my service narrative

i've constructed my service narrative by discussing three kinds of service. first, service to the department, college, and university. second, service to the community. and third, service to the field.

what follows is a working version of my service narrative, a part of my USF tenure packet that is due september 15th. comments are very much encouraged.


(08-11-08 update: a) added two new transition sentences; b) changed the garden project paragraph to be less about higher education trends and more about my service to the project.)

(09-13-08 update: a) added my involvement with the USF-based journal peace review and the ralph lane peace and justice essay award competition to the service to the college section; b) added my involvement in this year's one book, one campus reading discussions.)

David Silver
Service Narrative
Working Draft: August 9 11, 2008

To better trace my service activities as an assistant professor, I have divided my service narrative into three sections: a) Service to the Campus; b) Service to the Community; and c) Service to the Field.

Service to the Campus

Since joining the Media Studies faculty in fall 2006, I have worked creatively and collaboratively to contribute to the intellectual community of my Department, College, and University. Together with John Kim, I helped organize our 2006-2007 departmental Colloquium Series, a series of research and teaching presentations by regular and visiting Media Studies faculty. I also attended and participated in a workshop called “Video/Audio Blogging, Social Networks and Labor” at LaborTech 2006: The Digital Revolution and a Labor Media Strategy organized by Professor Dorothy Kidd. Also during 2006-2007, in collaboration with Teresa Moore and with support from the College of Arts and Sciences, Environmental Studies, Gleeson Library, the Journalism Minor, Living-Learning Communities, Peace and Justice Studies, and the Departments of Media Studies, Politics, and Sociology, I brought Josh Wolf to campus for a talk on Journalism and the Justice System. (See Appendix: “Maria Dinzeo, “Incarcerated Blogger Shares Experience with USF,” San Francisco Foghorn, April 26, 2007.) In 2007-2008, I chaired the Media Studies Job Search, a robust (180+ applications) search process that brought about important discussions about our department’s present and future directions but that resulted in no hire. With help from Lydia Fedulow, the department's extraordinary program assistant, I feel productive and organized.

Since 2006, I have enjoyed many inspired collaborations with people and departments across the College of Arts and Sciences. With visiting Politics Professor Banafsheh Akhlaghi, San Francisco Fire Chief Heather Fong, and student members of USF Politics Society & Pi Sigma Alpha, I was part of a September Project that examined the legacy of September 11 in terms of decreasing human rights and civil liberties in the US. With Politics Professors Corey Cook and Stephen Zunes, the USF Politics Society, and the McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, I was part of Election Watch 06, a night of students, staff, and faculty coming together over politics, pizza, and poll-watching on election night. Since 2007, I have served as an Associate Editor for the USF-based journal Peace Review and this year served as one of the judges for the Ralph Lane Peace & Justice Essay Award Competition.

Last year, I shared my research on using online tools to foster offline engagement as part of the Special Lecture Series in Computer Science (SLS/CS). I also worked with Computer Science Professor Benjamin Wells to bring Marc Smith to campus as part of SLS/CS. And for the last two years, I have helped (and been inspired by) Computer Science Professor Chris Brooks’ Peru Digital Divide Immersion Project by recommending two excellent Media Studies students (now graduates), Veanne Cao and Amber McChesney-Young, to help digitally document the collaboration.

My most fruitful College-wide service has been with USF’s Garden Project, led by Media Studies Professor Melinda Stone, Art + Architecture Professor Seth Wachtel, and eleven first-year living-learning student-farmers. Within two short years, USF’s garden provides a collaborative research, teaching, and community space that is not only green and beautiful but also practical and pedagogical. In fall, I gave a blogging workshop for the Garden Project students which resulted in a group blog. I’ve also consulted with Garden Project students about incorporating photography, tagging, and film - as well as topics like gardening skills, lessons about the land, and garden-to-table recipes - into future blogs. Last spring, my Digital Journalism students and I interviewed, documented, researched, photographed, blogged, and filmed the garden and its students and faculty (See Teaching Narrative). This summer, together with Christin Anderson and an email list, I helped coordinate a summer garden crew comprised of students, staff, librarians, and faculty.

Since 2006, I have collaborated with Gleeson Library and have worked closely and creatively with many Gleeson Librarians especially Joe Garity, our Media Studies Library Liaison. Together with Gleeson Librarians Debbie Benrubi and Kathy Woo, my spring 2007 “Digital Journalism” students and I interviewed, photographed, and blogged about the graphic novel exhibit in Gleeson Library. Together with Gleeson Librarian Vicki Rosen, my Davies Forum students and I took over a good chunk of the library as part of National Library Week. One of the most exciting projects to be a part of is Gleeson Gleanings, a group blog started by Gleeson Librarian Debbie Malone and contributed to by nearly a dozen Gleeson librarian-bloggers. As another example of the continuum of scholarship, I think of my relationship to a blog like Gleeson Gleanings as service, teaching, and research: I informally offered advice during the blog’s launch, my students and I routinely use (and comment to) the blog, and I regularly use Gleeson Gleanings as a topic of discussion for my research talks at library conferences.

Although I am still learning my way around campus, I have contributed service to the University. I co-staffed the Media Studies’ table at the Major/Minor Fair in both 2006 and 2007. I have worked with the Office of Undergraduate Admission to be a speaker for USF’s Admitted Student Visit Program, both in 2006 and in 2007, where I get to showcase USF student media and to field post-visit student comments on my blog. I also served as a faculty reading moderator for this year's one book, one campus reading of Three Cups of Tea. Also, in conjunction with the Center for Instruction and Teaching, I conducted a campus-wide blogging workshop for USF faculty and staff and co-presented (with Professors Andrew Goodwin and Michael Robertson) at a Faculty Development lunch panel organized by Sister Mary Theresa Moser called "Blogging Teaching, Collegiality and Self-Expression."

