Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

I do not have any assignments related to Halloween this semester, but my Freshman Composition class has focused on folklore readings, including an examination of Henderson State University's "Legend of the Lady in Black." I was looking for articles on folklore on college campuses and included part of a chapter on college student folklore from Richard M. Dorson's 1959  American Folklore.  They were surprised by the legends about paper grading and class attendance. For example, many students believe in the fifteen-minute rule that you are excused if your professor shows up after the first fifteen minutes are over. I have never tested this one because I am usually prompt. I told them that I had often heard about the process of throwing tests and papers down the stairs and giving them grades based on how far the papers sailed when I was an undergraduate. The idea is that professors grade papers by tossing them down the stairs and determining grades based on their position...

I have not been to many cemeteries lately because I have been so busy teaching and writing. I am not working on any articles right now, but I have been writing fiction and teaching six classes. In between grading journals and discussion boards, I have not had the time to do much except listen to a few records and take walks. When I lived in Illinois, Amanda and John and I would go to cemeteries all the time, searching for famous and infamous people. In fact, I still have to post many of those pictures, including pictures from Showmen's Rest in Woodlawn Cemetery and the Haymarket Martyrs in Forest Home Cemetery.  I miss going on these trips with them, but now and then, Carrie and I make it to local cemeteries. We visited three this weekend, including Rose Hill, Rest Haven Memorial Gardens, and Helms Cemetery. We visited several famous local graves in Rose Hill Cemetery include Harris T. Flanagin, Arkansas State Governor from 1862 to 1864, and Reverend John McLaughlin who founded Hen...

I've been visiting graveyards all summer, searching for the famous and not so famous. Here are a few of the photos that I took on my journeys. I will write about Hellbender's "Graveyarded" one of these days, but I thought the song was really appropriate for this post. Too bad that YouTube only has the whole album, Con Limon . I am posting a link to that, as well as these cemetery pics: Jack Kerouac, H.P. Lovecraft, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, John Dillinger, and all. Con Limon