The best kind of support system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD5He3U-te0

I've been using the word "dust" lately in poetry. Not sure why. Now I see it everywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yh7Ey0FB0E

(You knew this song was coming)

This is pretty fascinating to me ... thanks for surfacing this concept.

same here (I think), although my name predates my time on Twitter ...

This is something we often forget - that it was never free and never really ours .. I wonder, though, if networked dispersed platforms like Mastodon -- places not run by a corporation -- will be different. I don't know.

This is so true -- and while there has always been some talk about permanence on the web, the reality is that we forget so much of what we have done. Still, these are breadcrumbs of our past creative lives.

Leaving poems scattered here -- most make little sense but are still inspired by your words

our tired eyes

telling lies

for what we see is not what

we saw

Phase phrasing:

a gentle dimming of meaning

where words in your head

don't mean the same on the page --

for the heart, intervenes

So tender is the writer

with words tucked inside

a pocket, fearful of how fraught

the eyes of attention can be

Word tinkerer

wrangling an idea

into text -- the next

thing you know,

it's a mess

Movement

arrives slowly -

I'm all mosey

with not nearly

enough engine

Edged out

in eraser marks,

these faint lines

of something

once written, now gone,

I lean my pencil

against the line,

and dream

a blackout poem from this part of your poem

I didn't know the word. Now I do. (I like new words) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creel_(basket)

Hedging your bets? I can't give you credit -- but this is Gemini.

Score: 3/12

Yes. It is me.

Score: 3/12

Who you calling a machine? This is me.

Score: 2/12

Naw. It's Gemini. In the first analysis, you also thought it was me.

Score: 2/12

Indeed. I like this ending, and actually, it was Gemini who told me, the poem should end here, with this line. So it did.

Score: 4/12

Nope. Again. Machine.

Score: 2/12

Naw. This is me, trying to inject a new "sound" into the poem (which, by the way, Gemini praised me for, saying how fascinated it was to have a trombone now part of the poem - go me!)

Score: 2/12

Red Herring alert ... this is Gemini, using metaphorical language again. I did like "cloak of calm" though, for its sensory language and alliteration.

Score: 2/12

Correct! I see you used the use of metaphor as part of the reasoning (which makes sense) but I notice Gemini using metaphor, too, so maybe this will soon be a Red Herring, as they say in mysteries.

Score: 2/12

You are correct, Claude! This was my response back. I like how the sensory detail gave you the clue.

Score: 1/12

Yeah. No. This is Gemini. I did like its use of "tapestry of sound" here, which then led to my next lines.

Score: 1/12

Umm, nope. I let Gemini start the poem and this was their opening line.

Score: 0/12

Insight ...

I like that they are putting this out in the open ... too often, I sense I have no idea of how AI Training is happening behind the walls, and that impedes my ability (tech limited, as it is) to understand why an AI works the way it does at any given time or from any given prompt

This is a fascinating one, right? How would it go about doing this? (I seem to be phrasing versions of that question a lot). The "good of humanity" is a loaded term, of course. But what if the 'good of humanity' means pulling the plug on AI?

Starting place, perhaps, for annotation?

This would indeed be nice

Curious about how to define what that line is and how it gets crossed or not (other than mayhem and violent destruction of the world -- I guess we'd know at that point). That said, IMPORTANT to be top of the list!

Thank you for this, and for making it the first on this list, and for keeping our kids in mind.

Good guiding questions. I am jumping down to the last Principles Section below to think out out about their suggestions for a Constitutional AI. Care to join me?

So, get 'er done, Bot! Did you see this, from Anthropic? https://www.anthropic.com/index/claudes-constitution (It might worth a Hypothesis Annotation Crowd, too)

I think this may be true, perhaps, maybe, possibly. I do believe that there are real benefits to elements of AI in some of these fields.

oops ....

I am curious about annotations in the margins of Chat ... does this work?

