• Take a Summit Brewing Co. tour (I’ve heard the brewery tours are awesome)
• Try a Jucy Lucy
  
• Take the Schell Brewery Tour
• Go to a Timberwolves game
• Go to a Wild Game (love hockey!)
• Go to a Gopher hockey game
• Go to a Gopher football game (I may not be a football fan, but I should go to at least one game)
• Go to a Vikings game
• Visit the Minnesota History Center
• Go to a Gopher basketball game
• Visit the North Shore
• Photograph eagles by Lake Pepin
• Visit the Russian Art Museum
• Go to a Saints game
• Go to a Lynx game
• See a show at the Guthrie
• Photograph the Grand Rounds
• Go to a Twins game
• Visit James J. Hill House
• The Grand Meander
• St. Paul Winter Carnival
• Wabasha Street Caves
• Pavek Museum of Broadcasting
• A concert at the the state fair
• Mill City Farmers Market
• Minnesota Zoo
• Make lefse
• Schaar’s Bluff
• Tour the state capitol
• Go to the Walker Art Center
• Renaissance Festival (did this!)
• Mill City Museum (did this!)
• History Museum
• Bell Natural History Museum
• GLBT Pride Festival
• Cinco de Mayo in St. Paul
• Saint Patties day in St. Paul
• Beach Bash
• Minnesota Orchestra
• Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra
• Fort Snelling
• Paddleboat on the Mississippi
• Minnesota Opera
• Visit Duluth (did this)
• Science Museum of Minnesota
• Visit the Kensington Runestone
• Holidazzle
• Visit the Boundary Waters
  
• Jay Cooke State Park
• Gooseberry Falls
• Two Harbors
• F. Scott Fitzgerald’s house
• Visit International Falls and Voyageurs National Park
• Traverse both the Minneapolis and St. Paul skyways
• Visit Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi River

I’ll add new items as they come up.

I was on Netflix, cruising around, browsing for new DVDs to add to my queue, when I came across the blurb for the movie Bubble. I tend to like quirky, off-beat, independent type films. Then I noticed that this film is by Steven Soderbergh. Not necessarily in the so-called indie genre then. But it has that kind of a feel. I read a bit further.

Set in a crumbling Ohio town that revolves around the local doll factory, Steven Soderbergh’s offbeat film follows the antics of townsfolk turned detectives who try to unravel a murder mystery — and end up discovering a bizarre love triangle. In sharp contrast to his high-budget Ocean’s Eleven remake, Soderbergh uses low-cost digital camerawork and employs no-name actors in this quirky small-town drama.

Of course I’ve heard the term “no-name” used before to indicate someone who is not famous, who does not have a specific box office draw. However, it really bothered me. I started to really think about it, maybe even obsess over it a little.

How do the actors, Dustin James Ashley, Katherine Beaumier, Joyce Brookhart, Ross Clegg, Decker Moody, Leonora K. Hornbeck, Debbie Doebereiner, Misty Dawn Wilkins, K. Smith, and Daniel R. Christian like being called “no-name?” Beyond that, do they see themselves as “no-names?” Isn’t the fact that they have these names a direct conflict with the whole notion of being a “no-name?”

Is it belittling or disparaging to say that someone is a no-name? Don’t we remove some of their identity when we do this?

I wasn’t sure if this was the studio’s official release or not, so I went to the official movie site. It doesn’t actually say anything and the only link that works directed me to Best Buy where I could buy the movie. They write

Steven Soderbergh followed up his slick, star-studded sequel, Ocean’s Twelve, with Bubble, a small-town drama about workers in a doll factory, played by a cast of unknowns.

A cast of unknowns seems to be a better choice than no-names because it’s probably closer to the truth (although unknown is tricky, too, isn’t it? I mean, who are they unknown to? Certainly not family, friends, agents, managers, one another, etc.).

Ok. They are both discouraging terms when describing the cast. They seem like dirty words in some way. Isn’t there something better? Ingenue? A cast of talented actors? Why do they have to point this out at all? Is it because Soderbergh is known for his big blockbuster movies with casts of well-known actors like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and others? The writers are making not-so-subtle comparisons, and I don’t see the point. The targeted audiences for the two films seem to be very different. The styles of the movies are different. If you’re going to compare the types of casts (especially when the audience of Bubble would probably not care who is in the movie), then it seems like a pointless waste of valuable blurb real estate.

