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@claritysoln-blog
Library Cards of the Past
To celebrate library card sign up month weâve gathered library cards from our past. The oldest card is the one on the top from the 1890s. The one on the bottom is a 1968 application and card from Hennepin County Library.
Lovely!
15 Words You Never Knew Came From Literature (via Electric Lit)
Bill Lishman, environmentalist and photographer of Fly Away Home fame, captures the beauty of an imperiled jewel of Ontarioâs landscape in a coffee table book.
Buscando un libro o haciendo expurgo en la biblioteca? (ilustraciĂłn de Sungwon)
This is me every day ⊠looking for space to add more books.
Me too!
I just love Macklemore! Missed seeing him in person at the Fair, but enjoyed every minute via Twitter.Â
Wishing them all the best for their tour, in Ireland and points east.. and then back in the US starting Oct 22. Awesome.
Today is a historic day for civil rights in America. By declaring DOMA unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has stated that the U.S. Government can no longer deny federal benefits to same sex couples. This means that people like my uncles, who have been in a committed relationship for over 20...
People altogether cleaning Gezi Parki on Sunday afternoon.
Pages from Albert Einsteinâs notebook
I want to wad them up and eat them, and absorb every genius nutrient into my own self.
Cool!
(Some will say this is not the time. I disagree. This is the time when every mixed emotion needs to find voice.)
Since his arrest in January, 2011, I have known more about the events that began this spiral than I have wanted to know. Aaron consulted me as a friend and lawyer. He...
You can learn a lot about the world from Wikipedia, sometimes without reading the articles.
Kalev Leetaru, a researcher at the University of Illinois, has been looking at the capacious volunteer-written encyclopedia as a Big Data resource, concentrating on the connections between cities around the globe over time. To understand these connections, he focuses on the type of language used to talk about a particular place, to see whether the writers have a generally positive or negative sentiment toward the place at that time.
The result is an interesting historical atlas of the rise of globalization and warfare. His technical sponsor in data mining, Silicon Graphics International, hopes the work is also an advertisement for S.G.I.âs decidedly noncloud style of technical computing for some kinds of number crunching.
» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)
Glass Cathedrals by Lisa Swerling
âLogic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.â ~ Albert Einstein
Lovely poster for NASAâs One Hundred Year Starship Program, in the vein of Einsteinâs famous thoughts on rationality vs. intuition. Â
(á„ curiosity counts)
"Salt Creek Anthology" Virtual Book Tour!
CCLaPâs Book Tour for Jason Fisk's "Salt Creek Anthology" is in process, and Iâm honored to be included!
In case you are new to this exciting new work, here is an introduction:
A couple meet in a mental institution, have six kids, and devolve into violent alcoholism. An elderly Polish woman with Alzheimer's goes insane in front of our eyes. A frazzled empty-nester has her bruiser son move back in, along with a scheming girlfriend planning a surprise pregnancy to get them both back out. And an abusive, overweight, racist monster of a man psychologically lords over them all, a total of twenty-odd characters all living on the same cul-de-sac in the far rural suburbs of Chicago. Welcome to the dark, poetic world of author Jason Fisk, a "micro-story" collection that breaks these families' adventures down into a series of 75 linguistic nuggets; these are then experimentally hooked together in a non-linear fashion through literal hyperlinks within each story, letting you read them in whichever order you wish. With "Salt Creek Anthology," tumble down that brooding, enticing rabbithole that Fisk has created on this unassuming street for yourself, and see just how far the nightmare will take you.
What follows is a conversation with Jason Fisk, the author, about his work in general, this book in particular, and various other topics of interest.
ClaritySol: You are a husband and father, you teach, you write. You have a blog and other social media outlets to feed. How do you manage to be enthusiastic about all of it? Do you have any words of advice for those to seek to gain traction on a path similar to yours?
Jason Fisk: Well, with the exception of the upkeep of the blog, and other media outlets, I honestly feel like my enthusiasm is directly connected to the fact that Iâm truly passionate about my family, my teaching, and my writing, which makes the balancing of it all a lot of fun for me. Thatâs not to say that I donât have bad teaching days, days that I feel like a failure as a parent, and days that it would be so much easier not to write, but Iâm always back at it the next day, even when I donât feel like it. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration; there have been weeklong stretches where I have quit writing all together, due to various reasons, but it usually weasels its way back into my life and routine.
