An irregular blog
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE My approach to my dissertation research topic is specifically informed by the idea of the “long civil rights movement” that is, there is an ongoing and long-running struggle for equality of rights and opportunities for African Americans that pre-dates the twentieth century. While this is generally recognized by scholars this continuity is less…
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Tracking family history can be tricky. Most of it is oral and the familiar parts get told so often that they become more than familiar, they become rote. That sense of over-familiarity can cause those stories to seem less important, less remarkable. At the same time, the character of these stories are connected to their story-tellers. The moments…
America, as an experiment in democracy and religious liberty has grappled from its inception as to the degree that liberty, religious liberty, and slavery were connected. This discussion was particularly heightened around the topics of slavery and abolition in the early to mid-1800s. While abolitionists would argue that there was certainly connection between these three in favor of abolition, a…
I've been thinking about this post since Kevin Seeber posted his homework task in preparation for tomorrow's #critlib feelings chat. *Warning: there are feelings below.* Why are you a critical librarian? For me, #critlib serves as means for ongoing exploration, discovery and curiosity. The crit(ical) of critlib while benefiting from theoretical underpinnings or input does not require those…
Ali Smith~Artful I've been trying to finish this post for a week or so now and much of the problem has been that problem of writing about something you like in a way that connects to other people.Especially a book and trying to avoid the rehashing of the entire plot and wanting to communicate what punches or what's worth about the book without giving the whole thing away while also trying to…
I picked up Theodore Zeldin's book Conversation when a patron returned it to the library front desk and started reading, as one is wont to do, the last chapter. I had tried, and failed to read this petite volume several months ago and it had fallen flat. Or at least I had fallen flat. There's some really nice ideas that Zeldin lays out in this last chapter. I offer them to you without commentary…
This article from the Columbus Dispatch entitled "'Lincoln' full of authentic sounds" was recently forwarded to me. In order for the rest of this post to make sense you should, dear reader, take 5-7 minutes for a read-through or two of the above link. Clicking the link should open up in a new tab so you won't have to worry about losing your spot here. --- There's a couple of really interesting…
I grew up 20-30 minutes, depending on the traffic, from Sandy Hook, NJ. Traveling down Rt. 36 to its end forces you to either go left to Sandy Hook and the beach or right onto the barrier island of Sea Bright. If you travel far enough Sea Bright turns into Long Branch and eventually, I believe, LBI. The houses in Sea Bright largely face the ocean with the river at their backs so that even in…
This post is the result of a failure to read all the details in a particular request for submissions. I failed to grasp the audience was not librarians but that was after I had finished what follows. So rather than consign it to the ether, I share it here. Please comment as able and willing. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE The call of a particular publishing organ for an essay…
Finished reading Jonathan Sterne's excellent book The Audible Past yesterday. Sometimes, in particular works, there are chapters or sections that are well worth the time to be read again and again. The conclusion to Audible Past lands squarely in this category. While effectively wrapping up the entire work, the conclusion also raises additional questions and areas for additional study. One of the…
Came across this video demoing GoogleGlasses today . I would like to submit that GoogleGlasses looks good because of its editing. The fact it's promoted as a short film is mildly silly as no one, yet, really wants to watch hours of straight pov footage.Google in this particular clip is not showing off the glasses as much as highlights. Unfortunately, as far as I know, when you get the glasses,…
David Sizemore, a rather talented graphic designer whom I'm really pleased to consider a friend, has a really excellent recent blog post . This post originates out of Dave's recently attending a design conference and wrestling with the conundrum or philosophical state of choosing between fulfilling work versus paying work. The last paragraph and the next to last sentence in that paragraph is where…
The reason for this post is that I'm concerned with, to borrow Lanier's term, trying to make humans into gadgets, especially in language. The official term for this being technological determinism. Technological determinism is dangerous wherever it shows up but when its adherents pop up in evangelical journals in the discussion of worship, church and technology, I get especially nervous. Multnomah…
Today is John Cage's 100th Birthday. I was looking for his home page to post on the library Facebook page and found it. johncage.org In clicking around and through the site, I selected Indeterminacy and this was what was displayed: "I went to hear Krishnamurti speak. He was lecturing on how to hear a lecture. He said, “You must pay full attention to what is being said and you can’t do that if you…
Thanks to the fantastic walllace-l listserv I was recently made aware of Maria Bustillos' excellent article Not fade away: on living, dying, and the digital afterlife. There's a bunch of good stuff in this article but the aspect of memory and online activity is really interesting to me. " When someone dies nowadays, we are liable to return to find that person's digital self — his blog, say, or his…
The latest issue of Newsweek features an article entitled iCrazy: Panic. Depression. Psychosis. How Connection Addiction is rewiring our brains by Tony Dokoupil. Currently the whole article is available to read on the site. My own reaction to this sort of thinking is mixed. On one hand it seems to fall into the general this-really-big-thing-is-really-bad-for-you while on the other, there may be…
The recent copy of the New Yorker has a fascinating, well-written article on video phenomenon known as the TED Talk(s). The first page is available here and Heller has a web-only introduction here . There's several points that Heller raises or makes that are worth noting. The first is the extent to which the online videos are shot, using 8 cameras (p. 72), and edited to create what is an almost…
The night each plows A furrow of death In the field of stars Who calls? I am nothing But one with the one That makes the nothing All. - Charles Bell
You may have seen one of these iPhone/Siri ads from this NPR article: Hey Celebs, Are You Lonesome Tonight? Siri's Gotcha There are three aspects to the program that struck me as I read the article and watched the included ads. First: Siri embodies the clueless alien with massive mental firepower-literally a computer for a brain-as seemingly all-knowing but lacks understanding of basic…
Yesterday I was reading the Cambridge book review of The Pale King and this quote, toward the end of the review stuck with me: "...based on the evidence of this novel, I’d take Pietsch’s more hopeful view, that Wallace was trying to come unstuck and believed it was worth his while to try to do so and thought of his writing as a way of understanding how to do it." (Emphasis mine) This is a great…
"When Matthew Arnold keeled over, in April, 1888, while hurrying to catch the Liverpool tram, Walt Whitman told a friend, “He will not be missed.” Arnold was, in short, “one of the dudes of literature.” Whitman probably figured that his own gnarly hirsuteness would save him from becoming a dude. He was wrong, and therein lies a lesson for all hardworking scribblers: stick around long enough,…
My family grew up about 20 minutes from the Jersey Shore so fishing with my dad, and occasionally other siblings, off the jetties of Sandy Hook for blackfish in the early morning sunlight with the incoming tide crashing over the rocks was a fairly regular occurrence and are treasured childhood memories. My brother Drew still lives in this area and focuses his fishing time and energies on the…
In keeping with the "disruptive technologies" theme, I came across a William Gibson interview from Summer 2011 via the Paris Review . While I've not read any of Gibson's fiction, though it's on the ever-growing book list, I have read some of his non-fiction esp. the op-eds that show up periodically in the NYT. What's particularly excellent about this interview is Gibson's wide-ranging discussion…
"The question [Clayton] Christensen began with, twenty years ago, was: Why was success so difficult to sustain? How was it that big, rich companies, admired and emulated by everyone, could one year be at the peak of their power and, just a few years later, be struggling in the middle of the pack or just plain gone? The first industry that Christensen studied was disk drives. He saw that the…
The shift to motion sensor- based sinks and paper-towel roll dispensers makes me nervous. On the one hand I recognize the usefulness of the paper towel machine controlling how much paper towel you get at once to help keep the wet-handed individual from ripping off half the roll to dry off his barely moistened fingertips.On the same hand I recognize the sanitary implications. Of the list of all the…