Anne Dalke's blog

Here's the passage from the Adrienne Rich poem that I mentioned (and mis-quoted!) @ the end of our discussion today, about the "permanence" of our taking a stand (in barometer) or in writing (especially on-line). It's from "North American Time," and seems (to me) to have resonances for voice, silence and vision:

"Everything we write
will be used against us
or against those we love.
These are the terms,
take them or leave them.
Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.
One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
glorify art as detachment
or torture of those we
did not love but also
did not want to kill

We move but our words stand
become responsible
and this is verbal privilege...."

At the end of class today, I asked each of you to write--in the "rheomode"--a description of "what was happening" (then, there). Here is what we wrote, and then read to one another...a collective poem:

delving converse deconstructing familiarity

crawling across the chairs are the ants

rustling trees make hearing hard

making this area cool, the shade

sitting, enjoying with intentions for learning

the blowing of the breeze is moving the trees and rustling papers being written on by students

talking is going on

air moving

rethinking thinking know

circulating

re-communionate

writing, intending to disorient

negotiation and re-negotiation and irre-negotiation

breathing

At the end of class today, (re-directed somewhat by Zoe!) I asked each of you to write--in the mode that Andrew Goatley describes as an "environmentally friendly alternative to goal-directed grammar" --a description of "what was happening," just then, in the room. Here is what we wrote, and then read to one another (it gives me shivers!):

Talking takes place.
Contemplation and thinking are happening around.
The desks are in a circle.
Shining through the windows.
Silent thinking.
Thinking continues.
Air is moving and responding.
Writing and thinking are happening.
Thought happens. Written words voiced in speech.
Thinking in peace.
Pensively gaze, frown, then scribble.
Pens are rustling.
Mental contortion.
Beings pulsating in peacefulness.
A conversation is going on.

I now want to bring this (lovely, really lovely!) production of ours back into conversation with wanhong's provocative post about the difficulty of describing motion without matter. She reports that--although the discussion in her high school physics class was guided by the motto that "motion is eternal while stability is relative"--every time they studied motion, they diagrammed it using dots or squares to represent the object in motion.

Stepping off from that insight…how might we diagram this poem?
Are there objects (in motion) in it?
(Are they us, or our thoughts?)

(and what we will leave out!)

(and what we are leaving out!) in visiting our weekly "sit sites"...

Notifications: turns out we have 2 kinds:

a) One is using Google Feedburner; the link to it is here:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/12331
We are dependent on Google for this service, which is set up for daily emails,
for group posts only, NOT comments, which are treated differently.

b) Instructions for subscribing to comments are on the Help page:
Want to be notified by email when someone has commented on your posts?
Click on My Account, and then click on Edit. Change this setting:
(image here) and then click Save.

Our webmaster, Anne Dixon, can look up whether you are subscribed to either one
of these services, but she can't guarantee mail delivery ...

Timeouts: these are set to multiple hours, but sometimes the display isn't accurate.
You "might" have been logged in, put yourself and your computer to sleep, and returned.
All the cues that you are logged are still there--until you type something in and try
to save it, when you'll get an error message saying you're not logged in. So saving
drafts is up to you.

Hope this helps!
Anne

Okay, folks, I think I've found what we've (well, I've) been looking for (ta dah!):
a way that you can read the articles for this class (all your classes?) on your computer,
and annotate the electronic text, without having to print anything out.

These are the steps that worked for me:
1) download (the free) Adobe Reader X from http://www.adobe.com/products/reader.html
2) open up one of the pdfs assigned for class reading
3) The Comment & Markup toolbar doesn’t appear by default, so either
select View > Comment > Annotations, or click the Comment button in the Task toolbar.
This will make both the highlighting and the sticky notes functions available, so go to town!
4) There are tutorials on how to use other features @
 http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/site/misc/annotating.pdf
but, for now, these functionalities are enough for me!
Have fun--

Yours in the service of paper-less-ness
("I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues"),
A.

Okay, folks, I think I've found what we've (well, I've) been looking for (ta dah!):
a way that you can read the articles for this class (all your classes?) on your computer,
and annotate the electronic text, without having to print anything out.

These are the steps that worked for me:
1) download (the free) Adobe Reader X from http://www.adobe.com/products/reader.html
2) open up one of the pdfs assigned for class reading
3) The Comment & Markup toolbar doesn’t appear by default, so either
select View > Comment > Annotations, or click the Comment button in the Task toolbar.
This will make both the highlighting and the sticky notes functions available, so go to town!
4) There are tutorials on how to use other features @
 http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/site/misc/annotating.pdf
but, for now, these functionalities are enough for me!
Have fun--

Yours in the service of paper-less-ness
("I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues"),
A.

Okay, folks, I think I've found what we've (well, I've) been looking for (ta dah!):
a way that you can read the articles for this class (all your classes?) on your computer,
and annotate the electronic text, without having to print anything out.

These are the steps that worked for me:
1) download (the free) Adobe Reader X from http://www.adobe.com/products/reader.html
2) open up one of the pdfs assigned for class reading
3) The Comment & Markup toolbar doesn’t appear by default, so either
select View > Comment > Annotations, or click the Comment button in the Task toolbar.
This will make both the highlighting and the sticky notes functions available, so go to town!
4) There are tutorials on how to use other features @
 http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/site/misc/annotating.pdf
but, for now, these functionalities are enough for me!
Have fun--

Yours in the service of paper-less-ness
("I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues"),
A.