At the Pratt Library

Hey, all
The Enoch Pratt Free Library (Central Branch on Cathedral) is having a display of art from old Golden Books. It starts on March 2. This is a traveling exhibition and will be there until May.

It should be quite interesting, and for some of us, a lovely trip back into our childhoods. I still have some of my Golden Books.

The library is supposed to get a wi-fi cafe (you'll be able to buy coffee, too) on the first floor soon. It is a nice idea, but I am picturing lots of books with coffee stains. Bank of America paid for it, and it should help the library financially. Pratt is a local treasure, so if you haven't gotten to the central branch, here's a great excuse. Well, two excuses actually.

BTW My Naming Contest

In the middle of all the other stuff this semester, I am trying to start
a troupe of people interested in reading their work at a variety of
venues. Probably for no money right now but maybe down the road...

Anyway, if you are interested, let me know. Also, I would like a nice
creative name for the group.

Prize is your choice of overpriced but delicious drink at Starbucks. If you
are not a fan of the Empire de Coffee, I can substitute the legal vice of your
choice.

So far, I have not had anything come to mind except silly names:

The Underpaid Poets and Prose Writers
Warm Play
True - Ba - Doors
True -Badorables
A Bunch of People with Scary Job Prospects
The Perks
Nothing to Do on a Friday
The UB Steps

You get the idea -- I'm really lame with the names! Help.

Death Penalty

If anyone is interested in writing a letter in support of abolishing the death penalty in Maryland, here are bullet points from Amnesty International.

You can write to your state reps or send a letter to a local newspaper. I also have a detailed PDF with stats etc. I can send it to you, if you are interested.

thanks

Please use the following information to get started on your letter:
• If you are responding to an article, name the title, author and date.
• As a Maryland resident, call on Maryland legislators to vote for SB 279 and support repeal in 2009.
• Mention the flaws in capital punishment that the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment's hearings revealed:
• - It does not deter crime
• - It costs much more than the alternatives
• - It drags out the suffering of victims’ families, rather than bringing them “closure”
• - It risks taking innocent lives - mistakes in death penalty cases cannot be reversed once an execution has taken place.
• Reiterate that Maryland is better off without the death penalty, and that repeal will allow Maryland to develop policies that are actually effective at preventing crime or helping victims’ families.
• Keep it short, 150-250 words.
• Sign the letter with your name, city.

RE: Garden again

I received an email from Stuart Moulthrop He referred me to: http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/forkingpaths.html.

Also, the CD-ROM material from _New Media Reader_ may be available for download from MIT Press.

Or you can go directly to his Victory Garden.

Funny

Whoops!

Here is the Garden hypertext. I clicked incorrectly the first time I was here.
Click on the words in the text and then on the highlighted phrases. It's %*^&ing confusing, and

I think you need to drop acid to fully appreciate it. Unfortunately, all I have is Nightquil.

So I Am Still Trying to Read Garden of Forking Paths

Hey
I found Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta's World Literature Website,
or as I like to call it The Garden of Forking Paths for Dummies.
Still on the hunt for a good hypertext example and the Cliff
Notes.

FYI, I read some of Borges' Imaginary Creatures stories
last semester. Check them out. Very cool.

Here's a really nice website on Borges.

I'm So Hyper I Could Text

Wow, I know why "The Garden of Forking Paths" is so familiar. Stuart Moulthrop wrote about it and its importance to hypertext, and he is

a faculty member at UB

and

married to my hypermedia teacher (Nancy Kaplan)

He even taught the class when she had to go out of town. Really nice guy. Here he is .

I found this out by going to a confusing looking site (have a drink before you click on the words) but if you click on commentary,you're find an article that explains why it seems to Garden lends itself to hypertext manipulation. Enjoy -- it seems UB has played a part in all this.

BTW, When you're reading offline, do you find myself sometimes stopping to look up words, cultural references, and the like. I have seen stories and articles posted so that you can click on a term and be taken to a definition/explanation. Actually that is a built in feature of the Kindle; as you are reading, you can highlight a word and get a definition, etc. However I think that might become exhausting after a time. On the other hand, very useful, if you are reading something where lots of tech or foreign terms are tossed about.

Plus it inhibits the desire to go "look it up." Looking up miscelleouus information often leads to wonderfully serendipitous events -- you look up the word, miasma, and discover interesting words around it. You look for quotes with the word and discover a writer you never heard of. Obviously some hypertext nurtures our desire to be led down the garden of forking paths. But in hypertext, aren't the paths preordained links one to another. Won't everyone will discover the same destination and see the same scenery along the way?

Coming Up Empty, Storywise

So I finally get around to checking the homework. Oh, no, I was supposed to actually do some research. Instead I screwed around with putting video on the blog, reading posts, and trying to decide what music to have. Springsteen or Fall Out Boy, Beethoven or Beyonce, Panic at the Disco or Silver Seas.

So I hunted around on Google. Looked at that Choose Your Own Adventure deal. Not much there. But I took Meagan's suggestion and looked at We Are Stories . Now that is really great. Check out Charles Cummings, the 21 Steps. Also check out Cummings himself. He is fine!

Also saw a few sites with erotic stories. No, I didn't check them out. Erotica just makes me sleepy.

Continuing the search. I suspect some good stuff will be on here for kids.

Oh, and the place where the Screenactors Guild Reads -- also very cool.