Poetry, Xtreme Essays, and Procrastination

My computational hours are still taken up with preparations for the classes I'm teaching, but Sherry Chandler has posted a miscellany of wonderful links, which should be visited immediately. Her book, Weaving a New Eden, is also wonderful, and should also be read (or in my case) re-read immediately.

Sherry's brief diversions threatened to turn into a longer procrastination episode for me when I discovered Xtreme Walden by Jason Harrington. For example:

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they should aim for each other, in a profoundly epic game of Walden Paintball. Teams of self-reliant individuals will take cover behind shelving rocks, pines, and majestic beaver dams, to gain Shelter from the withering and varicolored fire of the opposing team. No longer in civilized country, masses of marker-toting men will lead their enemies to be pelted into quiet desperation, until they call resignation.

Poetry Feast For St. Bridgid--Weaving a New Eden

Since 2006, I've participated in a "silent poetry reading" for the Feast Day of St. Brigid (or in honor of some more pagan Brigid--at your preference). I'm not aware of any cross-blog activity this year, but it's a good day for a poem.

Here is Sherry Chandler reading Looking Over into the Promised Land from her 2011 book, Weaving a New Eden. I just love this book of poems. I've tried several times to write an explanation about why it's so wonderful, but I'm reduced to gushing fandom.

Weaving a New Eden is a women's history of Kentucky, moving from Rebecca Boone and the other frontierswomen through Sherry's ancestors ("The Grandmother Acrostics") to the present day and back again. These stories strike some chord in me that rings and resonates in a way that I can't describe. Few poets leave me wordless like this.

I've enjoyed reading Sherry's blog for as long as I've been reading blogs--she writes about poetry and poetics, cats and dogwood trees, and the many and varied books she reads. You can also sample a few of her poems online through her blog.

JSTOR Limited Free Access for Unmoored Scholars

jstor opens limited free access option non-subscribing scholars | Inside Higher Ed: "The depletion of the traditional professoriate has produced a new demographic of unmoored scholars who might not have “the consistency of access that they want,” says Heidi McGregor, a spokeswoman for JSTOR. The goal of Register & Read would be to better serve that population — as well as others that the organization might not have even known about."

Good news for us "unmoored scholars." The institutions that employ me as an adjunct faculty member don't subscribe to JSTOR.

'via Blog this'

Academic Badges and GarageBand E-Books

As part of the "adjunct army" that teaches a great chunk of the post-secondary academic courses, I'm painfully conscious of the high costs of textbooks and tuition, without being able to do much about it beyond observe the news. Here's a recent bid to "revolutionize" textbook publishing:

Apple to announce tools, platform to "digitally destroy" textbook publishing: "MacInnis sees Apple as possibly up-ending the traditional print publishing model for the low-end, where basic information has for many years remained locked behind high textbook prices. Apple can "kick up dust with the education market," which could then create visibility for platforms like Inkling. This could then serve as a sort of professional Logic-type tool for interactive textbook creation complement to Apple's "GarageBand for e-books." "There will be a spectrum of tools and consumers, and we will continue to fit on that spectrum," MacInnis opined. "I don't know if the publishing industry will react to it with fear or enthusiasm.""

Here's more about it from Open Culture: The best free cultural & educational media on the web. They've incorporated Apple's offerings into their aggregation of free online courses: Apple Releases Free iTunesU App & Enhanced University Courses (Plus Textbooks).

And this article suggests that college curricula and diplomas themselves may be on the way out:

College 2.0: Badges Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional College Diplomas | The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today's fast-changing job market. Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of "badges" to certify skills and abilities. If scouting focuses on outdoorsy skills like tying knots, these badges denote areas employers might look for, like mentorship or digital video editing. Many of the new digital badges are easy to attain--intentionally so--to keep students motivated, while others signal mastery of fine-grained skills that are not formally recognized in a traditional classroom."

Digitization Policies for the Web

Apropos of the SOPA/PIPA controversy last week, I've revised my short paper on digital copyright issues written for a local history project a few years ago. The website where it was posted has since been shut down, so I'm re-posting it here for my own reference. Even without SOPA/PIPA, modern copyright law has a stifling effect on preserving genealogy and local history, while profiting no one. "Orphan works" still under copyright, are being lost because they cannot legally be curated or shared on the Internet.

Pocahontas County Historic Preservation Project: A First Draft of Digitization Policies

Goals of the Digitization Project

• To facilitate preservation of historic materials through digitization.
• To make freely available as much material as possible, over the web and through local libraries, museums, and historic sites.
• To behave in a scholarly, courteous, and responsible manner to those who create or donate historic materials and to those who wish to access such material for noncommercial purposes. This must include acting in accordance with copyright, property, and privacy laws.

