Looking
back at Autumn
Hunter S. Thompson
drove headlong into the dark American night and found its underbelly
needing a tummy rub. PWR, I’m afraid, has not revealed its
dark side (to me). In a lightning flash, autumn 2004 delivered
its packages of rhetorical and contextual analyses, annotated
bibliographies, RBAs and marathon student/teacher conferences.
The rush was too swift to register pain. Amidst the maelstrom
of drafts, graphs, and pathos, someone cried out to say we were
making progress, and thus, fresh from an odyssey through the archipelago
of Green Library, a crew of brave students emerged having found
the authority to launch words alongside the grand authorities
in print (and non-print) who patrolled their research topics.
Brainstorming indeed. This, my friends, was composition.
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| "PWR
rocks the Stanford universe, and our fine students rock back
with grace and cunning. " |
Modes, process, reader-response,
expressionist, constructivist, de-constructionist, post-process
apologist – in the larger world of rhet/comp, the things
we talk about when we talk about writing have floated through
many phases lo! these many generations past. But something clicks
at Stanford. Leaders Lunsford and Diogenes have worked the contact
zones; their eyes retain the hopeful sparks of educators. Dr.
L’s twenty-first century take on rhetoric re-animates the
best of communication pedagogy. Mr. D’s breadth, experience,
and humor keep us honest. And even as their prodding and tweaking
guide a brilliant cast of teachers into assembling curriculum,
Moneyhun now steps into a leadership role in the Writing Center
(a brave act on its own – indeed). SWC makes sense of the
imperfect premise of a writing program. PWR rocks the Stanford
universe, and our fine students rock back with grace and cunning.
Enter
Tufte, Edward
By the time my first quarter was over, I was hungry to reflect,
assess, think it through. How timely, then, that visionary Edward
Tufte should re-visit the land of Silicon and come to Stanford
to deliver a lecture on visual information. He arrived just as
we were putting the bow on our densely taught autumn rhet-fest.
Fascinating to see E.T. in action. He introduced his current work
with analytical design, doing a teacherly job of breaking down
some fundamental principles, which, not surprisingly, overlap
with the principles we teach our students. He forgot, somehow,
to acknowledge ancient rhetoric’s having gone over most
of this some years (epochs?) back – alas, these are such
enlightened times. Nevertheless, his style was engaging, well-practiced,
and a hoot.
He promoted “spark lines,” his word for tiny horizontal
zig-zag lines – very small graphs – he proposes we
include in our visual vocabularies alongside words and numbers.
His swift commentary then segued into his already classic critique
of a PowerPoint slide used by Boeing to brief NASA higher ups
in regards to the Columbia space shuttle crisis. He touched upon
some of the "moral" (again, his word) implications of
this poorly presented evidence. The imminent deaths of another
valiant crew of shuttle astronauts, was, apparently for the sorry
Boeing PowerPoint Heads, a bit of information left best obscured.
Indeed.
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| PWR
Lecturers marvel over Minard’s poster after the Edward
Tufte talk on December 8, 2004. Left to right: Paul Bator,
Kevin DiPirro, Erik Turkman, Alyssa O’Brien, and John
Peterson. |
He closed with a brief
history of how he got his series of books on design started (self
published after he realized Harvard U. Press didn't quite understand
the need for the book to use rich and high quality graphics).
Of course, there was far more to it than this, not the least of
which were the artifacts (on paper! he didn't use the projector
screens) he provided to all lucky enough to get there early. The
place was packed, standing room only. Kudos to CTL for putting
this together. And the best part of the evening was getting see
PWR colleagues there, all of us dressed in sensible clothes to
guard against a damp night. It was December. The quarter was ending.
We could talk to each other. We could laugh about words and ideas.
We could critique the authority whom we had just seen wowing a
spillover crowd at Stanford. And so we de-briefed in the lobby
– until they finally had to kick us out so they could close
the building. The quarter was ending. I had made it. Fear? Yeah,
some. Loathing? No. It takes a real Hunter S. Thompson to dig
up the good stuff.
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