Poetry month | Footenotes

July 16, 2012

Image courtesy of Dan Century at flickr.com

Well, what’s in the news this week? I’m going to skip the Obama/Romney shadow boxing for now because Lord knows there’s going to be plenty of that in the coming months. But come on Mittens, show us the money. I want to know what was in those tax records that made Sarah Palin a better candidate for VP. Speaking of, can you imagine if they had won? I don’t mean that in a partisan way, just as a thought experiment. Take the next two minutes to imagine it. Like, picture the Arab Spring and then we send Vice President Palin over to Egypt to make sure the Israel/Egypt treaty is going to stand. I know, right? I know.

Whew.

Actually I was just writing that to get your blood pressure up because we really do need to freak out a little (but just a little) now. You might recall several months ago that the CUNY Academic Commons and basically everyone else on the internet pitched in to stop SOPA/PIPA. For a minute there it looked like we had managed to get an out of touch congress to slow down and think about what was happening. Things were looking better as late as this month with ACTA failing to be ratified by the EU, essentially stalling international support for similar legislation. But deep in the heart of Texas, Rep Lamar Smith was busy crafting some new legislation — the Intellectual Property Attache Act or IPAA. IPAA isn’t nearly as sweeping as SOPA but it is basically a big chunk of that old bill reformatted with an emphasis on influencing foreign countries to create legislation that could help change the internet as we know it. Though SOPA failed, bills like this could achieve the same result in piecemeal if we don’t stay informed. Eyes on the road.

Meanwhile on the Commons — CUNY gets some guns!

Or rather, CUNY had some guns and used to shoot them a lot. I can’t believe College of Staten Island had a rifle club. I went to Hunter, where was my rifle club? I think we had a fencing team. Anybody over at CSI know if they still have the rifle club? Wait…do we still have the rifles? What other slightly dangerous and yet oddly compelling sports do we have around CUNY? Archery? Falconry?

Tim Wilson, long time blogger on the site, took the Commons back to its roots with some poetry this week. For those of you new to the community the Commons had a deep poetry phase especially around Poetry Month that has, sadly, been on the wane. I know Grindley has been hard at work on some other projects so that leaves you, Tim Wilson, holding down the fort. New people — write some poems! Blog them!

If you, like me, missed Pete’s Mini Zine Fest at Pete’s Candy Store then be sure to head to Brooklyn College for Brooklyn College Library’s unveiling of the Zine Collection. I love the blog and after completely missing the BC Zine crew at ZineFest earlier in the spring I can’t wait to check out the collection. Mark your calenders folks!

Till next week.

2 Comments

April 14, 2011

Round-Up! 4/6- 4/13

Hello Commons!

First off – here’s a picture of ducklings:

Why?

Because Chris Stein hates ducks… Good shot with camera though.

I’m afraid that if I say anything I’ll totally jinx it, but with that risk considered and I’m going to go ahead and call us out for being a great community on the blogs this week. Not that we aren’t or haven’t been for a long time of course, but I think this was the first week in a while where I combed through all of the blogs and just seen tons of wonderful conversations happening everywhere.

It probably doesn’t hurt that it’s finally spring and we’re not smothered in grey death clouds all of the time now.

Seriously though, take a look!

For starters it’s April which means it’s Poetry Month again. For those of you who weren’t around the Commons last year we had a bunch of our resident poets step up and make some contributions. As always Carl James Grindley @Grindley is cranking out an unbelievable amount of material. Carl usually holds down the poetry fort here on the Commons all year but it’s great to have a month long marathon of work. For Poetry Month this year we have new-comer Erica Kaufman@Ericakaufman from the Graduate Center. She has two poems up so far and we’ve still have a couple of weeks to go. Also – great choice in blog theme Erica!

Maura Smale @MSmale over at The Living Laboratory blog started a conversation about possible applications for the new Openlab Project they’re working on. What I love about this post is watching potential users help drive the features in development. As you know we tend to do version updates here on the Commons quite frequently and we bundle new features with them that are largely driven my feedback from you. I can’t stress it enough, if there’s something you want to see on the Commons shoot one of the Community Facilitators an email or use the ‘feedback’ tab. We always try to make sure our development features are community driven and its great to see that at work in Openlab as well.

