Soul

stardust that formed the earth

elements recycled many times

into me they formed

flesh, bacteria, a colony of one

yet in and through everything in ages past

part of everything now

I breathe plant exhaust

they breathe mine

elemental as I am, 

flesh

     and bone 

              and blood

My spirit soars

for it of the skies

boundless and eternal

Hiding Under the Bed

Final Writeup for Mr. E's Monsterous Monster Wiki Project

About eight weeks ago, knowing that a project was coming up for my wiki and weblog class, and also having just learned about the awesomeness of wikis, I embarked on a daring and dangerous project of cataloging the monsters of Mr. E's imagination and putting them into an online encyclopedia.

The dangerous monsters nipped at my fingers and crashed my phone's camera, but I claimed success after the initial cataloging of 26 of these monsters, and prepared plans for a further expedition. Expedition and cataloging plans.

Over the last 6 weeks of hacking through jungles of paperwork, crossing rivers of maple syrup, and peering around mountains of pancakes, we captured and cataloged 55 different species of monsters.

The key components of success were listed as:

• 2-4 pages added to the wiki each week. That would be 24 pages for 6 weeks. We got 61!👍👍
• Pages on dyslexia and social media and dyslexia. 👍
• Wiki is well organized, with an index. 👍
• Wiki should have several contributors. (with the aid of pumpkin cookies, I did bribe someone onto the wiki, who fixed a spelling error) 👀
• Share on social media 1/week in an attempt at marketing. We got about 5 social media posts and 40 followers. I also blogged about online marketing for Mr. E. 👍
• Weekly reports (available below) 👍
• Readings that helped me to write and understand more about wikis 👍

Overall, the expedition into monstrous territory was a success, but getting other to tread where angels dare not is a challenge. There are a lot of people interested in and enjoying the humor and creativity of the monsters as cataloged, but few are brave enough to peer underneath their beds with their cameras ready, although at the wiki we welcome all contributions.

Mr. E became impatient with me, while he was creating and I was writing my seminar paper so that he began to take matters into his own hands and started taking pictures of the creatures himself. He did all the sock monster photography. I gave him a few tips on needing full light and a flat camera angle. But this excited me. He was participating in the wiki!!! Now, to see if we can move to the next step (someday).

When writing on the wiki I tried to keep it "wiki wiki," as quick is the nature of most internet surfing. For more or deeper information I linked to my sources. I  was amazed at just how much research goes into a good summary or introduction of a topic or new idea. Like, any good technical writing: the clearer and shorter the better.

Things I would change if I were to plan the expedition again: 

• I would look a little longer at wiki hosting sites before choosing one. But this one does have the largest 2 features I was looking for. (free! and easy to use) The downside is the side ads.
• I would set up a scanner to scan all monsters that come to light in 2-D, for higher quality resolution and better lighting.
• I would be more consistent on my marketing efforts. Having something worth posting every week is a challenge. Mr. E does not create monsters according to anybody's calendar.
• Bring more people with me, and more equipment (like cameras that don't crash every time they see a sharp claw)

What I like best about this whole project is that it does not end with the class (I can not deny it started with the class, though), the project is designed to continue indefinitely on the web, adding to that great curiosity cabinet of all real and imaginary things.

I have really learned to value the web for the voices it gives people. No longer do we need to interest a publisher to be heard, or have money behind us, we have the internet. And the internet has search engines that catalog and list the things they find even in the farthest corners. I don't like to brag, but my most viewed web post over the last 15 years has been the one discussing, in medical terms the impending birth of a 5th child and what that means for labor, that post has had over 500 visitors. The second most is a short post on universal health care and taxes, about 300 visitors. It excites me to be found as much as it excites me to find. We have a voice even if we refuse to pay for marketing.

And speaking of voice, (this connects into my lit project, which is focusing on women writers.) The web has given women a voice, who for centuries were silenced by the concepts of not needing education to bear children. Women came forward and blogged things that were specific to women, and often culturally taboo and connected with other women who have been in the same boat. Women's issues have been left out of literature for hundreds of years, But, it is precisely that it is left out that is so fascinating. There is a long history of not talking about the biological aspects of being a woman, for men either find it gross or uninteresting, or as my husband says "both." That is why we buy books on puberty for our girls, as it is not discussed in polite society: in case a man might overhear. At least today, the internet has helped bridge the gap. We have women willing to post pictures of miscarriage or early birth, husbands willing to show how their wife looks in the net panties after birth, no end of blog posts on pregnancy or those who are hoping to conceive. The internet marketing on period panties actually brings the word out of whispered obscurity and into our Facebook feeds.That is power, that is connection. Not only does it link us to the world, but most importantly to each other.

