Another Victory for the Women

Last night was another good night for the Lady T's, as they dispatched the Tech Hardrockers by 20 points to win the DAC Conference championship and cut the nets from the hoops and perpare for the national tournament. The Fieldhouse was packed with people, and the fans were led by a group of 11 men who spelled out "GO LADY TS!" (with the quotation marks) and chanted and danced and taunted the other team and coach (with We (Heart) Barbara on their backs). It was a rough game, with a nosebleed and several dazed players to punctuate the battle under the boards. Now they go on to play in the national tournament in Sioux City.

Too bad they had to share the spotlight on the news last night with the "Underwear Bandit."

A Game to Try Your Tonsils

The Trojan Women were victorious last night over the Black Hills State Yellowjackets in the second round of the conference tournament, and we'll play again at home (as top seed) on Tuesday against South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, who beat Mayville State. The Lady T's led most of the way, by as much as 16 at one point, but when BH started the press in the second half, DSU had problems with turnovers and scoring, and BH tied the game and led by four with less than a minute left. But DSU wasn't done, and a bucket, a couple of hard-earned free throws, and the game was tied. DSU stole the ball as BH inbounded with only seconds left, and when one shot rattled out, Maria Gengler was there with the rebound to put it back in as time expired and the elation shifted from the vocal BH fans to the fans wearing the blue and gold. Click here for a little sound clip of the crowd as it responds to one of many three-pointers.

Thursday with Marquart

The Poetry Festival at USD was a real showcase for writers of all types. Neil Harrison from Nebraska led a morning workshop and the afternoon featured Debra Marquart, a performance poet and writer from Iowa via North Dakota. Her workshop was excellent and led to a number of poems read at the slam, and her reading in the afternoon was funny and moving, as was her short reading before the slam that night. Four DSU students went down, and three DSU faculty attended the slam, which had one DSU alum reading and a student judging. It was a good showing for us, and we're working now to get Marquart here for a reading and some events.
She read a bit of her memoir The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, which sounds like a good read.

Off to a World Where Poetry Matters

Our little patch of the world doesn't show its love for poetry as vividly as other places, so sometimes a person has to travel to rub elbows with other poets and poet apprentices. So, tomorrow I'll pilot a car south to attend the Vermillion Literary Project's Poetry Festival, taking some students with me. Here's hoping all goes well and they enjoy the trip!

The Ballet Marathon?

The little town of Viborg, SD, is the site of the Swan Lake Christian Camp, hosts of the Swan Lake Marathon, going into its third year. While races like the Twin Cities Marathon cap their entries at 8,500 people and New York City's is about five times that, this little marathon had 19 finishers in 2005 and surged to 25 finishers in 2006. It's a shy person's marathon, perhaps. Last year also featured a half-marathon and a 5.3 miler. If July 1st is on your race calendar, and you're looking for a friendly encounter, you could do worse. The Sunday noon meal is free for racers and families, and for five bucks, they'll throw in a spaghetti dinner Saturday night. 2006 race photos are here.

Memories of Electronic Adventures

I wonder what will happen with our memories of playing computer games. There are scenes from screens that I remember, but they were isolated, individual, and temporary. Other people played Descent when it came out, and Myst, but when they entered the cavern with the dozens of enemy ships, or they put their hand on the transporting books, they were usually alone, much like reading a book is, but they don't get a chance to discuss those things with others. You can ask a person if they've read a book, and you can discuss that, but can you reminisce about riding the underwater roller-coaster in Riven? How is are these memories different from others?

I just wonder what people will remember from playing computer games, what they'll be able to share with others about all that time they spent (or are spending) facing an electronic screen. Actually, there will probably be a lot more to discuss and share than there will be from time spent updating pages and contacts on Facebook or Myspace. Maybe not. What do you think?

Virtual Tour, Without Leaving Your Seat

DSU has unveiled its virtual tour. Check it out here: http://www.dsuvtour.jamestower.com/index2.html

Click on one of the images of the three students, or choose one of the videos available. Cool!

Web 2.0 Finally Makes Sense

Others I know have been touting the wonders of the "new" web for some time, especially the way that web users can accumulate the material they want without clicking furiously through a maze of websites and keeping track of bookmarks. But it didn't really click in my brain until I watched the video clip sent to me by TQ. The video, "Web 2.0 . . . The Machine is Us/ing Us," is by Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. Thanks, TQ, and thanks, Dr. Wesch.

