I discovered Posterous a few months ago and thought it was a really cool service. Simple post-by-email micro-blogging that can also republish to other services like Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr or another blog. Problem was, I have a blog (this one) and didn’t really see a need for another.

Well, now that I’ve moved to Richmond, Virginia, I’ve found a use. I’ll be posting random notes about my experiences in the “River City” there. The last three entries will also be listed in the sidebar of this blog.

For anyone interested, here’s my Posterous site: Notes from River City

Karyn Romeis responded to my South African reflection by linking to her own African tale. Her words struck a chord because I returned from Africa (South Africa and Kenya) only a few weeks ago, and my experiences there profoundly changed me as a teacher and a human being. Her entry took me back to many schools and classrooms that I visited in Kenya as part of the Teachers Without Borders-Canada project.

Here’s a link to Karyn’s entry and to a version I annotated using Diigo.

I’ve rented the house and will be moving to Richmond soon, working from home full time, and using the time I currently spend commuting to do a lot more writing. I have some long-promised posts to write and some notes and pics from my visit to Germany. I also have some short stories, scripts, and longer works I’ve been neglecting. And I’m sure Richmond will provide its share of updates. More soon …

I’ll be visiting family in Germany for the next three weeks to celebrate a wedding and two birthdays. If you’re interested, I’ll be posting updates when I can on TravelPod and photos on Flickr.

I have a number of posts that won’t make it out of the draft folder until I return, and some of them are promised follow-ups to earlier posts. I haven’t forgotten them … sorry for the wait and thanks for the patience.

Posts still in the works:

• The World (of English) According to Me - Pt. 2
• Software for Writers - Pt. 3: Word Processors
• Software for Writers - Pt. 4: Research Tools
• Software for Writers - Pt. 5: Creative Writing Tools
• Some thoughts about how to assess the educational system drawn from the Child and Family Services Reviews process
• Catch-up posts on book notes/responses
• A spattering of copyright-related posts (of course)

I’ll get to these as soon as I can when I return. Happy July to all!

How do you Flock? What do you mean you don’t Flock?¹

Footnotes:

1. No, they don’t pay me, I’m just a huge fan of all-in-one that works well.

I’ve been playing around with the idea of publishing all of my content in one place - what would that look like? What would be lost, with respect to the social network effects that exist in other hosted services? It seems strange to be posting blog entries here, short updates to Twitter, photos to Flickr, etc… I’ve been wondering what it would look like if I just posted everything here, and then looked at ways to get it out, to rebuild the social network in a distributed, decentralized way.

One thing I’ve been struggling with is how absolutely trivial this would be if I was still running Drupal. Define some content types, slap in some templates for them, and decide which nodes get promoted to front page. Done. But WordPress doesn’t work like that. There’s not a clean and easy way to define something like a “Twitter Update” content type, or a “Photo” content type.

Well, actually, there is a clean and easy way. But it involves adding a couple of plugins. First, I added the AsideShop plugin. It’s pretty cool, and lets you define what are essentially templates for each of the categories on a WordPress site - superficially emulating the different node templates you can create in Drupal. I created an “aside” category, and told AsideShop to display it differently than the default posts. But… If I was to keep posting Twitter-like updates, my RSS feed would be pretty polluted with garbage that 99% (or more) of the remaining subscribers just wouldn’t care about.

Here is a screenshot of what asides look like currently:

The AsideShop configuration looks like this:

So, I added the Advanced Category Excluder plugin, and told it to remove everything in the “aside” category from the main site feed. Easy peasy.

All I have to do is write a regular post, and select the “aside” category. Everything else is handled automagically. I can expose all of the asides on their own page, and through their own feed. Wonder what I’ll wind up doing with that…

I am a grumpy bystander who can’t take my desired "next steps" because no one will buy my house. Nevertheless, I think this guy is right:

The vast majority of homeowners will remain well ahead, even after the market corrects for housing inflation …

Not long ago there was broad agreement that … the principal impediment to homeownership was … the prevalence of high housing prices. Hence deflation of housing prices would be desirable.

He’s also right about this:

The 96 percent of mortgage borrowers who are fulfilling their commitments, often by scrimping, may be grumpy bystanders if many of the other 4 percent — those who found the phrase "variable rate" impenetrably mysterious — are eligible for ameliorations of their obligations.

Which is not to say that the lending agencies don’t also deserve to get spanked for their shady practices.

Parenthood is undeniably a blessing.  Yet, if I were to speak honestly, I’d note that there are certain drawbacks, not the least of which is ceding control over the soundtrack to your life.  My sweet soon-to-be four year old doesn’t want to listen to many of my tunes.  I’m fortunate that her choices are usually pretty tolerable.  While I dig Dan Zanes or Laurie Berkner in small doses, they get play in our house mostly because the munchkin wants them.