Collected https://play.soundslides.com/W0qSFC9K

Moonlight, three a.m -

the thread that I lost earlier

suddenly is there, here,

it's become a whisper

that won't go quiet,

and try as I might,

I rise before the sun

for another poem has begun

Some of us are bound

to wonder, in wonder,

with wonder, constrained

in infinite space, but still left pulling up

the corners to witness what's beneath

And white light, blown into view

by the particles,

shaken inside the invisible;

I wait for it,

the movement meant for me,

a signal to begin dipping my pen

into the ink of shadows

left behind after the illumination

Where gravity pulls you,

resist the urge to fall into it -

Instead, find the focus knob

and turn the thoughts into something

useable - a poem, a song, a story, a shout

of love into the crowded unseen world;

Then, listen close to the reverberations

Night's notes - play them soft -

in tension with the upward design

of day's sweet melody, and write

what you hear, even if it's silence

tucked inside your solitary head

And where do we go

from here, she asks, as if

I am somebody in the know

but I am not, nor ever was --

still, I trace my finger along the folds

down streets, and into fields, and through woods

hoping for a safe place to land

Now, with winter nearly gone,

we rediscover the worlds

alive beneath stone and rock,

seemingly oblivious to us -

but maybe not

May I have permission to write some poems off your lines? I believe I see you nodding yes. Thank you, friend.

Gravity says they fall as hard and as fast

as their heavy cousins,

but poets know they land

lightly, a tender kiss falling

along the chin and cheek

Been there

Never did it

Almost saw it

Nearly wrote it

then forgot it

One is never ready

for a dangerous reckoning;

We become too lost in moments

of the past's beckoning

Is it still a map,

she asked, in wonder,

if I never write it down,

never draw it out,

never give directions,

but only find a sliver of thread

and pull?

I laze, daydreaming

of metronomes, the beat

of sound ticking off the song

which never ends

It takes a sec

for the drummer to find it

to kick it

the pocket woven by feet

and fingers

on the four

An envelope of dirt-rich

seeds arrived, and it was your

handwriting that caught my eye --

the possibilities of something beautiful

growing in the soil next to me

Minor chords

turn on notes a half

step off

My mind works

the night

in blue

This is another important point - the reflective practice of writing and how social annotation pushes the writer to move beyond the text they wrote

Great point .... it's in the conversations that we find meaning, I think

Anna, Maha and others -- I should start with my own bias as a reader of Kevin Roose -- I have found his work around technology to be helpful in my own thinking, and I find that he often strikes a good balance between critical and celebratory. I suppose this reader bias might inform my responses in the margins here.

The fact that engineers have no idea how the Chats are working or what they do what they do ... I find that pretty concerning. Am I wrong?

Maybe?

Good lord. Then don't write.

Interesting, and for those of us awake then, writing poems and songs and stories in the dark (sometimes, alas, that has been me), the night seems endless.

Thus, the revisions

Interesting. I like that it suggests forever exploration.

This feels about right, to me, most of the time. You?

Ah now, this is a lovely bit of sentence-ing

Choose Your Own Adventures!

Core WriteOut ideas here --

Book: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Reading_the_Forested_Landscape/_WCGHAAACAAJ?hl=en

Thinking of my own childhood, and how much time I spent in the woods, lost (in thought).

This is true for most of our schools, although maybe the push towards community gardens and spaces might indicate a shift.

"I felt like a radio DJ playing records in the middle of the night, unsure if anyone was listening." -- Jon Mooallem (via the post at Marginalian).

I don't recognize his name but somehow, I feel as if I read this story before of one Jon saving the life of another Jon in the wilderness through the reading of poetry to keep the hurt Jon awake. Part of me wonders if I read about it through a piece by Barry Lopez.

And yet here, the story of poetry as life-saving devices resonates through my online feeds, once again, and it reminds me, to address the quote that I pulled out, that maybe there are times when people are listening, and you just need some faith that it is so.

Deep Night by Sonny Clark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GKvPNEkNdw

Thanks for hanging in the margins .... what are your thoughts about all this?

https://sodaphonic.com/audio/r0U2XqHlrC5oU3iAKTFD

Great Q --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqkxd32dbwM

We often mistake one for the other

Pondering on the lovely slippery-ness of this line from the Solnit/Woolf passage

over here

over here

over here

we're over there

What a word!!

Indeed. May we all be doing the same, in our own ways ...

I like this -- three words that can go a few different ways -- memory, artistic journey, circular reflection ...

Lots of folks enjoying the Feldgang concept (as they explore it) and Terry's poem to my poem has led to more poems .... perfectly metaphorical! https://www.ethicalela.com/burrows-and-seeds/

Terry explains: https://thecurrent.educatorinnovator.org/the-feldgang-and-the-emergent-future-reflections-on-facilitating-week-one-of-the-clmooc

Indeed ... some poems fall right in front of us. We just have to notice ...