Farewell the Spanish Glass

It was reminder of a little outdoor cafe where we enjoyed a few beers and some good meals on our honeymoon, a waiter that took care of us, and our two week stay in Spain in general. But the last beer glass we had from that trip bit the dust today, a sad loss. It was a cool glass with an image a big man leaning on a beer keg, a mug hoisted for drinking, the word Cruzcampo beneath. Here's the last photo and a fond farewell to our Spanish Glass. We'll just have to remember the good times looking out over the beach without its prompting.

Marooned on a Very Cool Web Project

One of our astute librarians here at DSU recently sent a note out about Chasing Crusoe, a website created by teams of students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of the Andes, in Santiago, Chile. It explores both the novel Robinson Crusoe and the real-life adventure of Alexander Selkirk, along with lots of other material about pirates, marooning, and sea-faring. What these students created seems to be a promising blend of animation, digital storytelling, scholarship, and game creation. Check it out in English or en Espanol.

Poetry Reading by Phillip Block

Thursday evening Phillip Block, a recent product of the DSU English program who is now a graduate student at The University of South Dakota, read from his poetry at the Vermillion Literary Project's monthly poetry reading and slam. Five professors and a student from DSU went down to see the show, and we weren't disappointed. Many good poets read, and Phillip did a fine job. Here's a recording of his poem "Nightmaring Under Red Stars" from that evening and a photo of some of us and Phillip standing. Adam Bruns served as an excellent judge for the poetry slam that followed the reading. It was a great time, and we survived the fog that enveloped us there and back. For more about poetry slams, check out the Poetry Slam Inc.'s main page.

Al Gore's Crusade

The man who calls himself the man who used to be the next president of the United States was in town yesterday, and some colleagues and I were fortunate to go see him speak at Augustana College in Sioux Falls last night. A passionate speaker, Al Gore is a great spokesman for the need to act on pollution levels. While he might not have offered a list of "to do's" and "not to do's," his interest was in galvanizing his listeners into paying heed to the problem and recognizing the importance of acting. The primary problem, he says, is that people aren't well-informed enough to insist that their legislators act in the country's, and the world's, best interest. I hope his campaign for action gets the job done.

The Rise of Democratic Multimedia

YouTube has been getting a lot attention lately and not sharing it, but some see in that situation an opportunity for them to grab some attention for themselves. One site, OurMedia, offers the promise of more user-created content, and I look forward to looking at it further, but today it seemed a little overloaded. It's "The global home for grassroots media," and they've got a "clay and computers" group I'll look into. Another site, WGBH, offers their WGBH Video Sandbox, with free video clips they welcome you to download and use as you see fit. Need some video of a 1939 NYC street scene? Comin' right up!

The WGBH Lab is offering some opportunities for budding video producers. Check it out! Finally, while looking at these sites I stumbled upon the Open Media Network that offers high-quality, varied video for download and full-screen viewing.

More Stop-Action Action

There's been more stop-action from a couple of people I know, one a student and one my son who got a webcam for Christmas. Both take off on the ease of making the stop-action films using Lego building blocks and figures. Check out Adam and my son's videos and give them a little feedback to show you've been there! Follow links here to Adam's and my son's. It's good to see people using computers for creative, inventive ways to tell stories. I like the use of technology that allows people to be creators. I need to finish up some of mine I've been working on!

Putting My Zen to Work

MP3 players are often thought of as simply devices for listening to music, but my new Creative Zen asks for more. I've been listening to it during exercise, and it's much better for that than my iRiver H10, which is much bigger and doesn't like the jostling of exercise. The Zen has a radio, but like all MP3 players, it will also play any audio files, including recorded books and podcasts.
I looked a bit for some free audio books, and good people out there are supplying some, though not of even quality. I'm going to try out a collection of Chinese stories from Audio Books for Free.
The files aren't the best quality; you have to pay for the better ones. I would like to know how to listen to the great programs on Sound Portraits on my player. NPR has a lot of great podcasts for listening to, including peoples' stories on Story Corps and The Writer's Almanac. So, we'll see.

I'm Not the Old Me

I was hunting through some stuff in the basement and found this old picture of me and my siblings, circa 1973. We were quite a crew. My haircut in those days was a lot like my son's is now; it must be a thing for 16-year-olds.