Of course, she’s allowed her own music.  I know our tastes will likely diverge through her adolescence, and we’ll have less of a chance during those years to connect over common sounds.  That’s part of why I’m so glad that she’s worked the Dino-5 into her rotation recently.  This collection of hip-hop heads is organized by Prince Paul, who produced the landmark De La Soul albums 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul is Dead, and Buhloone Mind State, and features Ladybug Mecca (formerly of the Digable Planets), Chali 2na (Jurassic Five), Wordsworth (an underground Brooklyn MC who appeared on records by A Tribe Called Quest and Blackstar), and Scratch (the vocal turntable, formerly of the Roots).  Their debut album is a storybook, narrated by the poet Ursula Rucker, about 5 dino friends at their dino school.  My kid is now walking around, rapping in the deep voice of 2na’s character, T-Rex, “I may be big and scary, but I’m really pretty nice.”

What’s so striking about the Dino 5 for me is the way they capture the essence of hip-hop as it was during its golden era in the late 1980s-mid 1990s, before capital swooped in and co-opted what was once predominantly an alternative and oppositional art form.  Popping off about your fly Adidas or your adversary’s nappy head and rotund relatives, rapping about dancing, music, girls, boys, friends, enemies, and the neighborhood.  Most of that gave way to Big Pimpin’, bling bling, and baseless braggadacio.

Hip-hop is still a vibrant art form, always will be, but there’s a reason that the areas of the music that challenge listeners aurally, poetically, and politically moved “underground,” out of site from the casual observer who doesn’t have the time or the passion to dig for those sounds.  Hip-hop ain’t dead, y’all, far from it; it’s been integrated in interesting ways into other forms, it’s been globalized, and there’s still plenty of innovation happening.  Yet hip-hop’s foundational meaning has been clouded over the past generation by its loudest voices.

So I’m happy to share with my daughter a feeling similar to what I got during my adolescence, listening to De La transmit live from Mars.  The Dino 5 represent the best of hip-hop: role playing, storytelling, deep danceable beats, learned references and musical quotations, wicked flow, and lyrical playfulness.  Their music is both nice enough for a four year-old and “nice” enough for her purist dad.  Kid tested, pops approved.

As my daughter takes her first tentative steps towards reading, it heartens me to be able to introduce her to the poetry and artistry of hip-hop with something that’s her speed.  Soon enough, she’ll be barraged with beats and words and sounds.  The Dino 5’s album gives her hip-hop that’s more sophisticated than the corny rapping on Sesame Street.  Hopefully, it will help her sort through the cacophony that she’ll meet as she grows, and find something that’s as meaningful to her as the music of my youth is to me.

Here’s a couple of brief clips to tack sound onto my words.

T-Rex struggles with how other kids see him, and hopes that they can think twice about how nice he may be:

Tracy Triceratops has a tough time keeping her voice down:

Posdnous introduces the “D.A.I.S.Y. Age” on De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising (1989):

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The short answer: I really didn’t know, but now I think I do.  The longer answer is below …

If you’re reading this, you may have noticed that I’ve been bouncing back and forth between blogs, web addresses, and themes quite a lot in the last few months.  Sorry about that.

I had “sicheiiyazhi.com” as my primary blog for a while, but it was mainly an “education blog.”  When I left the classroom, I tried to maintain it, but it felt weird because I wanted to write about other things, too.  So I got rid of that URL altogether and started developing a new site at “erichoefler.com,” partially because “sicheiiyahzi.com” was a difficult URL to remember, but mainly because I didn’t want people to arrive at the old URL expecting to find a purely education-related blog only to be disappointed by the other subjects.  So a new beginning felt right.

I tried to keep the former contents of “sicheiiyazhi” on a strictly-education blog for archive purposes,¹ create other blogs for specific subjects,² and write about personal stuff on another subdomain blog,³ but I quickly realized that was a stupid idea, for two reasons:

1. I still keep a close eye on the world of education, and it’s a huge part of who I am.  Separating it out from my other interests is often pretty tough.
2. I’m not trying to be an “online publisher,” I just want a place to write about the things that matter to me.

I finally just gave it all up and decided to keep everything right here: easy URL (blog.erichoefler.com) with my old blog name (Sicheii Yazhi … because I like it), which is what I should have done in the first place.⁴

So, if you’re still here, I promise to stay still for a while.⁵

• Blog = “Sicheii Yazhi” @ blog.erichoefler.com
• Feed = feeds.feedburner.com/erichoefler/blog
• Subjects = education, writing, literature, film, genre, aspects of culture, and personal updates

I’ll still be writing about education, but the other subjects on that list will probably start appearing more frequently.  I’ve updated the categories and tags throughout, so things should be easy to find, and I have auto-redirects from any old URL until the accounts expire.

I still maintain that I write first for myself, second to learn from others, and third to share ideas and discoveries.  I hope you’ll continue to share your ideas with me if you’re still reading, and I hope I didn’t annoy anyone too badly …

Prost!

Footnotes:

1. which I called “Seems Like Teaching” and hosted at “edublog.erichoefler.com”
2. genre and culture, specifically
3. namely, this one
4. I mean, from the beginning, I should have hosted the blog at this URL instead of the difficult and obscure “sicheiiyazhi.com”
5. at least the blog/address … no promises on the theme staying still

I’m a big fan of Lost.  As a fan, I found this video mash-up hilarious, annoying … and strangely helpful.

Previously on Lost: What?