Composing Spaces

This morning I took it upon myself to move my blog from the directory to the root and then make it appear as if the blog were still in the directory so that the URL would be the same. I began at 10:00am. It is now 2:35pm. With the help of moshu on the Wordpress forums and the Search and Replace plug-in (which was in German; I couldn’t get it to appear in English), the move was a success. Now I just have to edit the template files, add some new templates, and then I can create my course pages as blogs and have the URLs be correct.

Time for a break.

Chris Anson of North Carolina State University forwarded a link on the WPA list to a pointed and hilarious letter from Pat Conroy to the editor of the Charleston (WV) Gazette in which he lambastes the Kanawha County school board’s suspension of his books, The Prince of Tides and Beach Music. The letter begins with:

I received an urgent e-mail from a high school student named Makenzie Hatfield of Charleston, West Virginia. She informed me of a group of parents who were attempting to suppress the teaching of two of my novels, “The Prince of Tides” and “Beach Music.” I heard rumors of this controversy as I was completing my latest filthy, vomit-inducing work. These controversies are so commonplace in my life that I no longer get involved. But my knowledge of mountain lore is strong enough to know the dangers of refusing to help a Hatfield of West Virginia. I also do not mess with McCoys.

And ends with:

The school board of Charleston, West Virginia, has sullied that gift and shamed themselves and their community. You’ve now entered the ranks of censors, book-banners, and teacher-haters, and the word will spread. Good teachers will avoid you as though you had cholera. But here is my favorite thing: Because you banned my books, every kid in that county will read them, every single one of them. Because book banners are invariably idiots, they don’t know how the world works — but writers and English teachers do.

Update, 9:18pm: Video from Zack Harold who is one of three finalists in West Virginia for MTV’s Choose or Lose ‘08 election coverage. He submitted this as port of the interview process.

Country Music Stars Challenge Al-Qaeda With Patriotic New Song ‘Bomb New York’

My brother-in-law, who is a Marine, and his wife are stationed at Camp Pendleton which is 38 miles north of San Diego. It also, according to the official website for the base, “covers over 125,000 acres and approximately 200 square miles of terrain. The stretch of shoreline along the base — 17½ miles — is the largest undeveloped portion of coastal area left in Southern California.”

Felipe just sent me some pictures of what it looked like this afternoon (note the sun in the second image):

Update, 11:18pm: CNN.com is now reporting that 3500 Marines have been evacuated from Camp Pendleton, as two fires were burning on the property. Here is a San Diego County-wide fire map (.pdf, 1.76 MB) updated as of 6:00pm local time. Camp Pendleton is in the upper left of the map and is still white as evacuations had yet to be ordered. You can see that Estimated Manditory Evacuation Areas surrounded it.

Bruce, “Living in the Future,” on the TODAY show. Video from Taylor Marsh.

Two years ago today and the days following my wife and I, as many did, watched with horror and rage as New Orleans flooded and thousands were left to try and survive. Several thousand residents took shelter in Austin, and Aimee and I did what we did to help: we went to Costco and bought at much as we could afford of the items we were told were in need: water, baby formula, diapers, and many others. I got my friend, Craig, an ER doctor in NYC, in contact with a doctor in Houston and he flew down and helped for a week:

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