Jana Remy
  • Writing
    • Disability
    • Making History
    • Digital Humanities
      • dayofDH
    • Canoeing
    • Creative Nonfiction & Essays
    • Feminism
    • Bibliographies
      • Pacific Worlds Bibliography
    • Social Media
      • Mentions/Links
  • Scholarship
    • Awards/Fellowships
    • Conferences & Invited Talks
    • Collaboration
    • Workshops
    • Conference Planning
    • Technical Skills
  • Teaching
    • Blogposts About Teaching

Jana Remy

  • Writing
    • Disability
    • Making History
    • Digital Humanities
      • dayofDH
    • Canoeing
    • Creative Nonfiction & Essays
    • Feminism
    • Bibliographies
      • Pacific Worlds Bibliography
    • Social Media
      • Mentions/Links
  • Scholarship
    • Awards/Fellowships
    • Conferences & Invited Talks
    • Collaboration
    • Workshops
    • Conference Planning
    • Technical Skills
  • Teaching
    • Blogposts About Teaching
Monthly Archives

December 2017

open
productivityteaching

open

The past few days I’ve been moving to a new office space at work.  The new digs are modeled on the completely open office concept of Facebook (fwiw, I know FB is evil, but I do think they do some things right):

open office

I know there’s been a lot of research showing that completely open office plans can disrupt attention. However, it can also contribute to an ethos of collaboration and openness, which is what I’m seeking to create in this new space. In our division we are working to bring people into the space to experiment with technology, and want to reinforce the ideas of visibility and creativity. I believe this open-office concept is a very visual and impactful way to send that message.

December 21, 2017
5 Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
was happiness…
booksdeep thoughts

was happiness…

Was happiness so bound up with the knowledge that it was also ephemeral?  And was it therefore always to be accompanied by the stubborn fear of its loss? Something wasn’t right. And yet she believed that she had developed an unusual capacity to ruin her own good fortune with this anxiety, this expectation of something going wrong.
~Richard Bausch, Hello to the Cannibals

 

This was one moment in the book that resonated with me on a fairly deep level. I was raised on the notion that one could not know happiness without also knowing a corresponding sadness, and it seems to me that every happy moment in my life has held the shadow of the days where things have been equally awful.

I love how Bausch is able to capture that so well in this quotation. It happens in a moment where the protagonist has no idea that there is a huge amount of sadness in her future, it’s a foreshadowing of what’s to come. But of course life is not as tidily constructed as a novel and I wonder if it isn’t possible just to be happy for awhile, without it inevitably leading to a time of despair?

December 18, 2017
0 Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
a perfect start
foodMomentsRandom

a perfect start

Yesterday I made this pumpkin bread recipe from Smitten Kitchen and it was every bit as magical as Deb said it would be: crunchy sweet top (who knew that this was what pumpkin bread needed to be really special), thick dense cakey center, not at all too sweet.

It made the perfect addition to my breakfast this morning!

December 17, 2017
2 Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
My love affair with letters (and the end of the semester…)
deep thoughtsdigital humanities

My love affair with letters (and the end of the semester…)

I am more than a little bit obsessed with letters. Ever since I was a young girl I have been a prolific writer of letters, often spending hours every Sunday writing to friends and family members, loving the practice of telling the stories of my life and sending little thoughts out through the post. In fact, I used to keep a large stash of little things that I collected from magazines and newspapers, just to have fun little things to include in the letters that I was writing.  One of my greatest treasures is the address book that I kept for years, where I would record all of the places where my correspondents lived. Even though I no longer add to that book, I still keep it because of the waves of memories that it holds as I look at where each of my friends moved over the years.

And my love of letters even overlaps with my love of books.  Three of my all-time favorites are Angle of Repose (which includes letters as part of the narrative), Pamela (an entirely epistolary novel) and Letters from Africa (the real-life letters of Karen Blixen to her beloved Denys Finch-Hatton). This is also why I am so very delighted by the current novel that I’m reading, Hello to the Cannibals, which also has letter writing at the core of the narrative.

I also use letters in my teaching, not just as source material for my students to examine, but for themselves to use the act of letter-writing as the basis for a reflective practice. One of my favorite assignments is at the end of the term, when I have my Digital Humanities students write letters to future students in the class, telling them what they can expect of the course.  Here are some fun excerpts from those letters:

This class will take all types. Those who are tech-savvy, and those who still carry around those bricks people affectionately refer to as “Nokias.” Those who know how to code, and those who can barely form a proper sentence. And that’s okay. The hope is by the end of the class, you’ll find something, no matter how small, you can attach to and find what interests you in this honestly intimidating field. Once you find that thing, run with it and run far. You’ll have the freedom to really make this class work for you, if you want it to…I also thought I wouldn’t be using any of these tools after the semester ended. After all, they looked really cool, but how could I integrate them into my own studies? In this case, desperation is both the mother and father of invention. As work in my other classes became more involving and complicated, I realized I could unravel some of that complexity with some of the practices I learned from this class. Even if there isn’t a specific tool that you find particularly helpful, the concepts of critical thought, deconstruction, and distant reading will be universally helpful to you.

