Minimal Poetry

As Mark Twain once said, "Forgive me the length of this discourse, I hadn't the time to make it short."

Minimal Poetry would tend towards that trend of saying more in fewer words. In our modern world, most of what we see of this would be related to either Social Media, Facebook posts, and Tweets, where brevity is required, or in commercial settings, names of companies, brand, and logos.

The Huff Post ran an article on this.  From which a take a quote that questions the lack of validity often given to such Minimal Poetry:

"If there was such a poetic form as the two-word poem, it would be the ultimate in literary minimalism and the vanishing point for that most characteristic of modernist trends in poetry: ever-greater compression, or breviloquence. Why couldn’t the form of just two words have its own unique esthetic challenge that is just as valid a self-imposed restriction as a rhyme scheme or the seventeen syllables of a haiku? If a haiku is no less a poem than an epic, why should a two-word poem be any less a poem than a haiku?"

Having worked hard in the commercial word to create some of this Minimal Poetry to express the aims and desires of the company instantly to a hopeful buyer and brand follower, I can testify to the number of hours involved in it. It takes a lot of time to get it just right.

The two words poetry to express some of the following are below.
RoundBelly = maternity clothes
Eco Sprout = organic children's clothing
These are by no means the best examples that exist out there, and I am sure I have written some better Minimal Poetry myself, but these are the ones that I used often enough to remember them.

Here are some others that come to mind:
Don't squeeze the Charmin
Finger Licken Good
Third Rock from the Sun
Sleeping Angels
Toddling through the Demolition Zone

Besides commercial and online social adventures in Minimal Poetry, protest signs are a great source.

What do you know of Minimal Poetry?

Common Place Books

A description of "Commonplace books " sounds very much like the eclectic nature of my (and many other) blog(s) :

These more undisciplined and disorganized commonplace books appeared in every permutation and degree of sophistication, and included nearly every imaginable type of text: lines of epic poetry, lofty quotations, and, just as often, medicinal and culinary recipes, ribald couplets, hermetical numerical tables, cartoons, monumental inscriptions, magical spells, bad jokes; in short, all the literary flotsam and jetsam of the more vigorous sort of reader.

Before the net, I actually had an unlined journal that I used for that purpose. Some newspaper cuts, quotes, drawings, poems, ect. These books "“often function as [arenas] for the shaping and consolation of a self” (p. 338)— sites for individual identity formation, reinforcement, and negotiation."

Farnam Street claims to think these collections spark creativity and recombination. He also explains that these books serve to extend the memory.

That self-shaping and self-understanding seem to be a common thread in the value of blogging. As Efimova suggests, Something akin to the oft thought concept of learning through writing or Composition Epistemology.

But do they also shape the unwitting readers of our blogs?

Perhaps with creative commons and the sharing economy, when we blog, we are not only building our commonplace books but end up adding to a collective commonplace book, one for all mankind.

Surfin' the Web (nostalgia attack)

I remember the days when we could spend hours going from one interesting link on the internet to another. Ah, when the web was young (and so was I). The web was full of amazing ideas and discussions and little communities built up around particular interests and you could actually have conversations with people in comment sections, and because it required a little bit of self-education to get on and surf the web most posters treated each other as equals and conversations remained polite and kind (at least the groups I participated in.)

What brought on this nostalgia attack? A nice little article dating from the year 2000. I bought my first HTML book in 1997. At that time I used the internet for meeting men to date and communicating with my parents.  Interestingly, Rebecca Blood dates the first 23 blogs to 1999. Trying to remember what the web was like back when I had my first baby, who now could be in college, is the reason for the nostalgia attack. It was before 9/11 changed the world. But after I met my husband online, and after my college went to 100% online course registration and required everyone to check their school given email addresses weekly.

I remember one school paper on Hamlet that I didn't have enough source materials for, so I went to the web and ended up quoting some of the work a high school English class put up. It satisfied the teacher, although there were no conventions on citing it yet.

Rebecca Blood points out "These weblogs provide a valuable filtering function for their readers. The web has been, in effect, pre-surfed for them. Out of the myriad web pages slung through cyberspace, weblog editors pick out the most mind-boggling, the most stupid, the most compelling." This is one of my favorite reason for the blogs I frequented, most had pre-selected, or even curated a selection of news or articles that were important to me, mostly on subjects of ecology, economy, and midwifery. I even have a section on this blog where I summarize a book on global warming called 6 Degrees. As overwhelming as a change of 6 degrees seemed at the time, there is no doubt we are living through a lot of it now. 

I also agree with Rebecca's conclusion, some of the most valuable things the internet does is to allow the little guy a voice, whether it is inside view of a war zone or a sting to corporate media it is what the world needed then, and still needs now.

Reflections

When you look into a mirror or standing water you see a reflection, not reality as it actually is, but one that is flipped. Often times reflections allow us to see things in a different way or notice things we did not by looking straight on. So here I am going to attempt to flip my reality of the last 2 weeks on its head.

