As is the case with most blogging sites, this one has lacked regular attention. I’m not going to promise to do better; our world is filled with promises not kept. If I’m back here next week and again the following week, that’s a whole lot better than a promise.

In the meantime, take a look at the WISE courses that I’ve been offering. They are fun and challenging, for me, at least, and, I hope, for the students in the classes. The current one, Historical Research with AI, is one of the most demanding one that I’ve prepared. I won’t know if it worked until we’re done.

Onward.

This fall, I’ll offer two courses:

• A Short History of the Long Roads – The Interstate Highway System
  “Coast to Coast without a Stoplight,” proclaimed the Saturday Evening Post in 1956. Planned as part of our national defense infrastructure, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System transformed the mobility of civilians, and with it, American life. Distant locations were connected while communities inside cities were divided from one another, sickened by noise and pollution or obliterated altogether. We will study the Massachusetts experience, including the Massachusetts Turnpike, I-290, and the Big Dig. We will also see what’s been done to repair the ecological and social damage caused by these asphalt arteries and how infrastructure improvements will change highways of the future.
  Recommended Reading: Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life, Cornell University Press, 2013
• Heard but Not Seen – The Studio Musicians
  The bass line in Sonny and Cher’s “The Beat Goes On” came from Carol Kaye of L.A.’s Wrecking Crew. Funk Brothers guitarist, Robert White, pulls us in to “My Girl” by The Temptations. Elvis Presley wanted Nashville’s Boots Randolph’s saxophone as the lead on “Return to Sender.” Al Jackson Jr.’s simple cross-stick drumming picks up the heartbeat of Otis Reddings’s “Try a Little Tenderness.” Another Redding tune, “Respect,” was recorded at the Muscle Shoals studio with Jimmy Johnson’s instantly recognizable guitar hook. We’ll listen to these and other musicians, and, in the process, we will hear new layers of familiar tunes.

Registration for these and other WISE courses starts on August 29, 2022 at https://assumptionwise.org.

After a year like no other, we are finding ways to tell the stories. One such story is WISE’s embrace of online courses. You can learn more with the presentation at this year’s NERD summit, Not your typical flip to Zoom. 

In addition to teaching the WISE course on Failures and those who love them, Karl will talk about Digital Humanities at the upcoming NERD Summit.

More to come with WISE and other projects. Stay tuned.