Footenotes

building CUNY Communities since 2009

Tag: Carl James Grindley

September 28, 2010

Round-Up 9/20-9/26

Because I’m an idiot and a masochist I watched the Senate vote live on the military spending bill for this year that included a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and passing the DREAM Act.  By now you know what came out of that but I mention it here because if you watched Senator Durbin’s speech after the vote he mentioned a CUNY Law student who would have benefited from the passing of the DREAM act.  I was too pissed distraught to write down the name of that student which is a shame because I was hoping he might be here.  I want to say it was nice to see CUNY mentioned during the circus, especially since both the repeal of DADT and passing the DREAM act would have been huge victories for so many in the CUNY community.  The thing is – it wasn’t nice.  I wasn’t glad to see a big cardboard picture of a CUNY student being waived around the senate floor in an effort to try and convince a bunch of senators that lots of people who don’t fit into their idea of ‘America’ deserve the right to serve their country.

I do take some consolation in remembering that at any given time CUNY has just under half a million students going through its programs.  That’s not to say that everyone in the university shares my opinions on DADT or DREAM, but I do believe that CUNY students, reflecting the diversity and great breadth of cultures that make New York what it is, know a little something about overcoming obstacles to get to great places.

Look, I know.   I try to keep it light even when I’m picking on people but I’m still a little stunned by the vote.  Besides – making fun of Linda McMahon would be too easy, even for you folks.

Speaking of you folks – it was a busy week on the blogs!  Here’s a few things of note.

Michael Smith @MSmith returned to the blogs this week.  Blogging for York College’s excellent 60 Minutes BootCamp, it looks like the journalism students from York have put together another fantastic piece – this time covering the Islamic community center south of the WTC.  In case you hadn’t heard they’re going to open a community center for Muslims and those interested in Islam downtown.  Apparently people have some thoughts on the matter.

Over at A Cosa Stai Pensando Beniamina Cassetta @beniamina has lost control of her thumbs.  Facebook is something of a dirty word around here so I try not to bring it up much, but you’re right – it is weird you can only like something.  At least Youtube gives you the option to vote down.  This is especially interesting when you consider that you can always delete negative comments as well.  It’s entirely possible to present reality on facebook in such a way that everything you say or link to is liked and commented on positively.  If only I could find a way to do that here on Footenotes…

Our resident poet and busiest guy at the keyboard, Carl James Grindley @Grindley is working on a book.  I’m afraid if I say too much here I might do more harm than good so I’ll leave it at congrats on the grant and good luck!  Invite us to the book party!

Since I’m writing this today, Tuesday, I can kind of see into the future as to what next week’s round-up will be.  Linda it’s good to see you again here, and I have…uhm…opinions…about this high school/college swap business on Tony’s blog.

They’ll have to wait – See you next week!

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May 23, 2010

The Round-Up I Wrote While You Were Watching ‘Lost’

I knew I wouldn’t get home till halfway through ‘Lost’.  Tomorrow I get to sequester myself from all media and phone calls until it finally downloads and I can catch up with the rest of society.  So while I suffer let me comb through the blogs this week and see what’s going on around the Commons.

First up, Tamar @tamarzilkha over at blogging politics took some time to consider whether the immigration laws in Arizona we’re really all that bad.  I’m going to go with yes.  Always a fan of acronyms, I tried to the crack the title code. Stop the BS Department of Homeland Security was my first guess.  With a little influence from all the poetry going on over at Carl James Grindley @Grindley and Tim Wilson’s @twilson blogs I felt I should try a little harder though and decided on ‘Sundry Things Have a Dozen Hearts Severed’. Don’t blame the art.

Speaking of Carl James Grindley, this week’s poems we’re particularly nice.  Coffee Shop is my favorite so far.  I thought the poem a day madness from April was a breakneck pace, but it looks like he’s going to come close to keeping up the pace in May.

