hard deadlines

Portsmouth science fiction writer John McDaid's 1993 hypermedia novel "Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse" is one of four examples of early digital literature included in a just-released scholarly resource called "Pathfinders," which aims to preserve and explore these innovative electronic fictions. Electronic Literature Organization president Dene Grigar and board member Stuart Moulthrop were co-principal investigators on this National Endowment for the Humanities funded effort to make these works available to a broader audience. Here's their announcement:

In the decade between 1985 and 1995, as personal computers grew familiar and the Internet became a presence in everyday life, assumptions about reading, writing, and text began to change. Digital tools allowed increasingly powerful combinations of media. The ancestors of blogs and social networks appeared.  Experimental writers began to use tools like hypertext as the basis for fiction and poetry.

In the face of all these changes, the idea of the book remained essential in understanding the new nature of writing.  Yet the book could no longer be limited to traditional forms.  To understand the early history of electronic writing we would need a new kind of book; but what would it be like?  How would it capture the interactivity the effort now required of readers? How would it reflect the graphics, movement, and sound that that had become important narrative strategies? How would such a reinvented book make accessible works meant to run on an Apple IIe or early Macintosh computer, in these days of tablets and smart phones?

Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature, by Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop, answers these questions in the form of a multimedia, open-source web-book created for a wide array of digital devices. It features 173 screens of content, 53,857 words of text, 104 videos, 203 color photos, and various audio files, providing readers with access to four important computer-based works of literature that were among the first to be sold commercially in the U.S. — but are now seriously threatened by obsolescence.

The book, whose production was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, will be released June 1, 2015 and made available free of charge through the open-source platform Scalar, created by the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture at the University of Southern California.

Using video and still photography, Pathfinders captures demonstrations of four groundbreaking works, performed by their authors on vintage systems.  Readers accessing the book will watch Judy Malloy walk through her database novel Uncle Roger, originally published on the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link and considered by some the first example of social-media literature.  They will also see a tour of Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse, a revolutionary hypermedia novel-in-a-box by John McDaid, and a demonstration of two classics in the early hypertext system Storyspace, Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl and William Bly’s We Descend.  Extensive interviews with all four authors add an important dimension of oral history to the project.

All four are acclaimed works of fiction representing the cultural impact of digital technologies that resonate today in experimental writing, video games, cinema, and virtual reality experiences.

Pathfinders was created by Dene Grigar, Professor and Director of the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver, and Stuart Moulthrop, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Demonstrations and research took place in the Electronic Literature Lab (ELL), a working collection of electronic literature and vintage computers dating from1983 assembled and directed by Grigar. The designer of the Pathfindersbook is Will Luers, faculty member in the CMDC Program. Madeleine Brookman, a junior in the CMDC Program, served as the Research Assistant to the project.

The formal book launch party is scheduled for Friday, June 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Nouspace-Angst Gallery, located at 1015 Main Street, Vancouver, WA. The works of these authors will be displayed on vintage computers and copies of the book will be on view to the public. For more information, contact Dr. Dene Grigar, dgrigar at wsu.edu.
 
The book will be available at http://scalar.usc.edu/works/pathfinders.

Editorial note: Written from a press release.

The Aquidneck Island Planning Commission will conduct a public hearing to receive comments on the Draft Aquidneck Island Bikeway Design Study Report (DSR) for the Town of Portsmouth on Thursday, May 28, 2015, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.

A presentation on the DSR will begin at 6 PM. The hearing will be held in the Town Council Chambers, Town Hall, 2200 East Main Road.

Copies of the draft DSR are available for review at the Portsmouth Town Hall (2200 E. Main Rd.), the Portsmouth Free Public Library (2658 E. Main Rd.), and the Aquidneck Island Planning Commission (437 Broadway, Newport). The DSR is also available in electronic format at: www.aquidneckplanning.org

Written comments on the draft DSR may be submitted through June 19, 2015 to aipccomment@gmail.com or to the Aquidneck Island Planning Commission, 437 Broadway, Newport, RI 02840. Commenters are requested to include their name and place of residence with all comments submitted.

Editorial note: Written from a news release.

Portsmouth's Vern Gorton, 59, passed away this week and our town will, literally, never be the same.

He wasn't just a brilliant attorney — although he was that — or a devoted husband and dad, or the heart and soul of the Portsmouth Democratic party. He was a truly wonderful human being and I will miss him terribly.

I met Vern when I got involved with Portsmouth politics about ten years ago. I don't remember what the topic was, but I recall the first time I saw him take the podium at a Town Council meeting and thinking, wow, am I ever glad to be on the same side of that issue.