What the last few weeks of the semester feels like

Weekly Refelction on Final Project week 5?

Yup, The wiki project is still going on. However, I agree with Bonnie, why can't school just be over yet?

Breathe, only 2 more weeks. You can do this.

Yes. I finished all my readings, played wiki fairy and fixed little details on the beast. And then added more monsters, because Mr. E just keeps making Monsters. I peered into his room this morning and what did I see?

A whole heck-a-lot of monsters waiting for me.

I haven't yet got Mr. E on his own wiki. I have barely been in the same room as him all week. So I managed the pics, the uploads and the new pages on some of these babies, but not with much input from their creator, as Dad was taking him to a movie. Maybe a chance tomorrow evening?

I also managed to put this pic on our Facebook page, inviting people, once again to that great wiki.

The readings I did this week did not provide further insight, but in some ways supported the written work on the wiki on dyslexia and wikis.

Studio Tour: Bonnie's Blog

Bonnie Robinson has been consistently blown me away with her thorough, well thought out and very well organized work this semester. I have looked up to her to understand how to be a graduate student. Her final project is no exception.

ok, Bonnie, that's a lot of writing in the last few weeks. One of these days, I'm going to get through it and finish this post.

That reminds me, thank you for the post on Abe's. I'm always looking for vegan eats when I'm in Rochester. I'll be there next May 14th. :) Maybe we can chat in a coffee house together :) And while we are discussing your post on Abe's, I didn't see a link to their website. Perhaps you could provide one? (although I did easily search it up). You could also provide links to other places you bring up, like the Rochester Public Library.

I feel like I am writing in a totally post-modern way, jumping time and styles and streams of consciousness in the middle of the paragraphs, but if anyone could handle it, you can Bonnie, after all, you've studied some Hemingway - the joys of teaching college-level English.

Bonnie is attempted to unfold and then mesh the histories of coffee houses and the internet, especially in their relation to the free exchange of ideas. This is rooted in the first-hand experience at local coffee houses in the Rochester, MN area, where she makes 3 different visits, including interviewing the owner, or barista for a better understanding of the underlying philosophies of the place.

She does a good job in these interviews. They are well constructed and relevant to her overall connections. I find them most fascinating. This project stands out as one that clearly has not reached its apex yet. It hasn't reached a critical mass for nuclear connection, which Bonnie hopes to achieve, and I  look forward to reading.

Studio Tour: Distinctively Dani

Distinctively Dani took on the world of travel blogging. And if there is anything that can give people a strong sense of wanderlust it is a good travel blog. Dani not only discusses travel blogs, looking at 2 of them per week, but she also tries to uncover the hidden meaning behind travel blogging.

In her earlier blog analyzing posts, Dani uses quotes and descriptions to show us how the blogger shares his/her experiences with us. A great example of this is March's post on the Expert Vagabond. Her more recent posts seem to shorten the prose, perhaps the beauty of the blogs analyzed changed.

Dani gives 2 other posts per week, her weekly reflection, and a post where she discusses a particular topic in relation to travel blogging, one was identity and travel blogging, and the other was one was on perks for travel blogging. She reads and discusses articles on these topics with relations to the blogs she has analyzed.

Dani begins her blogging about travel blogs with a discussion on her trip to Savannah, Georgia. She is thinking about attending grad school in writing there. From her appreciation of beautiful prose, her wanderlust wetted and showing through every word she writes, I am sure Dani will make Savannah only one of many places writing will take her in her life.

Studio Tour: Andrew Hanson

Andrew Hanson's Bible Time blog project fascinates me from the perspective of trying not to be a teacher. I teach adult Sunday school, (and substitute for seminary ie: every morning teen scripture class) and also Argument and Exposition this semester and as I read his posts I want to do what all teachers should do best: ask questions! Every time he says something, I want to ask a question in the margins.

