Other research dissertation ideas:

The Losheng Sanatorium
Love Boat Tours which date back to 1967

WT on Tuesday

Every once in awhile I think about moving back to Dallas. The reasons are complex - we have a good community there of healers and arts professionals, the weather is warm and closer to what I grew up with, the cost of property and the cost of living are actually affordable, and then Kort sends me this, which makes that fuzzy dream very quickly evaporate!

Robert Rauschenberg is dead at 82.

What should I devote my research too?

The pressure's on to pick a dissertation topic by Winter quarter (Jan 09), for which I will then begin to write grant application drafts. I'm writing right now the second of two papers on poetry and am open to exploring new topics, but realize that whatever it's going to be, it's going to have to deeply resonate and reflect something back to me about my own experiences, if I am to stay engaged. Here are things that interest me:

- hikikomori
- Taiwanese grave-paper makers and funerary practices
- secondhand clothing as it circulates to developing countries
- garbage
- the New Factographers
- poetry tourism (i.e. Basho's Oku No Hosomichi)
- Guatemalan indigenous healing practices
- Tibetan medical healing practices
- Ayurvedic medical healing practices
- PostSecret, Found, and the Museum of Broken Relationships

I loved this NY Times piece on Bettina Grossman - it reminded me of the documentary on the unlikely friendship between Linda Hattendorf and Jimmy Mirikitani.

Steve Bradbury has a terrific essay in Jacket on the indie avant-garde poetry scene in Taipei which revolves around filmmaker Hung Hung and poet-librettist Hsia Yu.

I'm thinking about doing some volunteer work with this organization over the summer, or perhaps next year when I'm into my methods coursework.

Contribute to a new artwork by Yoko Ono.

Entitled Secret Piece III, Ono invites people to add photos or messages to someone they love to a canvas in the Laing Art Gallery or on the Facebook event page.

Curator, Julie Milne explains:
'Visitors can bring along a photograph of a loved one, or a note which they can then stick onto a canvas. At the end of the exhibition, the canvas will be returned to Yoko Ono to form part of a new artwork. It is very exciting that the Laing's visitors have this opportunity to see this new artwork develop.'


LOVE
Love is in the air at the Laing Art Gallery, as flirtation, disappointment and intimacy are among the themes explored in a new exhibition.

Love is a new National Gallery touring exhibition, which looks at the ways artists have responded to the pains and pleasures of love over the centuries.

It features work by artists including Tracey Emin, David Hockney, Johannes Vermeer and Marc Chagall. The Laing's Marble Hall will also be home to Marc Quinn's spectacular sculpture, Kiss.

LOVE is set to be a spectacular exhibition, bringing together work by some of the world's most famous artists, both historical and contemporary.

A programme of free events at the Laing Art Gallery will run alongside the exhibition, including gallery talks and activities for families.

For more information, visit the Laing website at www.twmuseums.org.uk/laing.

A National Gallery Touring exhibition in partnership with Bristol’s Museums, Galleries & Archives Service and Tyne & Wear Museums. Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Northern Rock Foundation and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

19 April - 13 July 2008
Monday to Saturday 10am - 5pm
Sunday 2pm - 5pm
Closed: Xmas, Boxing Day & New Year.

"The difference between West and non-West must be constantly produced, through a process of disavowal, 'where the trace of what is disavowed is not repressed but repeated as something different - a mutation, a hybrid.' The hybrid forms of colonial modernity return to disrupt the West's claim to originality and authority, disturbing it with 'the ruse of recognition.'"

Haiku Not Bombs Pre-ordering

Preorders for Haiku Not Bombs are now being taken at the Booklyn website.

Hand-letterpressed covers, digitally printed and handbound by the talented staff of Booklyn

$9.00 per issue bookstores ordering more than 10 copies can be ordered directly through Booklyn

$15 per issue all other public/ individual buyers (does not include shipping) -- may be ordered through Booklyn online

After the headache of organizing the WOMPO reading at the Women's Center last month, I made a conscious choice to not organize any more poetry events unless it's

1) paid or
2) I am working with people I know and love.

Last week I was reminded of what a good decision this was: a bunch of SAIC grads from different class years decided to hop on the AWP bandwagon and organize a last-minute panel for submission, which meant something like 20 emails back and forth EVERYDAY for a 7-day period with nine different personalities hammering out the agenda of the panel, the participants, the content, etc. which boiled down to a tiny "statement of merit" of less than 500 words. Several of the negotiating voices have never been to an AWP or academic conference - which is not surprising, considering what the SAIC experience is actually about - but when it comes then to arriving at something like agreement or understanding - this becomes impossible because we are talking about different worlds of experience that do not easily interface or converge, at least without major anxiety and or suspicion on the part of some of those involved.

I sat back and watched the whole thing develop, watching at one point, an aggressive angry white feminist calling out the only male involved in the whole process, who also happened to be the only person stepping forward to volunteer a great deal of time to take the lead and organize the event and get the materials submitted and to be helpful. The feminist dropped out of the panel at one point, then reasserted herself into the conversation stating which kind of program she'd be willing to participate in, and then she threatened to drop out again after blowing off some steam. In the end, there were too many people for 1 panel which maxes out at 6, so there were 2 panels created, and then the group of more recent SAIC grads (not my generation), jettisoned the idea of their panel entirely to plan some more avant garde event at Links Hall/the Chicago MCA. I hate the expression, "Lead, or get out of the way" - but in this case, it felt very apropos.

If I was organizing a related event, which I'm definitely not, I would go against opinion and organize an open SAIC alumni marathon reading - given how many alums in their diversity are in the Chicago/Midwest. In some ways, I feel some conflict about the panel and MCA event not being representative, but being somewhat exclusionary.

And while I am imagining myself as organizational queen of the poetry world, if I were organizing a reading for a new anthology of Asian writing that is coming out, I would NOT have determined readers for an AWP panel by drawing five names among over a dozen out of a hat when having promised "first-come, first-serve." I would have planned an off-site event through the Center for Asian Arts & Media and secured external funding to pay folk and to help cover travel costs through applying to Poets & Writers.

But since I don't organize poetry events anymore... perhaps these ideas will be taken up by others.

I am very pleased to be included in a panel proposal will fellow La Alameda writer Lisa Gill, and ex-SAIC faculty Maureen Seaton.

Come June, I am switching jobs and working here and here. I've been training on Saturdays and feeling extremely strapped for time.

Suzzallo Library at UW is showing a great exhibition of children's book thru the end of May. My favorite pieces in this show - a circular vs. linear timeline constructed of concentric circles (each with a moment of history within) spiraling inwards, with the oldest ring of history on the outer ring of the circle, and the most current on the inside. The alphabet accordion books which resembled the artwork of Ryder tarot decks in my mind, the accordion form an ideal format perhaps for an illustrated abecedarian poem.