The resident faculty here at Blogistan Polytechnic Institute have made their way from the wine cellar library to the hot tub faculty lounge, and a peek out the window shows a lawn strewn with underthings so they're certainly exploring ... something. Fortunately the staff eavesdropped as the faculty were en route - we don't eavesdrop on the hot tub faculty lounge for fear of scandal - and the phrase "rooting around the attic" came up a lot. As we're unaware of any attics on campus, we think they were talking about how we think.
Oh, and we have an anniversary coming soon.
More below the fold....
First, as is our Monday custom, we thank last week's guest lecturers. Last Tuesday our Professor of Hamptomedilocagreenosophy, LI Mike, shared his experiences in health care advocacy in a March and Rally in Sag Harbor. And last Wednesday Professor of Ecoinsaninsuroscamology winterbanyan offered a snarky summary of Thirty Things I've Learned on DKos. If you missed either, please give them a read.
We have no guest lecturers scheduled for this week, but unlike our usual practice of inviting you to volunteer and choose your own topic, we'd like to offer a couple of topics and invite volunteers to open the discussion, because ...
... it's the one-year anniversary month of Morning Reaction/Morning Feature. One year ago tomorrow - September 15th - our beloved Kula2316 posted her very first diary. Ten days later she began the daily series Morning Reaction. Her digest of the day's news including reactions from overseas newspapers, and her insightful analysis and warm responses to comments, quickly gained a large and devoted audience that came to be known as the Kula Krew.
When she went offline in mid-January to prepare for her and Mr. Kula's move back to the U.S., I stepped in with Morning Feature, thinking I'd simply fill in for a week or two to ensure the Kula Krew had a place to gather "for Koffee, Kuddles, and Konversation." As it became apparent she wouldn't be returning to host a daily diary owing to other time commitments once she was back stateside, I realized I was in for the long haul. While many of us still hope Kula will return with Morning Reaction someday, Morning Feature evolved into something a bit different: Blogistan Polytechnic Institute, a self-referential satire on the "everyone's an expert on the Internet" phenomenon, complete with a motto - Magis vinum, magis verum ("More wine, more truth") - and the other accoutrement that have grown up over the months.
The most important element of Morning Reaction/Morning Feature was never Kula or me, however. It was always you, the readers, now the 'student body' - and many of you now faculty - of BPI. I put 'student body' in quotes because it's not true. I've said I write Morning Feature to explore rather than to expound, because I learn more from our discussions than I could ever hope to teach. Equally if not more important, we've become friends along the way and built a community based on courtesy and affection, even when we disagree.
Simply, you not only make this space work; you make it welcoming. You make me get up every morning at 3.30am - well, Pootie the Precious plays a role in that too - because I want to be with you. I may miss sleep sometimes, but I'd miss you more. You're worth it.
So tomorrow and Wednesday, I'd like take a couple of days to share how we came to Morning Reaction/Morning Feature, and why we've stayed. If you'd like to share a your story as a guest lecture tomorrow or Wednesday, please volunteer in a comment below. Chef will provide coffee and bagels, and the Professor of Astrology Janitor will be in the lobby explaining why there are two of him.
As for the rest of the week, we'll continue a topic that began with last week's series on Charles Pierce's Idiot America: how we think about politics, how we're often wrong, and how we can fix that. We'll shift into George Lakoff's The Political Mind and a discussion of cognitive frames, how inadequate frames limit our political reasoning, and how we can develop better frames.
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Happy Monday!