Grading papers, and trying to finish up one of my own to be given tomorrow, I take a short break and dip into a recent New Yorker. Here I read John Updike’s review of a new biography of Edith Wharton, and find this delectable bit from both authors:

Asked about the role of the unconscious in creating fiction, she sounds somewhat French, somewhat starchy, and quite sensible:

“I do not think I can get any nearer than this to the sources of my story-telling; I can only say that the process, though it takes place in some secret region on the sheer edge of consciousness, is always illuminated by the full light of my critical attention.”

End quote.

Perfect.

From the article in Fredericksburg.com:

At noon Friday, the University of Mary Washington will observe the statewide day of mourning declared by Gov. Timothy Kaine for the victims of the tragedy at Virginia Tech by creating a human “Chain of Hope” along Campus Walk starting at the bell tower. A moment of silence will be observed.

I just came back from this memorial. I need to say something.

At 11:55, I arrived at the site along with a colleague and a student. There was no chain of hope on the horizon that I could see. A sign pointed to an “admissions event.” A snackmobile was parked on the far sidewalk. People were walking back and forth, chatting under a bright warm sun.

I wondered if I had gotten the time or location wrong. To my left, I saw some women wearing orange clothing and orange ribbons. I asked one if I had come to the right place and time for the chain of hope. She said she thought so.

At 11:57, nothing had changed. People stood and milled about.

At 11:58, everything began to change.

At 11:59, a line had formed, stretching from the new bell tower as far as I could see down campus walk.

Then a woman said, “it’s noon, everyone.” Silence emerged from the sound of a second ago.

We stood holding hands in that silence. Photographers and videographers walked up and down, documenting the moment. We stood a long time. I sensed that none of us wanted to let go.

After what might have been five minutes, applause sounded all up and down the line, so that the chain need never break.

Something got to the core of me as I watched individual agency form itself into community in that minute between 11:58 and 11:59. I wish we could find and enact this affirmation every day, just because it is another day, and we are together.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

Many years ago my dear friend Robin told me about Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing. He quoted a particular passage he loved and thought I would too. He was right. I set it down here to share it with you and to save it for myself:

What about the student who is not good? Who will never write much? It is possible for a good teacher to get from that student one poem or one story that far exceeds whatever hopes the student had. It may be of no importance to the world of high culture, but it may be very important to the student. It is a small thing, but it is also small and wrong to forget or ignore lives that can use a single microscopic moment of personal triumph. Just once the kid with bad eyes hits a home run in an obscure sandlot game. You may ridicule the affectionate way he takes that day through a life drab enough to need it, but please stay the hell away from me.

Shannon over at Loaded Learning asked for a copy for her iPod, so here it is: a hi-res newly mastered mp3 of my one brief shining moment of low-level metro pop radio accomplishment: “My Favorite Town.”

Hard to believe it’s been two years since I first posted the tune. A lifetime ago in many respects.

For the truly insomniac:
I’m doing everything here except playing the drums. As Pete Townshend once put it, in a far more awesome context, a gynormous ego trip. I wrote and recorded the tune in 1990 on a Portastudio 244 in a spare bedroom in St. Johns Wood, Richmond. Drum machine: Alesis HR-16. Bass: 1972 Fender Jazz. Guitar: mid-80’s Fender Strat through various effects boxes. All instruments recorded directly through the mixing board (sounds that way, too). Vocals recorded through a Shure SM-57. Primary effects box: an Alesis Quadraverb. Also used: Alesis Microlimiter. 2007 Remastering in Sound Forge 8.

One day I should go back to the original multitracks to remaster the thing properly instead of continuing to tweak the version that came off the radio–that is, if the original 4-track cassette and the machine I recorded it on haven’t turned to dust.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.8MB)

InfoWorld has an interesting piece on the communications feeding into and out of yesterday’s tragedy at Virginia Tech. I’m not quite so optimistic about the good stuff always rising to the top, but the article makes several points worth considering–including the fact that everyone knows SMS is the best channel for mass communication to students in a time of emergency, though schools are regrettably slow to act on that knowledge. It wouldn’t be hard to set up an emergency cell phone registry. And it would be well worthwhile, in my view.

It’s not been widely reported, but students at Planet Blacksburg have been contributing their own brand of “citizen journalism” to the news of today’s horrific events at Virginia Tech. No, the site is not so polished as professional news organizations’; and yes, there’s undeniable value to the editing and fact-checking those organizations provide for their coverage–not to mention the expertise contributed by the professional writers and photographers they employ.

But there’s a human face to this tragedy that’s more clearly visible at Planet Blacksburg than at the professional sites I’ve visited, and there’s unique and significant value to the glimpses these Tech students are sharing with the rest of the world. The comments coming in from around that world make that value clear.

Here’s how Planet Blacksburg defines itself:

“Planet Blacksburg is a student-run new media organization striving to provide content to the New River Valley and beyond.”

Tonight, that “beyond” has grown far past what anyone could have expected–or desired, under the circumstances. Our thoughts and prayers are with the students, faculty, and staff at Virginia Tech, and with their families.

Catch of the day:

“I consider that beside Your site there is future!”

Well, I’d certainly like to think so too.

I could say it’s a meme worth studying, and probably it is, but the truth is that I just enjoy looking at the way these things are constructed, and the results I get back. This one is Alice‘s fault, as she led me to it.

What poetry form am I? Read on.

Me and Dante. I feel better already. Even more terrifying is how much sense this diagnosis makes as I consider it.

Now back to our normal programming.

I just popped over to take a nostalgic look at the EdVidWiki for our NMC Online Video Throwdown and was delighted to see some new contributions, several of them from my film students. One of those students offers a by-the-way comment that I can’t resist quoting:

“This one blows my mind, which is why I’ve decided it’s inherently educational.”

Works for me.

Brian’s got a very interesting post on Abject Learning concerning Twitter, Tumblr, Tumblog, and other new hyperconnected picocontent generators.

I left this comment, but it grew so long that I figured I’d just post it here.

Two quick and quixotic thoughts:

Nicholas of Cusa argued that it would be philosophically impossible to distinguish between a top rotating at infinite speed and a top standing still. In some respects, once hyperconnectivity exceeds a certain threshold, it not only has diminishing returns, but begins to turn into an accelerating disconnection. It’s a paradox, like alterity–but George has already heard some of what I think about connectivism.

No, I don’t know what that “certain threshold” is. I’m just musing about the value of disconnection, perhaps because every disconnection reveals other connections that may have gotten lost or overwhelmed or drowned out. But of course the answer is not to pursue hyperdisconnection, either, as many do who resist life online.

Second: not too long ago I read a Scientific American article in which cognitive psychologists investigated the formation of symbol-competence in children. What did it take for a child to learn that a picture of a box of popcorn would not spill popcorn into his lap if she held the picture upside down and shook it? There were two answers. One was that the competence was age-dependent. The other was that a certain inhibitory function had to be learned. In other words, there needed to be a gap between the visual stimulation and the motor response (and, presumably, the cerebration) so that the kid would not jump to the wrong conclusion about the picture (it’s a box of popcorn!) and grab it but would have time to come to the right conclusion (it’s a picture of a box of popcorn).

It seems to me that the next layer of thought in this whole shebang will have to account for connectivity, barriers, inhibition, and instant access as multidimensional, dynamic, and dynamically related (and necessary) ingredients of a complex model of cognition and education.