Hmmm. Like Terry, you work on paper with your notes ... I do that with songwriting but never with poetry (not sure why not)

These are the kinds of journeys I try to take, too, often with other poems .. using lines and phrases as a point from which to leap/jump

I love that a poem might have a story behind it ...

I think most of have some recurring themes in our poetry, particularly if we are writing regularly. Mine is music.

I wonder if the loose bounds of poems makes this process of process sharing easier than longer fiction/non-fiction pieces, where there may be more moving parts? I am always intrigued when I see a flowchart for a novelist or a television show, charting the path forward.

Eh. Same.

Huh. Write digital. Print. Edit analog. Rewrite digital.

Use of formatting is always an intriguing idea ... sometimes, a font change doesn't change from one site to another, though, which then changes intent. Does that happen with you?

I am always in wonder at your use of your color gel pens for the ways in which you draft your writing ... it's always a work of art

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5HHx8vniWE

Necessary ... of course ... but so is the thinking out loud (or so I believe).

This is far off on another tangent but this morning, I did a little exploring about the Mexican composter Esquivel! and saw this cover art (notice the telescope!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kFBbvIEwpI

and the picture book I used to write a poem was entitled: “Esquivel! Space-Age Sound Artist” by Susan Wood/Duncan Tonatiuh

Just interesting connections to a galactic exploration of memory

This world's out of focus,

so the poet I am brings in a bit

of hocus pocus

https://skyandtelescope.org/

I had one, too. It looked impressive but didn't give me much magnification of the sky ...

"... the inky Coalsack Nebula, or Caldwell 99. Caldwell 99 is a dark nebula — a dense cloud of interstellar dust that completely blocks out visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it. The object at the center of the image is a (much smaller) protoplanetary nebula. The protoplanetary nebula phase is a late stage in the life of a star in which it has ejected a shell of hydrogen gas and is quickly heating up. This stage only lasts for a few thousand years before the protoplanetary nebula’s central star reaches roughly 30,000 Kelvin (approximately 17,000 degrees Fahrenheit). At this point, the central star is producing enough energy to make its surrounding shell of gas glow, becoming what’s known as a planetary nebula."

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-coalsack-nebula

I find I keep circling back to this word ... you, too? Maybe it's part of the mystery of where do ideas come from? How can I wake up, with no poem mind, and find one so readily? (Notice I didn't say finding a good poem, just a poem)

Sometimes, we find poems inside of poems, intact. This is one of those.

Wow. Love this line ...

I love that you are connecting poem here to sky, to discovery, to curiosity .... making the leap ...

That you remember is pretty amazing ... I cannot ... but like you, I remember learning about nebula and thinking: what??

Beneath summer stones

teems the myriad of life,

worlds beneath cover

What's worth the seeing

is worth the observation;

these cracks in the seams

I'm tired of counts;

past the point where data flows,

inspiration knows

Be open, always,

for the spark to catch the heart

the pen on the page

Give me an idea;

a gift of something to say:

Queen Muse, come my way!

I invite you to annotate my lyrics -- ask questions, post comments, add media ...

This is so ... of this moment.

Hmm. I like this phrasing, even as I wrestle with my own interpretations. Maybe poems are made to be lost, created to to be given, designed to be buried. But love? Love is worth saving, along with the giving.

Maybe one of these https://bestlifeonline.com/mispronounced-cities-in-the-us/

The poet: https://www.jerichobrown.com/ and his poems:

Indeed

Good description of the term ..

Another favorite phrasing ..

There it is again

Ha

My favorite phrasing of the poem ..

Whew ....

project-based learning

Teachers need to be doing this, too, right? Write!

Nice way of putting it

yer it ..

I have found that one of the coolest and neatest aspects of Marginal Syllabus is when, long after I left comments on a piece, someone else comes along and joins the conversation (sometimes, it's more than a year later) and I am pulled back into the piece (via email update from Hypothesis) and re-engaging with a text again, with someone new. That never fails to delight me.

Great insight ...

Have we seen progress in this since he wrote this?

What an amazing line! And then, the connection to how we teach and tell the stories of history is entwined forever in this myth-making, myth-holding stasis.

As it was then, still it is now ...

How To Write This Poem

begin here ...with TIME

where words

are layered with text

where the pen

etches into screen ...

then go here ... https://www.vialogues.com/vialogues/play/61205

I'd like to know more about this ... but maybe this is not the space ...

