I don’t go crazy for the blog memes, but it’s worthwhile to relax a bit and dredge up a few memories. I was happy to be tagged by Michelle at the BearTwinsMom’s Den. It’s a brief, straightforward meme, too - I like those.

The rules:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

Got it.

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

Lots and lots of woodworking - more along the lines of lutherie.

I like re-designing things to meet my needs and then making them. I wanted, in 1998, an electric guitar with a combination of features that I couldn’t find anywhere:

• A symmetrical, double-cutaway body like the Gibson ES-335, but solid wood and with a flat top.
• A fat, round, oversized neck with a Gretsch-style peghead. I had, and still have, no need for a slim, fast neck.
• Woods I liked [and from local trees], which were black walnut for the body and black cherry for the neck; Koa for the electronics cover on the back gives contrast without gaudiness.
• Moving the bridge higher up the body and putting controls on the opposite side of right-handed guitars. This freed up the lower portion of the body for additions later on and, by moving the bridge up, my arm doesn’t hit the controls accidentally.
• Green abalone peghead inlays of my last name and a lightning bolt inspired by Roy Hobbs’ patch in The Natural.

You get the idea.

Having this made would’ve cost me plenty - $2,000+ or so given the specs I wanted. I couldn’t, at that time, make the metal parts or electronics, so I had to buy the bridge, tuners, pickups, etc. But if it’s wood, bone, or plastic, I made it. Total damage? About $180, and that’s because I didn’t skimp on quality. Had I harvested used parts, it could’ve clocked in at about $50 + elbow grease.

And, for what it’s worth, I’m not a certified musician or certified luthier, I haven’t toured with a band, etc. I didn’t work at a musical instrument factory or apprentice with a guitar builder.

Makes ya think, yes?

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

1. Install a podcast-playing plugin so it can debut today
2. Scan some old documents
3. Catch up on about 300 years of backlogged e-mails
4. Read today’s content from the 366 subscriptions I have in Google Reader
5. Write a blog post [doing that now]

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Bacon, pepperoni and cheese, beef jerky.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Return the scholarship money I was generously given by the Clark Foundation.
2. Develop a hybrid teaching academy with two components - 9-12 and post-secondary. The academy would have a business component similar to Boston’s MATCH, a humanities/classics curriculum drawing on Great Books and math done in-house with more advanced science coming through a university partnership. Post-secondary students would be actively involved in teaching the 9-12 students with a focus on their own pedagogy and scholarship. Think it’s not possible? Let’s talk it over.

5) Three of my bad habits:

1. Reading too much and not talking/writing enough.
2. Not being as politically active as I ought to be.
3. I’ll stop at two.

6) 5 places I have lived:

1. Hartwick, NY [resident of the Town of Hartwick but with a Cooperstown address/phone]
2. Western Massachusetts
3. Boston, MA
4. South Kensington, London, England
5. Sacramento, CA area

7) 5 jobs I have had:

1. Private teacher [English, history, rhetoric, algebra/geometry/trigonometry, physics, etc. to varying degrees - never Biology or a foreign language, though]
2. University-level student course evaluation editor
3. Corporate education
4. Query/result refinement for a search engine
5. Varied consulting

8) 6 peeps I wanna know more about:

First, a note - tagging is a tough business in this education blogosphere. You folks know that you can write serious policy/pedagogy/etc. pieces while still having a laugh and/or writing about something normal, yes? Actually, I remember all those posts castigating The Quick and the Ed for writing about The Wire, so I suppose they don’t realize it.

So, I’ll go beyond the education blogosphere for some of these 6 bloggers who I enjoy and want to know more about:

1. Born Again Redneck, whose blog name would beg for a tag even if his stuff wasn’t worth reading. [response]
2. WinExtra/Steve Hodson, who gives sound, insightful tech commentary without being a star-struck technofanboy. [response]
3. James Stripes of Patriots and Peoples. P&P is one of the few sites that suggests you can - and should - read A People’s History of the United States and its reaction, A Patriot’s History of the United States, and pull the best from both [I find far less worthwhile/accurate in Zinn, but I digress.] This site deserves a much bigger audience - for example, every college freshman in America? [response]
4. Doug Belshaw, with whom I don’t always agree [I’m not on board for many ed-tech ideas] but whose writing I enjoy. It’s a Britblog, too. [response]
5. Mr. Teacher/Learn Me Good, who’s a fine example of one who takes education seriously while still having a laugh. MrT is a warm, dry island in that polluted sea of eggheadery that is my RSS reader. He’s also got a column on education.com. [response]
6. Joel at So You Want To Teach? has a spectacular blog - it’s introspective/reflective without being trite and the valuable discussion makes it a must-read. I read every post in full. [response]

Have at it, folks.