General Announcements From Quarantine

General Announcements


Another week at the Virtual Coe College Writing Center commences, and this week, we have a few announcements.


The Writing Fellowship assignments have recently gone out to our consultants! For the freshmen consultants, this is an exciting time, and brings hopes of new connections in the fall when we return. The list of FYS classes offered has been sent out. Please remember to check your class and professor, and to reach out to contact them by the end of the week!


Virtual Tuesday Tea was held this week by religion professor Geoff Chaplin. The topic was on a letter-writing experiment he conducted, in which he offered to write letters to anyone online who saw the post and wanted one. To his surprise, he received 17 requests and multiple letters in response.


If you’re interested in keeping the art of letter-writing alive, and you’d like it to remain cheap and easy to send letters or packages, please contact your local representative to inform them that the Post Office should continue to receive funding, or text USPS to 50409 and answer some basic questions.


From my collection of photos taken in the writing center, here’s one of our old and dearly missed whiteboard prompts:








Recommended Reading


For those interested in economics, communication, or the intersection of the two, I would recommend the article “The Rhetoric of Economics” by Professor Diedre McCloskey, Distinguished Prof. of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Chicago. It can be found at http://www.jstor.org/stable/2724987.


The Rhetoric of Economics was recommended to me by my grandfather, a retired economics professor who has rather overestimated my capacity for understanding any and all trade journal articles about economics, but if you know what ‘logical positivism’ is, then this is the article for you, as it seems to be about the various attitudes and linguistic approaches that economists use to explain their work.


For those who are interested in easier and fun reads that are very much not about economics, I would recommend the satirical article: “A Poirot Novel Where No One Is Murdered And He Gets To Eat Everything He Wanted Without Interruption, at https://tinyurl.com/ycwsn5m3.


If you’re a fan of Hercule Poirot, I would very definitely recommend it, as it is exactly what it reads on the can- by which I mean the title. The article offers you a delightful array of chapter titles that would belong in a book where Poirot just enjoys some really good food.


For those interested in the continuing slide towards insurmountable inequality and the hoarding of resources by the rich, I would recommend “How Goliath Won: The Future Implications of Dukes vs Wal-Mart.” It is not a cheering read under current circumstances unless you are rich and an unethical corporate ceo. If you are rich and an unethical corporate CEO, please consider making a substantial to Coe College’s Writing Center. If you’re not rich, after reading this article I would recommend re-reading the Poirot one, because it’s very sad, but particularly relevant in light of recent Supreme Court rulings, if you’re up to date on the political news.


The New York Times and several other newspapers are currently offering free Covid newsletters and coverage without a subscription, and, as usual, NPR has excellent and comprehensive free coverage.


What are you reading in quarantine?