Digitization has tremendous potential to enhance preservation of historic materials, and to make all types of information available to interested parties around the world at little cost. However, it also presents novel problems in intellectual property rights. Who owns the rights to reproduce materials, and what may be done with the digital copies? There have been many changes in intellectual property rights law in the last 20 years, and there are few simple, straightforward answers to these questions.

I believe there are some cases in which we can use materials without fear of infringing anyone's rights.

• Text and photographs published prior to January 1, 1923 are considered in the public domain. At least one item of interest to our project, William T. Price's Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County, has been scanned by the Google Books Project, and is freely available at their website in pdf and ascii text files.
• Works of the United States Government, and other government-generated writings, as described by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History.
• Any work that was neither published nor registered as of Jan. 1, 1978, and whose author died before 1933 entered the public domain on Jan. 1, 2003, unless it was published on or before Dec. 31, 2002. (U.S. Copyright Office, see passage in Appendix.)
• Unpublished works that have been donated, along with their copyrights, to the Historical Society, the Genealogy group, or the Library system. (See the "Deed of Gift" references in the Appendix.) For example, if a diary and some family snapshots are donated by the creator's heir, along with explicit permission to share and reproduce, we may legally digitize and post these on the Web site.
• Our own photographs of three-dimensional artifacts, with the permission of the artifact owner.
• Descriptions of the materials in our local collections, using the Archon archive content management system to list our holdings on the Web, even where we cannot find the copyright owner or obtain permission. We can display excerpts of text or images as long as we comply with the Fair Use Doctrine. (Described by the Copyright Office, see Appendix.)
• Digital copies of unpublished works under copyright protection can be made (up to three copies) by a library for preservation purposes, but they cannot be posted on the Internet, or otherwise displayed or distributed. (Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Code, see Appendix for a link.)

Items that may not be available for digitization or publication on a Web site include:

• Studio and professional photographs where the photographer was still living as of January 1, 1933. The person who commissioned the photo did not get copyrights at purchase. These remained with the photographer, unless explicitly surrendered.
• Photographs and papers found and donated to the Historical Society. Although these organizations have legal ownership of the physical objects, copyright does not automatically convey with the object.
• Published materials under copyright protection where the copyright holder is unidentifiable, unavailable, or unwilling to give permission for digitization.

To proceed with the digitization project, we need to identify which materials we have legal right to digitize, obtain permission to use materials where necessary, and determine how we want to share our own materials.

• We need to identify copyright holders for materials already in possession of the Historical Society, the Pearl Buck Birthplace, and the libraries. Where this is known, we can request permission to digitize and share materials.
• As we gain access to new materials, we need to get permission in writing to digitize and share the materials. There are several "Deed of Gift" templates available for us to use in developing our own permission form. (See "Deed of Gift" in Appendix.) It will be important to make sure this form does not sound ominous, intimidating, or excessively technical, lest it have a "wet blanket" effect on offers of information.

• We need to spell out our copyright for the Web site. I suggest a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial license, but this will only apply to materials where we own the copyright (for example, things the Historic Preservation Officer writes while "on the clock;" new photographs of historic locations and objects taken specifically for the digitization project, etc.) Where we use materials by permission with attribution, we have no authority to grant permission to another party.

• The possibility of print publications such as books, calendars, and recordings has been discussed, especially as a form of fund raising for the support of the various institutions involved. Copyright issues must be considered especially carefully for such projects, as they are more carefully examined in for-profit situations.

Appendix: Quotations From Pertinent Sources

Copyright Office On Protection of Digital Rights

Pertinent information from the United States Copyright Office Frequently Asked Questions:

It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright. These rights, however, are not unlimited in scope. Sections 107 through 121 of the 1976 Copyright Act establish limitations on these rights....One major limitation is the doctrine of "fair use," which is given a statutory basis in section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act....

A party may seek to protect his or her copyrights against unauthorized use by filing a civil lawsuit in federal district court. If you believe that your copyright has been infringed, consult an attorney. In cases of willful infringement for profit, the U.S. Attorney may initiate a criminal investigation....

If you use a copyrighted work without authorization, the owner may be entitled to bring an infringement action against you. There are circumstances under the fair use doctrine where a quote or a sample may be used without permission. However, in cases of doubt, the Copyright Office recommends that permission be obtained....

....Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution. Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 for each work infringed and, if willful infringement is proven by the copyright owner, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed. In addition, an infringer of a work may also be liable for the attorney's fees incurred by the copyright owner to enforce his or her rights.....

....Photocopying shops, photography stores and other photo developing stores are often reluctant to make reproductions of old photographs for fear of violating the copyright law and being sued. These fears are not unreasonable, because copy shops have been sued for reproducing copyrighted works and have been required to pay substantial damages for infringing copyrighted works. The policy established by a shop is a business decision and risk assessment that the business is entitled to make, because the business may face liability if they reproduce a work even if they did not know the work was copyrighted....