Speaking of development, our own Chris Stein @Cstein (aforementioned duck-photographer) had a great post up making some early predictions on what the web might look like in the future. Not only is this a good post for understanding where we are now, but it’s rich with links that I think make excellent resources for all of us on the open-source side of the internet. Amanda Licastro @Alicastro followed up with another post dealing more explicitly with changes and growth with the semantic web that’s started a conversation in the comments.

And finally, perhaps in the spirit of Poetry Month, Helldriver @helldriver went full meta. Regarding another feather in your cap – I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of you when I saw the ad for Rush at Madison Square Garden. So…how was the show?

That said, I blew my whole concert fund for all of 2011 on three nights at Radio City to see what’s left of the Grateful Dead. First loves.

Till next week folks!

4 Comments

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!

1 Comment

April 24, 2010

Things I Learned About Myself on the Commons…Round Up!

Well, first I learned that I can’t remember if ‘About’ would be capitalized in a title for a blog. I’d go grab my copy of Strunk & White but…you know.

More importantly I learned:

Mary Carroll is my new hero.

Apparently I’m buying an Android.

I am a Twitter moron.

And…

I don’t go to enough Black Metal shows.

Let me explain.

So I started to read all of the blogs for this week’s round-up and things got off to a great start with Mark Carroll’s Always a Bridesmaid. I was basically stopped cold in my tracks when I got just one meager sentence into the post and read:

“I decided I would Nora Ephron them with my morning coffee.”

Never in my life have I seen Nora Ephron turned into a verb. Genius. So genius I didn’t get it at first. Was Mary Carroll going to reveal the identity of Deep Throat or was she trying to land a gig at Huffington Post? Nobody cares about Mark Felt anymore (Nixon who?) but the writing was great. Tender when it needed to be, acerbic for the rest. I have to say though, couldn’t you just Modge-Podge some of your old acting posters all over your husband’s sculptures?

The rest of the post brings up a good point about online and blended courses, and what we lose as educators when the classroom turns to pixels. In our rush to meld the internet and its endless features into a measured instrument for education we often let our enthusiasm overrun an appreciation for face time. Not to get all Martin Buber, but those breakthrough moments are hard to see on a Facebook update.

Speaking of Facebook updates, I mean Twitter, I finally caved and signed up. I was reading Sarah Morgano’s post at Commons Connections and started to feel a little left behind. I’m following four people and they’re all co-workers. Epic. I’ll be sure to blog about my life with Twitter as I get the hang of it. Fortunately there are a lot of great resources around the Commons for getting up to speed. So what is this number sign # thing supposed to do?

Foolishly I thought I was inciting violence last week when I ragged on Apple products to Michael Oman-Reagan, resident Mac guru at the Grad Center. Turns out he’s just as unhappy as I am. He made a post this week about Steve Jobs’ touchy feelings on porn. Apparently King Steve doesn’t want smut on his products. No surprise there, that’s long been the standard at Apple, but it does raise some interesting questions about who gets to shape morality in this age of open source. Is market ubiquity the same thing as censorship? Are Apple products so good looking and seductive that we’re not even tempted by anything else? That being said…we all remember what happened to Betamax.

Anthony Picciano from Tony’s Thoughts is away at a blended learning conference so no links this week. Hopefully on his way back we’ll get a post about what was going on there. Maybe they addressed some of the issues brought up at Always a Bridesmaid.

Helldriver was back this week blogging about the Immortal show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. First off, any black metal show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple sounds rad. That place must be charged with like 150 years worth of super secret Masonic ritual stuff. We’re lucky the Earth didn’t split open and unleash a thousand winged Dan Browns all over Brooklyn. More importantly, this:

“They absolutely exploded when the lights went down, and the shadow of the drummer appeared behind the kit, and then the other two members of the trio sprang from the wings in a miasma of noise and smoke. They banged their heads and made devil-horns. They knew all the words, and “sang” them, too, as surely as if the lead singer had said, “Now, boys and girls, aspirate along with me …”

Seriously, whatever you were doing that night wasn’t half as fun.

Finally – Carl James Grindley is just about done with Poetry Month. I’m not exactly sure why this makes me happy, but it works on the same level as when I watch the marathon run right through my neighborhood each year. For no real reason other than the thrill of it I just stand there waving my stupid inflatable TMobile balloon as the athletes slug through. You’re almost there!