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On the Desk This Week…

What you see is what I’m reading over the next week. No, of course, I don’t have to get it all done in seven days, but I’m on a roll and the research is getting interesting. Once I get into a book, I can’t put it down (unless it is […]

Marriage as Business Arrangement

I have a lot of papers to grade today, but before I can focus on them, I came across something in Emmett’s research that is quite enlightening. It is this: This is the wedding license of Emmett’s father, Dr. Francis C. Wilson and Kate Langley Jordan, Emmett’s stepmother. On the […]

Game On!

A busy day at research central today: — Added about 100 new items into the Emmett Wilson database. Tedious, but part of the process. — Wrote three pages of the rough draft for chapter two. Going very slowly; driving me nuts because I’ve had to stop and start so much […]

A Strategy for Research: Organizing Data

When it comes to writing a major piece, such as Emmett’s book, you collect a lot of information. That’s a good thing, but it can be overwhelming. I’d mentioned in an earlier post that I have (literally) hundreds of source items, and I’m still collecting information (and probably will for […]

The Dud

I was revved up this morning when this book arrived in my office from InterLibrary Loan: I’ve been waiting for this book for about three weeks — which is about how long it takes, depending on the book’s availability. (I’m not great at waiting around patiently for a book to […]

The Sad Decline of Writing Quality

A friend sent this to me the other day: Sad, but true. In my 20 years of teaching in two disciplines (Communications and Education), it seems like there has been a downward spiral in writing quality for at least the past decade. I’ve never had so many instances of academic […]

Rolling Right Along…

Good news: The narrative style is working. It lets me channel the research such that Emmett is narrating his story (with a little bit of help from me in the background)! When I started writing about 10 days ago, I used a standard, very structured, academic, follow-the-outline writing method, and frankly, […]