middle coasts

The Keystone XL Pipeline

2011-09-03T12:33:00.002-05:00

Hundreds of people continue their nonviolent protest outside the White House, urging President Obama to not approve the potentially environmentally disastrous Keystone XL pipeline. The Keystone XL pipeline, which if approved would run from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and carry some 900,000 barrels per day of crude oil refined from bitumen in the Canadian soil, has been denounced by environmentalist Bill McKibben and NASA scientist James Hansen and many other experts. But last week the State Department issued an assessment of the project that concluded that there would be "no significant impact" on natural resources near the pipeline route, while also downplaying the potential for increased greenhouse gas emissions.

The Nation's George Zornick captured the scene at the White House this week, and documented the arrests of protesters.

For more video, visit TheNation.com

My sister Fran was arrested this morning. I'm proud of her - and everyone who went to Washington

History of Chapbooks

2011-08-27T13:39:00.001-05:00

From xylography to xerography, chapbooks tell the history of literacy and disseminate the expression of thought, from musings to manifestos. To enlighten us on this subject Rain Taxi Review of Books editor Eric Lorberer will give an overview of the chapbook, paying special attention to its fascinating history, its variable design elements and formats, and its vibrant role in contemporary literature and publishing. Rain Taxi, a nationally acclaimed journal, includes regular critical commentary on chapbooks and will be launching a Chapbook Finder feature on its website soon. The chapbook is generally a pocket-sized, paper-covered publication, noteworthy for being accessible to create and circulate. Its pages may contain edicts issued by the establishment or criticisms articulated by a counter-culture voice.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Text/Messages: Books by Artists and Multiples Mall: A Bookish Fair.

Two favorite poems and a memory.

2011-07-13T11:53:00.005-05:00

Last week I was talking to a friend about her recent trip to Ireland - and walking along the flaggy shore that Heaney writes so beautifully about. My mind immediately went back to this evening when the sun was setting and the light was gold and spilling a golden glow over everything - water, land, dog, man. Part of my heart is there.

Onyx Ashanti: This is beatjazz

2011-07-12T22:46:00.002-05:00

adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=onyx_ashanti_this_is_beatjazz;year=2011;theme=art_unusual;theme=live_music;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=tales_of_invention;event=Full+Spectrum+Auditions;tag=Design;tag=Entertainment;tag=Technology;tag=live+music;tag=music;">

Onyx Ashanti is a musician, geek, open-source advocate, Maker, collaborator ... and we come back around again to musician. The intrumentation he has created fuses technique and technology into a full-body musical system, playable with hands, arms, mouth and body.

As he says:
I am what can only be described as a cyborg musician. in other words, the music i create live, can not be replicated without technology. My music is called "Beatjazz." It is a mix of sound design, live looping and jazz improvisation. My instrument of choice over the years has been a Yamaha Wind MIDI controller, but now the limitations have started to stunt the growth of this new form, so i designed an instrument that can take it into future.

He is now working on the next iteration of his instrument, codenamed Tron, and built around a helmet-mounted controller.

Onyx Ashanti on the Web

Twitter: @onyxashanti
Blog: beatjazz.blogspot.com

STEPHEN FRY

2011-07-08T11:00:00.003-05:00

I first became aware of Stephen Fry from a British friend who told me I should follow him on twitter. I did - and occasionally I would be amused by something he said - but I never really looked deeply into his life/work. Then another friend from Sweden posted this on FB (all these connected ways of learning from like minded people) and I had to post this here. I love his ideas about music - and especially this idea of a concerto being a conversation between the individual and the state. It made me immediately go to itunes and create a "concerto playlist" and start listening.

James Baldwin

2011-07-07T16:15:00.002-05:00

Absolutely one of the most brilliant and prophetic writers ever...witness...survivor. I've been about him for the past few years....and I just can't get enough of his wisdom, his wit and his unflagging love.

(Broadside by Patrick Sharrow)

Lake Michigan is a Dangerous Body of Water

2011-07-07T15:24:00.001-05:00

Lake Michigan is a Dangerous Body of Water, originally uploaded by abbyworld.

At least the southern half is...such a pity.

Each one teach one....

2011-07-07T13:44:00.003-05:00

I have been teaching long enough now that when I see former students giving the same advice that I give in the classroom....well - big internal smiles. Not that I take any credit for their wonderfulness - but love that I have had the honor of working with them for part of their / our journey.

Kimberly Weiss
wants to remind the young people of facebook not to post anything you wouldn't want a current/future employer to read/see, or to change your privacy settings to "friends only".

2011-07-06T00:05:00.003-05:00

New Zealand Book Council

2009-12-03T18:31:00.000-06:00

Exhibition opportunity!

2009-11-04T16:05:00.000-06:00

Abecedarian Gallery is hosting a juried exhibition of altered bookworks. There is a reduced entry fee student category and awards in that category. Your assistance distributing information about the opportunity is appreciated. Prospectus is available by visiting www.abecedariangallery.com, click on opportunities for artists link.

Thanks!

Alicia Bailey
Abecedarian Gallery
www.abecedariangallery.com
910 Santa Fe, Unit #101
Denver, CO 80204
phone: 720.282.4052 or 303.340.2110
fax: 303.479.9556

Tarabeans Blog…form AND content

2009-10-28T09:36:00.004-05:00

Since Tara posted about her altered book after last weeks crit…and I have been thinking about the physical/digital assignment (book of scans/transformations/autobiographical/20 pager) OMG is that part of the confusion???? How many ways have we referred to this project? Anyways….I decided to post about what she had written.

One of my favorite blogs ever is the CONVIVIO BOOKWORKS blog. I love these guys, the work they make (so unlike mine, but so attentive to details and so crisp and clean in its letterpress work.) I love the letters they send out every once in awhile….just talking about what they are doing and why – and telling stories about their lives and work. I have never met them, but they have answered every email I have ever sent them, quickly – and as if I am a long lost friend that they have just been waiting to hear from. This is from an email I saved – because I love the phrase in bold -

We also just got a fresh supply of Shaker Herbs in for the Convivio Book of Days Catalog… The house smells just like the Herb House at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine. Smell, great portal to memory.

This is a link to their latest project it…

http://www.conviviobookworks.com/pages/Works%20on%20Paper.html

This (in a very round about way) does bring me back to Tara’s blog and to Keith Smith.

Tara’s blog reflects her interests re: ideas and text. Even in her blog itself – there are not a lot of images …. and this is not a criticism …. because there are alot of ideas and thinking going on. She is honest – very honest. And she isn’t afraid to put herself out there and get messy with her thinking. I love this. It is where some hard work gets done and where some discoveries get made.

Text has played a major role in each of her projects this semester…the two she has finished as well as the one she is working on now. I have encouraged her to go back and read what Smith has to say about text – and I am going to share some of his thinking (and my own) here.

Smith outlines the ELEMENTS of the book….

the binding (the binding determines the type of book)
the pages
text and/or pictures
turning pages
display
He continues, “Like the formal elements within the single picture, the elements of the book function work in union to create the book. Each element must be conceived as part of and helps determine the other elements.

Picture, and/or text must be incorporated into the pages. If a writer hands material to a publisher, it is merely stuck into pages as convenient packaging.

Words should not be housed, but revealed by the (book) format.”

Let’s look at it another way as well….a book houses content…but in the genre of bookart – the book becomes the content as well. (not just the packaging).

Thomas McEvilley – in a riff on Wallace Steven’s 13 Ways of Looking at A Blackbird, wrote about 13 ways that we determine content in looking at art work. Very applicable to looking at our books – and in thinking about the elements of these final projects. The ( ) are my questions/comments to you.

1. Content that arises from the aspect of the artwork that is understood as representational. (DO we see nature based on how we have seen it represented in art?)

2. Content arising from verbal supplements supplied by the artist. (Title, what the artist says/writes)

3. Content arising from the genre or medium of the artwork. (How do we come to a painting vs. a book? How is a digital book different than a physical book – aside from the obvious?)

4. Content arising from the material of which the artwork is made. (When, for example, a jeweler works in some other medium than gold, because gold mining is damaging to the environment and does not return profits to the miners themselves.)

5. Content arising from the scale of the artwork. (Especially relevant for land art, earthworks. What about works at the nanoscale?)

6. Content arising from the temporal duration of the artwork. (Virtual work, Film, video, performance, music?)

7. Content arising from the context of the work. (Such as site specific work)

8. Content arising from the work’s relationship with art history. (A piece that specifically references something that came before it. Altered books in some cases – look at Smith’s examples of altered books made using Jansen’s History of Art.)