 

What I am taking away from this class more than anything is a new way of looking at , and questioning, our digital world. Why do our screens have to be rectangular? What does that do to our thinking? Why do our presentations needs to be composed of slides? What does that do to our thinking? Why do we only watch one video at a time? What does that do our thinking? Are these the only ways? These are questions I wasn’t asking before, but I am now.

 

And finally, there’s this letter that a student wrote using animated GIFs and is well worth clicking through and seeing on her wordpress site: http://wordpress.chapman.edu/juliaross/2017/12/09/good-luck-to-you-boo/

December 16, 2017
0 Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Using Google Drive in my courses and some surprises about how it spawned collaboration
teaching

Using Google Drive in my courses and some surprises about how it spawned collaboration

This post originally appeared on the Chapman Academics Blog.


For quite some time I’ve used GoogleDrive to store my course materials. For me it is the easiest way to manage the many documents that I create during a semester, and the iterations of those documents as I update them each time I teach a class. To share these documents with my students I add them as hyperlinked content on Blackboard.

However, this semester I had two unanticipated experiences from using GoogleDocs, which seemed worth sharing with others who are using this tool in the classroom.

  1. I created a folder in GoogleDrive for each of my students to store content related to their end-of-semester research projects. For example, I created a document called “Sources” in that folder where the students were required to upload the online links (or images of book covers) for their research sources, prior to completing their writing. By having their sources all in GDocs, I was able to peruse and comment on each one, to either validate it as an appropriate source or to suggest alternatives when the source did not match the students’ research question or the parameters of the assignment. I was surprised, however, as I was navigating through these GDocs, to find that many of the students were logged into the Docs at the same time that I was leaving my comments. This allowed us to virtually “chat” through the comment stream about their sources, and was a surprisingly informal and helpful way to offer suggestions and corrections for the students. In the future I intend to experiment with holding virtual office hours via GoogleDocs, which seems an excellent way to be available for conversation with my students during times that they might not be on campus or I might not be near my office phone.
  2. I discovered about halfway through the semester that in one of my classes where I created and linked to the stored syllabus in GoogleDocs, that they students were “chatting” on the syllabus page during class about the course material that I was presenting in class. At first I was taken aback and uncomfortable with knowing this–were they not paying attention in class and instead chatting with each other virtually, becoming something like a class snapchat account? But then I realized that it was pretty ingenious of them to use this tool that I’d given them in a way that I’d not expected. In fact, one class session where I was at a conference and had scheduled a guest speaker for the class, I jumped into the syllabus document and chatted with the students while they were in class and I was at my conference hotel. I loved that I got to “check in” with them in the moment, virtually. Their candid responses to the speaker were also helpful to me–they said that they were learning a lot from him! This assuaged any guilt that I had for not being present that day and allowed me to feel better about what was occurring in my classroom.

These experiences have cemented my interest in using GDocs in the classroom. In both intended and unintended ways, they are excellent tools for student collaboration of all kinds.

December 11, 2017
0 Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
a new look for janaremy
deep thoughtsStorieswriting

a new look for janaremy

Perhaps some of you have already noticed that I’ve been doing a bit of rearranging around here. As of a month ago, my site looked like the image above.

I loved this look for my site that I’ve had for the past seven years. The colors and simplicity of the design were so me. However under the hood the site was a pretty big mess–the design wasn’t responsive, the subpage links kept breaking, and the content was really hard to update due to the customization of WordPress necessary to support the visual layout. So I realized that it was time for it to go and to adopt a new look.

So I fussed around about it for awhile and came up with something super-simple, that resembles some of the former look of the “pilgrimsteps” blog from way back when.

Today:
screenshot from landing page for this website

Way Back When:

screenshot of an old blogpost

 

And from Way Way Back When:
screenshot from 2010

And From the Stone Ages of Blogland:

a screenshot from enivri.com (in 2002)

 

Some things never change, such as my love for light backgrounds, san-serif fonts, and images. But some things have changed so very very much in the past fifteen years.  More than I can even begin to document. Fortunately I have a blog archive stretching back over all that time that I can peruse and marvel at all the roads I’ve traveled since then.

December 9, 2017
0 Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
a better gardener
gardenRandomthings I like

a better gardener

Wild roses are fairest, and nature a better gardener than art.