The whole social media thing is relatively new to me too, and by relatively new, I mean less than two years on facebook. Initially, I was resistant to it, but have found it to be a wonderful and necessary resource for the promotion of my writing, which, in the world of the small presses, is sometimes exhausting in and of itsel
ClaritySol: It looks like your paths have been intertwining with CCLaP, Jason Pettus and the other writers there: Ben Tanzer, Mark Brand, Sally Wiegert and the others. How important is that to your process, to share your work with writers and to hear what theyâre doing and to work with your publisher in the way that you and Jason do?
Jason Fisk: Thatâs a tough one to answer. My involvement with other authors has changed over the years. Writing started out as a very solitary thing for me. Iâd sit at my desk, write, and send my stuff out into cyberspace and wait for a response. I would not necessarily consider myself much of an extrovert, and there is part of me that struggles with the act of social networking, especially when it feels disingenuous. I have to give credit to Ben Tanzer for opening a lot of doors to the local literary world. He actually put me in touch with Jason Pettus and CCLaP, and introduced me to different authors in the area, Mark and Sally being two of them. The actual act of writing and sharing my writing with other authors is something Iâve just started doing recently.
ClaritySol: I know one of Jason Pettusâ goals is to be responsive to the CCLaP audience â to provide what they want to read, and/or provide what they want to be challenged with.
How do you and your work fit in to those goals? What is your approach to the audience â are they part of your writing, or is your writing more a personal process?
Jason Fisk: When I write, I donât think about audience. Personally, I believe thinking about an audience while writing sucks the integrity from what Iâm writing. It begins to feel watered down. I would always be second guessing myself and wondering how a certain group would react to this or that.
I let Jason Pettus worry about the audience. If you send him something, writing or an idea, that heâs not so into, heâll let you know, and heâll gently push you in the direction heâd like to see you go, which is probably where catering to his audience comes into play. I also think he does a nice job of creating, or attracting, an audience that has similar tastes as him. Publishers like Jason not only have to sell their product, they also have to create and generate an interest where there may not initially have been one. Having said all of that, Jason Pettus also has this great philosophy of being hands off while the author writes their first draft. I think this is very respectful of the creative process and of the writer.
 ClaritySol: You have an impressive publication history already, which I found here:
http://jasonfisk.com/publicationpage.html
It is clear that poetry also has a big place in your writing. Which do you prefer? Do you find certain content is best explored in one format or the other? Are the struggles inherent in each very different, or mostly similar?
Jason Fisk: I started writing poetry in an elective in graduate school, and I absolutely loved finding that little piece of truth (or at least what I thought was truth) and writing about it. Most of my poems have a narrative quality to them, which probably has something to do with my early love of the short story. My relationship with poetry is somewhat contentious though; I really like accessible poetry, and hate pretentious, dense poetry. My real love is the short story, which I find more challenging to write, especially after working so hard to pare a story to its bare essentials for a poem. Itâs hard to get into the short story mind set.
ClaritySol:Â From your blog, here is a description of a book meeting from one of the attendees:
'What began as a discussion about fictional others quickly turned to ourselves and our own little bits of crazy. We praised Fisk for his ability to hand-pick what is absolutely essential about a story, entertain us with it, and then make us look twice for a glimpse we thought we caught of ourselves - all in two to four paragraphs.'
It sounds to me like you are one of those writers who applies to discipline and the strength of poetry to any other form you engage in as well, would you agree? That you are always a poet, and sometimes you write poetry and sometimes you write in other forms?
Jason Fisk: To me, itâs all about the transaction between the writer and the reader, and I believe the transaction part is very important. My goal is to create an outline of place, time, and movement, and have the reader fill the rest in with their imagination. The reader has then invested part of himself or herself in the story by painting the walls the colors they see, or imagining that particular space is similar to one in his or her house. I believe poetry has been a wonderful tool to roughly sketch out those bits and pieces of a story, and allow the readers to fill in the blanks, which, hopefully, creates a unique reading experience. I think youâre right; I will always be a poet, or at least retain those elements of poetry.
ClaritySol: From your blog, I borrowed this passage of yours:
 William Carlos Williams wrote, "No ideas but in things." While I know that my poetry is nowhere near Williams' level, it is something I strive to emulate. I love the thought of "No ideas but in things," and only want to paint what I see (whether it is in my imagination, or in real life). What the reader takes from it is their business.
 Is that an accurate capture of your attitude towards this piece as well?