9. Content that accrues to the work as it progressively reveals its destiny through persisting in time. (Duchamp added content to the Mona Lisa – altered books, again)

10. Content arising from participation in a specific iconographic tradition. (Certain colors or forms, or even subjects, have a particular meaning (very similar to context)

11. Content arising directly from the formal properties of the work. (A Pollock drip painting asserts flux and indefiniteness of identity as qualities that can be found in the world.. Sherman photographs for a certain period formally reference 50′s film stills)

12. Content arising from attitudinal gestures (wit, irony, parody, and so on) that may appear as qualifiers of any of the categories already mentioned. (for eg., Natural Born Killers, which tells the story of a pair of mass murderers while parodying various media forms like TV sitcoms…)

13. Content rooted in biological or physiological responses, or in cognitive awareness of them. (Sexual arousal, disgust, visual responses like persistence of vision (when you stare at an image composed of complements and then look at a white wall and still see it, but with colors reversed) op art)

VIDEOGIOCO by Donato Sansone

2009-10-16T06:32:00.000-05:00

VIDEOGIOCO by Donato Sansone from Enrico Ascoli - Sound Design on Vimeo.

Sarah Wilson – Series of 4 eightfolds in case

2009-10-01T11:31:00.001-05:00

Calvin Whitehurst – Series of 4 eightfolds in case

2009-10-01T11:24:00.001-05:00

One Response

October 8, 2009 at 12:28 pm Calvin
In making this book I struggled with paper weight and paper color. I am not a fan of yellowish looking papers which was the choice for the first book, so i chose a whiter paper. This paper was a heavier weight and in turn created some issues with the smaller books fitting in the case. The content in the book is somewhat mysterious and isn’t very literal but follows along with common numerology symbols that have been used for the numbers 1-4 over the centuries. I really did enjoy making the content for this book, it was probably my favorite part.

Creative Commons

2009-09-05T11:05:00.000-05:00

What do you know about CC? You should be thinking about this as you put your own images out on the web…or utilize the images of others

http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/movingimages/Mix_Tape.mov

http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/movingimages/Building_On_The_Past.mov

circle press

2009-09-02T18:49:00.007-05:00

...from their website...

CIRCLE PRESS, formed by Ron Kind in 1967, is both part of a tradition and a breaker of tradition. The stages of its life are marked not only by the individual natures of those whose books and prints it has published but also by the differing character of the decades through which it has passed. The Press has been highly productive for over forty years and has had a profound effect, directly and indirectly, on other artists working with books, for it has provided a continuity and a context against which such activity can be measured, even for those whose output and philosophy are utterly different or even opposed.....

The Burning of the Books

Ronald King

George Szirtes (poet)

Artist edition

London, 2008

This powerful sequence of 14 poems is the result of a unique collaboration between writer George Szertis and artist Ronald King.

Its genesis was King’s long fascination with Elias Canetti’s'Auto da Fe', the famously grotesque yet marvelous novel set in pre-war Vienna which contributed to Canetti winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. To accompany his illustrations, King commissioned Szirtes to write a text inspired by and related to Canetti’s great work.

In 2008 the book was published in a limited edition of 35 copies letter-pressed in Walbaum onto 240 lb Barcham Green mouldmade paper with 15 etchings, one double-spread, thirteen full-page and one half-page; a total of 18 unstitched sections 350 x 260 mm, enclosed in a uniquely collaged card wrap-around and placed in a cloth-bound solander box.

2009-08-30T13:50:00.000-05:00

Personas – try it out!

August 30, 2009 by lesliefedorchuk | Edit

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display until Sept 09 at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab(Please contact us if you want to show it next!). It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person – to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. The computational process is visualized with each stage of the analysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile.

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

Personas was created by Aaron Zinman, with help from Alex Dragulescu, Yannick Assogb a and Judith Donath.

Click below to go try!

personas

RISORGIMENTO!!!

2009-08-26T10:12:00.004-05:00

Alright - yes - I know....I have been a lousy blogger of late. This will stop here and now - as I will begin blogging regularly with the students who are taking bookarts this semester at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Maybe some former students will chime in as well (yes, I know you are out there!!)

First step...get these blogs up and running. Would you like to check out what we are looking at, learning about, DOING???? Go to my netvibes site - and there you can find all the resources that we are using. Feel free to send us suggestions -- we are building as we go along.

This is the public component of our work. We will also be utilizing a course moodle for some of the work that we are doing.

I'm happy to answer any questions - always.

2009-04-09T21:15:00.000-05:00

April 9, 2010

Danse Dance

Simon's Cat 'Cat Man Do'

2008-08-17T07:41:00.001-05:00

Joe.....

2008-06-30T10:50:00.003-05:00

Yeah I know you missed me...and I know this look is as close as you can get to telling me. Nice guy. Really cool guy.

Lyon - last night

2008-06-24T11:07:00.001-05:00

Lyon - last night, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

My last night in Lyon was so beautiful and so hard. The city is wonderful. Something to feast your eyes on in every corner of it. A wonderful combination of old, new, color, shape, texture.....

I have a lot of images to put up and talk about in the next few weeks. BUT....this was the last night - the moon was reflecting over the Rhone - with all of the illuminated buildings as well.

And I was sad to be leaving. So sad. Incredibly sad. But today I think - hmmm....I will be going back, I know. The moon, the rivers, the city, the friends....they will all be there when I come back.

2008-06-23T06:50:00.002-05:00

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver ~

An image of the ceiling of the Basilica of Fourviere in Lyon. Neobyzantine guilding ALL over the inside of it. On top of a hill - it gives you a view of the city and surrounding areas that is like no other. I have a little video of that - and will get it up here as soon as I can.

Radiohead Nude Bercy Paris June 2008

2008-06-22T02:57:00.003-05:00

btw....did I mention???

Lyon at Night.

2008-06-17T04:51:00.003-05:00

This is what we do..... (well, what the American tourist does...these two do go to work, so I don't have a clue how they do it - but they do it with very little sleep). Meet in the early evening - talk, coffee, wine. Lots of laughing, trying to teach the American how to say things in French (pointless)...then a late dinner. If the weather is nice (not pouring rain - although Virg seems to think that anything that is not HOT and SUNNY is pointless) we go for a walk. Did I mention that by this time it is well after midnight?

Lyon is....magical. In a totally different way from Paris. It is calm. It has a presence - a mystical presence that I need to learn more about. It is the history, the coming together of so many things in its past. But you do feel it....walking on the silent streets at night. Looking in shop windows, moving quietly through the square, talking softly - laughing....lots of that.

I am so thrilled to be here with these two good friends. We already know each other in many ways....and so when I see something moving and burst into tears (I can hear those of you who know me laughing....) - they aren't bothered - they just wait for me to contain myself and we move on. More soon.

2008-06-15T05:04:00.003-05:00

It is always better when you have a friend to point out things that you wouldn't see otherwise, take you to places that are more fun with someone else....or just point out when you are about to make a raging cultural blunder.....(who knew that you would never give peonies as a gift to a French person because that is a flower that goes on a gravesite?).

Spent the day being tourists....walking around icons and small streets...drinking and laughing with Virgil and his friends. We are about to head for the train station for our trip to Lyon. I hate to leave Paris....it is truly one of the most intriguing places I have ever been.

2008-06-12T07:28:00.004-05:00

Paris seems to hold unlimited beauty. Now that I have found my bearings and have an adventure on the metro everyday, I can see the scope of the history and diversity within the city. Yesterday I bought a bunch of peonies at a "magnifique" shop that was a work of art in and of itself - near the Ecole des Beux Arts.... I was missing my garden, and walking by the school - seeing students inside the gates - carving and drawing - just heightened the feeling.

The candles were burning in St. Germain des Pres. I find myself going into everyone of these cathedrals....they are incredible. They are also cool (it has been hot and muggy) and a quiet place to take out the map and figure out where I am. This particular one is / was connected to a once enormous Benedictine monastery. It has the tomb of Rene Descartes. These candles, always lit, are very very moving to me.

At the end of the day - I am back to my neighborhood...I climb the streets up and up and then the large stone staircase to my apartment building. At the bottom of the hill, the neighborhood is full of African immigrants...the hair shops and textiles and smells of food cooking are wonderful. Everyone out on the streets...everything is a feast for the eyes.

The switch from the west coast...to Paris

2008-06-09T04:46:00.003-05:00

It took me a while to realize that part of what I was experiencing were not only the differences between Paris and County Clare. It was the difference between a quiet rural village - with the sound of the sea and the presence of the clouds over the limestone hills - and a HUGE urban area full of people and tourists...where I am on my own for now and don't speak the language.

