Footenotes

“Not to make it perfect, but more nearly right than wrong.”

-Robert Hunter

Dear Commons,

A little over three years ago I had the very good fortune to interview with a couple of guys at CUNY who were working on this little project called the CUNY Academic Commons.  The job was something called a ‘Community Facilitator.’  I had no idea what that meant.  That was ok because it turned out they didn’t really either.  Before the interview was done Matt Gold and Boone Gorges explained to me that the job was, in many ways, whatever I wanted to make out of it – so long as it built a community and helped share the work of the Commons.

At the time we pretty much were the community.  There were a handful of early adopters, the Commons team, and everyone else had been thrown over a shoulder and carried here by a subcommittee member. Each new member or blog or group on the Commons was quietly celebrated and looked after in the same way you freeze when a particularly beautiful bird lands next to you on a bench.  You’re excited but you don’t want to be so excited you scare them off.   In an effort to build some sense of camaraderie on the site I started this errant little blog called ‘Footenotes.’  It was the first real ‘Community Facilitator’ thing I did for the site.  While I did a lot of things after it in my broadly defined role as a Community Facilitator, it’s been watching the community grow through reading for Footenotes each week that I’ve come to understand this place and what the Commons really is for CUNY.

But, alas, where does this awkward preamble lead us?

For the past three years I have been given the enormous privilege of working with this team.  The embarrassing wealth of talent and heart that runs the Commons has been an inspiration for me and instrumental in my growth.  Every single meeting has been filed with humor and big ideas and a tremendous sense of purpose, so much so that I made sure to travel to NYC from Boston once a month for two years to make sure I could share in the energy and passion of this group.  The Commons team as taught me how to think about what’s possible in the world and where to set the bar for how a person ought to approach any project they care about in their life.  With that in mind, I’ve been given an amazing opportunity to do work I’m very passionate about and will be leaving the Commons as Community Facilitator.  To be sure, I still look forward to being an active member of the site.  Many thanks to George Otte and the Sub-Committee who help steer the Commons.  My sincere gratitude to Matt Gold, Boone Gorges, Christ Stein, Scott Voth, Sarah Morgano, Michael Smith, Dominic Giglio, and Andre Pitanga.

And, of course, thank you for sharing so much with us here on the Commons.

Cheers,

Brian

cc license image “untitled” by Tony Fischer Photography

Everyone’s neck deep in mid-terms and election season drama.  Tonight’s debate promises to be a grand finale of sorts as we eagerly sit and look out for a treasure-chest of memes.  ”Binders full of women” dominated the news last week.  Personally, I was more charmed by the rap-battle-esque stage production.  Whoever thought taking away the podium would make a politician look better was either a moron or far more subversive than they get credit for.

Here on the Commons last week there was plenty going on outside of politics.  Well, not quite.  Tony Picciano pulled a great op-ed from The New York Times about the end of economic growth in America.  If you can read the Times piece, but if you’re busy be sure to check out Tony’s thoughts on it.  They’re not entirely related but there’ something in Robert Gordon’s alarm bell that reminds me of Fukuyama.  It’s certainly something to think about.

The Center for Place Culture and Politics posted about Vijay Prashad’s recent talk at the Graduate Center.  The talk itself is fascinating but I wanted to point out that the CPC’s great use of the Commons and WordPress.  Hosting video and Soundcloud through the site has drawn a lot of traffic to their page and shared the work with us in the Commons community.  If you’re interested in doing something similar with your own site be sure to check out Soundcloud and talk to the Community Facilitators.

Jean Gapetz posted a great set of links of literary maps and tress around New York.  The DHDebates blog is always packed with cool things like this.  Even if you’re not enrolled in the course you should definitely head over and comb through the wonderful collection they’ve put together.

Asif Patel pointed us towards some research suggesting that yoga may reduce some of the complications associated with cancer treatment and help improve quality of life in already healthy folks.  You’re in luck because the Commons already has it’s own Yoga Forum.  (In hindsight it looks like we lost our small yoga community on the Commons.  Come back! You were just ahead of your time.)

Finally this week, it’s OPEN ACCESS Week! Librarians and other faculty across CUNY and many other schools are raising awareness about Open Access issues and what they mean for higher education.  Be sure to check out the Open Access mixer this friday!

cc license image “untitled” by flickr user Dana Moos

Hello Commons,

Last week I was plenty ticked about those subway ads that went up around the city.  Turns out I wasn’t the only one.  The Awl started a little gallery of “modified” posters while sometimes CNN correspondent Mona Eltahawy took matters into her own hands.  The MTA has since decided to review their process for ad approval and the whole thing will probably wind up back in court again.  I know, I know – we’re all CUNY folks so we’re super-smart and this issue is really thorny because there’s the larger questions about freedom of speech looming behind the very immediate and visceral “hey, being racist is actually pretty awful” sentiment that’s guiding a lot of immediate reactions.  The sound thing to do is (was?) to follow the rule of the internet and not feed the trolls but sometimes you really just want slap big stickers up over offensive posters.