I love his initiative on the topic, how he has jumped in and try to understand and explain the verses he tackles. I am not sure the blog format is particularly better suited for this than a wiki would be, except for Andrew's desire not to have his words changed, in which case the blog is best.

When background information is given and links are given to connect the reader to a better understanding of the topic, it makes good use of the medium like his post connecting us links on burnt offerings and God's ransom. I also noticed that they linked to 2 different religious pages, one a non-denominational Christian, specifically on-line ministry and the other is a  Jehovah's Witness. With other posts, the trend continues as Andrew connects us to a wide variety of Christan theological studies. As a reader, it frustrates me that the links don't automatically open in a new tab and I have to hit the back button to continue on the blog.

Andrew gives us a nice amount, enough to learn something, but not enough to be overwhelmed by, of background information on these verses but doesn't tell us where he got this information, obviously, he knows his way around bible scholar sites, but a little credit to the source wouldn't be so bad.

After Andrew expounds on each verse he gives a nice summary of the blog post. Then Andrew ends each of his blog posts with "Thanks, Andrew" That is an interesting touch I don't often see on blogs. Does it make it personal, or does it make it epistolary? And in that case is he following the example of Paul?

Weekly Reflection #3

I bit the bullet and started into those readings, and now we have a nice little page AboutDyslexia.I kinda like how this page turned out. It is quick and hopefully an easy read that may give hope for some flustered parents of frustrated kids with dyslexia. It also dabbles with a little bit of academic research that is not usually connected with dyslexia, but I think Mister E's connection with it makes for a nice little case study.

For only the second time in the wiki, we have pages that link outside the wiki, not only the academic studies but also basic links on some of the learning disorders. Which reminds me, I should also link to a good page on ODD.

The wiki is taking on a nice shape. It is easy to add monster pages and we are beginning to get some good background information/resources available on it. I try to keep everything simple, neat, easy to read and am trying for consistent layouts. I expect layouts of more complicated pages will naturally fall into a standardized pattern and if not, then a little work will be applied to make it so.

For marketing this week, we did make our Facebook post and will have to make another one soon, perhaps tonight or tomorrow, (but I am writing this post today because my weekend is booked) as Mr. E made a really cool monster this week, but I haven’t had time to breathe. He would happily spend most days working with me on the wiki, which is something I just can’t do at this point in the semester (but I did a few weeks ago, which how this wiki got off the ground) But this may be an interesting opportunity to teach him to wiki and see what we come up with. He has started to text his grandparents so perhaps he can write a wiki page. Wouldn’t that build up my argument about how wikis and dyslexics can interact?

But I am once again afraid that everyone is so busy with their lives that I may have to bribe people to add something to the wiki.

Next week I hope to; clean up some details on the wiki, do more readings, write a page on creativity and dyslexia and move into the concepts of how wikis and dyslexics can be mutually beneficial.

As I review this blog post, that I am currently writing, I realize how stream-of-consciousness it is. As a general rule, I try to avoid stream-of-consciousness writing in all forms of academic prose. This week however, I am likely to let it stand because I have moved into the modern and postmodern eras in my literature class and have noticed the predilection of such writers to not only follow streams-of-consciousness, but also to use it as a way to play with time, to jump forward and move backwards with a whiff or a sound that stirs the memories. No wonder this is the era Dr. Who came to being, as we have learned to time travel in our thoughts and our stories.

Weekly Reflection on Final Project #2

Wiki grew by 2 whole pages this week. One of the pages was a step up in design than the others. It not only is a monster but shows a monster society in evolution, so it has section headings and a picture for each section.Some may argue that is too much info for one simple wiki page, and I am considering it, but as of yet, we di not have enough info to break it into a page for each section.  I am not thrilled with the layout for the pictures, perhaps that needs more work. See for yourself: http://mr-es-monsterous-monsters.wikia.com/wiki/GoblinMouth

I also worked on the readings. Marketing got its own post (see below) and by the time I was done with it, I felt thoroughly chastised as to how well I was not doing with it, especially in the continuity needed for a good marketing campaign. Luckily, I am not trying to make a living off of it.