Most of the things that have happened to me have been comical. Like the ride from the airport - that involved a forty minute traffic jam. No lanes of traffic (that I could see) ....we just forgo those...and everyone laying on the horn and screaming at one another. Did I mention my taxi driver wore a suit (very stunning) but we were unable to speak to each other - even a word. I handed him my map and he delivered me to...well...it was the top of a hill....but the bottom of a very large, very old, pedestrian stone staircase. Me and my 700 pound suitcase. Ahhhh, but that, is another story. Au revoir.

2008-06-02T08:40:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

2008-06-02T08:39:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

2008-06-02T08:37:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

2008-06-02T08:36:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

2008-06-02T08:35:00.005-05:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

So .... we are (sadly) into our final week. Research being completed, projects being pulled together. An edition of 20 books will be due in mid-August - but the completed mock up is due on Thursday, as is a facsimile "journal" of some kind.

It is wonderful to watch the ideas and the experience come onto the page and the book form.

2008-05-28T16:47:00.006-05:00

Maybe the only thing as impressive as standing at the top of the Cliffs of Moher, is being in a boat going slowly along the bottom of them. OR maybe going in the ocean in a kayak...or diving....to take a close look at what lives there....(thanks to Lauren for the kayaking pic of Jim...one of our fearless and funny guides.)

dublin

2008-05-27T09:20:00.001-05:00

dublin, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

Been meaning to post this image....and I have a couple minutes now...waiting for a bus in the internet cafe in Doolin. Went on a boat to the bottom of the Cliffs of Moher earlier today. Will post those later.

The doors in on this island....are some of my favorite things....so many painted bright colors. Often containing tongue in cheek humor....such as this one......

2008-05-25T08:59:00.003-05:00

Here is a little peek into the book I am making this summer. Recipes from the people who are cooking for me on my travels.....starting with Maurizio.

Sea Bass with Olives and salted Sardinian Capers
(and rosemary and garlic)

Buy fish......

WILD sea bass (line caught...and bought in Galway at the open market the same day)
you can see ours as we bought it...in the video above.....

clean if it isn't clean, dry it with a paper towel

put aluminum foil in a tureen, lay the fish in it

In the meanwhile....

strip leaves from fresh rosemary and toss on top of the sea bass -
along with black olives (also from the market)

Pour on top of this....olive oil with capers and garlic that have been sauteeing. Splash of white wine....

Close aluminum foil

Put it in the oven at 200 c. / 400 f ..."hmmm...I have no idea if this is right...just CRANK the oven up then after five minutes reduce it to 375 f"

"You realize that all of these things cannot be repeated in Milwaukee, right?"

A fish like this (maybe three pounds) maybe an hour, or 45 minutes.

Serve with freshly made bread, also from market. Chilled white wine. Salad.

Newtown Castle on the Burren in County Clare, Ireland

2008-05-20T12:16:00.001-05:00

Newtown Castle on the Burren in County Clare, Ireland, originally uploaded by raymond digital.

2008-05-20T12:10:00.002-05:00

Traditional music at the castle the other night. Mary called when I was working in the studio - so over I went, climbing the stairs to the top. There was a roaring fire and everything was decorated with flowers - earlier in the day there had been a wedding. An Irish woman and a Japanese man - in full Samuri regalia (him). Long trails of ivy hung from the balcony - red and white roses glowing in the light of the candles. The wedding had a visit from the strawboys - a west coast tradition - dressing up in straw disguises and crashing the party to play tricks.

But tonight - some of the best musicians around - traditional Irish harp, concertina, pipes and fiddle. Background and stories for every song they played...and I am reminded again and again how rich in tradition and history this country is - how proudly it is kept alive.

The lights of Galway flickered across the bay (is it a bay?) as the outside light faded and the fire and the candles flickered. We were a small but passionate group - of mostly locals.

Jim (an uncle of Micheal Green - founder of the college) tells me a wonderful story about celebrating the millenium at the castle. A party was held on that new year's eve....the lower floor reserved for the young people...the middle floor for refreshments - and on the upper floor people were asked to come as someone they had most admired in the past 100 years and present a talent of some kind. By the time they all finished performing for one another...they were well into the new year...the new millenium.

Wonderful images to have....even second hand.

Dancing at Kilfenora

2008-05-19T09:46:00.003-05:00

Between the Jigs and the Reels

Between a jig and a reel
what is there?
Only one beat
escaped from a ribcage.

Tunes are migratory
and fly from heart to heart
intimating
that there's a pattern
to life's pulls and draws.

Because what matters to us most
can seldom be told in words
the heart's moods are better charted
in its own language --

the rythm of Cooley's accordian
which could open the heart of a stone,
John Doherty's dark reels
and the tune that the sea taught him,
the high parts of the road and the underworlds
which only love can brave
to bring us back to our senses
and on beyond.

Moya Cannon

Low Tides.

2008-05-16T13:35:00.003-05:00

Field trip this morning.....in the harbor right outside our cottage...low tide.....8:30 a.m.

Maurizio challenges everyone to find as many different seaweeds and critters as they can. Winning team gets a prize. Everyone has their "wellies" on, their equipment - books, pens, cameras, journals....and is moving slowly around the seaweed covered rocks. We are all trying not to slip and fall. So far I don't think anyone has.

Working in pairs, students spread out across the harbor and you see them bent over and examining stuff. Tanya and Sarah found the most stuff. Nick and Kyle - hmmmm.....enough said.

Last night we went to Kilfenora for set dancing. I believe that everyone had a good time. How could you not? Someone told me (when they got there) that there had been a bit of resistance to the trip. "Why didn't you tell us that it we would be going to the dance on the Titanic?" ... referring to the movie, of course.

Interesting to think about a time when all of our history comes from these kinds of re - creations. Is this just a normal unfolding of events? Another (well a new) way of passing on information? Will movies and such soon be our only point of reference??

Writing about Gibson's Neuromancer, Jack Womack says, "The past lingers on in unexpected and unavoidable ways long after we believe it is gone....Our cultural and historical past is readily accessible to everyone today, so long as you choose to turn it on, or download it. Today, as never before - the information media having become to enlightenment as the cereal aisle is to the supermarket - if you choose not to access the past, you are de facto free to rule it out of existence, as least so far as you might be concerned...."

2008-05-14T05:36:00.004-05:00

So time collapses here....and it is something that can bother you horribly if you don't give yourself over to it. You are a better person - and far more likely to see more --- hear more --- feel more --- if you can allow it.

I told you that I went to hear the dawn chorus the other day. What I didn't tell you is that my father-in-law showed up. Granted...he no longer with us physically, but I have found that the great mystery of life is that no one ever really goes....at least not for me.

So I was at the tail end of the forty or so people that were out on the walk. I was dawdling....taking pictures, looking at things. And I was wet. I had locked myself out of the cottage with no raincoat - and there was a fine off and on mist. I couldn't hear Gordon, and I was trying to take notes. Suddenly a white-haired gentleman in a fishing hat leaned over and whispered, "just go on then....you had better push your way to the front so you can hear what is being said now...." I did. I didn't talk to him again. Later, I was thinking about it, and I thought, "...that was so familiar, why?" Then it hit me. It was just the kind of thing John would have said to me, in just the way he would have said it. Nice.

But. Being married to the oldest Fitzgerald son, and having the pleasure of being in the clan - I see all ten of his brood, and their broods - our collective brood - everywhere I go here. Yesterday I swore that my son Joe sold me my copy of the Irish Times. But no, that was just Robert, who is also nearly 14 and likes rock music rather than Moby (free Moby cd's were being given away with the paper....). And this morning, I swore that Teresa drove right past me on the road. I did a double-take. Mary's twin works at Monk's Pub, and Liam has a clone down in Lisdoonvarna.

2008-05-13T05:35:00.004-05:00

The green....is what I love, and what I always really forget. I mean, not in the sense that I don't remember GREEN....but the intensity of it. That is what you are reminded of. Lost three students for a bit - as their initial flight was canceled. Hoping to see them later today. The rest are buzzing about...in the ocean, climbing to the tops of the hills...all seeming to be doing well.

The quiet here ... makes me quiet.

home - tide out

2008-05-11T08:33:00.004-05:00

home - tide out, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

...here we are, number 5...just a short hike down the road from the village....cows at my bedroom window when I wake up, roses on the trellis - starting to open, swans honking sweetly in the distance.

Up at four thirty this morning to join about 20 folks led by Gordon D'Arcy http://www.burrencollege.ie/faculty/gordondarcy.html to listen to the dawn chorus....a wonderful walk about the area...followed by a champagne breakfast at the hotel in the village.

ascophyllum

2008-05-09T12:12:00.002-05:00

ascophyllum, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

this is a brown seaweed....you are looking at the gas blotters.....little built in flotation devices. (hahaha....I had to come back and edit this....they are bladders, not blotters. Gotta love that Italian accent.....)