It’s almost as if the writers of these blurbs were thinking of a way to sell this movie to an Ocean’s Twelve audience, trying to pull them in, without really thinking about the audience, a more indie-oriented audience, they could have. It’s ok to appeal to various audiences. But it’s not effective to do it in a way that divides your audiences. It certainly doesn’t seem to have been effective for the underrated Bubble and the no-name unknowns who were cast to act in it.

… and I still miss him as if it were yesterday. Each morning I wake up, and this photo greets me from the wall across from my bed. A friend got me Walking With Zeke, by Chris Clarke (of Creek Running North fame). Clarke writes

And he was sometimes taken for granted, an occupational hazard of being so steadfast, so trustworthy. While I never for a moment in more than 15 years forgot how much I loved my dog, I count myself as lucky that I came to realize, late in his life, just how profoundly he had affected me.

I had lunch with three women today, all dog owners and lovers, who spoke with such care about the dogs in their lives. Then one stopped, leaned toward me, and said, “Tell me about your dog. I know you lost him recently. I want to know about him.” I struggled not to let tears well.

This is the plain truth: Dakota irritated me beyond reason when he begged for food, when he pulled trash out of the garbage cans, when he ate too much and then threw up. But I wouldn’t trade any of those things for the joys he brought me. For the unconditional love, the friendship, the listening. I can’t tell you how many times he would lay his head on me when I cried, getting close to me, almost as if he knew I needed to be loved. Or how I would wake up with sore hips because he laid so close to me in bed that I couldn’t move — and how I didn’t mind those sore hips because it meant I was loved. Or how he made me laugh when we played tug-of-war with his favorite toys, or when he burrowed through the snow, popping up like a “whack-the-mole” 20 feet later, with snow on his nose.

I still love my boy. He taught me so much about myself and about love, just when I needed it.

It’s been a rough year, Dakota. I’ve missed loving on you. I’ve missed talking to you. I don’t cry every time I talk about you anymore. Instead, I smile, and remember, and love you all the more.

Flash forward to November 2008. I am on a mailing list for PhD students in my program. Our director of graduate studies, Bernadette Longo, sent out an email about a class, WRIT 5112, she will be teaching in the spring. She wrote,

This course focuses on the theory and practice of information design. For the first half of the class, we will read about information design, information architecture, and related issues pertaining to this course topic. In the second half of the class, we will work with First Step Initiative, a non-profit microfinance organization working with women entrepreneurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo (www.firststepinitiative.org). We will work with FSI and its founder, Chingwell Mutombu, to design cell phone based social networking tools to connect people in the US (and at the U) with people in Congo, as well as connect FSI entrepreneurs and staff with each other in Congo.

After reading her synopsis, I wrote to her immediately. While I don’t need an information design course, I was interested in the subject matter. It has been my lifelong dream (since I was in high school, at least) to work in an environment or on a project that will make women’s lives better. I gushed. I was very enthusiastic and nearly insinuated myself on her to be a TA in her course. I wanted to be a part of this. In fact, I was worried that I had gone overboard, but Bernadette, being the fabulous person she is, recognized my enthusiasm for real desire to be a part of something wonderful and said she’d she what she could do to help me be a part of the project (I can’t actually take the class because I am already registered for the classes I need).

Since then, Bernadette and I have spoken a bit more in depth about this course. Ms. Mutumbu sounds like an amazing person and I was finally able to have my first glimpse of her in a video produced for this course.

While all of this was going on, I was looking at some websites of activist photographers (one is in Chile, another in Afghanistan) who show atrocities going on in different parts of the world. That’s when I stumbled on Condition Critical, a site that discusses the realities of war in the eastern part of Congo (DRC).