....In the case of photographs, it is sometimes difficult to determine who owns the copyright and there may be little or no information about the owner on individual copies. Ownership of a "copy" of a photograph the tangible embodiment of the "work" is distinct from the "work" itself the intangible intellectual property. The owner of the "work" is generally the photographer or, in certain situations, the employer of the photographer. Even if a person hires a photographer to take pictures of a wedding, for example, the photographer will own the copyright in the photographs unless the copyright in the photographs is transferred, in writing and signed by the copyright owner, to another person. The subject of the photograph generally has nothing to do with the ownership of the copyright in the photograph. If the photographer is no longer living, the rights in the photograph are determined by the photographer's will or passed as personal property by the applicable laws of intestate succession.....

Materials In the Public Domain

When U.S. Works Pass Into the Public Domain provides a chart to clarify the rules. The simplest entry indicates that works published prior to January 1, 1923 are in the public domain. Complexity increases from there.

The Copyright Office explains how unpublished works may enter public domain: Certain Unpublished, Unregistered Works Enter Public Domain.

Certain works that were neither published nor registered for copyright as of Jan. 1, 1978, entered the public domain on Jan. 1, 2003, unless the works were published on or before Dec. 31, 2002.

Under the 1909 Copyright Act, works that were neither published nor registered did not enjoy statutory protection, although they were protected under common law in perpetuity as long as they remained unpublished and unregistered. But under section 303 of the 1976 Copyright Act, works that were created but neither published nor registered in the Copyright Office before Jan. 1, 1978, lost their common law protection and acquired a statutory term of protection that was the life of the author plus 50 years, amended in 1998 to life plus 70 years.

As a result of the 1976 Copyright Act, any of the works in question whose author had died over 50 years prior to 1978 would have entered the public domain after Dec. 31, 1977. To provide a reasonable term of copyright protection for these works, and in light of the fact that these works had enjoyed perpetual protection under common law, Congress extended their term by at least 25 more years. Congress also encouraged publication by providing an additional 25 more years, extended in 1998 to 45 more years, of protection if the work was published on or before Dec. 31, 2002.

That first 25-year period expired on Dec. 31, 2002. Any work that was neither published nor registered as of Jan. 1, 1978, and whose author died before 1933 entered the public domain on Jan. 1, 2003, unless it was published on or before Dec. 31, 2002. If the author died in 1933 or later, the work will be protected for 70 years after the author's death, due to the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998.

Fair Use Doctrine

A discussion of the Fair Use Doctrine, by the U.S. Copyright Office

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of
   commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The distinction between "fair use" and infringement may be unclear
and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.

Privacy and Publicity Issues

Library of Congress Privacy and Publicity Issues:

While copyright protects the copyright holder's property rights in the work or intellectual creation, privacy and publicity rights protect the interests of the person(s) who may be the subject(s) of the work or intellectual creation. Issues pertaining to privacy and publicity may arise when a researcher contemplates the use of letters, diary entries, photographs or reportage in visual, audio, and print formats found in library collections. Because two or more people are often involved in the work (e.g., photographer and subject, interviewer and interviewee) and because of the ease with which various media in digital format can be reused, photographs, audio files, and motion pictures represent materials in which issues of privacy and publicity emerge with some frequency....

While copyright is a federally protected right under the United States Copyright Act, with statutorily described fair use defenses against charges of copyright infringement, neither privacy nor publicity rights are the subject of federal law. Note also that while fair use is a defense to copyright infringement, fair use is not a defense to claims of violation of privacy or publicity rights. Privacy and publicity rights are the subject of state laws. What may be permitted in one state may not be permitted in another. Note also that related causes of action may be pursued under the federal Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. P 1125 (a), for example, for unauthorized uses of a person's identity in order to create a false endorsement.

While an individual's right to privacy generally ends when the individual dies, publicity rights associated with the commercial value connected with an individual's name, image or voice may continue. For example, many estates or representatives of famous authors, musicians, actors, photographers, politicians, sports figures, celebrities, and other public figures continue to control and license the uses of those figures' names, likenesses, etc.

How Libraries Manage Copyright Issues Pertaining to Their Digital Collections

Library of Congress

How the Library of Congress handles copyright issues on its Web site, as explained by the United States Copyright Office FAQ's:

I saw an image on the Library of Congress website that I would like to use. Do I need to obtain permission?

With few exceptions, the Library of Congress does not own copyright in the materials in its collections and does not grant or deny permission to use the content mounted on its website. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item from the Library's collections and for securing any necessary permissions rests with persons desiring to use the item. To the greatest extent possible, the Library attempts to provide any known rights information about its collections. Such information can be found in the "Copyright and Other Restrictions" statements on each American Memory online collection homepage. If the image is not part of the American Memory collections, contact the Library custodial division to which the image is credited. Bibliographic records and finding aids available in each custodial division include information that may assist in assessing the copyright status. Search our catalogs through the Library's Online Catalog. To access information from the Library's reading rooms, go to Research Centers.