Before I get on with the rest of the round up for this week I’d like to point you over to the GC’s Center for Place Culture and Politics site.  A couple of days ago it was announced that the the much-beloved Neil Smith passed away.  There’s been a really beautiful outpouring of condolences and memories on two tribute pages and another has gone up with some wonderful videos.  By all accounts he was a marvelous educator and friend to many.

Roman Kossak had a great post up on teaching his “Math for Poets.”  When I took a similar course as an undergrad it was called “Math for Lovers.” Roman talks about the ups and downs of teaching  and speaks candidly about what went wrong in the classroom.  It may be  a little cliche but I think a good rule of thumb in education is that you always learn more from what doesn’t work.  Sharing those moments is really insightful so thank you!

A new blog showed up this week.  A.W. Strouse arrived sharing poetry and telling us more disappointing things about Ed Koch.  Strouse has hit the ground running with a flurry of great post and I’m excited to see what’s next.  Since we’re talking about Ed Koch I’ll share this little bit of New York apocrypha:  As it turned out, Ed Koch wound up moving into the same building as author and ACT-UP founder Larry Kramer.  It was holy hell in the building until the co-op board managed to broker some kind of treaty between the two.  One day, after months of peace, the elevator door opens and Larry Kramer’s dog bolts out and races over to none-other-than Ed Koch.  Larry snatches up the pooch and tells the poor creature (the dog that is), “Don’t go near him, that’s the man that killed all of daddy’s friends.”  Ah, New York.

Finally this week, Jessica Yood sent us a dispatch from sabbatical.  I was worried that the start of the school year would mean we wouldn’t get quite so many Associations posts.  Instead we got more stellar writing on life in, and as, September.  Glad to see you again!

Till next week.

Hello Commons!

I was kind of enjoying bragging about Hawaii each week.  I’m not proud of that but it’s the truth.  Then Tony Picciano was like “Hawaii, that’s cute” and started posting about his world tour.  Early in the week we got some great posts about Tony at Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee.  Then there was a ship.  Then Tony wound up in Copenhagen.  Then I got jealous because I think Kierkegaard is buried in Copenhagen.  Now I’m just really curious to see what’s next for Tony as he travels around Europe.  We should have given you some Commons stickers to pass out ‘Over There.’  Speaking of — we have a ton of cards and pamphlets for the Commons so if you’d like some to pass around your department or to other CUNY colleagues send me a note and I’ll see to it you get some.  I just might deliver them myself.

A small post over at Thought Sphere showed up this week pointing out that CUNY didn’t get a mention in a recent Crain’s article on the tech initiatives around New York City.  I like to think of the Commons community as a pretty tech savvy bunch so maybe we could put our heads together and compile a list of initiatives around CUNY right now that Crain missed.  Keith Okrosy mentions that the CornellNYC project got a little ink in the article.  Just because they voted us off the island doesn’t mean we aren’t plugged in.  Thoughts?  This is just he kind of thing the Wiki is for.

Jessica Yood over at Associations had a wonderful post this week about writer’s block.  The whole thing has left me wondering whether Footenotes is a failed rhizome.  The post ends in what I suspect is close to Judith Halberstam’s notion of a “queer art of failure.”  The writing doesn’t happen but a text is consumed instead.  This might only be exposing the gross extent of my sloth but I tend to think of reading as tertiary writing.  A good writer must read everything.

Whoa, I really wondered out into the tall grass.

Speaking of writers and such – Footenotes favorite Brooklyn Zine Project announced their two new interns this week!  Welcome to the project Erica and Sarah, you might want to check out the last interns’ posts to see what’s in store for you.

Finally this week — new blog Identification of Weeds in the Garden asks the community, “How do you eliminate patchy spots on the lawn?“  Well, go on…How?

Till next week.

At last!

