May 2012
31 posts
5 tags
Helle Jorgensen
If you are looking for summer textiles inspiration, I can’t recommend Helle Jorgensen highly enough. Below are two images from her hemp and driftwood series.  I have been following Helle’s work for about three years now. Though I do not know her, I find her work a source of constant comfort. Her ongoing diatom collection is directly responsible for my own: —— Top...
May 31st
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In the Zone of Alienation: Tarkovsky as Video Game... →
May 31st
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May 30th
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May 30th
1,229 notes
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May 30th
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Community, Service, and Learning
[Uncovering the slave burial ground, 24th May, 2011] A year ago last week the city of Richmond broke asphalt on a parking lot that had, for years, covered a burial ground used for slaves. I attended the ground breaking ceremony with three of my coworkers.  I, like my colleagues, taught the controversy in class. Some taught students about the debate as a way of engaging issues of social...
May 29th
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May 29th
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Wilderness, unforeseen and fearsome.
While in West Virginia this weekend I read Wendell Berry’s The Unforeseen Wilderness, about which I hope to write here soon. In the meantime, a thought: Berry writes a great deal about the impact of logging on local culture. Logging, Berry writes, is like mining: inherently short term in profit and in commitment. In this life of short term commitment, Berry argues, we lose the kinds of...
May 29th
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Gaming the College Classroom
I’m in the slow process of formulating how my classroom will function next year. We have a new course theme, and I plan to overhaul quite a bit. Among the changes I’m playing around with: rewriting my class to more closely resemble a large scale interactive gaming session, with levels, achievements, diverse reward systems, etc. I’m not sure at this point what this will look...
May 28th
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Publication Standards Pt. 1 - Nick Disabato →
May 28th
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“Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips,...”
– -Stanislaw Lem “The Fifth Sally (A) Or Trurl’s Prescription” from The Cyberiad. This translation comes from Michael Kandel, without a doubt my favorite translator. Stanislaw Lem has a wonderful website.  —— Lem, Stanislaw. The Cyberiad. Transl. Michael Kandel. New York:...
May 26th
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THAT IS ALL: SO NOW YOU ALL KNOW MY TERRIBLE... →
Your Honor, My own domain is registered via GreenGeeks, and I LOVE THEM. areasofmyexpertise: Today my registration of areasofmyexpertise.com expired, and so you learned my terrible secret: it is registered via GoDaddy….
May 26th
55 notes
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May 25th
44 notes
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Listen We’re in West Virginia again for the...
May 25th
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May 22nd
18 notes
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Prigov and Translation
Issue 20.2 of Qui Parle arrived at my office this week, and it looks quite nice. It contains my translation of selections from Dmitri Prigov’s mostly untranslatable Cтихграммы, which I completed last winter on a beloved typewriter that doesn’t see much use these days. Below: one of Prigov’s original poems, my translation, a scan of the original publication, and finally, a photo...
May 22nd
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“Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to...”
– Anna Kamienska. Clare Cavanagh, translator. —— I can’t stop reading Anna Kamienska’s journals: Anna Kamienska. “In That Great River: A Notebook.” Trans. Clare Cavanagh. Poetry CXCVI.3 (2010): 229-250. Print.  Available online via the Poetry Foundation:
May 22nd
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Bike Month at Cricket Press →
May 20th
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Nick Cave at Jack Shainman Gallery, 2011.
Summer is here, which means I’m off contract. As much as that is meaningful (I’m still working most weekdays), it does mean I hope to get back to textiles as soon as possible. In anticipation of this I’ve spent the last month or so collecting inspiration, most of which resembles my own work—exclusively utilitarian.  Nick Cave is the exception. He is the craftsman who makes...
May 18th
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May 18th
1,115 notes
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И как она там, в тумане?
If you stay up too late working on a Sunday, you have earned cartoons. I fit this description. Below is Yuri Norstein’s “Hedgehog in the Fog,” one of my favorites and a fitting response, I think, to the death of Sendak earlier this week.  There exists a two volume collection of Norstein’s lectures on animation that I cannot afford to purchase from the savvy...
May 14th
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Moscow Looking More Like Cairo - The Moscow Times →
May 13th
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Spring Elizabeth Bishop Roundup
Three great links from Sandra Barry and the fine people at the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia:  Great Village and Handcraft “A Foreigner Everywhere:” Bishop on the BBC Recordings of Bishop’s 1947 and 1978 readings at Harvard
May 11th
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May 11th
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Michael Anthony Simon - Spider Webs →
May 11th
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“I know that rationally there aren’t patterns, that my life is meaningless, but...”
– Alison Bechdel, interviewed on The Afterword (via jennywrenfrankenstein)
May 10th
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May 10th
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“I was young just minutes ago.”
– -Maurice Sendak. If there were any justice in the world, Maurice Sendak would not be filling my news feed this morning. Unfortunately, there is not, and he was the first to admit it.  Before everyone gets another Where the Wild Things Are tattoo, I’d like to make a case for two of his...
May 8th
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Francois Hollande Victory Speech  →
May 7th
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“Let me fall out the window With confetti in my hair Deal out jacks or better...”
– Tom Waits. “Tango Till You’re Sore.” off Rain Dogs. Island Records, 1985. It’s bedtime at our place. 
May 4th
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Here's to good timing
Just in time to replace some of the images that participants requested be removed, Inside Out sent us some very, very, very large posters.  Those guys are the best.
May 1st