Dr. J’s Lists

Here’s My “Top 25 Books” List, Now Build Me A Park

Inspired by Brooke Foy’s project for UrbanArt at Brent Ferguson Park, where she is building a maze of huge, concrete books as a public art installation, I tried to figure out which books I would choose for such a project. Here, I’ve listed my Top 25 Books. I don’t think Brooke Foy reads this blog,…

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Rainy Days and Sunday

Nothing particularly profound to say today, readers. It’s the second day of spring, and after an absolutely beautiful day yesterday, Mother Nature has delivered us a cold and rainy Sunday here in Memphis. So, I thought I’d share my favortie “rainy day” albums. If you click on the album covers, it will take you to…

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Dr. J’s Top Stories of 2009

What a long, strange trip it’s been! It’s almost time to bid adieu to the last year of the first decade of the new millineum. In case you weren’t paying attention, here are a dozen of the highlights (and lowlights) of 2009: 12. Sarah Palin Goes “Rogue” The Grand Dame of the Illiterati wrote a…

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Best of Reality Television

It’s no secret that one of my guilty pleasures is reality television. I was an early convert to this genre of entertainment, having come of age around the same time that MTV’s groundbreaking series The Real World was in its prime. (The first season of that show was broadcast in my freshman year of college.)…

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Listening While Grading

This following is the soundtrack of my life these days: Ennio Morricone’s The Mission: This is the soundtrack to the movie of the same name. Quite simply, some of the most breathtakingly beautiful music ever composed. This album made me love the oboe. The emotional rise and fall of the compositions carries its listener from…

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Torture 101

A friend and colleague of mine invited me to come speak to his class about torture last week. The class was a writing seminar, organized around the theme of “citizenship,” and my colleague was feeling (understandably) frustrated because– in his words– he “just didn’t feel like [he] had the tools or the knowledge to counter…

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10 Things I Love About Memphis

Here’s my contribution to the meme begun over at Smart City Memphis: 1. Wild Bill’s Juke Joint I’m sure that it doesn’t come as any surprise to readers of this blog that I’ve got Wild Bill’s first on the list. This is the single greatest place in Memphis… or in any city I’ve ever been…

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Why I Don’t Care About Cheating

First, a few caveats about this post, just for clarification: (1) By “cheating,” I mean academic cheating. Plagiarism, mostly. I don’t mean relationship cheating, or sports cheating, or cheating on your taxes. I do actually care about those… well, two out of three of them, anyway.(2) The title of this post is (obviously, I hope)…

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Nominations for Secretary of Culture?

Last night at the 51st Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy President Neil Portnow extended a long-overdue appeal to President Obama when he said: “Our finest national treasure is our culture in the arts, so it’s time that we acknowledged that fact with the creation of the Cabinet position of Secretary of the Arts.” How right…

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25 Random Things About Me

So, there’s a thing going around on Facebook that asks people to list 25 random things about themselves. I usually delete messages like this immediately, but for whatever reason I actually filled out the list this time. I suppose that the point of this exercise is to show something revelatory about what the author finds…

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