Epistemographer

So, I’m checking out the keyword searches that have brought people to this fine website (as an aside, I’m not sure why five people have googled “Oprah AND Tivo”)…anyhow, I’m looking at my server stats and find that a good 35 people found my site by googling “Joe Trippi.”

(FYI, Joe Trippi is Howard Dean‘s campaign manager.)

So, I think, “Huh…that’s odd. I can’t imagine that my site is that high in the rankings for a ‘Joe Trippi’ search. Funny that so many people would be wading down through the Google search results.”

Then, just for the heck of it, I punch “Joe Trippi” into my handy Google Toolbar.

The result? Of 21400 pages that reference Joe Trippi, a post of mine from a few weeks ago is #9. Number frickin’ nine!!!.

Meg was right, even if she was just kidding..

So, I’m finding that there are times that I’m writing, and it’s a very workmanlike process … every paragraph is pieced together with a topic sentence, a few sentences of backup, and a transition to the next paragraph. Frankly, much of my writing last month felt like this – I was getting it done, and and struggling along, but there wasn’t really much joy in it. It had to be done, and that was that.

Something a little odd has happened to me in the past week, though: I started to soar. I don’t quite know how to describe the sensation – it’s almost like the feeling I’ve had when dancing, when I so lose myself in the joy of the dance that I’m not consciously trying to move my body. Rather, my movements just flow out of me, coming from somewhere in the core of my body rather than my head.

My writing has been feeling like that lately – I just sit down, know exactly where and how to pick up the thread I left for myself, and the words just pour out of me. I’ve been writing huge amounts, and it’s good, clear prose.

I’m thinking that part of the reason for this is that the stuff I’ve been writing over the past week (basically, my third chapter) is more narrative than much of the second chapter. I also feel like I’ve just got this stuff so solid, and I know exactly the argument I want to lay out, that it’s all crystal clear in my head. Feels really good, even if it looks like a file cabinet exploded in my little study, with photocopies covering every horizontal surface and tacked up on most of the wall space within arm’s reach. It’s interesting – alongside my clarity about what I’m writing is this near-photographic knowledge of where every article and every interview quote is sitting in this mess of paper. I can visualize them all, and I find myself reaching right for the document I need even before I consciously realize I’m doing so.

Speaking of photocopies, I had a funny moment today – read a trade article about an old video convention from 1981, and I realized that of the nine people quoted, I’d personally spoken to eight in the past year. As a historian, it’s a good feeling to realize that you did in fact manage to choose the right people to talk to, and that you’ve got a good handle on what one of my advisors would call the “core set” of actors involved. Go me.

Via Shay (who’ll hopefully get a blog of his own up one of these days), here’s one of those things that’s been buzzing around the ‘Net for the past few weeks. I hadn’t seen it until tonight, and it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time…just stunning…

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~thon/SiCAF_Seoul_2003.wmv

I’d forgotten to upload these earlier. Two pics that sum up New York in the snow for me:

The view while emerging from the subway into a totally transformed world. I stood at the foot of these stairs for a good minute, just transfixed by the swirling snow in the bright streetlight through the narrow opening up to the sidewalk. A woman walked by, saw me taking this picture, smiled and said “Yeah, it’s just beautiful, isn’t it?”

The Trump zamboni, at the Trump (er, “Wolman”) ice skating rink in Central Park, overshadowed by various and sundry Trump buildings. It costs too much to skate and was too crowded, yet I wouldn’t take back the experience for a second.

For anybody in New York City this week, the McSweeney’s magazine The Believer is hosting a night of readings and performances at the New School.

Here’s the scoop:

Novelist and music critic Touré conducts an interview with Q-Tip; co-editor Heidi Julavits talks with Jennifer Egan, Susan Choi, and Stephen Elliott about the challenges of political fiction post 9/11; famed graphic designer Chip Kidd interviews famed graphic designer Milton Glaser; co-editor Vendela Vida and Ben Marcus reenact a botched interview with a famous philosopher; historian/travel writer Tony Perrottet gives a brief reading from his essay about how readings contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire.

Musical entertainment, in the form of banjo playing, provided by frequent Believer contributor Tom Bissell.

John Hodgman, reluctant comedian and food writer, is Master of Ceremonies.