Marsh's Library in Dublin

2008-05-09T04:09:00.002-05:00

Marsh's Library, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

Built in 1701 byt Archbishop Narcissus Marsh...this is the first public library in Ireland and one of the earliest in the islands. There are four main collections consisting of 25,000 books relating to the 16th, 17th, and early 18th c.'s.

There are about 300 manuscripts...including one on the lives of the Irish saints that was written in 1400.

We spent a pleasant time there....you can't actually TOUCH anything without permission ahead of time....but there was a wonderful display of books related to China (EAST MEETS WEST)....and Maurizio had a lovely chat with the librarian about beer while I LOOKED and LOOKED and LOOKED.

We drink a Guinness every night. We drove by the brewery in Dublin...but did not stop - as Maurizio was driving .... and giving the Roman Empire salute at the same time.... (his own particular Mecca) .... it was probably for the best.

...with Maurizio in front of Temple's ... Dublin

2008-05-08T09:41:00.002-05:00

...with Maurizio in front of Temple's ... Dublin, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

....also should introduce you to Maurizio....who I am teaching with for the next month....

He has got me looking at kelp in an entirely new way....also loves to cook. We are having a blast. More on this later....

Ireland

2008-05-08T09:16:00.003-05:00

Coming back to Ireland is like getting a present that you didn't think you would ever have the like of again....and here it is. Right here.....just as you left it.

This of course is the view from outside our cottage (with the obligatory cows who are there in the morning) and the view of the burren or the ocean or the village....depending on which way you want to turn and look.

2008-01-19T17:05:00.001-06:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

"We are surrounded by miracles, but we have to recognize them; otherwise there is no life." Thich Nhat Hanh

2008-01-19T16:58:00.001-06:00

Best Prayer I Have Heard In A Long Time...

Heavenly Father, Help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can't make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us, Lord, that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together

Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.

(thank you Violet, for sending this to me)

Jim Harrison....Five Things

2007-12-29T10:35:00.000-06:00

I'm reading Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison. I will happily read anything he writes....not only because I have a knowledge of the places he is writing about - but because I have a kinship with them, and with the feelings he seems to have for them.

In a recent article in the NY Times he tells us his five rules:

1. Eat well, of course, avoiding the ninny diets and mincing cuisines that demonize appetite and make unthinkable a tasty snack of hog jowls. We’re all going to die. Might as well enjoy a little fat along the way. (In a 1971 “false memoir” called “Wolf,” written while Harrison was convalescing from a fall off a cliff, he suggested curing heartbreak by broiling a two- to three-pound porterhouse, eating it with your hands, followed by a hot bath in which you consume the best bourbon you can buy until the bottle is empty. Then sleep for a day. Ladies and gentlemen, this works.)

2. Pursue love and sex, no matter discrepancies of desire and age. Romance is worth the humbling. Doing it outdoors on stumps, in clearings and even swarmed by mosquitoes is particularly recommended.

3. Welcome animals, especially bears, ravens and wolves, into your waking and dream life. An acceptance of our common creaturedom is essential not just to the health of the planet but to our ordinary happiness. We are mere participants in natural cycles, not the kings of them.

4. Rather than lighting out for territory, we ought to try living in it.

5. And finally, love the detour. Take the longest route between two points, since the journey is the thing, a notion to which, contaminated by the Zen-fascist slogans of advertising (“just do it!”), we all pay lip service but few of us indulge.

As today is my birthday, I can't think of better rules to ponder the coming year with. A blessed New Year to all...we all need and deserve it.

(the image is from Anderson Ulf/Gamma, via Getty Images)

HOW IN THE HELL

2007-11-30T13:09:00.000-06:00

...did it ge t to be the end of November? What have I been doing. Note to self: update blog. Short version....two class overload this semester. Prep for exhibit in spring. Prep for new course in the spring. Proposal written and accepted for teaching in Ireland in May...travel to France after that is in the works. A variety of family "events" and student "events" and friend "events."
And then there is SL.

2007-06-18T09:27:00.002-05:00

Updates and Projects.....

In the ahhh department: Last year good friend Laura gave me some iris from her garden and I have been waiting for them to come up. Finally - and well worth the wait. Gigantic blooms of the deepest richest purple I have ever seen. You just want to FALL into them. ahhhhh.

Finally must mention Stellar Spark:Summer Session - spent the night sweating and dancing with Johnny and hundreds of others. 30 spinners and six stages - my favorites were Magda, a Detroit member of the female collective Women on Wax, and Richie Hawtin (seen above) a Canadian techno minimalist....very cool, very fun.

Lupe Fiasco -Conflict Diamonds

2007-06-18T09:08:00.001-05:00

Brilliant. He is coming to Milwaukee in July. I can't wait.

Madonna

2007-06-18T09:07:00.001-05:00

thank you Virgil for sending this to me....it should be seared onto everyone's brain.

Lucinda Williams West In Stores Now!

2007-06-18T09:06:00.001-05:00

Are you alright?

World Wide Twistesr

2007-06-10T20:32:00.001-05:00

earlier communication with
Addi on this blog - he is still going strong! YEAH

Everyday Prophets

2007-06-06T06:30:00.001-05:00

351236923_2ce0def459_b, originally uploaded by everydayprophets.

Who are these people? ( Especially the literary idea man in the front - kind of like a Herman Hesse type of guy.) For more information go here. Their new cd is something I am listening and dancing to all the time.......right in line with the course I'll be teaching this coming year - by coincidence (?) same name!! Small world. I knew that.

Neil Young - Heart of Gold

2007-06-01T04:04:00.001-05:00

Song for a lifetime.....

MUSIC

2007-05-28T07:53:00.000-05:00

Maybe it is spending a lot of time listening to good house music of late - or maybe it is visiting my brother Matt - who always has new things to listen too - but I am a dancing fool lately. Enjoying it all. Still struggling through Rebecca Solnit....

"Some ideas are new, but most are only recognition of what has been there all along, the mystery in the middle of the room, the secret in the mirror. Sometimes one unexpected thought becomes the bridge that lets you traverse the country of the famliar in a n unprecedented way....."

Have been to two conferences in the past month - both blew me out of the water. The first - in Madison - had a keynote by Micheal Wesch. ( See the post from April 3rd) The second was in Baltimore - at MICA - where I spoke with Steve Meneely about Second Life...and really paid attention to what else was going on - as captured by my friend the ranting lunatic.

daydreamin by lupe fiasco ft. jill scott

2007-05-28T07:52:00.001-05:00

Bill Maher on the French

2007-05-26T08:51:00.001-05:00

Luka Bloom - Delirious

2007-05-22T17:47:00.001-05:00

Smells Like [teen?] Spirit.....

2007-05-17T11:28:00.000-05:00

Sightings 5/17/07
Buying Virtue
-- Joe Laycock

Combining ingredients such as frankincense and myrrh, Virtue® is a perfume inspired by Biblical ingredients and marketed as a tool for spiritual attainment. The product's literature advises the consumer to "hold it in Sacred regard as a means to train yourself to readily contact your Spiritual Self," so as to "serve both your worldly fragrance needs and provide a means of focusing your Spiritual Intent." Pioneered by Vicki Pratt and Rick Larimore, Virtue retails for $80 a bottle.

A product like Virtue reveals much about the changing face of lived religion in America. There was a time when mainstream American Protestantism would have been highly suspicious of associating Christianity with a scent. Fragrances, images, and other sensory experiences were once considered to be the hallmarks of Catholic idolatry. But in 2004 the "Christian retail market" -- selling Christian versions of everything from golf-balls to gangsta rap -- hit $4.3 billion in sales. The suggestion of idolatry has been largely circumvented by marketing these products as tools for evangelism. For example, creators of Virtuous Woman, a rival fragrance to Virtue, imagine that their perfume caters "to the needs of women who are interested in incorporating a passion for sharing their faith with a beauty product that makes them feel and smell really good."

Health and beauty products have appropriated motifs from Eastern religions for years. The Gap, for instance, began marketing a fragrance called "Om" in 1996. What is interesting in the case of Virtue is that it carefully straddles its marketing campaign between Christianity and eclectic spirituality. It is marketed as a tool not for evangelism, but for a sort of vague spiritual attainment. The scent is designed "to help maintain that sometimes tenuous, conscious link with our sacred center of pure Being, our Heart of Hearts, the great eternal ~ I AM."

The manufacturer's website states that "creating Virtue has been an adventurous journey through fragrance and scripture, with remarkable miracles confirming our choices." This "creation narrative," describing the conception of the product, assumes an essentialist view of religious experience: Diverse traditions are reduced to approaches all arriving at a religious experience that is universal and homogenous. Pratt and Larimore explain that Christianity is their preferred mode for achieving their spiritual goals. The designers also note that many religious traditions equate a scent with saintliness, citing the smell associated with twentieth-century saint Padre Pio.