I've dabbled in the readings for dyslexia, but only got through the first 2. I'm am just going to have to jump in and make an "about dyslexia" page on that wiki and add to it as I can.

The Facebook post went well this week. It was well received and shared. We reached a whole 17 people from the post on Mr. E's page, and another (or some of the same) 11 people from my personal page with that post.

Bonnie responded to last week's reflection and I invited her boys to add to Mr. E's Monsterous Wiki. I hope they do. (hint, hint). It would be greatly appreciated to have others enjoying the wiki too.

Discussion of Marketing Tactics and How it Relates to Mr. E's Monsters

Marketing something on the internet, according to www.entrepreneur.com, should add "add value rather than clutter to their lives." It should also be very focused. Focused is doable. Monster Art is Mr. E is nicely focused. But how does it add value it people's busy and hectic lives? I mean if I'm perusing Facebook (the main focus of the Monstrous Art marketing) what stops my scroll? Cute things. Funny things, or things that are not about Trump. I know I am going off topic here, but Facebook is more cheery when politics is not 90% of it. . . so things that make me laugh or kick in those cuteness hormones. Monsters are cute? Maybe they're funny?

The whole purpose of the monstrous art is to be a diversion. So how do I go about diverting people's attention from political posts? I feel if I continue on this train of thought I will go back to cuteness. Some of the monsters trade on cuteness...like this one.

Quality gets people to share it and discuss it. What is quality in cuteness or funniness? How do I get someone to like it enough to share it? Always make it funny or cute? The post I made about the Pancake Eating Hippo, was cute, not just the monster but the reaction to it by cute little boys. Between the cuteness of the pancakes and faces of the boys, it did gather more likes and responses and shares than any other monster posts up to that point. 

Plan for it to take time and grow bit by bit. Marketing involves patience? you mean it's not instant? Being that there is nothing beyond time and energy involved in this adventure at this time, the monsters have learned to wait. Mister E's mommy just doesn't have enough time to do it all right now. She made some excuse about being a grad student.

Connecting with influential people/groups can introduce you to a whole new group of people. Good ideas. I wonder who Mister E should connect with?

Build relationships with everyone that reaches out to you. Oh oh, this is beginning to sound a little bit like work. Respond to people? Maybe even in a timely manner. I have ignored my brother when he reached out to talk about picture quality. Since then I figured out how to crop and relight pictures on my phone before uploading them onto the net. I still haven't responded.

Consistently publish good content. I think this harkens back to the concept of better photographs. And making the posts worth stopping for. But what about that word "Consistently"? That goes back to the idea of trying to get new content on Facebook every week. So far I have managed every 2-3 weeks, probably not enough.

Share as you want to be shared. Think I could get my Sister-in-law to share my posts if I share hers? Maybe I could even make a deal of it. And perhaps even expand to other's . . . 
Sigh, marketing sounds like a little work, all the time.

Weekly Relection for Final Project #1

Monster Wiki is up and running. Good news. I have made/set up an awesome wiki. Once I learned the new system it became a breeze to load up pictures and put introductions on each monster. We have 46 pages on the wiki. The most work went into the Index, which is a great place to get an overview of what is currently on the wiki. I am not a programmer, so I am not sure how to make the index to build its self... so it will probably continue to be done manually.

To be honest I did not do all 46 pages of the wiki this week. I started several weeks ago, hoping it would work as this project, but knowing it would be worthwhile effort even if it did not. The additional pages of monsters that I thought might take longer, went up quickly with my son's drawing and input all week. These are fun because they create a connected reading and linking throughout that section of the wiki. I hope to introduce more of this interlinking between monsters. The Squawkapus is a good one to start this bit of interlinking tour on.

Moving forward, my largest obstacle will be to get the reading done and written about. The other large stepping stone is drawing people to it. The Facebook page and posts have drawn more interest on average each week. We get a few new views every day or two. Each post we make we invite viewers to the wiki, but so far the wiki has remained mostly viewerless, not to mention without other participants. I have a backup plan of offering pumpkin cookies to my father to add things to the wiki, but first I will see if there are less obvious-bribing ways to draw participants.

Power of Re-vision

The first pass at notes on wikis I made were very similar to my blog posts- personal viewpoints with lots of quotes and material taken from my sources, but as I read up on how to write wikis, I had lots of revising to do.