~Louisa May Alcott

And a link to an image showing my last visit to Louisa.

December 5, 2017
0 Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
A Room of My Own
deep thoughtsthings I likewomenwriting

A Room of My Own

Virginia was right.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…

After a few years of Stijn and I trying to co-habit in a shared office space, I realized a few weeks ago that it wasn’t working for me, that I needed my own space to write, one that had my own books, office supplies, piles of papers, houseplants, etcetera.

I was nervous to tell him that I wanted to keep a separate space. I felt like, somehow, it was a signal that there was something amiss with our relationship. I waffled for a while about broaching the subject. And when I finally did, I was nervous that he would resist or feel betrayed. He didn’t. He was nonchalant, asked a few clarifying questions about shared resources, and wished me well.

For many years I have worked and written from wherever I could plug-in my laptop, and I have done just fine. I wrote papers, authored blogposts, crafted technical documentation, and replied to emails all from wherever and whenever. It has worked and I have made do. But now it feels like such a luxury to be able to claim a room and to make it my own. And already I can feel the difference. Writing is easier than it has been in a very long time.

Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog’s chance of writing poetry. that is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one’s own.

December 4, 2017
0 Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
An update from the Archive
making history

An update from the Archive

For those of you who followed along on the FBLive videos that we created in the Archive last summer, you will know that we left you hanging as to the outcome of the developing relationship between Florence and Wally. Specifically, you knew that they had plans to marry soon but also that Wally would “ship out” soon too, and we didn’t tell you which would happen first.

Therefore, today I’m here to tease you with a bit more information.  It can be found in this snippet from one of Florence’s letters:

letter from Florence Keeler
My transcription of the relevant parts:

It’s been so dreadfully long since you left darling — since you kissed me Goodbye on the street corner in Las Vegas. Just think we will soon be married for four months, a third of a year, and we haven’t had one week together. It’s hard to take and I don’t want to go on this way. I want to be where you are. I wish something would happen so I could make some kind of plans. I don’t know how I can get out of LA on a plane or train at Christmas. There is just no space and I don’t even know whether I’m going so I can’t make a reservation. I do hope you call tomorrow. I’ve received nothing later than your last Sunday’s letter. That’s why my spirits are so very low right now…

Poor Florence, she hasn’t heard anything from Wally lately, she had to say goodbye to her brand new husband on a street corner as he shipped out for parts unknown-to-her, and she is struggling to make her holiday plans. I felt so awful for her as I read this letter, perhaps even more so because it’s that same time of year that I’m also scheming about all of my own Christmas plans!

So I’ll let you in on a secret to break a bit of the suspense. She gets her wish and Wally does come home for Christmas. And this time it’s not a furlough or a weekend break. He’s home for good.

December 1, 2017
0 Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest

About Me

About Me

Hi there friend, and welcome to my blog. I started writing on the internet more than fifteen years ago. Since then I've started and finished a PhD program, left the Mormon church and became a Quaker, got divorced, started a history podcast, found full-time work in academia, took up rock climbing and outrigger canoeing, and traveled across the globe (China! Belgium! Italy! Chicago! Montana! Portland! Gettysburg! and oh-so-many points in-between). For my 38th birthday and 25th anniversary of my bone cancer diagnosis, we (meaning me and you) bought legs for a young double-amputee from China. This blog is eclectic and random--it has poetry and cooking and books. And cats. And flowers. And the ocean (my ocean). But in that sense it's a good reflection of me and my wide-ranging, far-reaching, magpie curiosity.

Snapshots of My Life

  • hey so this is the face of a guy who
  • a little treat fromthegarden the first of many I hope
  • she likes to sit behind me on the couch
  • found me a few belgians dtsa homesick
  • Came home from a cold  windy evening of outrigger
  • our first dinner onthebackporch in a very long time heatwave
  • postpaddling nirvana by chefstijn andyesIdidlicktheplateclean lifeofapaddler
  • Friday!!! wemadeit
  • I call this photo Teamwork I slice and eat a

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog.

Popular

  • 1

    the post-post divorce Christmas celebration

    November 28, 2017
  • 2

    a new look for janaremy

    December 9, 2017
  • 3

    A Room of My Own

    December 4, 2017
  • 4

    What I learned from launching a social media campaign about the War Letters Archive

    November 30, 2017
  • 5

    open

    December 21, 2017

Categories

Archives

Popular Posts

  • 1

    the post-post divorce Christmas celebration

    November 28, 2017
  • 2

    a new look for janaremy

    December 9, 2017
  • 3

    A Room of My Own

    December 4, 2017

Calendar

December 2017
M T W T F S S
« Nov    
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Flickr

@2017 - PenciDesign. All Right Reserved. Designed and Developed by PenciDesign


Back To Top