What astounds me about what I am about to say is that the\nlast time I posted to this blog was July 24, more than a month ago. There are\nreasons for that, but in the meantime, despite the lack of new articles, this\nblog continued to find new subscribers\u2014and their numbers just yesterday crossed\nthe 20,000 mark. Already, the numbers have exceeded that threshold by a few dozen.\nI would have expected the increase to decrease until I wrote something new. I\ncan only assume that past writings have continued to propel interest despite my\nlack of activity. That fact is profoundly humbling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wrote twice in July. The other post occurred on the July 4\nholiday. It detailed my cataract surgery in June and offered some medical\nhistory concerning the procedure. What followed, in addition to two trips to\nColorado and one to Washington, D.C., between mid-July and early August, was a\nmad rush connected to a fall semester course I teach for the University of Iowa\u2019s\nSchool of Urban and Regional Planning<\/a>,\nas an adjunct assistant professor. But this year, the decision was made to move\nmy class online, which meant a great deal of added work to make that change\npossible. And just to complicate matters, in mid-August, my laptop suffered a\nhard drive failure that delayed my timeline. I then worked to restore course-related\nfiles, an odyssey I will not detail here. It would be an overdose of minutiae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have been teaching in Iowa City since 2008. After the massive floods that\nstruck much of eastern Iowa<\/a> and some neighboring states in June of that year,\nthe planning program began an urgent search for a way to add curriculum related\nto natural hazards and to make itself more relevant and useful to communities\nin Iowa needing assistance with flood recovery. It was easier to import such\nexpertise than to develop it among existing faculty, apparently, because they\nsoon made an offer for me to teach beginning that fall. I am an alumnus of the\nprogram, and they knew me well. At the time, I was already co-instructing such\na course at the University of Illinois-Chicago<\/a>\nwith colleague Richard Roths, although that ended after the spring 2009 class\nthe following year. But the arrangement with the University of Iowa has\ncontinued. The course has grown and evolved over time, naturally, just as the\nsubject matter for \u201cPlanning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery\u201d has also\nchanged. Every year is a new adventure and an exercise in updating teaching\nmaterials. As I like to say, it is hardly like teaching Shakespeare. The script\nis rewritten with each new major disaster. Recent years have added multiple exclamation\npoints to that statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, while the subscriber count was climbing yesterday, I\nwas preparing for and then presiding over the first online class session for\nURP:6280 last night, with eleven students in attendance. I still have work to\ndo in reformatting PowerPoint files from past years and recording lecture\nvideos that used to be presented in a classroom. But I discovered yet again that,\nfrom the first class to the last, my students are inquisitive and thoughtful\nand have very good reasons for choosing this course as an elective in pursuit\nof their Master of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning. As before, some make\nclear that they see this as possibly the most important class they will take.\nSome past students are now in leadership roles in the field of hazard\nmitigation and disaster recovery planning. They are not deluded about the\nchallenges that communities will face under the influence of climate change,\ndemographic shifts, and other factors. They want to do the planning that matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although I have not written much for this blog lately, that\nwill change very soon. I had to keep my priorities straight, however; my\nstudents had to have their materials ready on the course website by Monday,\nAugust 26, as classes started, and it was my obligation to make that happen. After\nLabor Day, I can gradually shift some of my attention elsewhere. My recent travels,\nto San Francisco in April, Manitoba and Cleveland in May, and to Colorado and\nWashington in July and August have supplied me with excellent subject matter\nfor at least several future posts. I relish the prospect of making up for lost\ntime with subscribers both new and old. Thanks to everyone for their support\nand interest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jim Schwab<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What astounds me about what I am about to say is that the last time I posted to this blog was July 24, more than a month ago. There are reasons for that, but in the meantime, despite the lack of new articles, this blog continued to find new subscribers\u2014and their numbers just yesterday crossed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[231,441,81,75,609,223,368,258,50,130],"tags":[1368,1370,87,200,1371,1369,652,804],"class_list":["post-1345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging-3","category-careers","category-disaster-2","category-education","category-natural-hazards","category-personal-health","category-personal-history","category-technology","category-urban-planning","category-writing-2","tag-2008-floods","tag-adjunct","tag-blogging-2","tag-iowa-city","tag-online-course","tag-school-of-urban-and-regional-planning","tag-teaching","tag-university-of-iowa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1346,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions\/1346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}