Library of Congress "Legal" Page

Whenever possible, the Library of Congress provides factual information about copyright owners and related matters in the catalog records, finding aids and other texts that accompany collections. As a publicly supported institution, the Library generally does not own rights in its collections. Therefore, it does not charge permission fees for use of such material and generally does not grant or deny permission to publish or otherwise distribute material in its collections. Permission and possible fees may be required from the copyright owner independently of the Library. It is the researcher's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in the Library's collections. Transmission or reproduction of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Researchers must make their own assessments of rights in light of their intended use.

If you have any more information about an item you've seen on our website or if you are the copyright owner and believe our website has not properly attributed your work to you or has used it without permission, we want to hear from you. Please contact OGC@loc.gov with your contact information and a link to the relevant content.

West Virginia University Libraries

How West Virginia University University Library regulates use of its archives, physical archives: Rules for the Use of Library Materials in the West Virginia and Regional History Collection

Some materials in the WVRHC are protected by copyright laws and other restrictions. The researcher assumes all responsibility for possible infringement of copyright and/or other literary, artistic, property or privacy rights in the act of copying or in the subsequent use of the materials copied....The reproduction of any collection in its entirety is prohibited.

Any publication, exhibition, or other public use of materials reproduced must properly credit the source from which a copy is made. The basic credit line is "West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Libraries"....Researchers are not permitted to photograph any materials in the WVRHC. To order photographs, users may inquire at the reference desk about policies, forms and fees.

West Virginia History Online Digital Collections has rules that offer us a model on proper usage: Notes on Rights and Reproductions. Their West Virginia History OnView: Photographs From the West Virginia & Regional History Collection is the sort of online archive we hope to produce.

West Virginia History OnLine digital resources are available for use in research, teaching, and private study only. These materials may NOT be used for publication or exhibition, downloaded and placed on another server where they can be publicly accessed, or utilized in any other public manner without the express written permission of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection. Such permission may be granted only by a curator of the WV&RHC or by the Dean of WVU Libraries. Any reproduction of materials from this site must properly credit the source of the materials. For archives and manuscripts, the proper credit line includes the full name of the collection, plus "West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Libraries." For works of art, the proper credit line includes the names of the artist and artwork, plus "West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Libraries."

Some Materials in the WV&RHC and on this web site are protected by copyright laws and other restrictions. The researcher assumes all responsibility for possible infringement of copyright and/or other literary, artistic, property or privacy rights in the act of copying or in the subsequent use of the materials copied.

Deed of Gift Forms

Local history research organizations such as libraries, museums, and historical associations, can protect themselves against inadvertent copyright violations by obtaining permission to display and use material at the time it is donated. If your organization accepts gifts (items), then it needs a Deed of gift form.

Here are two other sources for Deed of Gift formats:

• Wisconsin Historical Records Advisory Board Best Practices Project, 1997-98
• A Guide to Deeds of Gift

Copyright Concerns For Libraries

There are special rules for libraries and digital copying. Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Code is a graphic presentation of these rules, provided by Copyright advisory network, a site about the latest developments in digital collections and archives.

Modes of Managing Copyright Issues

• Creative Commons
• The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle
• DigitalKoans--What Is the Sound of One E-Print Downloading?

Online Resources for Further Reading

• United States Copyright Office
• Fair Use, explained by the U.S. Copyright Office
• Rules for the Use of Library Materials in the West Virginia and Regional History Collection
• West Virginia History Online Digital Collections
• West Virginia History OnView: Photographs From the West Virginia & Regional History Collection
• Notes on Rights and Reproductions
• A Guide to Deeds of Gift
• Copyright advisory network
• Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Code--rules especially for libraries
• Creative Commons
• The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle
• The Public Domain--explained by the Copyright Office
• DigitalKoans--What Is the Sound of One E-Print Downloading?
• WHEN U.S. WORKS PASS INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
• Library of Congress Homepage legal issues, including copyright, privacy, and publicity
• Intellectual Property Rights Server--Copyright page--provides information about intellectual property law including patent, trademark and copyright. Resources include comprehensive links, general information, space for professionals to publish articles and forums for discussing related issues.
• A Look Back at Canarsie, Clouded by Copyright Woes --a case study from the New York Times, describing how Brooklyn Historical Society was unable to give permission to a local historian who wanted to include two photographs from their collection in his forthcoming book.
• COPYRIGHTS AND OTHER RIGHTS IN PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES
  A detailed discussion of 20th century photographs, copyright law, and licensing

The Long and Short of Writing Practice

Via Mirabilis.ca: A long sentence is worth the read --by Pico Iyer.