And that ability to easily revise is what really helps give wikis power, not only is there a process to get better, but is it about as quick and painless as those processes can be.

Re-vision suggests seeing again, perhaps through another lens or from another point. Wikis not only allow our personal re-visioning processes but also allows collaborative processes. The power of collaboration is in essence what wikis are all about.

Now, I like google docs for collaborating in formats like a word processor or a spreadsheet, but wiki formats are for quickness and are always works-in-progress.

For general information on the real wikis work really well- whether a wiki on the local party scene or something as massive as Wikipedia. I am debating of the usefulness of wikis for my son's Monsterous Monsters. There a wiki would collaborate to create information on each monster and how it works within the Monsterous ecosystem. He is always creating new monsters and I think a collaborative work environment would make it fun to create monstrous puns and ideas with other creative people. A wiki full of imagination.

Good, Bad or Ugly?

For Dana Boyd, blogging is about building bridges of understanding across the great gulf of the online world.

Every useful thing is a 2 edged sword. Most things can be as harmful as they are useful, that includes the internet. Dana tells a story about one awful Blogher conference. What a horrible thing happened when those in the audience instead of working towards building bridges, actively tore a live speaker down on twitter that was trending behind her on a big screen.

And hence we see the ugly side of social media, just in case speeches of hate or intolerance was not enough passed around on Facebook.

The most powerful use of blogging I have seen, which shapes my sense of the value of social media, was a vlog from the heart of the fighting in a city in Syria. It was a teen girl, describing the best she could what was going on. It was honest. It was raw, and it was needed to awake the world the awful situation we had allowed to develop.

Another powerful scene is social media is when 2 countries were preparing for war, but all over social media, notes of love and admiration were sent by individuals in one country to the other stating that they didn't support the war and had no desire to harm the others. This worked both ways and the governments had to back down from the full offensive action.

There is power in the tools of  social media. How are we going to use this power?

Service and Social Media are not always opposite, It depends on your focus

Another thing to think about when looking at Social Media use and Narcism

Linda K Burton said: 

We live in a culture where more and more we are focused on the small, little screen in our hands than we are on the people around us. We have substituted texting and tweeting for actually looking someone in the eye and smiling or, even rarer, having a face-to-face conversation. We are often more concerned with how many followers and likes we have than with putting an arm around a friend and showing love, concern, and tangible interest. As amazing as modern technology can be for spreading the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ and helping us stay connected to family and friends, if we are not vigilant in how we use our personal devices, we too can begin to turn inward and forget that the essence of living the gospel is service.

I have tremendous love for and faith in those of you who are in your teen and young adult years. I have seen and felt of your desires to serve and make a difference in the world. I believe that most members consider service to be at the heart of their covenants and discipleship. But I also think that sometimes it’s easy to miss some of the greatest opportunities to serve others because we are distracted or because we are looking for ambitious ways to change the world and we don’t see that some of the most significant needs we can meet are within our own families, among our friends, in our wards, and in our communities. We are touched when we see the suffering and great needs of those halfway around the world, but we may fail to see there is a person who needs our friendship sitting right next to us in class.

Templates, Forms how do I identify myself within thee?

Unless you are talented in writing code, you have probably used a template to create your page or identity online. Facebook is ripe with these, so is Blogger. I even built a whole commercial websites using templates, then I learned how to manipulate code and made it better ;p

Christine Rosen discusses social media and virtual friendship and does so from a very 2007 bend. Since then we have learned that Social Media is not a big scary monster for teenagers and young adults only, now it is old school, left to those of us not hip enough to move on the next trend of social networking. There has been no lack of research on how social media is connected with our, and especially our teenager's mental health.  Christine could say "I told you so." But she hasn't published much to The NewAlantas lately.

Something about gathering friends by those answering similar things in the same categories...
Hold that thought. It's a real-life distraction break intruding on my online musings.

This little cutie climbed into my lap, nuzzled me said "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" and then hit my glasses off.

ok, Back to carefully constructed cyber-reality.