Such marketing schemes play upon America's well-known lack of religious literacy. (Stephen Prothero's book Religious Literacy, with its damning quiz results, is one prominent recent commentary on this phenomenon.) In such a religiously under-literate environment, Virtue's marketing campaign may have an active impact on American religious life, as a kind of "corporate theologian" perpetuating a blending of spirituality and consumer culture.

Consider, for example, the use of scripture. Describing how to use Virtue with "spiritual intent," the product website quotes Psalm 46:10 (though the quote is mistakenly attributed to Psalm 45): "Be still, and know that I am God." Similarly, in emphasizing the significance of their product's name, the marketers cite Mark 5:30: "And Jesus immediately knew in himself that virtue had gone out of Him, turned Him about in the press and said, who touched my clothes?" Here, scriptural "endorsement" masquerades as spiritual ethos.

Meanwhile, fuzzy scriptural interpretation is used to validate the choice of ingredients that go into the perfume. The website informs readers that apricot was probably the original forbidden fruit. Using the forbidden fruit for spiritual attainment is described cryptically as a "subtle turning of the tables." For too many American consumers, this mystifying promotional theology, which garbs spiritual confusion in biblical mystique, may be their only encounter with Biblical exegesis.

But perhaps most importantly, Virtue is currently accepting applications from religious groups and missionary organizations that wish to sell the product as a means to raise money. Religious groups seeking to support themselves by selling the fragrance (along with a pamphlet on the spiritual application of the perfume) may find themselves endorsing not only the company's product, but also its hazy, Christian-eclectic religious perspective.

If we are disturbed by the idea of corporations having this sort of influence over religious organizations, we should remember that capitalism appeals to what is already in the religious consciousness of the consumer -- in this case, a penchant for pick-and-choose spirituality that mimics the market of which it is ever more thoroughly a part. Products like Virtue thus serve to strengthen and nourish trends that are already present in American lived religion.

References:
The official website of Virtue is: http://www.virtueperfume.com/.

A press release on Virtue edited by Carly Zander ("World's First Spiritual Perfume Introduced; Virtue® Reminds Wearer of God," send2press.com, April 3, 2007) can be read at: http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2007-04-0403-003.shtml.

Joseph Laycock is an independent scholar and currently teaches secondary school in Atlanta.

The current Religion and Culture Web Forum features "The Desire to Acquire: Or, Why Shopping Malls Are Sites of Religious Violence," by Jon Pahl. To read this article, please visit: http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/webforum/index.shtml.

Sightings comes from the [ http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/ ]Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Attribution
Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column, Sightings, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

2007-05-16T21:24:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

2007-05-10T16:21:00.000-05:00

Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge

Bob Dylan

(I guess if you've found this - you know...)

Sightings 4/26/07

2007-04-26T14:18:00.000-05:00

What There Is to Say
-- Jerome Eric Copulsky

Classes at Virginia Tech resume this week, and the cacophonous presence of the media that had settled upon the campus has begun to dissipate. Students clad in orange and maroon mull about the Drillfield; some toss Frisbees, kick soccer balls, fly kites. Others gather by the newly placed memorials, inscribing their thoughts and prayers on huge placards, leaving flowers and candles, VT memorabilia and Bibles, before heading off to class.

But classes this week will not be as they were before, and like many other professors here, I have been thinking about what I should do when I enter the classroom. In the face of such horror, what can we possibly teach our students?

There is a well-known story in the Talmud, that great compendium of Jewish law and lore, which describes an encounter between Moses and God on Mount Sinai. When Moses ascended the mountain to receive the Torah, he found God adorning the letters of the book with crowns. Confused, the prophet asked God why he was adding these seemingly meaningless designs. God answered that many generations later a great Sage named Akiba ben Joseph would expound "heaps and heaps of laws" from these jots and tittles, and allowed Moses to appear in Rabbi Akiba's classroom and experience the genius of his teaching.

But when Moses asked about Akiba's reward, he was shown the brutal aftermath of Akiba's eventual martyrdom, the rabbi's flesh weighed out at the market-stalls. " 'Lord of the Universe,' cried Moses, 'such Torah, and such a reward!' He replied, 'Be silent, for this is the way I have determined it.' "

This is one of many texts that I have my students read and grapple with in my Judaism class. Over the past few days, I've been thinking about this story and my students' encounters with it. Understandably, they are usually disturbed and perplexed by it. Many resist the denial of a rational connection between the great Sage's deeds and his earthly fate. How could such Torah earn such reward? Why does Akiba meet such a terrible end? Why does Moses not receive a vision of the Rabbi teaching in paradise? How can silence be the end of the story?

Moses' curiosity about Rabbi Akiba, and his shock at discovering the great Sage's end, implies that there ought to be a rational connection between one's deeds and one's fate. But the tale challenges that relationship -- and this may be the point. Its refusal of explanation exposes the limits of our knowledge and understanding, providing not easy solace but a profound and troubling awe. Like Moses, the reader is left mute, encountering only the haunting paradox of a divinity at once intimate and utterly inscrutable.

Religious traditions and communities, I suggest to my students, are involved in building -- and maintaining -- a meaningful world. This is an ongoing struggle, in which the beliefs and practices of the past are drawn upon to explain the present. At times, human beings find it difficult to square their inherited conceptions of ultimate reality and their own experiences, and the tradition is challenged, deepened, transformed. Confronted by the ineffable mystery of the cosmos, they hear the complaint of Job, the lament of the Psalmist, the command: "Be silent."

Much has already been said about the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Much more will be said over the coming days, weeks, and years. There are many things we will, and should, speak about. As scholars and teachers, our job is to try to understand and interpret the world, and we encourage our students to do so as well. We will resist glib answers and facile explanations. We will attempt to fathom the psyche of the gunman, to comprehend how he turned into a monster who tried to cloak himself in the language of suffering and martyrdom. We will discuss the violence so prevalent in our society, gun control, the failures of our mental health system. We will reflect upon the fact that so much of the evil we endure, here and elsewhere, is of all-too-human origin.

Perhaps most importantly, we will speak of the victims. We will speak about those we knew and learn about those we did not from the people they have touched. We will recount their hopes and their deeds, and we will try to keep their memory alive in the way we conduct our lives.

But with my students I can go no further. When I step into the classroom this week I reach my limits as a teacher. I know that many students are struggling with how to reconcile the events of April 16th with their own beliefs and commitments. That thirty-two lives have been cut short, that thirty-two worlds have been destroyed by a madman's bullets defies all understanding. I will find no reason for this tragedy, no explanation for why on that blustery spring morning a young man's rage turned on those students and teachers.

Facing my students, my colleagues, the survivors, and the families of the deceased, after I have offered my words of consolation, I will reach the limits of my understanding and will take heed of those austere words uttered to Moses: "Be silent."

Jerome Eric Copulsky is Assistant Professor and Director of Judaic Studies at Virginia Tech.

Sightings comes from the [ http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/ ]Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Throwies in Milwaukee

2007-04-23T05:44:00.001-05:00

With thanks to Jesus Ali!

2007-04-22T15:07:00.002-05:00

From: A Field Guide To Getting Lost

2007-04-16T16:48:00.000-05:00

"To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In [Walter] Benjamin's terms, to be lost it to be fully present, and be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery."

Rebecca Solnit

Setting Type

2007-04-13T12:37:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

In a story by Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451, there is a group of people who, in order to save them, memorise books, and are called "walking books"! Other similarly claimed substitutes abound in so-called book-artists' jargon, but the memories of books are not yet in book form, and so cannot be called books or have bookness. One could say however that a pack of Tarot cards does have bookness. It functions as a working group of loose-leaf planar surfaces with related images conveying textual matter in pictorial form. Traditional knowledge has it that the Tarot is in fact a philosophical treatise. The planes of a book have a necessary relationship or they simply become a collection of arbitrary planes for which a book format is not essential for the conveyed meaning. Many arbitrarily devised objects such as chewed or dissolved texts in bottles, etc., may or may not be art objects, but they are not objects with bookness. The book-maker's art should be distinguished from the art-maker's book. The book is generally thought of as a compact, conveniently portable mobile object (although there can be giant books, made of any material). The book, as book, has multiple planes because all the text or material it contains would be too unwieldy in a single planar form. There are book-like objects or appearances and object-like books, but that is a different story.

© Philip Smith 1996

2007-04-13T12:29:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

Mika Grace Kelly

2007-04-11T14:26:00.001-05:00

HOW CAN THERE BE SUCH COLOR??

2007-04-09T17:56:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

This is from a recent trip that Elijah and I took to the Domes...it was sleeting outside - a pouring rain that really wanted to be snow. But inside the tropical dome - we found this!!!