Not everyone wants to be reduced to a sound bite or a bumper sticker. Enter (I hope) the long sentence: the collection of clauses that is so many-chambered and lavish and abundant in tones and suggestions, that has so much room for near-contradiction and ambiguity and those places in memory or imagination that can't be simplified, or put into easy words, that it allows the reader to keep many things in her head and heart at the same time, and to descend, as by a spiral staircase, deeper into herself and those things that won't be squeezed into an either/or. With each clause, we're taken further and further from trite conclusions--or that at least is the hope--and away from reductionism....

Years of writing technical and scientific papers matched with my current practice of Web writing have coached me to appreciate the short and succinct, but my own prose runs to the baroque and confusing. I look forward to Sherry's and Dave's 140-character word snapshots, and I spent some time considering joining the River of Stones project, but my trite attempts seem more like "sound bites" and "bumper stickers" than Fiona's mindful writing practice:

A small stone is a very short piece of writing that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment. There are no strict rules for what makes a piece of writing a small stone, as there are for forms such as haiku. The process of finding small stones is as important as the finished product--searching for them will encourage you to keep your eyes (and ears, nose, mouth, fingers, feelings and mind) open.

I truly appreciate well-written instruction manuals, field guides, taxonomic descriptions, and crochet patterns. I reread Elizabeth Zimmermann's knitting books just for fun as often as I refer to them for techniques. They are special because they offer a little more than bare-bones instructions, but not so much blather that you lose track of the procedure. (I'm afraid my own instructions are blather-heavy.) I'm skilled with observation of detail, but haiku writing appears to be contrary to my nature. Pico Iyer gives me hope for when he says "...[T]he promise of the long sentence is that it will take you beyond the known, far from shore, into depths and mysteries you can't get your mind, or most of your words, around."

Textbook Troubles and Dr. Feynman

Sometimes I teach undergraduate college classes. As an adjunct faculty member, I don't pick the textbooks or write my own syllabus, so I'm painfully aware of how much textbooks cost, and how frequent production of new editions keeps the students buying new rather than used books. There's talk about how e-books will save students money, but in my experience, the e-books cost just as much as physical books. I was heartened to read this: Steinberg Proposal Slashes Textbook Costs for California College Students:

At a time when the affordability of higher education is at the forefront of national debate, this legislation would create Open Educational Resources (OER) in California, where undergraduate students would be able to have free access to the 50 core textbooks required for lower-division coursework via computer or mobile device through a digital open source library, with the option of buying a printed version for around $20. The legislation would also require publishers selling textbooks adopted by faculty for the most widely-taken lower division courses to provide at least three free copies of those books to be placed on reserve in California public college and university campus libraries.

If college textbook highway robbery were not aggravating enough, there's always the topic of K-12 textbooks in public schools. I enjoyed re-reading Judging Books by Their Covers:

In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience...Feynman analyzed the Commission's idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products. "Judging Books by Their Covers" appeared as a chapter in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman...(1985).

In case reading this makes you nostalgic for Dr. Feynman (as it did me), here are links to some fine Feynman videos: The Richard Feynman Trilogy: The Physicist Captured in Three Films | Open Culture.

Proofreading Matters

This is wonderful, and Taylor Mali has much more, like:

Shaking Out the Cobwebs

I'm back! Don't adjust your RSS feed. Pocahontas County Fare is being served once again.

Gainful employment is a feast-or-famine affair around here, and for the last few months, I've enjoyed an over-full work schedule. At this point, I've enjoyed about as much as I can stand, so the upcoming work-hiatus is quite welcome.

Please excuse me while I knock down some cobwebs and sweep out the dead June bugs.

Writing Skills Resources

Sometimes a blog can be a handy online filing cabinet for things like this: 50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills. It's a list of links, most of which point to further lists, sometimes of advice, sometimes of still more links.

I'm particularly impressed by the scope of "writing tips." These include English grammar, advertising copy, student term papers, Web pages, writing prompts, rhymes, and famous writers on writing.

My favorites are the "tools," like Wordcounter, which points out your most frequently used words. I tend to think of some dandy five-dollar word, and then use it over and over again in the same document.

Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County In the 21st Century

The last few weeks I've been spending a lot of time with Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County by William T. Price (1901), which is now available on Google Books. You can download the pdf file, and for a while you could also grab the unedited OCR version of the text, although this doesn't seem to be available anymore.