I had been aware of the issues that affected women in the Kivu provinces of  DRC. As Wikipedia states (my emphases)

The war situation has made the life of women more precarious. Violence against women seems to be perceived by large sectors of society to be normal. In July 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross expressed concern about the situation in eastern DRC.  A phenomenon of ‘pendulum displacement’ has developed, where people hasten at night to safety. According to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence, Yakin Ertürk, who toured eastern Congo in July 2007, violence against women in North and South Kivu included “unimaginable brutality”. “Armed groups attack local communities, loot, rape, kidnap women and children and make them work as sexual slaves,” Ertürk said.

While this violence is mostly restricted to the east, all Congolese women struggle for a sense of place, ownership, and safety. Ms. Mutombu is making a difference in the lives of women, one at a time. I would be honored to be a part of this.

cogdogblog recently blogged about goingtorain, the website that gives you a weather forecast in the simplest form possible. Is it going to rain? In my case, it was snow (and below the “yes,” it states “there will be snow today with a high of 27°f in saint paul, mn.”

What I love about this site is its simplicity. I’m constantly talking to my students about simplicity and context. It’s easy. Is it going to rain? In this case it means “will there be precipitation?” Yes. Simple. Easy. What is the context of that “yes?” Is it going to rain? Yes.

So what happens when you take a serious scene from the movie Downfall and put subtitles to it that change the context of the entire scene? How do we view the scene in the context of the subtitles?

For the record, the weeping women and the comment of “There, there. I hear he only shoots in jpg anyway” did crack me up.

I teach a Technical and Professional Writing course for juniors and seniors in disciplines across the curriculum. We discuss and practice writing in many different forms: correspondence, instructional, data analysis, and others. In the process of this course, I use email entirely for correspondence outside of the classroom. I expect return emails to be done in a formalized manner: salutation, body, and a proper closing. It is tiresome to get emails that are just attachments, or that don’t contain the name of who is writing me (this is especially bothersome early in the semester when I don’t know the names and email addresses of the students yet). My students are great about it and give me wonderful emails (my instructions were to be conversational in approach because we are spending an entire semester together and this allows me to get to know the students better).

It seems, however, that not all students are receptive to this type of writing. In fact, Historiann’s experience was downright awful. The exchange that really amuses me is

Thank you for responding, but at the same time it is not your duty to counsel others on how to conduct themselves via email. I was never rude or inappropriate in any manner. I’ve had many professors and others I’m not well acquainted with who email me in the same fashion. There are many customs and practices and no single one is correct. You are the first person I’ve had an email exchange with that feels the need to reprimand me about email etiquette.

I’m a 33 year old man who doesn’t need to be told how to conduct myself. I do just fine. Hopefully, in the future you will be more relaxed with not only students, but any person who may be interested in talking to you about history. You will find that you shut out a lot of people in life by conducting yourself in this manner.

While it is true that there are many customs, there are also appropriate guidelines that we should follow when approaching someone to ask for assistance and whom we don’t know. In addition, perhaps it is important to remember that formality is a condition of a relationship. I write to plenty of friends and family without a proper salutation (I almost always close with my first initial — lowercase d), but I’m also very cognizant of my audience. When I write to a new professor, I always greet them with Dr. or Professor so-and-so. It is not until we’ve developed a relationship do I even ask how they would prefer to be addressed — even in email.

I believe my students deserve the same respect. I email them with a salutation, body, and a closing with my full first name — unless it is an ongoing conversation, and then I will often do without the salutation (and realize they may as well).

If I were to write an email to my husband’s pillow (if I had a husband and he had a pillow like this), on the other hand, I doubt it would get any respect from me. It may just get the trash.

That being said, I think that people often take advantage of creative commons licenses. People don’t read them, corporations ignore the restrictions based on certain licenses (mine, for instance, is attribution, no derivatives, no commercial use) and freely use works that are clearly not meant for their use (which really bothers me because they are making money off of someone else’s work, but not giving back to the artist to make sure that more works can be developed).

Now, if someone asks me for permission to use my photographs in a mashup or to do things with it, all I ask for is a copy of their created work. I will usually give permission to other artists and to not-for-profits. I like sharing my work. It’s not what I do for a living, and I want others to enjoy it.