Appalachian Anthropology had another post up this week.  I really love blogs like this that annotate a larger work in process.  Although I might not ever get to read the final work that comes out of the process, it’s such a pleasure to watch someone have really personal experience with their research and share that over the course of project.  I feel like this is the best way to use a blog in some sense, not so much as a public journal, but at as instrument to record the ways in which the self becomes integrated into the fabric of their own efforts.

Linda Wadas @lindawadas over at For the benefit of all sentient beings brought us some ducklings!  More than cute ducks was a reminder that spring is here, which I need to remember because it was a long, long winter.

Michael Oman-Reagan @omanreagan reposted a Pogue’s Post from the Times about IT security overkill that kicked up some conversation in the comments.  The Pogue piece was funny but made an excellent point about overkill.  That being said it was especially well timed on the heels of news this week that Todd Davis of Lifelock, you know the guy who posts his social security number on his TV commercials talking about how his service keeps your identity safe…has had own identity stolen 14 times since. (Thanks Metafilter!)

To wrap things up I just want to say – Get better soon Tony Picciano!

and…

Congrats to the Commons – we passed 1,000 members sometime this weekend!!!

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May 1, 2010

Finally – April’s Over!

Good Lord what a long month.

The blogs were in bloom this week on the Commons.  Maybe it was the never-ending rain that forced everyone to sit home and write poetry, or maybe we all just felt like chumps for letting Carl James Grindley do all of the heavy lifting this month over at Poems in Progress.  Whatever the motivation there was poetry in spades here.  Timothy Wilson was feeling prolific towards the end and broke out some Spanish on us.  Good thing we’re not in Arizona or…you know…he’d probably accused of being a Mex’can terrorist commie illegal or something. Ok, alright, Footenotes isn’t exactly a bully pulpit, but come on Arizona. COME ON!

Shhhh…just relax, it’s ok, they’re far away from here and it’s not like I’m in dire need of turquoise or anything.

Anyways, poetry.  All of our favorites threw in.  Michael Oman-Reagan posted perennial favorite Lawrence Ferlinghetti via Religion Scholars and Linda Wadas at For the Benefit of All Sentient Beings offered some photography as poetry.   I was holding out for Scott Voth to write a little ode to wikis but, alas, it was not to be.

But it wasn’t all sonnets and stanzas around here.  Tamar Zilkha made a return to the Commons this week thoroughly annoyed with the Census Bureau.  It was an interesting post about what constitutes race to the government and good ole Uncle Sam might be a little out of his league when trying to define race.   Honestly at this point I wish I hadn’t turned in my Census form yet because I’d love to make a few changes to my own answers.  Especially in light of this stupid friggin law that Arizona passed.

It’s basically like a bunch of people in Arizona realized that they’re referred to as the “South-West” and decided it was time to invest a little more in the “Southern” part of South-West.  Like, maybe Arizona just got lonely because the only other states that would hang out with it were Utah and New Mexico.  I’d be pretty lonely too, but making eyes at Alabama just because you’re tired of the dry heat…I don’t even know what I’m saying.  As a southern refugee I always looked towards the desert peoples as wise sages of the brush.  Now you don’t need a license to carry a concealed gun and it’s ok to stop anyone (Latino) and demand papers.  Because the wild west was so much fun you know, just like at Six Flags.

No seriously, it’s ok, I’m done.

Tony Picciano pulled up Maureen Dowd’s op-ed in the Times this week about the Goldman Sachs hearing over on Tony’s Thoughts.  As much as I’d love for something to come out of the criminal charges headed towards Goldman I just don’t see it amounting to much.  What I suspect is that Lloyd Blankfein is just going to erect a giant wall of gold bricks around Goldman Sachs downtown and throw big diamonds at SEC investigators till they give up from all of the bruises.

While Scott Voth did not deliver on a wiki poem, he made a post over at Wiki Wrangler giving us a sneak peak at his masters thesis work.  The post cards are lovely and it’s a great project suited to the scope of Omeka.  Takes some time to visit the Omeka site and learn about what they’re doing.