About 400 pages of this tome record are genealogical records, interspersed with short reminiscences about the early settlers in Pocahontas County. Because so many people are looking for this information, I'm converting it into html on our website, Pocahontas County History. Over the years, I've encountered unattributed quotes from Reverend Price's book on many different genealogy websites, and last summer I discovered that WPA employees had typed out long passages from the 1901 book in the late 1930'a and early 1940's. Some of these typists identified their source, while others did not, but these typescripts have been appearing here and there on the Internet as well, never with proper attribution.

I must confess, the more time I spend with the late Reverend Price (pictured above), the more exasperated I become with some of his bad editorial habits; however, I don't want his work floating around the Interwebitubes without proper attribution. Besides, with Drupal set up for decent search engine optimization, more people should be able to find their ancestral names and places once the worthy reverend's words are rendered into hypertext markup language. (Worthy ancestors being the only kind he bothered to catalog.)

Gear Shifting and Fragmentation

I've never been great at shifting gears mentally, so my current work configuration offers me a real challenge. I'm teaching courses in chemistry, statistics, and Microsoft Word 2007, while developing a new course for beginners in Excel spreadsheets. Meanwhile, I'm still the county historic preservation officer, which means I'm maintaining two online databases, digitizing content, looking for grants, and planning museum and archive curation. These are part-time jobs, and don't, in theory, add up to more than a 45-50 hour work week.

In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they are different. In practice, I have a hard time thinking, "OK, that's it for biochemistry this week. Now I'm going to update Drupal and proof-read a genealogy text. After that, I'll write an exam for the junior college computer students, and then, cook supper." It should work, but it doesn't. I'm still thinking about gene promoter and enhancer sequences as I retype sections of the "The Descendants of Thomas Galford." Later, I'll be thinking about the ravages of the Civil War on the Allegheny Front's inhabitants as I try and think how to test students' understanding of formatting features in word processing. And eventually, as I think about hanging intents and margins, I'll probably dump too much pepper in the mashed potatoes again.

I shouldn't complain about having paying jobs, and I do like variety. Nevertheless, I feel as if my mental gears are in danger of being stripped.

A Compendium of Troll Stylings

Lately, I've had to check an Internet forum for updates on a topic important to my work. The forum allows anonymous postings, and it reminds me why I generally stay off such "communities"--I have a low tolerance for flame wars and trolls.

One thing that always surprises me about these uncivil exchanges is how they all sound alike. I know the guys who called each other names on Usenet newsgroups back in the 1980's have really different backgrounds than the inept typists I've been reading lately, but they sound just the same. It's like they're writing in the same literary genre. Let's call it "adolescent bile."

It made me wonder if someone had documented the literary stylings of trolls. I did find much written about the social phenomenon of trolling, but no literary analysis. Perhaps this is a gap I should fill--"Word Choice in Appalachian Flame Wars in the early 21st Century." Perhaps not. Here are some links, some of them amusing, some of them appalling, on Bad Internet Behavior.

• Beware the Troll--A Practical Guide--a catalog of troll types and techniques, with suggestions on how to handle them.
• Flame Warriors caricatures--These date from the Usenet News days. I was pleased to find them still preserved and still funny.
• Internet Trolls from Wikipedia, and they should know from trolls.
• Godwin's law states: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
• Don't flame me, bro' cites some psychology to explain flame wars: Social psychologists have known for decades that, if we reduce our sense of our own identity--a process called deindividuation--we are less likely to stick to social norms.
• Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics Social Informatics (SI) refers to the body of research and study that examines social aspects of computerization, including the roles of information technology in social and organizational change, the uses of information technologies in social contexts, and the ways that the social organization of information technologies is influenced by social forces and social practices. OK, this sort of research was what I was looking for, but they don't have many articles accumulated yet.
• The Trolls Among Us --a long New York Times feature on some infamous Internet trolls.
• Trolling for Ethics: Matthias Schwartz's Awesome Piece on Internet Poltergeists--a NYTimes reaction to the NYTimes article above.
• Help! I'm an Internet troll! I go on right-wing sites and say provocative things. Why do I do it? You think they'll come after me? This Salon article suggests a reason all the trolls sound alike--trolling is the online equivalent of shouting naughty words while hiding in the shadows. You probably act like a professional all day long. The way they keep us cooped up in offices all day, it's no wonder that occasionally we just like to shout an insult.

Lapse of Enthusiasm

I'm having one of those lapses in enthusiasm. After months of playing with content management systems, loading them up with "content," breaking them, taking them apart, trying again, I've finally got a Drupal format I like for the new, improved Spice Ridge home page. Unfortunately, I'm so sick of it I just can't stand to work on it anymore. I'm going to ignore it for a little while, and hope it will seem more engaging in a couple of days. Maybe I should knit for a while, pretend like it's not there....get out the sewing machine. They say "A change is good as a rest."

