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.

The Killers
Tuesday, 17 Aug 2004 :-:

The Library Company of Philadelphia has wireless. Yay!

** * **

I love short morality fiction about real events.

Take, for example, take the plight of Cromwell Hicks, who in this story was just recently expelled from Yale for a few petty jokes -- abducting a prof's daughter in the dead of night and planting explosives in one of the academic halls....

A thousand things came to the memory of Cromwell, which seemed to confirm the story of Mr. Jacob Hicks. Suffice it to say, that after an hour's walk up and down the street, Cromwell found himself at the corner of Second and Walnut street, with three facts impressed rather vividly upon his mind; He was without a father; his mother had eloped with a mustache (appended to a British Baronet;) and he, Cromwell Hicks, late of Yale College, was without a cent in the world.

What does he to do in that kind of situation? Kill blacks and kidnap women of course. But first, he robs the bank owned by his dad.

Oh well. He was an illegitimate child anyway.

Where was the legitimate child that his mother had hidden from her husband? In Eastern State Penitentiary of course. And yes, his real (and rich) father had put him in jail for trying to pass counterfeit money. And no, he didn't know he had a son at the time. Well, he thought Cromwell was his son, but he was wrong.

** * **

Oh, it all works out in the end. Everyone dies -- almost. The wronged, legitimate son survives in his attempt to rescue his "sister" (they were raised together, but didn't know they weren't biological siblings) from the flames of the riot where she was imprisoned by the illegitimate son.

One presumes that they married and lived happily ever after.

Like I said, gotta love good ol' 19th century literature.

** * **

As I was reading, Phil Lapansky, research librarian here at the Library Company, peeked over my shoulder, got excited, and handed me a bookled he has compiled on George Lippard, the author of this story. It turns out that Lippard published this book under a number of titles -- I'm currently sitting in front of two of them.

Lapansky has actually photocopied all editions and done a textual criticism with a detailed annotation of all revisions between editions...

Lately here at the Library Company we have been overrun with literature folks -- profs and PhD'ers from English and American Studies Depts. reading and reifying tons of 19thc. literature, and their language is invading our "discourse" (like right there, for example -- we used to just write and talk). Is what we have here with these assorted versions an example of "intertextual dialogics?" Is my above musing "supratextual monologics?"
** * **

One final thing. I hereby resolve never to name any character "Mr. Snick"