Jason Fisk: Oh, absolutely!
ClaritySol: Whatâs next? Do you have many additional things that youâre working on right now? Do you have additional pieces percolating that are not even in the writing stage yet? What can we look forward to?
Jason Fisk: I just finished up a small collection of more flash fiction, and am currently in the process of polishing that up. Jason Pettus has also suggested that I take the next year and try my hand at writing a novel, which is what Iâm planning on doing, so thatâs whatâs currently fermenting in my head. Weâll seeâŠ
 ClaritySol: Anything else you'd like us to know about your work, your plans, your art?
Jason Fisk: No, I feel like weâve covered quite a bit here. I do want to thank you for taking the time to research and craft such insightful and thoughtful questions. Your time and involvement is very much appreciated.
on Pinterest... and Tumblr?
Pinterest â located at pinterest.com â is a social photo-sharing website. Users can establish accounts, and then set up collections of images that reflect their interest.Â
Other users can browse their collections, âlikeâ various items, collect images from each other, and establish mutual interest relationships and so on.Â
Launching as a closed beta in March 2010, the site has in stages opened up to the public, and has generated a lot of enthusiasm in the process.
On August 16, 2011, Time magazine published Pinterest in its "50 Best Websites of 2011" column.(Wikipedia)
Just in the last few months â December, January â the site has been skyrocketing with users. It crossed the 10 million user mark last month, being one of the fastest sites to do so.
Users love itâs visuality, ease of use, and itâs ability to facilitate relationships with others of similar interests. It links in with Facebook, Twitter, Â has an RSS feed feature, comes with WordPress widgets and thereâs an iPhone app for it too!
But recently, awareness has been growing of downsides for users of the site. In particular related to the very use of images that is such a big part of its appeal.Â
I literally only heard of this site about a week ago.
A few days ago, I retweeted this tweet about it:
56 Ways to Market Your Business on #Pinterestj.mp/yt2cO8 via @copyblogger RT @brasonja #in
And that tweet of mine was RTâd about 4 times, more than almost any other of my tweets. Clearly it is a topic of interest right now! So as I began to read today more concerns about the site, I thought I'd pull together this blog post about it all.
Here is a clearer link to that article on CopyBlogger.Â
It talks about a wide spectrum of ways to use Pinterest for marketing your business, everything from social media immersion techniques to branding to traffic analysis techniques to webinar support. Seems all very exciting and wonderful, but read on, please!
Another Pinterest-excitement tweet I saw recently:
How the medical industry is using (and could use): Pinterest bit.ly/zaonKE RT @MelissaOnline
This MedCityNews article showcases how the medical industry already uses and could even more use Pinterest to boost patient morale, improve patient education and, of course, engage in cutting-edge marketing activities.Â
This page also mentions the revenue stream aspect of Pinterest, which involves affiliate marketing via Skimlinks and changing the codes linked to images to replace the original marketer with Pinterest . That practice, described further in this MarketingLand article is generating interest and concern as more people become aware of it.Â
But copyright theft is a much more serious concern, since it involves legal ramifications that are completely beyond what users have in mind when they sign up to use Pinterest. This BusinessInsider describes those concerns.Â
In a question and answer format, the piece explores the idea that Pinterest may be more illegal than Napster was, due to its use of images not owned by the user, thereby violating the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). Pinterest actually ârequiresâ that each user âownâ rights to the images they post, but they in no way reinforce that requirement.Â
This article explores the fair use argument and how it applies to Pinterest (and Tumblr, for that matter), and also mentions that Pinterest grabs whole sites when people âpinâ an image from that site, making it all even more serious.
Pinterest makes users even more uncomfortable in its statement that it reserves the right to sell any image posted by a user. This article by RWW mentions that several businesses, after initially signing up to use Pinterest, almost immediately closed their accounts as they more fully explored the implications. Â What it boils down to is that, if a user posts a photo which they donât own the license to (a license given them free, world-wide, very broad and open rights to), they could be sued for posting it (and thereby granting Pinterest the right to sell it).Â
All in all, seems like a lot going on that hasn't fully been worked through yet.. both for Pinterest, and even perhaps for Tumblr!
Exciting Literary Tour Stop here - Coming Soon!
On November 29, the Jason Fisk literary tour will stop at my site, with an exclusive interview on his book release: Salt Creek Anthology, a hyperfiction masterpiece!
For further information: Jason Pettus'Â CCLaP Center