So identities we create online are often a result of filling in forms and are therefore limited to the nature and design of the forms or templates. Do these templates construct our idenity? Jenny Davis seems to think they do. Which brings me back to Christine, who thinks that we try to make ourselves unique on these online social media templates by doing things just like everybody else. Apparently, there is/was a tend of profile pictures with fingers up noses. With the group I hang with on social media, the trend is one of using our baby's pictures as our profile pics. I feel it helps send the message that I am a proud mommy and am not looking for social interactions with those looking for dates.

As I have worked on genealogy and indexing, a very addicting hobby, I have learned to value forms. Geneology becomes a much easier pursuit when forms became the rage. Forms make it so much easier to figure out what is going on, especially when they are typed. Before forms came on the scene you have to peruse the handwritten notes and books of the clergy. Not only do you have to decipher handwriting, but you have to wade through a lot of information that doesn't relate to what you are looking for at all, then you have to learn another language to read the clergy's notes from whatever countries your ancestors lived in before they immigrated to America, in my case a lot of German and Norwegian. Luckily for us, a lot of people volunteered hours to do "indexing." Indexing is taking these records and filling out the information into computer forms that become searchable, and are instantly linked back to the pictures of the original records.

So I guess, what we have now is not only templates constructing our online identities, but are also helping us construct the identities of our progenitors and also where we came from. Do you think they will help us figure out where we are going?  Do you think I could find an online form to see my grandkids?

How does Politeness work in Social Media?

Questions to consider:

How does politeness interact with social media, blogs, vlogs and minimal space mediums like tweeting?

Isn't politeness the grease of the social clockwork?s this grease ignored entirely for reasons of shock/attention span or character space? Or did it evolve and change forms?

We know some of the evolution:
All caps = yelling
Terminal periods on texts and tweets seem severe, nay even aggressive. Crair says that line breaks are more effective than the humble period, and terminal periods are completely unnecessary and therefore if they are used, they hold a different meaning, that being one of "pissed."

What about things like  :), or ;p, Where do they come in for politeness? When and how are they properly used?

When does discussion get uncomfortable? or offensive?

Does proper sentence structure show respect to your topic?

Blogs as Literature?

Steve Himmer in The Labyrinth Unbound attempts to analysis blogs as literature.
 First he explains that blogs have codes to understanding, just like novels.

The novel ... is defined as much in how readers are trained to enter its shared codes as it is by the specific delivery of those codes. Likewise, the weblog relies on particular codes enacted by both author and readers—readers who become, in this case, secondary authors.
Interactive writing, how novel!

 Unlike a novel in which the author’s interpretations are viewed through the lens of a character, or traditional journalism in which the author is purposely made invisible, writing on a weblog can only ever be read through the filter of the reader’s prior knowledge of the author. As one day’s posts build on points raised or refuted in a previous day’s, readers must actively engage the process of “discovering” the author.

This author discovery is one of the joys of reading good blogs. Besides learning on whatever topic the blog posts about, you slowly unwrap and discover what makes another tick. I have enjoyed this on little bit of finding the underlying author while learning about baking cookies or environmental degradation. 

Unlike a printed text, a blog "offers is multicultural, offering multiple paths for traversing the text. There is not single defined narrative route, as in Ulysses, but instead a variety of possible movements from each point in the work to any number of other points in the work. The text is reassembled—thus rewritten—through the interaction of author and reader with each performance."

And now for a barely related fascinating tidbit: "Raymond Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de poèmes, for example, is a collection of ten sonnets with each line of each poem printed on an individually manipulable strip of paper. Because each line of each sonnet poetically “fits” with every line of every other sonnet, there is a potential for producing and reading 1014 (100,000,000,000,000) individual poems. "

The interaction of blogs can be infinite and ever changing and ever expanding, never completed- almost a performance art, the process of making the blog literature is as valuable to enjoy as the the literature itself.

The weblog, as its detractors criticize, is often characterized by mundane, banal, sometimes embarrassing personal content ranging from what the author ate for lunch to specific health problems and sexual issues. This personal content, moreover, is frequently intermingled with commentary on politics or culture, making the personal, the public, and the political inseparable in precisely the ways the avant-garde demanded.

"Personal content intermingled with political commentary or cultural issues of the day"? That's never been seen on this blog.

With the analysed nature of blogs as lit, the ever-changing, never finished, interactive styles, it will be interesting to see how this literary style is taught in classrooms in 100 years.

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.