The Ecstacy of Communication -Implications in the Virtual World

2007-04-08T19:01:00.000-05:00

Reading an article by Denise Carter from the UK. Trying to research how virtual communites impact not only students - but individuals in general. Set within the wider context of the Internet and society it investigates how geographically distant individuals are coming together to inhabit new kinds of social spaces or virtual communities. People 'live in' and 'construct' these new spaces in such a way as to suggest that the Internet is not a placeless cyberspace that is distinct and separate from the real world. Building on the work of other cyberethnographers, the author combines original ethnographic research in Cybercity, a Virtual Community, with face-to-face meetings to illustrate how, for many people, cyberspace is just another place to meet.

Second, she suggests that people in Cybercity are investing as much effort in maintaining relationships in cyberspace as in other social spaces. This analysis suggests that by extending traditional human relationships into Cybercity, they are widening their webs of relationships, not weakening them. Human relationships in cyberspace are formed and maintained in similar ways to those in wider society. Rather than being exotic and removed from real life, they are actually being assimilated into everyday life. Furthermore, they are often moved into other social settings, just as they are in offline life.

However, experience shows that they can harbor the same emotional issues that real-life relationships do - further implications ensue as a result of role playing and the "gaming" mentality of some of the inhabitants.

Issues to examine as more and more educational institutions have a presence on these communities.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

2007-04-03T09:48:00.001-05:00

Second Life Red Cliffs

2007-03-28T23:05:00.000-05:00

Snapshot of me on the red cliffs in second life. Late at night, rainy here....but endless possibilities abound there....

under the sea

2007-03-28T23:03:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

In SL - where I have been spending a lot of time lately - I have been watching a friend build a lake - with houses on stilts, a beach to come - all very beautiful....so I am dreaming of life under the seas tonight.

2007-03-04T12:08:00.000-06:00

Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

A torch passes - Tech_Space - USATODAY.com

2006-12-20T14:42:00.001-06:00

By Angela Gunn

Alas, that would be a literal torch, thanks to Second Life -- Lawrence Lessig, the prime mover behind the Creative Commons movement, really did hand a visible torch to Joi Ito Friday night to signify handing off chairing duties for that
organization. I miss metaphor, don't you?

Still, in a weekend oversaturated with no-less-overwrought-for-being-overdue tributes to user creativity throughout the Net (I knew it was going to be a long one when a music critic of my acquaintance breathlessly announced that YouTube and MySpace were his Artists of the Year), I like this one.

It's YouTube and MySpace that got the attention this year (blogs having had their gee-whiz moment a minute back), but the foundations of those services are shaky, precisely because they are in many ways predicated on material that could get lawyered up at any moment. The Creative Commons movement is lawyered up. Creative works with a CC license are genuinely part of the promise of user-generated content, because CC-specifying copyright owners have taken care to say exactly how their works can and cannot be remixed, reused and reproduced.

That, to me, is a strong and healthy foundation for Web 2.0, or user-generated content, or what you will. And it'll advance the cause a lot fast than any foolish X-of-the-Year awards.

kick push

2006-12-12T17:22:00.000-06:00

I'm listening to a lot of Stevie Wonder and Lupe Fiasco these days. Check it out.

Look for changes to the blog soon. I am going to post the course blogs from the past semester - and I've started a new one that is just for the exhibit I am curating. The link to that is stcf.miad.edu.

The semester is over this Friday. I am grading and working on the exhibit. Holiday season?! Well - somewhere in there!

CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion

2006-12-02T09:22:00.000-06:00

CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion

This is an amazing teaching idea - and I feel as if I have made some remarkable discoveries here. This past week in the course I am teaching - Printed Page/Virtual Page - we had some interesting discussions about Sec. Life and how/why it's existence and uses. I often feel that our discussions hover at the level of popular culture and don't have the depth I would like. Mostly I take the responsibility for this - for I often feel at a loss as to how to take the conversations to another level. Everytime I teach this course I make new discoveries that are happening almost faster than I can accomodate them.

Bravo to Cyber One!!

BEACH BOYS / GHETTO BOYS - ARCHANGEL

2006-11-18T13:06:00.000-06:00

2006-11-18T13:03:00.000-06:00

You know it's been a good week when you have been able to spend time with both Corey Archangel and Cyro Baptista [Beat the Donkey].

Check out all of the stuff on Archangel's site - well worth wading through everything. I especially like the Beach Boys/Ghetto Boys mash up he does.

Cyro Baptista was at Alverno - the Beat the Donkey performance included some work with Roosevelt Middle School of the Arts which was really fun to see.

JS Online:

2006-11-04T15:34:00.000-06:00

From the Milwaukee Journal

2006-11-04T15:30:00.000-06:00

Firing away at Coast Guard plan

Machine-gun proposal hits rough waters

By DAN EGAN
degan@journalsentinel.com

The U.S. Coast Guard has spent its entire history building an incredible reservoir of goodwill in the Great Lakes.

From the countless rescues of distressed mariners to the ice-breaker Mackinaw's annual Lake Michigan run with a load of North Woods Christmas trees for Chicago's needy, people on the lakes - drunken boaters excluded - have always been happy to see the bright red ships steaming their way.

And then the agency got its new machine guns and quietly announced in August a desire to create 34 massive - and permanent - firing ranges for a weapon that can shoot 10 lead bullets a second. It was, the Coast Guard explained, all about steeling its crews for the war on terrorism.

But now it is the agency itself that has a lot of people terrified, both in the U.S. and across the lakes in Canada, which shares ownership in the world's largest freshwater system, a drinking source for millions.

The major worries:

• The potential dangers associated with annually dumping in the lakes more than 3 tons of lead in the form of spent bullets.

"We run the risk that terrorists have succeeded in getting us to poison our own lakes without ever having set foot in the Great Lakes basin," said Hugh McDiarmid Jr. of the Michigan Environmental Council.

• Safety of recreational boaters and commercial operators who might tragically stray into one of the Coast Guard's designated "safety zones" during a live-fire exercise.

"When people are thinking of where they're going to go fishing, are they going to go to the place that's quiet? Or the place where people are shooting?" asked Duluth Mayor Herb Bergson. "It's not a good tourism thing."

• An increased militarization of what has been a famously non-militarized border between the U.S. and Canada.

"Canada is not harboring terrorists planning a marine assault on the United States across the Great Lakes," Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May said in a news release this month. "The notion is ludicrous."

The plan, initially released in the relatively obscure Federal Register in August, was put on hold at the end of the summer after an outcry from environmental and boating communities, as well as regional politicians.

The Coast Guard now is going to great pains to tell its side of the story. At the same time, it expanded the public comment deadline from Aug. 31 to Nov. 13. It is holding nine public hearings across the region, including one Wednesday in Waukegan, Ill., and another Nov. 8 in Sturgeon Bay.

Standing at a podium flanked by a painting of an icebreaker and another of a helicopter hovering over someone clinging to a swamped boat, Coast Guard Capt. Bruce Jones made no apologies for a plan that has so many people appalled during a news briefing held last week at the Milwaukee Coast Guard station.

He said the guns are needed "to ensure that our crews are prepared to respond to any future threat or increase in threat level on the Great Lakes - including our 13 nuclear power plants, 22 high-capacity passenger vessels and ferries and 11 major ports."

Added protection

Coast Guard crews have long been equipped with weaponry, typically handguns, shotguns and M-16 machine guns.

Jones said the firing zones are needed now because crews need to train regularly on the new, more powerful M240-B machine guns. Thirty-four such zones are required to ensure efficient use of manpower; crews that train close to their base, he said, will still be available for search-and-rescue calls. There are 14 proposed zones on Lake Michigan alone, including one about 10 miles east of downtown Milwaukee. All of the proposed zones are at least five miles from shore. The guns can fire a maximum distance of about two miles.

Jones said the zones would be used sparingly - each "several" times a year for three or four hours - and that the areas will otherwise be open to the public. He added that the Coast Guard would try to conduct the training in off-summer months when recreational boats typically don't ply the mid-lake waters but said the agency wanted to retain the right to use the firing ranges any time of year. Coast Guard officials say they need to train on water in order for crews to learn how to safely and accurately use the guns in the real-life scenarios they may encounter.

Jones said warnings would be broadcast on marine-band radio before any bullets are fired, and a second watch boat equipped with radar would be on the lookout so crews could intercept wayward sailors before they strayed into the live-fire zones.

He called the volume of lead deposited in the water and its effects on the environment "negligible," and pointed to an 82-page environmental study the Coast Guard paid an outside engineering firm to conduct as evidence.

Environmental groups may not like the idea of all that lead going into the lakes, but Richard Rediske, an expert in environmental chemistry and aquatic ecology from Michigan's Grand Valley State University, agreed that the small chunks of lead on the bottom of the middle of lakes pose little risk to the environment or human health.