Is it idealistic to hope that others will ask permission? Or that a shared commerce is a better commerce? If someone makes a living off of their work, that’s one thing. I can understand full copyright restrictions and recommend that their works be registered with the Library of Congress (or their country’s equivalent) to protect their full rights. But if one isn’t a full-time artist, making a living from the sales of her works, what is the harm in sharing them freely?

Is it a scary proposition to share like that? Are we so commercially oriented that sharing makes us feel like we’re missing out on something or that we’re being taken?

Personally, I hate money. It’s a necessary evil, but I hate it. I wish we could barter for goods. I’ll edit your resume if you buy me a few meals. I’ll create your website for groceries. Each person gets what they need out of an exchange, and it’s a nice way to live.

This is really a film about identity: the identity of a President, a town, the people of the town, and the visitors. The most obvious, of course, is the identity of the President. Look closer though and you’re going to see how a town’s identity changes because of the historic events that take place within it. You’re going to see how the locals shape their identities around not only the town, but the events that occur within that town. The visitors change not only the identity of the town, the people, and the President, but we see such a small piece of them that their identity is set up to establish the idea of “other” within the town.

So much of our personal identities are constructed from where we’ve lived, how we’ve lived, who we call “our people,” and other factors. I think that this movie is an excellent look into that phenomenon, in a microcosm sort of way.

It’s free. It’s online. It’s a great piece of documentary work.

They are smart people, those students.

I do care who wins, of course. But it’s not my job as an instructor to influence students who take my class to vote one way or the other. It is my job to encourage them to be good citizens.

My job as a good blogger, a good online friend, is to encourage those of you who are U.S. citizens and registered to vote to do so. So get out there. Stand in that long line, make your voice heard. It matters. Don’t think it doesn’t. Too many recent elections have been lost because people have forgotten how much their voice matters.

Vote. Please. It’s not a privilege everyone has and we’re fortunate to have it.

Ever since I’ve gotten here, I’ve been hearing about this phenomenon called “Minnesota Nice.” According to Wikipedia:

Minnesota nice is the stereotypical behavior of Minnesota residents described as hospitality and courtesy to others. The term is also sometimes used in a derogatory way, to connote a sort of smiling stubbornness, forced politeness, false humility or passive aggressive hostility.

I was speaking to some of my students, asking them about this behavior. They laughed. They said that the Twin Cities area is not renowned for its Minnesota Nice behavior.

This behavior does not translate into Minnesota politics either. Not at all. I’ve seen some aggregious political ads having lived in California (Arizona politics doesn’t come close to these levels of aggressiveness), but I’ve never seen such mean-spirited attack ads, especially in the Senate race.

Here in Minnesota, there are several candidates (Charles Aldrich (L), Dean Barkley (IP), Norm Coleman (R), Al Franken (DFL), and James Niemackl (C)) running for the U.S. Senate seat that is currently held by first-term Senator Norm Coleman (who replaced Dean Barkley, who replaced the late Paul Wellstone). While Barkley has been a part of the debates, it is really the race between Coleman and Franken (yes, that Al Franken) that has been the worst. This summer, the first ad that I remember seeing was against Franken and included accusations of being involved in pornography. While Coleman has suspended his attack ads and has tried to portray a compassionate, family man who understands our hardships, the ads have not stopped (fueled by money from the Republican National Committee, the National Chamber of Commerce, and others). Coleman has also been attacked with low-blows (but by most accounts, not nearly as often, as harshly, or as personally as Franken).

So imagine my concern when John McCain visited the Twin Cities a few weeks ago and the people attending this rally talked about “being scared” and Obama being “an Arab.” McCain’s response wasn’t much better. He states, “No ma’am. No ma’am. He’s a decent family man citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with.” Ummm..those of Arab decent can’t be decent family men and citizens (of somewhere)?

I actually respect Senator McCain. I wouldn’t ever vote for him because our belief systems are not compatible at all, but I do think that he believes that he can give this country what it needs and that he does care about what happens to the people of this country. However, when a major political candidate makes a statement like that, it makes me wonder what he really believes.

All of this in Minnesota, where Minnesota Nice is supposed to be the acceptable behavior (the positive Minnesota Nice, not the derogatory aspect of it).

Where is the nice?