January at National Blog Posting Month

I signed up for National Blog Posting Month for January. These days, I seem to need a little kick in the pants to complete posts and put them up. I have html files of half-finished posts rattling around on every computer I use, and plenty of ideas that aren't making contact with the keyboard. I'm not sure why a cute little badge motivates me, but it's free, and it worked in November, so here goes!

Blogging More or Less

I've written 30 posts in 30 days for November Is National Blog Posting Month, although I haven't posted each day. At the same time I've been trying to post more often, a number of people have been posting about why it would be good to post less often. Leslie at The Clutter Museum brought this to my attention through 5 Things Teachers Could Learn From Slow Blogging. Leslie focuses on the uses of technology in higher education, but she links to a collection of articles on "Slow Blogging."

It seems a New York Times article by Sharon Otterman (November 21, 2008) triggered this month's discussion: Haste, Scorned: Blogging at a Snail's Pace

...Ms. Ganley, 51, is part of a small, quirky movement called slow blogging. The practice is inspired by the slow food movement, which says that fast food is destroying local traditions and healthy eating habits. Slow food advocates...believe that food should be local, organic and seasonal; slow bloggers believe that news-driven blogs like TechCrunch and Gawker are the equivalent of fast food restaurants--great for occasional consumption, but not enough to guarantee human sustenance over the longer haul.

Recursively enough, Slow Food (American style) has its own blog, The Slow Food USA Blog. I used to follow it regularly, because I'm interested in agriculture, food, cooking, gardening, old-fashioned skills, recipes, animal breeds, and crop varieties. However, I gradually lost interest in reading their musings on these topics. There's a line between being mindful of what you eat and where it came from and self-absorption, and they crossed it a little too often for my taste.

Unfortunately, as I made my way through the links Leslie provided, that same feeling began to creep over me. Maybe it was too many articles on the same introspective topic all at once. Perhaps if I approach these one at a time in a few days, I'll be able to get through them.

• Slow Blogging: Context, Transitions and Traditions (Back from Illinois, Part Two: Setting Up The Classroom Community) from Ganley's BGBlogging. The 2006 post that seems to have launched early discussion.
• Slow Blog Manifesto There's also a Slow Food Manifesto. I don't know which one came first.
• I Am a Slow Blog
• A "Slow Blog" Or Rather, "Bright Blog" Manifesto by David D. Perlmutter; Slow Blog: Part 2
• Why I Blog by Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic.

I do believe it's valuable to think about what you're doing and why you're doing it, but I'm not sure how interesting it is for other people to read about it, at least in abstract terms. Heaven knows I love my tomatoes, and I slap photos, recipe, and how-to's on my blog expecting that others may enjoy or learn. The tomatoes are wonderfully concrete, and much more interesting than my second-hand analysis of the evils of agribusiness.

Aw shucks. I've gone and blogged about blogging again.

How To Do Stuff

In an attempt to get back on track blogging with "30 Posts in 30 Days" I've been sifting through my collection of half-written posts (now spread across three different computers--electronic clutter times 3!). Here's a resource I don't want to lose track of: 80 How-To Sites Worth Bookmarking. The list includes eight topics such as "Become a Technophile in 10 Easy Steps," "Dining on a DIY Diet," and "Every How-To They Can Get Their Hands On." It's a post on Stepcase Lifehack, a blog on productivity and personal development: Dozens of authors posting how-to's on dozens of topics.

"Life hacks" as an information category has alternately irritated me and filled me with pity. The things kids need directions for, these days! How to shop on a budget; how to cook something for dinner; how to iron a shirt--didn't their parents teach them anything? Evidently not. Thank goodness someone taught them how to look stuff up on the Internet.

I started learning how to do stuff from books when I was 10 or 11, and the Internet sucked me in long before the World Wide Web appeared. Those Usenet newsgroups were a gold mine of esoteric "how-to" information, from statistical analysis (where I was legitimately using my computer guest account) through baking, brewing, photography, and musical instrument repair (not legitimate computer use for me, but very welcome). I don't know when directions for simple and mundane things like ironing your own shirts and comparative grocery shopping started to appear.

I guess I feel sorry for people who have to look up these things on the Internet because these are things adults taught me when I was a child. When I iron shirts, I remember my mom showing me how; when I roll out bread dough with a rolling pin, I think of my grandma; when I fry an egg, I remember fixing breakfast with my dad.

Learning how to do something is its own reward, but I really hope the "life hackers" have some knowledge that gives them a connection to the past and their families.

November Is National Blog Posting Month

I've signed on for November Is National Blog Posting Month again this year. Other duties and projects have pushed writing and photo editing to my back burner, and I hope this commitment will help me turn up the blogging heat.

I've signed up over at NaBloPoMo, where I found this really cool Cartesian Blogging Badge by Sara. (If you were wondering "Why Descartes?" as I was, she explains how as well as why.

