The reason I want students to have to struggle with difficult texts is because I want them to have the capacity to make meaning in and of the world on their own.
11.03.2026 21:06
👍 567
🔁 107
💬 4
📌 5
The reason I want students to have to struggle with difficult texts is because I want them to have the capacity to make meaning in and of the world on their own.
Be careful. Last fall, I almost got killed in a giant rut that someone had filled with leaves rather than dirt.
Moonrise over the beach at night
During a terrible time, one of the things that kept me going was a memory of this place. I drove 800 miles, stopping only for gas, to get there. It got me thinking about writing, reading, memory, and in a way, time travel. Check it out here: philipskiba.com/memory-time/
During the pandemic, I had days when I felt I was by myself on a shore drained of the tide, dragging a stick across miles of wet sand. There were also days when I was a boy again, sliding down a snowy hill on a flattened cardboard box. And there were days when I remembered the teacher who made us memorize a poem each week, and when we asked why, she said we might one day find ourselves in a wreck at the side of the road and we would recite these poems to stay alive.
Rick Barot ♥️
A beautiful reminder of what poetry can do.
Yours truly reading
Poster for the Asbury book cooperative comedic personal essay contest.
Had a lot of fun with the other finalists at the Asbury Book Co-Op event Saturday night. Read from my essay “Lobsternacht.”
It was going on one, two in the morning, and we were shooting what I felt was an important scene for me, when he makes an attempt to be quote-unquote straight, in a suit, and at the end of it he gets emotional and locks himself in the other room. And I felt like, I’m not getting what I want—I’m not happy with it. Mike was happy with it. He called me the next day and said, “I know you weren’t happy with the scene last night. Believe me, we wouldn’t have gone home if I had felt we weren’t getting it.” And then he sort of became my psychiatrist and said, “You find it difficult to be happy, don’t you? You find it difficult to enjoy things.” And I said, “Well, sometimes. Last night was about feeling too tired and not feeling I was reaching what I needed to reach for the scene.” He talked to me then about when he was making, I don’t know whether it was Virginia Woolf or The Graduate. He said, “I didn’t enjoy it for a second. I was worried about so many things.” And then he said, “You know, this is never going to happen again quite this way. You should try to allow yourself to enjoy this more. Take a minute a day, and then add a minute the next day, and another minute. Pretty soon, you’ll have hours of happiness.”
The Birdcage opened thirty years ago today, so in its honor, I want to share one of my favorite stories about Mike Nichols that didn't make it into my biography. This is from an interview I did with Nathan Lane.
I truly have difficulty nowadays, deciding what is grifting nonsense, and what is just lazy pseudo-scientific thinking. It’s so angry making.
The thing I try to beat into my trainees most is that you are a scientist first, and don’t have the luxuries of lazy thinking or unsupported beliefs.
Oz was pushing colloidal silver? He needs his license revoked, if he even still has one.
Cover of We Make You Feel Sane, depicting, a man and woman sitting on the hood of a car illuminated by headlights, backed by Jersey Shore rides
Back cover and blurb from the forthcoming novel We Make You Feel Sane.
Awaiting proofs of my debut novel, We Make You Feel Sane. I feel like a kid at Christmas. After publishing a ton in my field, this is unknown territory! Cover art from Jeffry Everett below. You know his work from @gaslightanthem.bsky.social posters, and a bunch of other cool bands.
Neon lights Nobel Prize
When a leader speaks that leader dies
You won't have to follow me
Only you can set you free
You gave me fortune you gave me fame
You gave me power in your God's name
I'm every person you need to be
Oh I'm
The Cult
Of Personality
Check out Albanese bears, tropical flavor, unfrozen. Sublime.
Very well done. I’ve enjoyed it.
A diatribe on the dysfunction of LinkedIn
Among my favorite commentaries on LinkedIn
This guy had one of the wildest interviews I have ever read in Tape Op magazine a couple of years ago. Seek it out. It is mind- bending.
You still had 100 characters left to use after the text in this post. You could have included this sentence (69 characters).
There is no evidence that ivermectin works as a treatment for cancer.
Looks like Starmer just announced you are, too. None of this is good.
This week's cover @thelancet.com
I need an iPhone app where any scammer agent that says the word “credit” gets immediately disconnected. Whatcha got, people?
Shim the cleat.
More commonly, we use “syndrome” when we don’t know WTF is going on. But “complex” is right up there, too! 😂
Hello, students. Meet your blue exam book. You will have three hours to complete this exam.
This is really interesting!
Tomatoes. Fruit that tastes like a vegetable. Underhanded.
Every academic, in particular, every academic who suddenly discovered that they were a token interviewee in a hiring process that had already been decided, should read Tobias Wolff’s short story “In the Garden of the North American Martyrs.” Just brilliant.
If you eat them faster you can get to 10 before it hurts / you develop dysentery!
Big Phil Energy^TM
They can pay using NFT’s.
This is a very well written description of the mostly unexamined drive I feel to make and share my art. The more anti-culture gets pushed at me the more compelled I feel to make my own
Look at that reach for the line! Born competitor!
Not as thrilling as the dog on the downhill course, but extra style points for congeniality and being a good boy when met by the race marshal.