Martha
J. Bianco, Ph.D.
About
Me
Greetings!
If you've landed here, I assume you may want to know a thing or two about me. Here are a few "quick facts":
- I live in a big house that is torture to clean.
- In this house, there are two four cats, two hamsters, one fish, two children, and eight computers.
- Also, an X-Box, one two Wii's, about four one DS, one PS3, two TiVos, several televisions, including a big ol' flat screen
- What's the thing with all these boxes? Well, the kids -- they're into the X-Box, the Wii's, the DS's, etc.
- I am kind of a film nut -- and I also like a lot of cable or long-gone TV series (like Weeds, The Tudors, The Sopranos, Oz, Battlestar Galactica [rip], Firefly, Dead Like Me, etc.). I spend a lot of time streaming shows from Netflix or hulu.com, which I watch while I do many of the other things listed on this page.
- My favorite
- color is purple
- animals are
black-and-white long-haired cats. And pandas. I find the
former a bit easier to keep as a pet.
- foods are eggplant, lamb, garlicky things, honey tangerines, and goat cheese. I also really like Tombstone pepperoni pizza (?) but my new favoriate is Amy's cornmeal crust cheese pizza
- cold beverage is diet Mug rootbeer (has to be diet; the regular stuff is missing a certain something)
- hot beverage is a
quad grande nonfat latté with a quarter pump of mocha, extra foam, and
three Equals
- sweet is fine, expensive dark chocolate. Also, watermelon and green applie Tootsie Pops.
- movies are Being There, Like Water for Chocolate, The Fifth Element, Men in Black, and THX-1138.
- song is Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay,
by Otis Redding, and Ave
Maria, by almost anyone
- author is Doris Lessing
- poet is Langston Hughes
- art forms are dance & photography
- pastime is history anything -- reading, studying, writing, museum visiting, movie watching, etc.
- weird interest is submarines. I also like aircraft carriers. What I like about these is the social community aboard them.
- I love reading about food
and am appreciative that the word "foodie" exists in today's lexicon.
The things I love to do are: teaching, computing, reading, writing & researching, dancing, and cooking.
The Teaching
I have been teaching one thing or another for over 30 years. I have taught
- English (i.e., language arts -- from the kindergarten to postsecondary levels), including
- English at the basic and developmental levels for adults and GED learners
- English for for speakers of other languages (ESOL)
- policy studies courses (e.g., policy implementation and policy analysis)
- urban policy courses (e.g., education, transportation, social welfare)
- urban economics, sociology, and political science
- Spanish and Greek
- jazz and hip hop dance
- computer applications of all sorts
- statistics and research methods
- urban history
- hip hop history
- gender studies courses
- film studies courses
The Reading
I enjoy nonfiction -- particularly biographies, histories, and food-related writing -- as well as political humor & satire, historical fiction, and some of what falls into the general category of "women's fiction" but not romance! I have a Nook (Color ) and an Amazon Kindle. They can both handle library books, public domain, and, of course, purchased versions of the books I love to read.
The Computer
Do you know what a Kaypro is/was? Then you know when/how I got started. Of course, that's just personal computing. Before that, there was this:
The point is, I've been playing with computers for a long time. For me, though, computer stuff is not the thing I do. Computers are the things I do stuff on. (Please excuse the rather wretched syntax.) What I mean is that I've used computers for a lot of things:
- teaching computer applications, including MS-Office, SPSS, GIS, HTML, and more
- running a computer lab
- coding
- html
(making web pages, like this one); I code mostly by hand -- that is,
with old-fashioned html
- serious writing (academic articles, proposals, newsletters); this has required a fairly decent grasp of the MS-Office program suite (and OpenOffice, too)
- graphics (using imaging software and graph-generating software)
- financial planning (not just through the use of spreadsheets, but also financial software like Quicken)
- communications: "E-mail me" is my standard response to almost anything (and, alas, "text me"); okay, so I hate the telephone. But I don't blog or chat (no time) and I don't skype (no need, really). When necessary, I do engage in instant messaging (say, for example, I want to walk a student through a problem)
- webmistressing; I guess this could come under the "communications" category, but I feel it needs a bullet of its own. I have about ten domains (a gal can never have too many domains). I think I like webmaster-mistressing best of all.
- electronic
e-mail list management (mostly professional and academic, but also for
community organizations)
- friendship,
support/networking. Let me be specific here. I keep in touch with
friends via e-mail. I join online support groups when I have
an
issue for which I need support or networking -- like teaching English
to the incarcerated. But you will not find me in a chat room
(unless I'm trying to teach someone in real time).
The Dance
The older I get, the more I feel that "dance" is a thing of the past. But, still, up until about a year ago, I was still doing complicated hip-hop routines on a regular basis. In the more distant past, I have designed stage lighting, performed dances, and choreographed pieces for
- African-derived jazz dance (in the style of Alvin Ailey, for example)
- African Diaspora folk (e.g., rumba, Santería, etc.)
- Ballroom and Latin (e.g., tango, rumba, salsa, merengue, mambo)
- Hip hop
I was also the dance critic for Willamette Week for a period of time back in the 1980s. Free tickets to everything!
The Cooking
Ah. Well, I'm mostly Italian, but also have some French in me. Part of my family is also from Hong Kong -- so Cantonese is on the menu, too. And, since I lived in Greece for a couple of years, I can put together a pretty good Greek feast. Mostly, anything Mediterranean, and you'll find it on my table, along with a nice bottle of red wine, a good loaf of bread, and a deep, dark chocolate dessert.
Then there is the fact that part of my household is vegan. So, at this point I can take pretty much any dish and veganize it. We often have two versions of the same dish for dinner (dairy macaroni and cheese in one casserole, vegan mac-n-cheeze in the other). I love the challenge of special-diet cooking.
I used to enjoy weight training and tae kwan do -- but I've suffered several sports-related injuries that now make many of these activities (including dance) all but impossible. So, I spend my "free time" (?) reading (often about cooking), listening to hip hop and jazz, watching a wide variety of films (see above), from sf to "urban" to indie and anything I think I can use in teaching (I love experimenting with creative approaches to teaching, whether through music, slam poetry, or film). I also have children. And cats. 'Nuff said.
I've traveled through the Mediterranean, lived in Athens, and road-tripped through America's national parks (Western states only). Most of my extended family lives back east, so I have traveled to New York, New Jersey, and Baltimore a lot over the years. New York is my favorite place on earth, other than Santorini, Greece. I don't ski, but I love rustic mountain cabins (as long as there's Internet access, at least for my Android phone).
You can read more about my teaching style, interests, research, and publications by looking at my curriculum vitae.
Return to Martha J. Bianco's Home Page
If you must, check out MySpace (I can't keep up with all the spaces, spots, and 'sters; my MySpace account is a rather lame attempt for me to stay "connected" with people half my age -- and, oh, yeah, to find out about music, too). And, yes, I have a Facebook presence, too -- but my site there is even more lame than my MySpace page.
Write me at biancom@q7.com
The last time I updated this was September 18, 2011.