The National Blog Posting Month Web site is a social networking affair where you can, in theory, read the blogs of others participating in the project. Discovering blogs like Sara's makes this an attractive proposition, but the nifty social networking site crashes my browser with some regularity, as it did last year. I don't think Linux compatibility is high on the priority list of the hip young women who run the project.

Un-hip, un-young, and Open Source as I am, let's see if I can't post something here every day.

The Meme of Unspectacular Facts

Sherry Chandler tagged me for the "six unspectacular things about you" meme. I actually still owe Sherry a post for the page 123 meme from February 25 of this year. In that meme, you were supposed to pick up the book nearest you, turn to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and post it. Sherry had high hopes for me, maybe some arcane local history book. In fact, the nearest book was How to Make Sewing Patterns by Donald H. McCunn. Page 123 of that book, "Gathered Sleeve Cap," had only four sentences. The next nearest books were four shelves of odd-sized books: music books, cookbooks, knitting books, sheet music, and pamphlets. Book after book either lacked page 123, or had no sentences there. At that time, I was substituting daily at the middle school, and by day's end, my supply of resourcefulness was utterly depleted.

I'm still feeling guilty about that activity, so I'd better get after the current meme. I suppose all facts about me are unspectacular, so it shouldn't be hard, eh?

1. I'm left-handed.
2. My earliest childhood memory is of a caterpillar.
3. I have always preferred tea to coffee.
4. I learned to read from the funny papers in the Des Moines Register.
5. My fingers are long and spatulate, but my thumbs are relatively short. This dashed my dreams of playing Irish or Cajun button accordion.
6. I have the same birthday as Katherine Anne Porter, she was born the same year as my maternal grandmother (two weeks earlier), and I lived for five years (1987-1992) in the town where she died (Silver Spring, MD). I knew none of this when I first read Pale Horse, Pale Rider in 1974, but I had a disturbing sense of deja vu about "Miranda."

I've never had any luck tagging anyone with a meme, so if no one's tagged you and this sounds like fun, go ahead and meme away. The meme terms & conditions are: "1. link the person who tagged you; 2. mention the rules on your blog; 3. list 6 unspectacular things about you: 4. tag 6 other bloggers by linking them."

Cranky Environmentalists

I have mixed feelings when I read snide articles like Greed In the Name Of Green--To Worshipers of Consumption: Spending Won't Save the Earth by Monica Hesse, Washington Post, March 5, 2008. On the one hand, she is pointing out a real contradiction in pro-environmental advertising. It would be less wasteful of resources if we all bought less stuff, but the whole point of advertising, and of offering things for sale in general, is to sell more stuff. Hesse, like most critics of the "environmentally correct" movement, seems to say there's little point in becoming more mindful of waste, excess, and poor practices.

But, but, but--buying green feels so guilt-less, akin to the mentality that results in eating 14 of Whole Foods' two-bite cupcakes. Their first ingredient is cane sugar, but in a land of high-fructose panic, that's practically a health food, right? Have another.

"There's a certain thrill, that you get to go out and replace everything," says Leslie Garrett, author of "The Virtuous Consumer," a green shopping guide. "New bamboo T-shirts, new hemp curtains."

....Chip Giller, editor of enviro-blog Grist.org, has a less fatalistic view. He loves that Wal-Mart has developed an organic line. He applauds the efforts of the green consumer. "Two years ago, who would have thought we'd be in a place where terms like locavore and carbon footprint were household terms?" he says, viewing green consumption as a "gateway" to get more people involved in environmental issues. The important thing is for people to keep walking through the gate, toward the land of reduced air travel, energy-efficient homes and much less stuff: "We're not going to buy our way out of this."

This article was accompanied by an on-line discussion with one of the quoted authors:

Leslie Garrett...was online Wednesday, March 5, at 1 p..m. ET....Hello! Leslie Garrett here, author of The Virtuous Consumer: Your Essential Shopping Guide for a Better, Kinder, Healthier World (and one our kids will thank us for!). World's longest title, I know...Happy to answer questions!

Much of that discussion involves weighing which practices are more "virtuous," and how other people perceive one's behavior. This always makes me uncomfortable. "Paper or plastic?" is more effectively decided as a practical rather than a moral choice. (Around here, it's not a choice. Just try and find a brown paper bag to make school book covers in Pocahontas County!) Developing a new reason to look down on other people and feel self-satisfied seems counterproductive, too, but judging your neighbor based on carbon footprints and recycling efforts seems inevitable in these discussions.

This is the tone that deters me from following blogs and news websites about "green living," voluntary simplicity, and frugal practices. I'm interested in these topics, and would no doubt benefit from other people's insights, but the carping and cavilling eventually leads me to hit the "unsubscribe" button. Perhaps it's inevitable that giving up consumerist practices and possessions just makes us a bit cranky.