The semester has wrapped up, the last finals have been graded, most of us are knocking out those last meetings of the year.  Summer is about to happen.  I imagine a lot of you have books to finally get around to or articles you’ve put off.  After a somewhat awkward and, frankly, disappointing debut as a surfer this time last year, I have committed to return to the ocean and master it.  Call me Ismael.  Or Ahab.  Whatever.  Who cares?  It’s summer.  We have a pretty good tradition of summer blogging from folks around the Commons so for all of you new bloggers this year be sure to check in with us and let us know what you’re up to.  There’s no classes to teach (for a lot of you) or departments to keep going so you’ve got no excuse.  This is the summer you blog. Ok, alright, I’ll take it easy.

Out there in the world things were a mess.  Tony Picciano checked in this week with Chicago and the NATO Summit protests.  On top of that there’s been weeks of rioting up in Montreal as students take to the streets to protest tuition hikes.  The Canadian government thought they were going to nip that in the bud with quick legislation to make student gatherings more difficult, but that went about as well as you imagine it would.  Not so bright, eh?  Sometimes you got to fight for your education.  Good luck out there and here’s hoping the protests can stay peaceful.

Speaking of taking it the streets – the Open Access group posted a link to an Open Access WhiteHouse.org petition that have going.  The petition looks to raise awareness about Open Access issues and to push for public access to federally funded research studies.  It’s your tax money, shouldn’t you be able to see what it’s discovering in research?

Here’s why I love the Commons:  I feel like I just found my math soul-mate over at the CUNYMath Blog.  First there was the obscure Rudolf Otto reference in the title, then there was the awesome list of 4 motivations towards math, and by the end Hunter Johnson was writing gems like, “many mathematicians are Platonists in the week and formalists on Sundays.”  It almost actually physically pains me that people didn’t try to teach me math like this in high school.  I would have been a full blown math guy if more of my math teachers and professors we’re just as eager to talk about William James.  CUNYMath, we’re lucky to have you!

And just when the week couldn’t get anymore awesome Asif Patel stirred the pot on male circumcision.  My hunch is that this is probably something you don’t spend all that much time thinking about.  I was a research assistant for a prof doing work on this and let me tell you — it’s a war out there.  I’m surprised the comments haven’t blown up on this blog post yet.  As of now there’s just the one but if you start to dig around on this topic online it gets emotional pretty quickly.

Nancy Foasberg over at A Librarians Folly revived her blog this week where she shares her thoughts on transliteracy.  There are about a million librarians on the Commons so I expect to see this post making the rounds soon.  Glad to have you back Nancy!

Well, there you go folks.  This time next Sunday I’ll be blogging from the beach.  Where will you be?

Till next week.

Speaking of sock puppets - the inspiration for Footenotes.

Hello Commons!

Ages ago when Twitter became a thing I totally missed the boat on it.  I didn’t get it.  I lived in San Francisco at the crest of the dot-com boom and when I first heard about Twitter it sounded like something right out of 1999.  Give it two months and a few overpaid “Experience Gurus” or “Good Vibes Shamans” or whatever cutesy dot-com title they’d cook up and Twitter was going to be right there in the rubbish bin next to that sock puppet for Pets.com.   Lo and behold though it’s become a thoroughly entrenched part of modern online life and so I resolved (yet again) this year to hang out there more.  Not a week into my resolution and I find a gem from our own Matt Gold.  Matt tweeted about an outstanding blog talking about the Commons from Lawrence Hanley out at SFSU; Babylon is Burning.  It’s a ‘run don’t walk’ kind of blog – this guy gets us!  I’m always on the hunt for good education blogs so if you’ve got a few bookmarked yourself please send them my way.

Meanwhile on the Commons – To start the week (and year) off you’re going to have to indulge me as I flagrantly abuse my power and call-out one of my other blogs.  If you missed it we’ve revamped Ground Control and now it’s packed with posts from most of the Commons team.  Watch out for new sets of posts each month as we discuss the Commons and other projects and ideas that share our open-source and community focused ethos.

By now you probably heard that Mitt Romney took Iowa with Rick “Google Problem” Santorum coming in a close second.  Tony Picciano was all over it during the election and afterwards as Mitt stood atop of the pile of contenders.  That image is mostly absurd because it’s impossible to picture Mitt Romney climbing on top of anything.  The guy is so starched and stiff an unexpected gale would knock him over and then Ron Paul would be back in play.  Where was the 2012 Campaign set on this? I know the semester is over but we need you guys.

Elsewhere newcomer blog Copywrite & Fair Use had a handful of posts up.  My favorite was an awesome resource for using photographs in your books.  I hope the team at Copywrite & Fair Use will head over to the Wiki part of the site and set up some resources for us.  Speaking of books, our own Christopher Bonastia @CBonastia blogged this week that his new book Southern Stalemate is available.  Congrats Christopher.

