jeromemartin.ca

Why read blogs? Why write them?

I learned about a session on blogging given by Richard Parent (Department of English, University of Vermont) two days ago at UVM, from a blog written by Paul Martin (from the same Department at UVM) yesterday.
Richard has posted the material from the session on his blog Digital Digression v2.0.
It's a well-written, comprehensive and compelling argument for both reading and writing blogs. Thanks, Richard.

The Cozy Season

Winter has hit Edmonton early this year. We've had a lot of snow and temperatures that have dipped to -32 C, a new record for November. However, we're a resilient lot and we take some pleasure at being able to survive and even enjoy this type of weather.
Yesterday was one of the coldest days. I stopped by Jeffery's Café and Wine Bar – my favourite 'third place' for meetings and work – to prepare for a meeting, to relax and organize my thoughts for the presentation I would make.
I sat near the fireplace, ordered a bowl of clam chowder and a cup of coffee and read the book review section in the Sunday edition of the New York Times.
Jeffery's has free wi-fi. I checked my e-mail using my laptop, sent a note to someone in England who gave a favourable review of Cappuccino U, and then finally moved on to the work at hand. No phone calls. No interruptions. Just a pleasant environment with interesting people at the other tables.
Winter keeps us inside, at least on days like these. It may be cold, but we don't have to cut the lawn, wash the car or cut the hedge.
Find a café like Jeffery's. Then let it snow.

E-Textbooks for Some Texas Schools

Students in some Texas school districts will be able to leave their Mt. Everest backpacks at home as their schools adopt e-books instead of textbooks, according to a report in The Dallas Morning News. They will also have textbooks that will be current, not years out-of-date.
The next question is: Are textbooks of any kind needed? Can teachers use websites, podcasts and blogs to provide course material instead of relying on specific 'textbooks'?

Documenting Photographs

Recently I've been writing about my photographs, where I made them, who is in them and where the prints and negatives are stored. While I have printed and mounted contact prints of virtually all of my negatives and have written brief notes about them I have not always included complete information. This is a process of discovery and recovery, an opportunity of seeing and interpreting my work again.
I'm using my journals to confirm the times and places of some photographs.
My mother, our family's first documentary photographer, often wrote names and dates on the borders of the black and white prints which were printed for her by a lab in Winnipeg. In some cases she wrote on the back of the photos with pencil. However, she did not write a journal and never wrote about the photographs or being a photographer. She said 'I'm not a photographer: I just took photos of my kids.'
In examining our familys' photographs we want to know the identities of all of the people in them. I have a photograph in my collection of a small town baseball team. The previous owner of the photograph used a ballpoint pen to write names and to draw arrows on the photograph in order to identify his father and the rest of the team. Archivists would cringe at the sight of this photo, but it tells a story of not only the ball team but also of how photographs are often viewed: 'This is a picture of George and Frank etc.' I would never draw on a photograph, but I love this photo/document.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but documenting our photographs and our photography helps us and others to understand our work.

Selling Literature to Go With Your Lifestyle - New York Times

Selling Literature to Go With Your Lifestyle - New York Times:
"With book sales sagging — down 2.6 percent as of August over the same period last year, according to the Association of American Publishers — publishers are pushing their books into butcher shops, carwashes, cookware stores, cheese shops, even chi-chi clothing boutiques where high-end literary titles are used to amplify the elegant lifestyle they are attempting to project."
We who spend time in bookstores and who shop for books online often assume that everyone else does the same: but not everyone has ready access to bookstores and not everyone who does is interested in going into a bookstore or shopping online.
Selling books in other venues makes sense: it's been done for years but, according to this article, publishers and retailers are becoming more creative in their marketing.