A Ballad of the Lost and Found

Who knows the pleasure of the surprise of finding something you thought was lost forever, perhaps nothing special, just something that represents a time and a place, and the person you were when you lost it? When my daughter was about eight years old, and we had just moved to a small hobby farm in northeast South Dakota, she and my older son became very interested in treasures and making maps. My daughter made a treasure, some objects in an old black plastic lunch box. I don't remember what she put inside--some yarn, a plastic figurine, a bottle she had found. It disappeared. Years later, I found it next to a log in the shelterbelt, and all the treasure was intact, including a map she had drawn showing some marks for the location of the treasure (yes, I know, the map was inside the treasure). I got a thrill when I opened it, a lost treasure, a time capsule. She was thirteen, and when I showed it to her, she was ashamed, indicated that this silliness was something she would rather have forgotten. I gave her the treasure, and she threw it away. I wish I had kept it. I would like to have kept the map at least, and maybe a photo of the treasure in its chest. She would like to have it some day, I suspect, like Scout's cigar-box treasures.

I'm a keeper, much to the wife's chagrin. But this past weekend we hunted up an old treasure of her own. She was sure a cabinet matching the one we use for a bed table was still in her parents' old abandoned house. After a search, I found it in the basement, much the worse for wear; the moisture and racoons had damaged it, but not beyond repair. The drawers were stuck, and I could tell there were items inside. I got it home, and one drawer wouldn't give up its treasure, but finally, I banged it open and found, among other things, an old Korean shoe, one of the ones her aunt had bought for her and her sisters. Here's a picture of it. Those girls wore those shoes, but they appear to be more intended for placing on a shelf and admiring their hand-painted flowers.

What once-lost treasures have you found?

Kick-Ass Blender

When we got married the wife indicated that she wanted a kick-ass blender, one that wouldn't wilt when you asked it to make good smoothies. Here's one, complete with videos showing testing on cell-phones, cans and bottles, and even an iPod. Will It Blend?

A Note on Books

Books, books, books. Besides the copies of the magazines and journals and online and paper newspapers, I've been busy reading over the break. I just finished T. Coraghessan's Greasy Lake and Other Stories, a book with a wide range of subject matter, but with a consistent attention to detail and style. I had read two stories some time ago--"Greasy Lake" and "The Overcoat II"--and these prompted me to pick up the collection, which didn't disappoint. I'm also reading Amy Hempel's collection of stories Reasons to Live and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, both excellent books.

Didion's book is a sharp reminder of a class of people that live lives very different than mine and yours, I'd guess, people who can tick off the names of doctors and lawyers and writers and celebreties they count among their friends, people who pack up and fly across the continent or the ocean on a moment's notice, people for whom budgets do not seem to exist, people who call up neurologists and argue with them. I'm struck by that notion of power and wealth more than the anguish that she faces in light of the death of her husband and the illness of her daughter. Mostly the book seems to illustrate the frustration the author feels in having the orderly, managed, and comfortable world she lived in shattered by tragic events that she cannot control. For most of us, that world of chaos and disorder is far closer than it is for her; we live in the expectation of its arrival, in ongoing efforts to keep our footing within it. The plans of the world are always unfolding without our approval.

The world of Boyle's "Greasy Lake," where adolescents pretending to be "dangerous characters" actually run into some truly dangerous ones, is a lot closer to the world most of us live in. Still, there's a strange attraction to seeing Didion's dawning recognition of what most of us knew all along.

A Regina Monologue

Of the gifts I got for Christmas, one has captured my attention in a surprising way, coming out of the blue with a sound unique and haunting, a new CD from Regina Spektor, someone I'd never heard of before, her fourth collection called Begin to Hope. Previous releases include Soviet Kitsch (2004), Songs, and 11:11 (the first two were self-released). Born in the Soviet Union, Spektor is part of the New York "antifolk" movement, quirky and independent; she has a powerhouse voice like Norah Jones and the offbeat quality of The Ditty Bops.

Here's from a review by Jenny Eliscu of Begin to Hope: "Compare her to other eccentric, female, piano-playing crooners, but New York singer-songwriter Regina Spektor is an oddball unto herself. Less miserable than Fiona Apple, less wacky than Nellie McKay and less hippieish than Tori Amos, Spektor shows off her gorgeous, fluttery voice, her burgeoning writer chops and her God-given quirks on her second disc, Begin to Hope."

Check her out! Thanks for the Christmas present, daughter!