Notebook of Sand

• Recent Publications
• Recent Projects
• Conferences & Speaking
"Comparing Spatial Hypertext Collections"
  ACM Hypertext '09
"Archiving and Sharing Your Tinderbox"
  Tinderbox Weekend London '09
"The Electronic Nature of Future Literatures"
  Literary Studies Now, Apr '09
"The World University Project"
  St. John's Col. Cambridge, Feb '09
"Ethical Explanations,"
  The New Knowledge Forge, Jun '08
Lecture, Cambridge University
  Tragedy in E-Lit, Nov '07
Hypertext '07: Tragedy in E-Lit
Host for Tinderbox Cambridge '07
Keynote: Dickinson State Uni Conf
Upper Midwest NCHC'07: Speaker
eNarrative 6: Creative Nonfiction
HT'05: "Philadelphia Fullerine"
  Nelson award winning paper
NCHC '05:
 Nurturing Independent Scholarship
Riddick Practicum:
  Building Meeting Good Will
NCHC '04:
  Philadelphia Fullerine
  Lecture on American Studies
WWW@10: Nonfiction on the Web
NCHC '03: Parliamentary Procedure
ELL '03 -- Gawain Superstar
• (a)Musing (ad)Dictions:

Ideas. Tools. Art. Build --not buy. What works, what doesn't. Enjoy new media and software aesthetics at Tekka.

Theodore Gray (The Magic Black Box)

Faith, Life, Art, Academics. Sermons from my family away from home: Eden Chapel!

My other home: The Cambridge Union Society (in 2007, I designed our [Fresher's Guide])

The Economist daily news analysis

Global Higher Ed blog

• Hypertext/Writing

Writing the Living Web

Chief Scientist of Eastgate Systems, hypertext expert Mark Bernstein. (Electronic) Literature, cooking, art, etc.

Fabulous game reviews at playthisthing.

• Stats

Chapter I: Born. Lived. Died.

There is a Chapter II.

Locale: Lancaster County Pa, USA

Lineage: Guatemala

Religion: My faith is the primary focus of my life, influencing each part of me. I have been forgiven, cleansed, and empowered by Jesus Christ. Without him, I am a very thoughtful, competent idiot. With him, I am all I need to be, all I could ever hope for. I oppose institutional religious stagnation, but getting together with others is a good idea. God is real. Jesus Christ is his Son, and the Bible is true. Faith is not human effort. It's human choice. I try to be the most listening, understanding, and generous person I can.

Interests: Anything I can learn. Training and experience in new media, computer science, anglophone literature, education, parliamentary debate, democratic procedure, sculpture, and trumpet performance. Next: applied & computational linguistics, probably.

Education: Private school K-3. Home educated 4-12. Graduated Summa Cum Laude from Elizabethtown College in Jan 2006. As the 2006 Davies-Jackson Scholar, I studied English at St. John's College, Cambridge University from 2006 - 2008.

Memberships: Eden Baptist, Cambridge Union Society, ACM, AIP, GPA.

Alum of the Elizabethtown College Honors Program, sponsored by the Hershey Company.

Tangier
Friday, 28 Jan 2005 :-:

The weight of history rests heavy on my soul.

** * **

Cheseapeake Bay at Sunset -- Tangier is several hours away from hereI was watching "The Story of English" by Jim McLehrer. It was episode 3, Muse of Fire, about the language of Walter Raleigh, about the dialects of 16th and 17th century England, and about the few Americans who still carry on British accents.

They showed Tangier Island. A several hour boat ride from mainland Virginia, Tangier had, at the time of filming, maintained an accent similar to the one held by the first British inhabitants of Tangier in 1686.

Tangier, like Maine, reminds me that some of the poorest Americans are not in the cities, but live difficult lives of hard work scraping a living from the land and sea. At Tangier Island, where luxuries are few, the men literally work all day. As soon as men are old enough teenagers, they begin the daily life cycle of work and sleep. No eight or ten hour days for the men of Tangier. They would put obsessive computer programmers to shame with their hours.

Yet one gets the unmistakable impression that they are happy.

** * **

When I watched the show, I nearly cried. Because I knew that the medium that brought me news of their proud linguistic heritage would also probably destroy it. Television does much to homogenize speech. Our current visual entertainment may reduce attention span, encourages us to trust performance over logic, and homogenizes language through mass distribution.

I imagined that by the time I was able to watch the video, now eight years later, a new generation would be growing up, one that knows the characters of Friends more than the vivid, unpredictable character of the sea.

I was wrong. The people Tangier seem to be very firm about keeping their way of life.

I am briefly put into a great dilemma. Imagine how much better life could be for them with more modern conveniences, with more time for using their minds to create, to experience, to explore human wisdom, art, literature, etc.. But then, when I think of things like quality of life, I remember that, like any human concoction, this 21st century Western life we have made for ourselves is much more prosperous, includes more toys, and involves more creativity. But in a way, many more things are demanded of us, and the work of our collective desires and efforts have not all been great or helpful. These are strongly religious people -- if they know God, who am I to say that my life is better than theirs? In fact, they might just be able to say that about me.

** * **

For the weight of history rests heavy on my soul.