To wrap up the week there was some action on the bird spotting front.  The Commons’ own birdwatching community checked in and reported back to us.  From the sounds of it the Mountain Bluebird is tough to catch.  Keep us posted on Montauk.

Till next week.

It’s actually worse when Christmas falls on a Sunday.  You feel a little cheated when a holiday is on the weekend because it didn’t get the chance wreak havoc on your work schedule.  Oh wait…we’re academics.  Everything between now late January is a kind of a hazy wasteland.  There are some books you should probably read, you might want to grade those finals, you should probably touch up that last draft of your article before you dally too long and miss the cutoff.  Whatever.  It’s an equally good time to rewatch The Sopranos.

Yeah, that’s it.

Here on the Commons the diehards were still posting.  Tony Picciano had some great posts up.  First was the news about Cornell winning the bid for the new science college on Roosevelt Island.  I remember reading in CUNY Matters that we had teamed up with Stanford so the news was a bit of a bummer for CUNY.  On the bright side it’s interesting to learn from a commenter on Tony’s blog that a 350 million dollar gift from Charles Feeney tipped the scales.  Either way it’s a great thing for the city.  We didn’t need it anyways – we got our hands full with our own new college.

Helldriver made it in just under the wire for a great finish to 2011.  I felt my knuckles tense up when he started to call The Pianist a musical and had to push myself away from the desk to do some box breathing.  It’s ok – in a universe where I have come to accept Dancer in the Dark as a true musical there’s room for The Pianist too.  The genre is so anemic these days we’ll take everything we can get.

While my blood pressure was still up it seemed like a good time to take a look at Nestor Montilla Seniors’ ‘Redistricting in the United States’ blog.  This week was about redistricting follies in New York and New Jersey.  It’s a well researched and thorough post about the back door politics of redistricting and deserves a look.  I’m hoping the bullpen over at the Campaign 2012 blog heads over to the comments.  Speaking of comments; last week I mentioned Adam Wandt’s ebook proposal for CUNY and there’s been a huge discussion there in the comments.  Head over and check it out.

To wrap up the week Chris Stein taught the Commons that there’s actually a word for those little round dots of light in photos.  Meanwhile, our own Michael Smith is heading up a new photography blog that gives us a picture a day around CUNY.

There’s your week.  Stay tuned for a big end of the year round up soon!

I came home from dinner to see that Kim Jong Il died of “exhaustion” yesteday.  It feels weird that he should pass away on the heels on the United States’ exit from Iraq earlier in the week.  Were it the Bush years I’d say that our service members were probably now just making a layover in the US en route to the other side of the globe.  But with Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin-Laden and Kim Jong Il all gone I suppose that leaves only Ahmadinejad haunting Bush’s quiet exile down in Texas.  Despite how you feel about SOPA and the draconian NDAA, we’re still a long ways off from referring to sovereign nations as an ‘Axis of Evil’ on live television and, one hopes, the attendant hawkish military policy.  Of course it’s not as if we’re really leaving Iraq so perhaps cutting the doves loose would be a little premature. While it was a poignant and thoughtful week in world news we were celebrating the culmination of a lot of hard work on the Commons.  Commons 1.3 was released with a ton of new features.  If you haven’t had a chance to check out the additions to the site be sure and read through Sarah’s post and take the new version out for a spin.

The blogs we’re exciting this week as well.  Lee Hachadoorian over at ‘Free City’ shared his experience using the Kindle DX for PDFs.  I’m glad we’re talking about Kindles and eReaders on the Commons.  Earlier in the month Matt Gold and I were trying to figure where we fell on Kindles.  I hate the idea of going digital when it comes to books.  I like underlining and dogearing and reading other people’s notes on used copies of old books.  Matt was no less romantic about it but much more pragmatic in terms of the big picture.  Lee’s emphasis on PDFs bears some consideration though.  I might be needlessly exposing a weak spot in my own research but I don’t always read articles with the same adore that I do books.  Something like a Kindle might be the perfect instrument for articles where only parts of the research or data is relevant.  Great…now I have to buy a Kindle and hope that none of the staff at Word sees me with it in the neighborhood.

Speaking of eBooks – Adam Wandt had a great post up asking the community to take a moment and think through how we can use eBooks to help CUNY students.  It’s already sparked a wonderful conversation in the comments and I hope the Commons community can take a few minutes to check out Adam’s video and share their thoughts on how we can all help.  I think this is something our community here is really ideally suited to address and play a part in.

Some other highlights from the week include Maura Smale’s presentation and slides for her ongoing research on undergraduate study habits and Florian Lengyel’s awesome Occupy/Math post.

Till next week!