All the Way to Toronto and Home Again

Guess what city is the fourth largest city in North America.  I mean, after Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles.   Got it?  Toronto?  You're right!

My colleague Stacey Berry and I returned from a great trip to the big city on Sunday after spending three days and nights, conferencing with folks from HASTAC, the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory.  It was the best tech/humanities conference I've been to, with great speakers, great demonstrations, and great ideas.  Below, one of the pictures shows a project by York University librarians allowing you to "Digitize or Destroy" a book.  Select a book, and you can shred it or save it.  Or both!

Speakers included the following:

Kia Ng,  Director and co-founder of Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Research in Music (ICSRiM), University of Leeds

Joseph Tabbi, a leading authority on the effects of new technologies on contemporary  fiction and Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Paola Antonelli, Director of Research and Development and Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art

Stacey and I came away with many ideas that we have in mind to implement in future classes.  Good deal!  

Digitize or Destroy?  Your librarian lets you choose.  

A cool computerized motion thing.

One of the presentations under way.  

Going on Tour

I'm looking forward to heading for Minneapolis for the MnWE (Minnesota Writing and English) Conference.  This will give me another chance to talk about the great English for New Media program at Dakota State University and the work that people do here.  Goodo for us!

New Tricks and the Hoop of Life

Students in one of my classes have been working this semester to bring the DSU literary magazine into the electronic world once again.  It had a brief moment in the sun of the internet years ago, when Dr. Dan Weinstein did some fancy html work to move the poetry from paper to pixels, but that moment passed and the site apparently disappeared.  So, here we go again with a dedicated site, not bound by the DSU biz.  Our site, New-Tricks.org, is up and running and waiting for the 2012 selections to be made and posted.

Sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society at DSU, New Tricks has been around since 1992, when the English majors sought to make things new by breaking with tradition at DSU.

We hope to shine a light on the good work that the writers and artists at DSU are doing, from students to faculty to staff.  If you're interested, check out the site, give us some feedback, maybe send us some of your work, and we'll have some new material there in the next few weeks.  Wish us luck!

St. Patrick's Day--Limericks and Libation

A week late, but the B's had their annual St. Patrick's Day party this past weekend, giving us some time to get together, share some limericks and talk, and gather 'round the "campfire" for storytelling and catching up.  Returning visitors from Missouri came up, and this photo shows the elite crew that remained until late, long after the lighter weight classes had cashed it in.  It was a great time!

Crowded Schedule

"Time is what keeps everything from happening at once."  Ray Cummings.

Ray, is time a thing that moves in a stream, or comes in clumps like cottage cheese?  Does it flow like a river, come down from north like a wind, or does it rumble from time to time like California earthquakes?  I'd like to know, because lately it seems as though the long stretches of quiet, the bowl of sun and space with nothing to stir it but my own steps forward, these seem gone, or become the dumped contents of a pair of salad tongs.  One arm of the tongs is me.  What is the other?  

This week, in addition to my teaching, I've done a prep session for students getting ready for the CAAP exam, co-hosted, sort of, a conference for the GPACW, participated in a panel discussion of the English for New Media program at DSU, and led a workshop (with a colleague) on the multimedia authoring software Sophie, which neither of us knew before we took on the workshop.  

Nothing wrong with keeping busy, except when it invades the need for quiet, or time with family.  It just so happens my sister and her man came through this week on their RV journey west after selling their home, quitting their jobs, and packing everything into an 18 year old motor home and leaving Nashville for California via St. Louis, South Dakota, Boise, Portland, and maybe even Seattle.  Then my daughter and her man arrived for a visit from Minneapolis.  So it's great having them here, but I wish, Ray, that there could be less of it all happening at once.  

It's all good.  

English Department Summit

 We met this afternoon as an English Department, our first official meeting outside the University this semester.  We got work done on a wide variety of fronts, made plans for future work, and enjoyed food and drink, including soup, bread, pork pies, and cake.  A good meeting all around, with good folks and true. 

Chicken noodle, chili, and pumpkin soup.