Starting school again is always hard. Christmas vacation was very challenging this year. We lost 2 dear family members, one expected due to cancer and the other my dearest Grandma, very unexpected. And what hurt was not so much her loss, because of my faith, I know that she is still with us and that I will see her again, but because I could not be there for her transition. I was in Florida on a long-awaited vacation. Vacation was fun, and still hard in some ways. Losing Grandma in the middle of it put additional pressure on the family and organizational challenges a trip of that size demands, but then my baby (toddler) sprained his ankle and had to be carried everywhere and required a fair amount of doctor visits. So I was nowhere as prepared for school as I would have liked, but it came roaring down upon me, and my baby who just started walking again the night before school started got used to having Mom always hold him, and wasn't happy about her going away routinely at all. (I am beginning to suspect grammar is one of the early things that get distorted in a reflection.)

So when I enter the class, I was relieved that most of this stuff is old hat, to a blogger of 14 years. Yup, this blog has been running since 2004. When I started the blog it was to connect with my extended family and share with grandmas lots of baby pics. The blog ended up connected with an online internet business I ran for the next 5 years and then Facebook came on the scene and stole the blogging steam. In some ways that freed my blog from the self-editing of having readers I knew and loved, and in many ways it just plain ignored it.

It is fascinating to blog again, to bring about snippets of life that deserve more permanent time than Facebook would give them, and to also share knowledge gained in the process. In this blog resurrection, I have updated both the look and functionality of my blog, adding widgets and blog roles (at the bottom of the page). I finally gave up pink as my background color,  as I no longer hope for little girls, but am a proud and exasperated mom of one pre-teen girl and one sweeter, smaller one.

I am enjoying using the RSS feed on Feedly. It has proven a most effective way to keep on top of class bogs and assignments, however, the news feeds are overwhelming.  I am much less enthralled with Twitter. The best thing about Twitter is the NASA feed I connected with. I guess I enjoy some permanence, some continuance as if I could save the perfect day (or minutes) on my blog and come back it when I need a lift. Wait, I do that. I lose myself in my blogs past to rediscover myself in the now. That alone is the most valuable reason to blog.
To see all the blogs for class, click on my tag #en3177

What does it mean to copyright a website? And what good does it do me?

I have always worked my websites under the assumption that I can not use anything I didn't create or get express permission for. Here is wisdom to the affect. Being Safe about Copyright.

But what about my work?
This information is useful. copyright
I have always kinda assumed this quote "Original work is copyrighted from the moment of creation, provided it’s fixed in tangible form." Which is one reason some of my creative work is on this blog somewhere, I wanted to have evidence it was mine before anyone could lay claim to it. 
You could use a copyright symbol to hammer the point home, but "you don’t even need the notice to claim copyright; the law eliminated the requirement of public notice in 1989."

For $35 you can legally file a copyright, which allows you to sue for infringement, but it only includes the parts of the website that are uploaded at that time, or you could file for a 3 month copyright.

That all seems like a lot of work and money for a starving college student. So I would normally just let things be copyrighted from creation. However, when I consider that the most sincere form of flattery is imitation, I would be honored to have others think anything I have done on this blog are worth sharing, and I am excited to be part of the sharing economy. My conclusion to do a creative commons style licensing, this licensing will allow others to use and share my work. I would love my work to be shared and passed around, but I am not sure how I feel about other people making money off my work. 

Behold, my sidebar says it all.

Creative Commons and the Sharing Economy

Have you heard about Creative Commons? It is a sharing economy's way of maintaining credit for your work while allowing people to use it and share it and add to it. There are similar platforms for Live Open Science, instantly shared and connected science works. The creators of that were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. The developed software for that has been superseded with a more advanced platform called Open Hab (although this may not be the right name, as I  can not find evidence of it).

Anyways, back to Creative Commons. There are many different levels you may copyright your work at, depending upon how open you want to be with how others can share or add to it. And they have a multi layered tag attached that is instantly read by computer and humans. It is a cool interaction between the human creativity and the computer technology.

I really like concepts related to building a sharing economy and realizations that as robots/tech can replace a lot of our daily work what will we have left except our humanity/creativity? Therefore I would suggest that part of the change towards the sharing economy that we should consider is the concept of Universal Income or Basic Income. I know experiments are being tried in Finland and Norway and Washington state.

I wonder how much of a golden age we could enter as a world society if everyone had their basic needs met and were left to their creativity, especially if they were up to sharing it all?

RSS feed

Easy as pie. In fact, pie takes longer, especially if you are making your own crust. I used to use RSS of the blogs I followed and then Facebook took over and we all shared our interesting tidbits on Facebook instead of a blog, many of us dedicated bloggers stopped blogging and of course people stopped reading blogs because the info was on Facebook.

So I am going to run a test. Does my news feeds come better through Facebook or an RSS reader? Specifically I am comparing the Feeds for Washing Post, Huffington Post and The Atlantic. So far the RSS feed is winning, less cat and Trump videos to scroll through to get to the news.

What do you think?