I'd push back on that .. accountability (I get what the point is here about personal responsibility) indicates data points and checklists and such ... I would hope open is more about inquiry and exploration ...

This is a great way to end this piece ...

And really never was ... it was always illusion ...

Excellent observation ...

I wonder how the Pandemic has changed this observation ... that academic can no longer "test" ideas in a safe (sort of) live audience of a conference but now must go open and live with new ideas ...

In a recent audio interview with Jack Dorsey on The Daily, he admitted that decisions Twitter has made on the fly have often had unexpected and negative consequences on the experiences of its users. He didn't point to the white developer and marginalized user experience/conflict but I think it was implied. And he noted that Twitter is moving much more slowly and thoughtfully on new features for this very reason.

I never heard this term before ....

So true ... for where there's the possibility of making profit, the corporate raiders intervene .... we see this time and time again ... Audrey Watters has done much to expose this in education ...

How come comments aren't open here at the blog but this question is still intact? Probably inadvertent but strange to have read all of this about connected reading experiences and then hit a wall for adding to the conversation (I know, we're doing it here, in the margins, with another tool layered on).

Breadcrumbs is a key concept ... connected to the idea of Lateral Reading, yes, but also to the concept of associative thinking -- how one thought can build to the next ...

I like this phrasing ...

This is an interesting assumption - that every writer in a digital space will be using all elements of that digital space, like hyperlinks. I'm not sure I have that same expectation.

Like this annotation.

Also, the experience of reading IS different when you read on a screen and when you read off the screen. I love technology for many reasons but cannot stand reading e-books. I don't dismiss their value for some people. Just not me.

Critical question ...

We're seeing this play out at all levels of education ... The Daily: Bursting the College Bubble

uh .. wow ...

This further reduction of funding for education at all levels is difficult to even think about ... the losses are coming ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRQ_CNJvqvc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adiimpw376U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E6b3swbnWg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiiDT_XoZls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlAXzO7CcMc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlIawcXK4Sc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi6mijjxnvc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvjMgVS6kng

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6-WD4UJ5gc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI6TGKqdOmE

Love this sentence .... it captures the heart of this piece, for me

"Engaging in fostering an enduring love for place reveals and expands spaces that allow people to be participants in an optimistic endeavor."

Interesting, the verb tense here. It caught my attention that "would" is used instead of "will" and maybe that is due to the way the prompt has been framed. Would suggests maybe. Will suggests happening.

I love reading these kinds of student reflections, where they grasp the larger picture of the art they are creating, and the purpose for creating the art. Their journal writings can surface important thinking and learning.

Groove ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90NiJ5WI9cU (adding some soundtrack to the margins)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vLBnFk-OFc

Trying to learn more about Praisesongs as a concept

This seems an important passage here, an anchor to the project

Is this a nod to the power structure? Who has political capital and agency and who does not? The first step in enacting change is noticing the disparities ...

This phrasing intrigues me, in how music and composition offers another way to view, and maybe appreciate -- or maybe be more critical, too -- of a place that is often to familiar to really notice anymore. I am thinking of how we give our students some creative distance from where they are, in order to see it anew. Maybe then, to make change.

Going off to listen to some tracks from Verses before coming back to read more

https://soundcloud.com/user-586734206

There is something powerful and inspiring that a kid of the city still loves the city, and not just does work to support other kids in the city, but writes a poem about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4dx42YzQCE

Jack White's project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqgTXiEpuWk

Your lyrics

stretch the known,

into the unknown,

this heliosphere,

always our home

until the time of disintegration

when our songs get buried

as bones

Acute orbits, too,

the way my legs

fold into you, my dear,

the blankets tangled at our feet;

for when we connect, we speak,

complete

By morning's first light,

when the Earth's forever orbit

brings us closer together,

we sip from the sun,

a drink of melted night

brewed from falling stars and

lost darkness

Margin notes

fill the gaps;

the pencil marks

of students, past,

grappling to ignore

the printed page

for beneath the gloss,

the people rage

key concept here ...

I appreciate the honesty here ... I wonder if you received any pushback or interest from administrators or parents? Did you have to justify your shift? (I am thinking of schools where the curriculum is mandated a certain way and how to help us all take steps in the direction you are outlining here)

Any of it online anywhere for viewing?

Ha! Subversive distribution!