This is Just to Say: NPM 2019 Day 2

a #NationalPoetryMonth Day dose of @dogtrax and students for today’s excellent #NPM19 digital #poetrybombing (just to say)

Thinking Through My Lens

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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Creating a New Healthcare Paradigm

occupy the paradigm

Clay Forsberg

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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More |n|otabilia 0523 ⁂ Samuel Beckett

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

Nothing remained but to see what he wanted to see. Any fool can turn the blind eye, but who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand? —Samuel Beckett —found in Murphy (1938) The crazy chess game from Samuel Beckett’s Murphy The crazy chess game from Samuel Beckett’s Murphy � Help me get a silver button by subscribing to my channel https://goo.gl/5JntDA

|n|otabilia 0521 ⁂ Ursula K. Le Guin

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books. All too often, that’s more than Mummy and Daddy know; for, in denying their childhood, the adults have denied half their knowledge, and are left with the sad, sterile little fact: “Unicorns aren’t real.” And that fact is one that never got anybody anywhere (except in the story “The Unicorn in the Garden,” by another great fantasist, in which it is shown that a devotion to the unreality of unicorns may get you straight into the loony bin). It is by such statements as, “Once upon a time there was a dragon,” or “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”—it is by such beautiful non-facts that we fantastic human beings may arrive, in our peculiar fashion, at the truth. —Ursula K. Le Guin —found in The Language of the Night (1979)

The New Green Deal: Moving Beyond the Hype

Clay Forsberg

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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Week 4: Identity – E-Learning 3.0 MOOC #el30

…aspects of digital identity and/or our identities as online users: tracked, mapped, decentralized — but still us or (fractal) reflections thereof

learning reflections

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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Say hello to WaterCalculator.org #ActOnClimate

Coyote Gulch

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.

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Utopia and climate change

occasional links & commentary

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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A Writer’s Astrology

michaelalexanderchaney

Writing takes imagination. It goes without saying that writers are magical thinkers. This means that we tend to be superstitious. We may love haunted houses and wild speculations, antiques and termite-hollowed logs. Many of us like astrology almost as much as we love gossip and the luxurious smell of new paperbacks. Unfortunately, most astrological sources do not gear their standard sign descriptions to the particularities of the novelist or poet. Everybody knows about the stubbornness of the Taurus. But how does that play out in terms of the writer’s life? What happens to the sexual energies of the Scorpio when translated into poetry? These are questions writers want answered, but there aren’t many places to go for the astrological skinny on the writing zodiac. Until now. Herewith, a writer’s astrology to satisfy all of your star-crossed curiosities.

(also, if you appreciate this article, please Check out my handmade oil paintings …

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If Only Your Stare Meant You Actually See Disabled People

Crutches & Spice

I can feel your gaze. If you think you’re being slick, you’re not. I don’t even have to look in your direction, I caught your head on a swivel from the moment you heard me coming. Am I odd to you? What is the story you’re concocting in your head about me? What will you take from me? What assumptions are you making? Are you using my body to pull yourself out of your mediocrity? Did you get the motivation you needed? Is this when you’ll get to know my name? Will you even ask? Or will you demand even more? Will you demand to know what’s “wrong” with me? Will you yell at me; tell me I’m faking? Will you pull out your camera? How many likes do you think you’ll get? Followers? Words of encouragement? Will you pray over me? In front of all these strangers? I wonder…

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