Wow- insightful

Read this article on social change

We’re currently at the very edge of an abundant future, and the pace of change isn’t going to slow down. As Ismail put it, “…[civilization] is heading into a trough. I think it’s about a 20- or 30-year period. We need to get to abundance on the other side by creating new leaders, new projects, and new institutions.”

Not asking a lot is it?

Take Note Dads, this is how it's done

Interesting Ideas in Digital literacy:

"Digital literacy is not about the skills of using technologies, but how we use our judgment to maintain awareness of what we are reading and writing, why we are doing it, and whom we are addressing."

Maha Bali makes a most interesting point that judgment and awareness are needed even as we are quietly sitting at home on a computer because now this time is spent connected to the world.

Wow- makes me want to snuggle up with a good book.

What do you think?

Real or Fake- how to determine the difference

This is worth learning:
https://www.facebook.com/quartznews/videos/1871421812891512/

How do you tell fake from real news?

Writting Education- does it make a difference?

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-writing-revolution/309090/

This is an amazing series of articles exploring the usefulness of how and whys of writing education at a High School level.

Helps answer the question of if teaching writing does any good at all?  What do you think?

Kicking Butt

Picture by Barbra Haney

Once you are over 35, and had half a dozen children, your body just doesn't seem to be as responsive and flexible as it used to be, sometimes it could even feel creaky. But after a few years in Karate, it is getting much more responsive and less creaky. It can move fast, it can kick high, jump, turn and kick at the same time, it can defend itself. It has become strong, quick, dangerous.
      Exercising naturally brings a high, and I enjoy that too. Post karate class I feel good. My muscles feel moved and well used, blood is flowing fast to all organs of my body and I feel as if I could actually tolerate sitting down and chilling for a few minutes. I am not big at sitting down, I like to always be doing something, but finally, after working so hard my gi is drenched in sweat, I can sit down and just be quiet for a few minutes. It feels well earned.
     As a girl, I wanted to be a dancer. I trained for years, but no serious dance school would take someone who is 5 foot 10 and was a size 12 when she was nothing but skin and bones, and couldn't get her toes to turn out far enough. Ballet dancing has focused upon the perfect body and some hard to describe notion of "talent."
     Luckily for me, karate does not depend upon body shapes, or any notion of talent, but of hard work. It is a martial art, designed to train those who signed up for war (ie, almost all young men). Also lucky for me, the training starts slow enough to get us creaky old 30-somethings into shape bit by bit.
     About one year ago, when I finally reached red belt (advanced level), I learned to do something I hadn't managed before. I learned to give up trying to do karate like ballet and to listen to Master Nelson and just do as he told me. I remember looking in the mirror and being impressed how good I looked, just by doing what he was telling me. So when I boast of how awesome Karate is, I boast like Ammon.

Aphra Behn and the Feminist Mystique

Aphra Behn, one of the earliest professional female writers (in English) wrote the play "The Rover" that was first produced in 1677 and was a great success. The plays introduction, however gave her no credit. It only says "This play was written by a Person of Quality." She did not take credit until after it's prolonged success.
        I find it interesting that her characters and even her speeches were largely taken from stock, but yet her play showed resilience. Being as I have yet to totally immerse myself in the works of the time,  including Thomas Killagrew's Thomaso, I can not directly compare her characters to others. But from what I know about Alphra Behn, and about theater successes, I would guess that she took the stock characters and gave them her own twist, flavors that not only made fun of the stock formulas, but also added to the experience of the characters as understandable and relatable to the audience personally.
       Of course, as so common to female authors and produces, females actually carry on conversations with other females about their hopes, dreams, and ambitions. I once read an article that claimed Walt Disney's animated "Sleeping Beauty" was the most feminist of all movies she studied because women had conversations with each other about other things than men.
    Alphra Behn faced a backlash of being "bawdy" like her characters in this play. Is "bawdy" an insult? Heaven forbid that females have thoughts, feelings or expressions of the biological work of their lives. Sex, birth, babies, yup very feminine. And guess what? We are going to talk about it now. (It only took several hundred years from Alphra Behn). I am sorry my typing is so poor. My toddler is nursing with one hand and hitting my keyboard with the other.
    Recently there has been a nice trend of accepting the biological feminine. From period panties to comfortable bras, advertisers have brought it out of whispered obscurity. I also believe the Internet has helped, as women bloggers have often broached subjects that would leave most men embarrassed to even imagine. Mommy bloggers, who often start out fairly anonymous, gave us a voice. Now the feminine is taking over even some of the traditional male genres like Star Wars, with strong female leads that are not just eye candy.  Thank you Aphra Behn.

Behn, Alphra, Oroonoko, The Rover and Other Works. Janet Todd, Ed. Penguin Books. London 1992.

Revamping this Blog.... for a School Class

Yes, for the first time in years this blog will be used daily. It is now absorbed by English 3177/5177 at Bemidji State University. So besides using my blog daily, I have to learn how to tweet. Who would like to follow this mom on twitter?