Speaking of technology and academia, Adam Wandt had a really touching post on the increasing use of technology by the elderly.  He set up his grandmother with a computer and got her to explore the internet and technology with some really great benefits on the side.  The links towards the end are a nice touch if you’re looking for some further reading on the mental benefits of technology.  Congrats Adam!

Finally, Helldriver made it in just under the wire for this week’s round up.  It’s a post about spring and music.  That, of course, is an understatement, but were I to try and explain what a great post it is I’d just ruin it.  To be frank, I think the best thing I can say about Helldriver’s post today is that it’s enough to make me wrap up this week’s round up and get the hell out of my apartment.

See ya next week folks!

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April 3, 2010

Weekly Round-Up! 3/28-4/3

Earlier in the week there was this moment where ‘Footenotes’ was lingering on the sidebar, floating along as the most ‘Recent Blog Post’ and as I sipped my coffee and chewed my granola I carelessly muttered, “Lord, somebody has got to post something…”

and behold:

\m/ HELLDRIVER’S PIT STOP \m/

I had no idea that my careless prayer would be received by Baphomet and bring the CUNY Commons its first music blog.  In fact at first I literally didn’t believe.  Had someone sneaked in under the wire?  The vague profile, the sordid drug tales, everything reeked of mystery and betrayal.  As I made my way to the end of this inaugural post I realized that no, this was not some malevolent prank, but the threat of a music blog right here on the Commons!  Helldriver makes no promises, but  I do hope to see more from the space in the weeks to come.

Faith now restored, I saw that we also got a post from our very own Scott Voth, the CUNY Commons Wiki-Wrangler.  In a move that might be so meta Web2.0y  it’ll blow you mind- we got blog post about a new wiki page about the Commons Wiki!  Scott was pointing the way to this awesome introduction to wiki’s he wrote and if you didn’t catch it on the first go round now’s your chance.  If you haven’t made a wiki or contributed to the existing ones you’re missing out on a great feature of the CUNY Academic Commons so get over there.

See, things were looking up.  We had music, we had wikis, it was looking like smooth sailing until Heather Heim over at ‘Thoughts on Jury Duty‘…

Ok, I have to stop for a second and stand up to clap.  ‘Thoughts on Jury Duty’ might be the best name for a blog ever.  You see it and you think;

“Do I really want to read a blog about jury duty? Naw, but who would so it can’t be about jury duty.  That’s got to be  funny or ironic right?  I’m gonna click it.”

Then you click it and it is a blog about jury duty, but by this point you’ve already clicked the damn thing so you start to read it and you’re sucked in…

“I mean the guy was 80, do you really think sticking a tube in his small intestine killed him?  No, being 80 killed him, but I mean, if the doctor was aiming for the stomach and missed he couldn’t have been much of a doctor.  And what’s up with all the rules for a civil malpractice suit jury, between the questions and the voting process you’d think they were picking a pope or something…”

Anyways, I’ve digressed, but I feel you on jury duty Heather, it’s been years since the last time I was on a jury and still don’t know if we made the right decision about the defendant.

What I was going to say…eventually…after that detour…was that ‘Thoughts on Jury Duty‘ had an excellent link to this article in the Times about new technology that allows companies to keep a close eye on what their employees are doing on facebook/twitter/the usual suspects.  While I find it a little loathsome that this service is on the rise,  if you don’t know by now how to keep dirt off your face(book) you probably are a liability to your company…by being an idiot.

Finally, Carl James Grindley over at ‘Poems in Progress‘ has two new works up and would like to remind everybody that April is Poetry Month.  In the spirit of April I’ll give it my best:

A Haiku:

The CUNY Commons;

I had things to do today,

but read blogs instead.

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Environment: Reclaim Dev

Branch: 2.5.x

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