December 8
NEW YORK
Tishman Auditorium, ground floor
66 W. 12th St.
12th street between sixth ave and seventh ave, closer to sixth
7 PM
Tickets are $5 and may be bought at the box office (same address as the auditorium) or over the phone, 212-229-5488 M-F, 1-8 p.m.

David Brooks’ advice to Republicans for their NYC convention next fall:

This week I read that you have abandoned plans to house Republicans safely on a cruise ship off the island of Manhattan during the G.O.P. convention in New York this summer. Have you paused to consider what this will mean?

It will mean that instead of spending time in a secure environment offshore, kind, decent Republicans will be wandering innocently among packs of inflamed New York liberals. They’ll be subjected to long harangues that rely heavily on the words “multilateral,” “Kyoto” and “John Ashcroft.” They’ll get condescending looks when they go into a deli and order a strawberry and chocolate chip bagel with pineapple cream cheese – a perfectly acceptable bagel option in most suburbs. They will naively pick up The Village Voice, thinking it contains small-town news.

I spent the day yesterday at Princeton’s Writing Program, having lunch with the directors and sticking around for a workshop on proposing writing seminars (I’m going to apply for a fellowship, so the workshop was definitely worthwhile).

Their program is a little different from what I’m used to at Cornell, in particular because the Princeton seminars are substantially more structured, with four standard assignments spaced throughout the semester. Though I initially wasn’t sure about what seemed a more rigid pedagogy, after thinking through a course design I realized that their setup makes a whole lot of sense. On the one hand, I’m definitely moving more toward the idea of a few longer assignments than a bunch of short ones (esp. with one long research paper, which will be the centerpiece of my “Writing as Technology” course next semester). Also, knowing up front the kinds of assignments that are expected makes it substantially easier to build a course from the assignments up, rather than the other way around.

Aside from that, the Princeton program felt very familiar and natural, with its explicit orientation toward teaching argument (plus, Kerry and Ann, the directors, are just plain cool). I’m most comfortable (and happiest) when teaching macro-level things like argument and structure, so I think I’d fit in fine. I’d say their postdoc would be one of my top choices for where to spend the next few years (plus, being able to live in NYC would be a definite plus)…

Oh, and here’s the weirdest thing about the day – I’m waiting for the train back from Princeton to NYC and I see a two other grad students from the workshop. I walk over, introduce myself, and one of them says “Cornell Science & Technology Studies, right? Are you the guy who lives in Park Slope and has a blog?”

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, he explained that he found “Epistemographer” via NYC Bloggers (he lives a few stops up on the F train from Jenny’s place)…too funny. It’s a little weird to meet someone who already knows a lot about you from reading your blog, but definitely a cool experience. So, a shout out to Michael, and I’ll look forward to catching up with you in the neighborhood sometime soon…

Alex’s post on Amazon wish-lists as performance art reminded me of a project I did a few years ago for a seminar taught by Cornell’s Geri Gay on Computer Mediated Communication. I’d been meaning to put this online for a while, so here it is…

The project was an analysis of the ways that people were using the public space of Amazon product reviews as a performance space, riffing off of books and each other (in particular on pages selling Bil Keane’s Family Circus collections). If nothing else, the sheer volume of the reviews is impressive, and some of them are quite funny…

Short version of the past week:

Baltimore, Federal Hill; Inner Harbor lights at night; sitting on the cannon; sleep at my sister’s place; sister’s boyfriend made breakfast; Cheese Day; friends; Conan the Barbarian; I’m named Cheese King; dinner with Jenny, Kev and Colleen; hanging at Dave’s place; sleep at parents’ house; lunch at Hard Times with Russ et al; losing a few racquetball games; haggling over dinner; dinner (crabcakes…mmm!); sleep; canceled breakfast with grandparents; flight to Cleveland; dinner; Dean learned “Mahi-Mahi”; lost mittens; sleep; hanging out; setting up a webcam; Love, Actually; sleep; cooking; painfully cute kids; reading; blur of Thanksgiving food; sleep; leftovers; more painfully cute kids; more setting up a webcam; dinner with Jenny’s friends; sleep; finally got the webcam to work; flight back east; drive from BWI to Brooklyn; sleep; get back to writing; dinner with Kev; drive to Ithaca.

And now, to sleep…