Blogging on the Powwow

I have no idea if Percy Grainger led with his chest. But, it's a nice play on two themes that carried me through the academic year that is coming to a close (2014-2015). In the 2010-2011 academic year, I returned to the oboe when I was on a fellowship and released from all teaching/campus responsibilities. As I have written before ( here and here ), it was like magic, and Neil and I dubbed that year, the Year of the Oboe - YOTO. I think of this most recent academic year as the Year of Percy Grainger - YOPG.  In case my readers have not been exposed to the world of concert bands, allow me to be so humble as to introduce Percy Grainger to you. Percy Grainger (1882-1961) was a composer and concert pianist, wildly famous, who mostly lived in Australia, England, and the United States. He was most well known for his innovative and fresh compositions involving British folk music. I will insert a side note to add that Mr. Grainger was a very generous friend of the oboe. It would...

Massachusetts has a new law: if your wipers are on, your head and taillights also need to be on. It's a safety issue. I like it. I hear that some Massachusetts lawmakers want to repeal it . But, I digress, as I often do when blogging. It's a new law in Massachusetts, but Maine has had this law since 1997. I know, because I did a research project on this law during my first semester of graduate school. That was fall of 1997. I completed an assignment for a research class on this new law. I was interested in how people know if a new law has been passed. This was before widespread use of the Internet and unlike now, there were no electronic signs along the highways. How would people learn about this law? I conducted a project in which I assessed the extent to which Mainers were compliant with the law. On five or six days when it rained, I parked on several different roads in Saco and Biddeford and among cars with Maine plates, when the wipers were engaged, I recorded wheth...