This gallery contains 4 photos.
Originally posted on The Orphanage:
We spent last week preparing The Orphanage for the summer. All cars have been exercised and serviced. The ’51 Crosley is on the turntable, the Plymouth and Lark are back on the floor. Summer hours are Tuesday-Sunday 1-5pm. ?
…adieu National Poetry Month until next year. Intermittent #poetrybombing ongoing…
For most of us, there is only the unattended Moment,
the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.[T.S. Eliot]
Poetry matters because it provides this music, which at its best is heard so deeply that it approximates silence. Poetry matters because it serves up the substance of our lives, and becomes more than a mere articulation of experience—although that articulation alone is part of its usefulness. Its adequacy to experience, in fact, is profound and lasting in the many different ways I have suggested in this book. Mainly, it allows us to see ourselves freshly and keenly. It makes the invisible world visible. It transforms our politics by enhancing our ability to make comparisons and draw distinctions. It reanimates nature for us, connecting spirit and matter. It draws us more deeply into conversation with the traditions that we feed off, modify, and extend. In the end, it brings us closer to God, however we define that term. It provides, in some cases, a reason for life itself. “How gladly with proper words the soldier dies,” writes Stevens, “If he must, or lives on the bread of faithful speech.”
—Jay Parini
—found in Why Poetry Matters (2008)
That’s it for Poetry Month! I hope you’ve enjoyed the selections this year and that you enjoy and share poetry all year.
a #NationalPoetryMonth Day dose of @dogtrax and students for today’s excellent #NPM19 digital #poetrybombing (just to say)
Today we turned to William Carlos Williams for inspiration. Using the book A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams by Jen Bryant, I introduced my students to William Carlos Williams. I wanted to continue the focus on the ordinary as well as show a poet who continued his writing while working as a doctor. I’ve been working to dispel the myth that poetry has to rhyme…and this book definitely helped make that point!
Once we learned a bit about Williams, we studied two of his poems to use as mentor texts for our own poems. The Red Wheelbarrow surprised my students. It seemed so short and so simple at first glance…and then they started to notice. The word glazed really caught their attention…and made them think of doughnuts rather than rain coated wheelbarrows. Then we started to play around with how to put our own content…
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occupy the paradigm
The healthcare community has been abuzz the last couple weeks over the Apple Watch’s ability (or not) to detect irregular heartbeats in attempt to predict atrial fibrillation. Enthusiasts, naysayers, survivors, Eric Topol, and everyone else in between have been giving their assessment of the results of 400,000+ person study done in conjunction with Stanford University. Some praised the results, others obsessed on the chance of false positives causing unnecessary alarm in apparently healthy young adults. I’m guessing where someone’s opinion fell is pretty much where it started out.
That said, the new Apple Watch, Version 4 is not a FitBit. This is not about adoption of a new-fangled gizmo that after a month will end up in the top drawer of your nightstand next to the (no offense to the FitBit). This is the next generation of that smart device that never leaves your side, or your wrist. I’m not…
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My previous by email was a test. Now that I know it still works, I’ll (try to) remember to add a credit link, appropriate lede and, time permitting, even the occasional modest paragraph. I should also check this one for formatting and display.
Future Notabilia snippets from Katexic Clippings may appear on occasion but not daily or on anything resembling a regular schedule. Why should I, when you can subscribe to your very own clippings and daily notabilia?
But here’s more about Katexic and creator Chris Lott:
about Chris Lott
Fairbanksan shares love of language, insights with ‘Katexic Clippings’
My Vocabulary Loves Katexic Clippings | bavatuesdays
l anguagehat.com : Katexic Clippings.
Thursday, March 21, 201: |n|otabilia 0523 ⁂ Samuel Beckett
The crazy chess game from Samuel Beckett’s Murphy
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A couple of weeks ago we saw the unveiling of the New Green Deal. In the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with a second from Senator Ed Markey from Delaware, stood in front of the media and laid down an ultimatum to the American public and political elite alike.
The New Green Deal makes a compelling case that we have to act now on carbon emissions or face the consequences of climate Armageddon. I agree with this. In fact I’ve been saying it for years. Ocasio-Cortez and Markey’s plan outlines several broad objectives. Among them; our electric grid must be powered entirely by alternative energy by 2030, and by 2050 our nation’s automotive fleet is to be converted to electric power. There are several other ambitious environmental goals, including retrofitting buildings for conservation. You can dig deeper here for the details.
The New…
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…aspects of digital identity and/or our identities as online users: tracked, mapped, decentralized — but still us or (fractal) reflections thereof
This post is part of my reflections on week 4 topic, Identity, on Stephen Downes’ E-Learning 3.0 MOOC #el30. Though the topic got to an end some days ago, I found writing my first blog post a bit daunting, (!). As things are, I am now ready to join in the online conversation.
Initial thoughts
This topic reminded me of a recent visit to a portrait exhibition at a nearby museum. After the visit, I kept on thinking about what our faces told us (and others) about ourselves, about how our uniqueness and sameness interweave in creating who we are, and what made us “us”: similar to others, though unique. To use the concept on this course, I was thinking about what defines our identity.
In E-Learning 3.0 MOOC the focus narrows down to online identity. Here, the questions related to whom I am are still valid but…
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It takes a tremendous amount of energy to get water to your tap. Click here estimate your footprint and then learn ways to cut into each wedge of the pie.
The warnings about the consequences of global warming are becoming increasingly dire. And with good reason.
Just last month, a report by a multidisciplinary research team published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences made the case that even fairly modest future carbon dioxide emissions could set off a cascade of catastrophic effects, with melting permafrost releasing methane to ratchet up global temperatures enough to drive much of the Amazon to die off, and so on in a chain reaction around the world that pushes Earth into a terrifying new hothouse state from which there is no return. Civilization as we know it would surely not survive.
Climate change during the Capitalocene (in its last stage?) has also spawned a new genre of science fiction novels—the so called cli-fi (climate change fiction) genre. It includes Octavia E. Butler’s The Parable of the Sower, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Kim Stanley Robinson’s…
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