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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

UD's FAVORITE THINGS


"What? You can't be serious. You'd never do that," one of my students just said to me.

He had come up to chat after class, and had mentioned, merely to ridicule it as typical of the kitschy American spectacles we discuss during our class on Don DeLillo's novels, that a Sing-a-Long Sound of Music would soon take place at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium.

But UD responded with excitement: "Really? Thanks - I'll order tickets right away! I got tickets to the Sing-a-Long in Baltimore last year and then wasn't able to go..."

The student's face fell. UD could tell right away that he'd thought UD was somewhat cool right up to the moment when she revealed that she has been dreaming for years about attending this event.




In the rushed way of such moments, with a new set of students entering the room, UD tried to describe the happy meta-ironies of the Singalong, and how the Singalong represents for her one of the few public venues - outside of, say, a Jimmy Swaggart revival - where one can truly sing out. Yes, yes, there's the Singalong Messiah every December at the Kennedy Center. But the feel of that is very High Anglican. No giggling at the Gloria!

UD thinks this chat might have been an authentic learning experience for her student, along the lines of "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."