I am Craving a Big Boy

This quarter at SCAD I'm using the 4th Edition of The Speaker's Compact Handbook (Sprague, Stuart, and Bodary). I've also taken the plunge with their "bundled" package. Of course that means more money for students. I chose it because it is a way to record (most likely on their phones) and upload speeches via software that even I can figure out. I showed my boss the on-line tutorial. It had a 50's retro style that reminded me of an early commercial for Frisch's Big Boy (which, I just found out, was Cincinnati's first, year-round drive in, opening on Central Parkway in 1948).

 Somehow, somehow, this quarter, I'd like to teach more integrated concepts, as opposed to a set of information (which, most often in public speaking, is a set of skills). What are, for example, the broader, social-rhetorical ideas behind the classic concepts that we teach such as audience analysis? I feel guilty of the accusation leveled at our internet society:  lots of information, far less meaning. The above fact is an interesting piece of trivia about my hometown, for example. But it acquires a place, a meaning, when seen in the landscape of the era of drive in restaurants and the concomitant rise of individual car ownership, the sprawl of suburbs, and the new values of convenience, speed, and, independence. Business owners awakened to the new market of children. (And, I think that the drive-in era might have been a point when family entertainment and eating out merged.)  No, I don't have this social / history view of each of my city's fun facts -- I've been reading Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. In fact, it's going to be required reading in my upcoming (eeek!!) speech class this quarter. It will give us something to chew on, as they say -- the ol', basis for in-class discussion and jumping off points, at least, for speech assignments. I'll let you know!

Before closing this morning I'd like to wish my wonderful friend Douglas Kaufman Happy Birthday. At present, he's the only follower of this blog. He's a huge support to me and a "diamond in the rough," as his mom, Ruth, described him.