At Home in the Upper Valley

Winter – Finally!

ap — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:19:24 +0000

Vote Here – Vote Early – Vote Once

ap — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:10:26 +0000

The usual springtime primary election happens before winter has hit. New Hampshire moved the primary election up as far as it could to maintain first-in-the-nation election status this year. First of the first were the nine residents of Dixville Notch

The People’s Library

ap — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:22:57 +0000

Occupy Wall Street has established a library by you and for you!
Why the Occupy Wall Street Movement Has Libraries

The People’s Library homepage
OWS Library YouTube channel
OWS Library Twitter
email address owspeopleslibrary@gmail.com
Facebook Occupy Wall Street Library

INSIDE Higher Ed Guerrilla Librarians in Our Midst
The People’s Library, Your Library catalog
Occupy Boston has a Library and other library sites are being added to the OWS library website.
And if there is not an Occupy library near you, try submitting a reference question to Radical Reference
You can send book donations to UPS Store Re: Occupy Wall Street, Attn: The People’s Library, 118A Fulton St. #205, New York, NY 10038

News about the OWS library after the encampment was broken down on Tuesday 11/15.

A library research guide on Occupy Wall Street and other Social Movements

The Occupy Dartmouth library

OWS Library Destruction video 11/15/11

The OWS library regrows in Manhattan

Is Babar an orphan?

ap — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 13:11:28 +0000

I have a category of bookmarks I call Society and Culture. Usually links that get tagged this way for my use are political in nature, or social occurrences that likely would not or could not have occurred in another era. Examples of the former are the recent report from the New York Times titled One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring, and another NYT’s article The Limping Middle Class.

Today though, I added a bookmark in this group to a story about Babar, that grey elephant I loved so much as a child. In reality, Babar’s reality that is, Barbar is an orphan. And in this time in our world, Barbar and other published works in a certain nether-land are about to become orphan works.

This story is about orphan works in the publishing world. And Barbar is about to become an orphan again, or at least was on the list to become an orphan work. Given that Barbar’s heirs (the author that is) are still very much alive, The Story of Barbar has been pulled from a proposed orphan works list. Is this really fair to authors and publishers? That a work still in-copyright but for which rights holders cannot be found can be declared an orphan work with a limited time frame. Perhaps an author or publisher wishes to remain anonymous or unreachable for personal reasons. Can or should their works really become “public”? Maybe more works should be declared orphan works so that more people can have access to and enjoy them.

My reptile brain needs help – Enter Vitamin R

ap — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 23:44:13 +0000

I am using this Winter break to put a brake on some of my habits and focus in a different way. Vitamin R is a Mac OSX collection of tools to help manage attention, maintain motivation, and Get Things Done (GTD). Highlights of this simple to use tool include voice prompts, built-in white noise, and planned breaks! Tell me what tools you use to Get Things Done.

Cram 9

ap — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:07:10 +0000

One of my poems has been selected for publication in Cram Volume 9: Poetry In The First, better known as Cram 9. Selected for publication was my poem titled ‘Submission’. I was preparing a letter with questions I had about submitting poetry to a journal. Some of the guidelines for publication seemed unclear to me. Here is an example…and I wonder how you would react to knowing that a journal gives notice that they do not respond to entries unless they plan to publish your poetry. I wanted to be clear with other venues I submit to because some do not accept simultaneous submissions. Anyway, instead of sending off my letter to clarify the submission policy, I wrote a poem, and submitted it elsewhere, to Cram 9!

Advance copies of Cram 9 will be given away, FREE, to people attending The Printers’ Ball at Columbia College, 1104 S. Wabash Ave. The official release party and reading will be on Sat. Aug 14, 7 PM at Cafe Ballou, 939 N. Western Ave. Chicago. I’ll be attending a Perseid Meteor Shower Party in rural VT that eve and will not be able to participate in the reading…darn!

Be sure to check out either of these literary events.

Poetry reading filming for CATV

ap — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 05:16:10 +0000

A number of us from the poetry writers group that meets at the Norwich VT Public Library gathered yesterday in Sharon VT. The day was hot, flowers were blooming, and words were spinning. We were filmed for a show due to be broadcast on our local community access TV, CATV. Luckily I didn’t throw out my TV yet, just mothballed it. I’m going to want to view this show!

Do you ever read privacy or licensing blurbs?

ap — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:35:06 +0000

…this one from an analytics tool for twitter search says that you retain ownership of your content, but give over rights to SNS Analytics http://w.sns.ly/in every way they have imagined, or not thought up yet…GEEZ..

“While you own all of your own User-Generated Content, you hereby grant us, our licensees of the Applications and business partners a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use and exploit your User-Generated Content for any purpose.

..you hereby grant us, our licensees of the Applications and business partners the right to publicly exhibit, display, reproduce, store, distribute, alter or make other use of videos, photographs, images or likenesses of you, or in which you may be included with others.

..you consent to such uses in **any medium now known or developed in the future**, including photographs, video, slide shows, Internet images or other mediums, means of storage or distribution. You agree that such images and likenesses of you can be used with or without your name. **You give this permission without any limitation whatsoever**”

Waste Reduction

ap — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:07:54 +0000

My college is implementing an enhanced recycling plan. All trash cans have been removed from our offices. Many have also been removed from our public areas as well. We are a full service library. We receive a lot of junk mail that needs to be discarded. We have a print station for students and they do not always leave with their printouts.

I wanted to discard a piece of junk mail. After I removed the plastic wrapper I put the paper in one of our old and large paper recycling bins that was hidden and has not been removed….and I’m hoping that we can keep it.

So my next task was to throw out the plastic wrapper. It sort of fit in a small plastic container meant for our real waste. Some of this must be thought out further. What works for an individual office space will quickly spill over in our public areas, even for recyclables.

Patience please, this blog will be up again ASAP!

ap — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 01:33:04 +0000

So you may ask, what’s taking so long to rebuild this blog? Well, with a little help from my son, I got my blog up and running again. And then I was so happy with the new features of WordPress, that I just went on and on changing this and that…until I got spammed with the ‘Silence is Golden’ blog configuration spam. Short story is that my blog went blank and the shortest path without a reliable backup, was to rebuild …and that is still in progress. Many old posts and new ones are yet to be ported over….again

What’s the take home message here. Friends should not let friends run old blog sites. It’s much better to upgrade now and then.