As I drifted into the local Democratic party, I would run into him at meetings. He was always level-headed, it seemed always smiling, and always able to put into words what everyone was thinking — and doing it in with a turn of phrase and a sense of humor. In all those years, I don't think I ever saw him lose his composure.

Over several campaigns, I had the great good fortune to work with Vern, and it was a masterclass in local politics, taught with wry wit and a clear, uncompromising eye. He had no patience for fools and called things as he saw them, but he unfailingly counseled taking the high road. Not that he was above slugging it out with the opposition — he was a person of deep convictions and he would not yield an inch — but he was always a gentleman.

He believed in the people and the Town of Portsmouth, and he encouraged the candidates he coached to serve the best interests of the community with intelligence and common sense. He was a wonderful mentor, and having his guidance during the election I ran for school committee was a truly special time. I learned a hell of a lot, and, I think, even more important, wanted to emulate what I came to see as his deep commitment to public service.

Vern was an inspirational leader, but one who led by doing. When I was looking around for a photo, I realized that there weren't many. Vern was always too busy working. When the local Democrats would be running our yearly clambake and all the candidates would be out shaking hands with Jack Reed, or David Cicilline, or Gina Raimondo, Vern would be back in the kitchen calmly making chowder. In our monthly town committee meetings, he'd usually be sitting in the back, listening, and only speaking up to say something that either made us all laugh or kept us from doing something stupid.

Portsmouth is a better place because of all that Vern did, and we will all miss his wisdom, judgment, and deep humanity. My heart goes out to family and friends, whose loss is even more immense. There are no words of consolation for a loss this great; only the comforting memory of someone who truly left everything he touched in better shape than he found it.

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Tiverton Town Council President Denise deMedeiros watches as election workers post vote totals.

By a wide margin, Tiverton voters passed a voter-initiated alternative town budget restricting the increase on the tax levy to 0.9% rather than the 2.9% proposed by the Town Budget Committee. The unofficial vote was 1,535 (59%) for budget #2, a double-digit lead over budget #1 which received 1,066 (41%). Officials said the vote will be certified next week.

According to a document provided to voters, the new 0.9% budget reduces the tax rate to $18.99 per thousand (rather than the Budget Committee's proposed $19.38 per thousand) by cutting $126K from the school committee, $150K from the Town Council's "Future Needs" account, eliminating the Town Planner and withdrawing $360K from the General Fund, among other changes.

Supporters of both budgets had spent much of the day outside Tiverton High School, where voting was taking place. (1,526 residents voted today, compared to 1,075 who took advantage of early voting or mail ballots; the winning margins were similar in both tallies.)

Budget #2 truck and motorcycle, minus toy rifle.

There was a bit of excitement in the late afternoon when Tiverton police responded to a report that someone had a replica of a rifle on display next to a truck decorated with Budget #2 posters. A post circulated on Facebook showed an olive-drab replica of what appeared to be an M-1 propped against a motorcycle near the entrance to the polling station.

"I just brought it to get people's attention," said Town Council member Joe Sousa, saying that the police had asked him to remove it. Sousa and a group of the budget #2 supporters, including Justin Katz, who originated the petition, stood near the entrance holding signs and vocally urging voters to consider their budget as they entered the building.

"Without a doubt," one voter shouted back.

Another of the budget #2 supporters, Jim O'Dell, thought that the distribution of revaluation notices this week had an impact on voters. "It couldn't have been better for us," he said. "People knew how much they were being socked -- that's why so many people are here." He claimed that some residents had seen valuation changes in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Town Council President Denise deMedeiros, who was with a group of budget #1 supporters in the parking lot, agreed that the revaluation notice was "untimely." "It was supposed to come out a few weeks ago," she said, noting that the reval was done by a contractor and they did not have control of the timing. "If it came out tomorrow, they would have said that we did it on purpose."

School Committee chair Sally Black held a poster noting that budget #1 had been approved by the budget committee, the town council, and the school committee, and included all-day Kindergarten while holding the school budget to just a 1% increase.

"We're fighting over $78 a year on a $200,000 house," said deMedeiros. "Our budget keeps everything and doesn't take anything from the general fund." She noted the areas that budget #2 cuts included the town planner, at a time when Tiverton is confronting major issues like the plans for the industrial park and the proposed casino. It cut the allocation for legal fees in half while at the same urging the council to "play hardball" in contract negotiations. And it zeroed the "future needs" account which the council uses to cover contract increases without tipping their hand in negotiations by earmarking specific amounts.

"If it wins, we'll have to deal with it, "said deMedeiros. "We're going to have to make some cuts, and they're not going to be the cuts they suggested."

Correction: Updated to correct the spelling of the first name of the school committee chair.