March 2016

There were 2 posts published in March 2016.

rabbit hole

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I’ve been doing some slow pokey updates around here and realizing that even though I’ve been thinking I’ve been at this for fifteen+ years, this year really rounds out the twentieth year I’ve been writing stuff down here. During that time I’ve had three (at least) different content management systems and only two web hosts which is something of a miracle. I’ve lived in six different places (seven if you count #dadshouse) and driven eight cars in that time period. Went cross country about ten times. The last few years have seen a lot of that leveling out. And then there’s some stuff I just can’t remember too well. This site has always been an outboard brain in some ways, reminding me about things I had forgotten or maybe misremembered. So giving the place a tune-up–just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, made sure things were still showing up in Google, added a search to the sidebar–is one more small way of keeping my own brain a bit more together.

The day-to-day here is about the same. Flossing and meditation continue and seem to be helping. I got some sort of conference crud which means my sinus situation has downgraded to “again with the sinus rinsing” but it’s mostly okay. The longer days, some of them even sunny, have raised everyone’s spirits and it truly is a rising-tides-lifts-all-boats situation.

I’ll be heading down to Massachusetts to participate in a librarian panel at Hampshire with some other librarians. The situation morphed from a “Hey can you come down and be on a panel for an hour?” into a “We’ll give you a one hour tour, then a one hour interview with our Communications team, then a one hour break, then a one hour panel, then a dinner with everyone…” and as much as I’m looking forward to the panel, I’m also feeling a bit bait-and-switched since I heard about their million dollar Mellon grant (they are reimbursing my mileage for the trip). Which just reminds me why I asked Hampshire to take me off of their mailing lists in the first place, a decision I’ve never really regretted. Liked the place just fine, but feel they don’t owe me anything and I don’t owe them anything. It will be interesting to go back. I’ve been on campus a few times since the bulk of my friends graduated but never for more than an hour or two. If you’re in the area, here’s the announcement. Free and open to the public.

Return to DC, also I made a thing

Briony Morrow-Cribbs from Christopher Schwarz on Vimeo.

Video detailing the work of Briony Morrow-Cribbs on the etchings she made for The Anarchist's Design Book by Lost Art Press. Filmed at The Putney School, Putney Vermont.

Music: Red Favorite/Jeremy Pisani

Film: Jessamyn West, James Poolner and Elizabeth West

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I’m heading back to DC next week for the Computers in Libraries conference. If you see me please say hello.

This is a thing I made a few weeks ago. I posted it to social media on a Friday afternoon which is sort of a dead zone and didn’t get a lot of feedback on it. So I wanted to mention: I made this. I’m really proud of it and it was a lot of work relative to pushing memes around the internet so I hope you’ll watch all six minutes of it and I hope you like it.

It’s a little promo movie, a small paid gig, about a copperplate etching artist who did the illustrations for my cousin’s most recent book The Anarchist’s Design Book. I did it with my mom and Jim and with the very pleasant cooperation of the artist Briony Morrow-Cribbs. I put up a little photo set of pictures here.

I spent all day Tuesday at Town Meeting and then the next eight hours staffing the polls and counting votes. For all of my very serious beliefs that electoral politics at a national level are devoid of integrity (as much as I like Bernie) I still like watching local people try to work out their local issues by all getting together and talking about them. Not sure if I will write up a thing or not, but some photos are here.