Maybe that's true, said McDiarmid of the Michigan Environmental Council, but he won't be thoroughly convinced until the Coast Guard conducts an exhaustive environmental impact statement on the proposal.

Passive past

For some, the biggest issue is the potential to disrupt the pacific history the U.S. and Canada have enjoyed on their shared Great Lakes.

The smooth sailing started just after the War of 1812, when the two countries signed the Rush-Bagot Agreement of 1817, which limited the number of naval weapons each country could employ on the Great Lakes to three 18-pound cannons.

That treaty worked well for more than a century, but Canada recognized it was too dated to be relevant when it approached the U.S. following World War II and asked to take another look at it.

The countries entered into a new arrangement in which both sides agreed ship-based armaments could be increased for training purposes, provided each country gave the other detailed information about the new weaponry.

So when the Coast Guard decided it wanted its crews to carry bigger guns three years ago, the U.S. sent a delegation to Canada.

Canada's formal response: Not a problem. In fact, the weapons proposed were of such small caliber that officials with the Canada Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said the guns would not trigger consultation under the Rush-Bagot Agreement.

The Coast Guard moved ahead, and training began on the lakes last winter in several temporary firing zones.

The Canadian federal government might have signed off on the new weapons, but local Canadian leaders have made it clear in recent weeks they are not happy with the plans for training ranges on the shared lakes.

Similar worries exist on this side of the border.

Dan Thomas, president of the Great Lakes Sport Fishing Council, has gotten over his initial hostility toward the plan. But he still has problems with the proximity of the live-fire zones to shore and the way the Coast Guard went about announcing the proposal.

"Basically, the Coast Guard shot themselves in the foot on how they initially went about in not informing us," he said. "It (followed) the law, but it certainly wasn't appropriate. It violated . . . the excellent relationship that the Coast Guard and recreational boating communities have had for so many decades."

Jones, the Coast Guard captain, doesn't disagree that more could have been done to notify the public.

"In retrospect, that was a mistake," Jones said. "And we're making up for it now."

That doesn't mean people still won't have problems with the plan.

One of the things that upsets Cameron Davis of the conservation group Alliance for the Great Lakes is the scope of the training ranges, which cover 2.5% of the lakes' surface, or more than 2,300 square miles.

He worries the proposal could have a bigger impact on the future of the lakes than some people think.

"As far as the ecology of the lakes, there are much bigger issues than this," he said. "However, if people are scared to go out on the lakes, they won't love the lakes. And if they don't love the lakes, why will they care for them?"

2006-10-25T08:41:00.000-05:00

Filesharing

Like Reefer Madness - only with "internets".....

Smoking Tree

2006-10-21T11:33:00.000-05:00

And now one of the most beautiful pieces i've seen at Ars Electronica Center.

What happens when trees are no longer able to turn carbon dioxide into the oxygen we need to breathe?

During the day

In southern Ireland near John Gerrard’s home, an oak tree’s leaves suddenly cease producing oxygen and instead begin to give off carbon. The Smoke Tree is in fact a virtual sculpture. The polluting process unfolds over a whole day creating an ever-changing tableau, a sculpture in virtual smoke which presents a disquieting yet strangely plausible possibility.

At dusk

Over time the tree is weakening and producing less smoke. In approx. 200 years the tree will eventually stop producing smoke and fall rendering the work as a landscape from that time on.

As in previous works (see Watchful Portrait and The Ladder) the presentation frame operates as a navigation device, allowing the public to look around the tree as an 'image object' or virtual sculpture.

Video.

2006-10-11T20:12:00.000-05:00

They Have Torn Down My Parent's House

it was made of wood and brick.
The windows they removed. To them it's real
estate, to me it's my heart being ripped in two.
The realtors, the bankers don't understand.
A house is made of family. My parent's house is a memory that will
endure after it's torn down.
They've been gone for not so many years, but I wanted this
house to live on.
I know the world is made of change, and change
is all that's real. But one thing I cannot change,
that is the way I feel. I mourn again,
because they have torn down my parent's
house, and it gives me pain. It was my house for many years.
My parents and sister died in it - I brought my children home to it.
I see us there all as if it were yesterday,
our laughter and tears in the rooms and up and down the hall.
The house once stood to remind me, but that too
is gone. They have torn down my parent's house,
it was made of wood and brick.
Yet a house is more than made of wood,
a house is made of love.

Thirty Years - Together

2006-09-17T00:54:00.000-05:00

" The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves to one another without giving our word. And this must be an unconditional giving, for in joining ourselves to one another we join ourselves to the unknown.....in life, in the world, we are never given two known results to choose between, but only one result that we choose without knowing what it is.

Marriage rests upon the immutable givens that compose it: words, bodies, characters, histories, places. Some wishes cannot succeed, some victories cannot be won, some loneliness is incorrigible. But there is relief and freedom in knowing what is real: these givens come to us out of the perennial reality of the world, like the terrain we live on. One does not care for this ground to make it a different place, or to make it perfect, but to make it inhabitable and to make it better. To flee from its realities is only to arrive at them unprepared.

Because the condition of marriage is worldly and its meaning communal, no one party to it can be solely in charge. What you alone think it ought to be, it is not going to be. Where you alone think you want it to go, it is not going to go. It is going where the two of you - and marriage, time, life, history, and the world - will take it. You do not know the road, you have committted your life to a way.

Forms join us to time, to the consequences and fruitions of our own passing. The Zen student, the poet, the husband, the wife - none knows with certainty what he or she is staying for, but all know the likelihood that they will be staying "awhile": to find out what they are staying for. And it is the faith of all of these disciplines that they will not stay to find that they should not have stayed.

That faith has nothing to do with what is usually called optimism. As the traditional marriage ceremony insisits, not everything that we stay to find out will make us happy. The faith, rather, is that by staying, and only by staying, we will learn something of the truth, that the truth is good to know, and that it is always both different and larger than we thought."

Wendell Berry from Poetry and Marriage

suscpetible to images

2006-09-05T11:01:00.000-05:00

Take a look at the latest "art unleashed" column written by yours truly for this new online arts magazine in Milwaukee. The entire publication is worth book-marking and keeping track of.

One Web Day

2006-08-21T09:43:00.000-05:00

(World's Collide: J.Fitz talking on cellphone next to a totem pole)

One Web Day is a grand thing to celebrate, I think....from their site:

Share Your Story
Post your thoughts here or on your own blog:

* about the top 10 amazing ways the web has changed the world.
* about the ways the web has changed your world
* about the ways you'd like to see the web change the world

What you can do to celebrate
On OneWebDay, take one web-related action that helps someone else. Suggestions:

* teach someone to use an application (blog, wiki, Flickr) that is new to them
* start a group blog about an issue you care about
* help a grandparent get in touch with a grandchild online
* help a young student find a new educational resource online
* start a story online that other people add to
* go to a local senior center and volunteer to help people get online
* go to a local school and volunteer to help get better equipment in place
* talk to your town about getting free wireless access in place
* post a tribute to a friend online - interview him/her about his/her life
* have a contest with a friend to collect and display the five most amazing things you can find online
* go to a public wireless place and strike up a conversation about the web with someone near you
* send a recipe to a friend and then make dinner together

OneWebDay Events
In NYC, we plan to have a lunchtime event in Bryant Park, a wireless hotspot, where kiosks will be available that people can use to post pictures and text to the web that have to do with how the web has changed their lives. These images can then be projected on large screens, together with a backchat channel. We're inviting "online celebrities" to speak about how the web has changed and will change lives: Jeff Bezos, Craig Newmark. Plus local politicians - Eliot Spitzer and Michael Bloomberg.

Similar plans are underway in Austin, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Portland (ME), Vienna, Naples, Italy, and London. In Canada, CIRA (the .ca registry) has committed significant financial support to promote the OneWebDay celebration in cities across the country.

AguaSonic Acoustics

2006-08-14T18:46:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you just need a little reminder that the world is bigger. Bigger than your immediate concerns. As the summer winds down, I'm stuck in the mire of self and family and the beginning of school. And of course - the world....and all the places in the world where we are doing such damage to one another and this beautiful planet we inhabit.

Nice to remember that somewhere whales are singing and someone has the foresight to document it.

AguaSonic Humpback 2

2006-08-14T18:39:00.000-05:00

I loved the whale sounds - but my sis said they were creeping her out - so I have removed them. You can find them through the web-link in the other post!

Unedited On The Road to be published

2006-08-05T16:26:00.000-05:00

It's literary legend, how Jack Kerouac wrote his breakthrough novel ``On the Road" in a three-week frenzy of creativity in spring 1951, typing the story without paragraphs or page breaks onto a 119-foot scroll of nearly translucent paper.

In fact, the Lowell native revised the book many times before it was published six years later, and while the scroll came to symbolize the spontaneity of the Beat Generation, the early, unedited version of the novel never reached the public.

Now, in time to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the novel's publication, the version of ``On the Road" that Kerouac wrote on the scroll will be published next year in book form for the first time, said John Sampas of Lowell, the executor of the writer's literary estate and the brother of his third wife, Stella. It will include some sections that had been cut from the novel because of references to sex or drugs.

The agreement between the Kerouac estate and the New York publisher Viking Penguin is an important development for literary scholars and Kerouac fanatics who have never had access to the original draft.

The scroll contains numerous passages that were edited out of the book and uses the original names of characters who were closely modeled on friends of Kerouac, including fellow writers William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.

``It is a big deal, and it will be of great interest to Kerouac scholars," said Hilary Holladay, director of the Kerouac Center for American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. ``He had worked on and off before on that particular draft, but this was like a complete birth of the story."

The original scroll, long part of Kerouac's estate, was sold to Indianapolis Colts owner James Irsay in 2001 for a record-setting $2.43 million. It is currently drawing crowds on a national tour, recently extended through 2008, and it will be exhibited in Lowell next summer at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum.

The iconic manuscript will return to its author's home city at a time of growing local interest in Kerouac, after decades in which the writer was largely ignored, in part because of his appetites for drugs and alcohol. In the past five years, local leaders have pressed the state for highway signs to advertise the city as Kerouac's birthplace and advocated for the state to declare a Jack Kerouac Day.

Outside Lowell, the writer has also gained popularity. Sampas, the executor of Kerouac's estate, said he was inspired to publish the scroll version of the novel after seeing the interest of young scholars at an academic conference at UMass-Lowell last fall. After inviting Kerouac specialists to dinner, he brought them to his Lowell home and shared some of the writer's private papers with them.

``They were enthralled, and it was a wonderful experience, feeling their awe," he recalled. ``It permeated the room."

He asked the four students, who are pursuing advanced literary degrees at universities in Denver, New York, London, and Melbourne, to serve as editors of the new version, and they agreed.

It remains to be seen exactly how they will present the original Kerouac story, which was typed as one freewheeling, single-spaced paragraph. Eager to write freely and continuously, without pausing to pull finished pages from his typewriter and insert new ones, Kerouac typed instead on 12-foot rolls of paper that he later Scotch-taped together, Sampas said.

Living in New York in 1951 and writing about his recent cross-country adventures, Kerouac worked from his own notes, journals, and letters, and frequently added notes and corrections over the typewritten text.

He had previously worked on the book in scattered bursts, but finally laid it all out on paper in a single three-week sprint, Holladay said.

Some specialists say they prefer the unedited version, which features a different first sentence than the published novel, as well as a more abrupt ending.

A cocker spaniel owned by one of Kerouac's friends apparently ate the last section, according to WJim Canary, the head of special collections conservation at Indiana University's Lilly Library.

By Jenna Russell, Boston Globe Staff | July 27, 2006

While traveling out west last month we visited the interprative center - part of the Northern Cascade National Park - and saw a beautifil little exhibit about the time Kerouac spent on Desolation Peak.

Many folks don't know that Jack Kerouac spent 63 days during the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak. He wrote about his experiences in the books "The Dharma Bums" and "Desolation Angels". The lookout is a 14' x 14' structure built in 1933 and remains active under the National Park Service.

>>>Click here for more information about the trail.<<<

The following passages are from "The Dharma Bums" and "Desolation Angels".

"There she is!" yelled Happy and in the swirled-across top-of-the-world fog I saw a funny little peaked almost Chinese cabin among the little pointy firs and boulders standing on a bald rock top surrounded by snowbanks and patches of wet grass with tiny flowers.

I gulped. It was too dark and dismal to like it. "This will be my home and restingplace all summer?"

I was thinking about this place again when I heard that my nephew Liam - who lives in Seattle - just got back from hiking up to the fire tower. Well done, Liam! Here's a picture of Liam from the trail ride we went on in British Columbia last month. (That was fun too.)

red-bellied snakes

2006-07-31T09:12:00.000-05:00

How do they communicate with each other?

Red-bellied Snakes communicate with each other primarily through touch and smell, especially during breeding. Outside of the breeding season they do not interact much with other snakes. They use their forked tongues to collect chemicals from the air and insert these forks into a special organ in the roof of their mouth, which interprets these chemical signals. Snakes are also sensitive to vibrations and have reasonably good vision.

Communication and happiness. Do they have anything to do with one another? Are the snakes happy?

I came across "The World Map of Happiness"- you need to check this out. Watching young boys in the woods for a couple weeks, as they gift you daily with toads and snakes - but have little need for communication - at least the kind that I can truly understand. And yet, it is obvious that they are happy. And the dog - who must remain leashed when outside in the city - is delightfully happy when she can run and swim and chase her charges (the young boys).

Adrian White said “The concept of happiness, or satisfaction with life, is currently a major area of research in economics and psychology, most closely associated with new developments in positive psychology....” My cynical translation when hearing the worlds "happiness" and "economics and psychology" is that they are trying to figure out new ways to get us to think we need to buy more useless stuff. And yet there are so many simple pleasures to be had.

Why do we forget that so easily?

More quotes from the Happiness Map site:
"There is increasing political interest in using measures of happiness as a national indicator in conjuntion with measures of wealth. A recent BBC survey found that 81% of the population think the Government should focus on making us happier rather than wealthier."

"Further analysis showed that a nation's level of happiness was most closely associated with health levels (correlation of .62), followed by wealth (.52), and then provision of education (.51)."

“There is a belief that capitalism leads to unhappy people. However, when people are asked if they are happy with their lives, people in countries with good healthcare, a higher GDP per captia, and access to education were much more likely to report being happy.”

An entire two lazy weeks up north. Home now and back to school and a schedule. The sabbatical year is officially over for and it has been a wonder and a gift.

The Wonder Years

2006-07-21T14:27:00.000-05:00

There is a wonder factor to a twelve year old boy. I love it. I am spending time with four of them up north this week and next.

They are: playing cards and flirting with cheating on each other. Catching frogs and building homes for them. Wondering why I go nuts when they try to use their nets to catch the hummingbirds at the feeder. Swimming with the dog. Building forts and swings in the woods and carving their names into trees. Building a bonfire every night. Whittling. Playing flashlight tag until midnight. Eating - constantly. Waiting for rain sometimes - no screens of any kind unless it is raining - so no movies, tv, gameboys.... Constantly testing their knowledge of constellations, music, fads - of anything - out on each other.

I am: bringing them to the library to (among other things) do research on the frog (excuse me, toad). Giving them oral quizzes on American jazz...I believe they now all know the difference between Frank Sinatra and Mel Torme. Forcing them to eat vegetables, take showers and check for ticks. Singing to them until their eyes roll back in their heads - especially opera. Playing cards with them - they play like a bunch of old grumpy men. Making them pick up - their clothes, their soda cans, the watermelon rinds off the lawn, their dishes. My nick-name - the enforcer.

Reading

2006-07-21T13:59:00.000-05:00

As I am ranting about the unfolding events this week - trying to make sense of it all - I've finished a book that I found oddly comforting - mostly because I thought it was going to be a lite "summer-read" and it made me think about so many other things, including the senseless events of late. I recommend Anderson Cooper's "Dispatches From the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters and Survival."

I have been wondering for quite awhile why I like the way this man does his job. I like to think it is more than just his waspy good looks - the blue-eyed, silver-haired wonder. It just seemed like there was something else there that was seeping through my hardened cynicism of anything that has to do with televised news. His book seems to answer some of those questions for me - although it hasn't done a heck of a lot for my hardened cynicism. He is not afraid to make connections between the personal and the global - between the people he is covering and himself. Is this why folks call him a "new breed of journalist" and question his ability to be objective. Where is there any objectivity on the news anyway? (Where is the news anyway?)

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has read this and what you think - either post here or email me.

Images from the Middle East

2006-07-18T14:10:00.001-05:00

Hello - what are you doing on this beautiful summer day? Watching your children on the beach or the playground. Are you on vacation and sitting quetly in the sunshine. Having to go to work and grousing about the traffic, the project, the boss? Perhaps you are weeding your garden or working on a beloved project in the studio. Are you walking through the farmers market? Are you watching the birds at your feeder? Are you wishing you were somewhere else? Spend a moment with these images and take a moment to imagine this as your beautiful summer day. What will you do to help?

Subtraction 7.0

2006-07-14T11:03:00.000-05:00

Bravo! Click on the title to visit Subtraction. I love finding these. A smart and interesting site - with enough to look through and ponder for quite a while.