Without a doubt one of the most rewarding and refreshing experiences on campus has been blogging alongside Media Studies professors Andrew Goodwin (Professor of Pop) and Michael Robertson (Darwin's California Cat Presents the 15-Minute Man). Reading and commenting on the blogs of two colleagues who teach different classes to similar students at the same campus, and having them read and comment on silver in sf, is extremely exciting. Equally exciting is when USF students continue the classroom experience by commenting on their professor’s blog (or blogging a post of their own) and by so doing enter into a public conversation with peers and professors. In turn, my ideas and lectures get stronger and more interesting with student feedback. For blogging and for integrating blogs into teaching and service I received USF’s Faculty Innovation Award in spring 2008.

Service to the Community

Extending my service from campus to the community, I have enjoyed collaborating with San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) for the last two years. Last summer, I worked with SFPL Librarian Jerry Dear, the Herb Caen Magazines & Newspaper Center, and SFPL to present “The Power of Web 2.0” at the Main Library. (See Appendix: The Power of Web 2.0 talk flyer; and Jerry Dear’s email titled “A Superb Program” to David Silver, July 1, 2007.) Last spring, I continued my collaboration with Jerry Dear and SFPL to help bring Sarah Houghton-Jan (The Librarian in Black) to SFPL; my Davies Forum students and I field-tripped to the Main Library to see The Librarian in Black’s talk on Library 2.0.

I have also begun to collaborate with professors and librarians at neighboring Bay Area colleges and universities. With an invitation from California College of the Arts Professor Rachel Schreiber, I served as Moderator for CCA’s Visual and Critical Studies 2008 Graduate Symposium, where I had the pleasure to introduce and comment on Guinevere Harrison’s MA thesis “Neogeography: Mapping Our Place in the World” and Lee Pembleton’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” With an invitation from long-time collaborator Shinjoung Yeo, I gave a talk for Stanford librarians, where I suggested that instead of professors and librarians building sites for college students to visit and obey, we should encourage our students to build their own sites - sites where they follow their curiosity, create content, converse, and collaborate (the five c's). (See Appendix: “a talk for librarians at stanford university,” silver in sf, March 19, 2008.) And this summer, I attended the Tools for Participation conference organized by Doug Schuler, sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and hosted by the Information School at UC Berkeley.

Service to the Field

For over a decade, I have worked actively, creatively, and collaboratively towards fostering research and teaching around an academic field called new media studies, digital media studies, Internet studies, or cyberculture studies. Whatever the name, there is growing and sustained academic interest (especially but not limited to our students) in the Internet, digital media and culture, and convergent mobile media. In 1996, I began using the term cyberculture studies because I was convinced that the media revolution we were beginning to experience was both technological and cultural and because the term cyberculture studies was ambiguous enough to include just about anything and everything relating to contemporary or not-so-contemporary media and culture.

In 2002, I was invited to be on the Academic Advisory Board of the Pew Internet & American Life Project (PIP) and in 2006 I joined PIP as a member of their Advisory Board. Working with the Pew Internet & American Life Project staff has been a highlight of my career and it is a privilege to be a part of a project that continues to publish – publicly and for free – rich and rigorous data and stories about US-based digital media practices, behaviors, and possibilities. In another example of the continuum of scholarship, the reports the Pew Internet & American Life Project publish make their way into my research and into my syllabi. Continuing the continuum, PIP Senior Research Specialist Mary Madden was guest lecturer in my Davies Forum course on Digital Literacy in spring 2008. In addition to working with Pew, I have worked and learned from the Ford Foundation, especially Becky Lentz and the Media, Arts and Culture (MAC) unit. In 2002, I attended and presented my work at the October staff meeting of MAC in Berkeley, California and in 2006, I attended a mini-symposium titled “Media and Communications at a Crossroads: The Role of Scholarship for Media Reform and Justice” in New York City. (See Appendix: Letter from Ford Foundation, November 12, 2002; and Media and Communications at a Crossroads: The Role of Scholarship for Media Reform and Justice, Participant Bios, January 20, 2006.) For the last two years, I have served as grant reviewer for the small and large grant cycles of the Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Sphere, a collaboration among the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Center for International Media Action (CIMA), and the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center at Fordham University.

On a more academic level, I work with a number of journals, especially New Media & Society, where I have served as a Contributing Editor since 2001. Under the expert editorial direction of Nick Jankowski and Steve Jones, New Media & Society has become, I believe, the leading journal in new media studies and one that has had success in bridging social science- and humanities-based academic communities. I am also a member of the Editorial Board of Games & Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media and a member of the Advisory Board of the Iowa Review Web. Since 2000, I have reviewed articles for: American Studies; first monday; Games & Culture; Information, Communication & Society; The Information Society; Journal of American Culture; New Media & Society; and Social Movement Studies. Also since 2000, I have regularly reviewed manuscripts for Arnold Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Prentice Hall, Routledge, Sage, SUNY Press, and Wadsworth Publishing.

In a field that is always changing, some of the most dynamic research is found not in journals nor in books but rather at conferences. Although the majority of work comes from the conference organizers, I have contributed by serving as a reviewer on many conference committees. In the last decade, I have served on the Program Committee of Constructing Cyberculture(s): Performance, Pedagogy, and Politics in Online Spaces Conference (College Park, Maryland, 2001); on the Program Committee for the Fourth International Digital Arts & Culture Conference (Brown University, Rhode Island, 2001); on the Program Committee for the Second Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 2001); on the Program Committee for the Shaping the Network Society: Patterns for Participation, Action and Change Conference (Seattle, Washington, 2002); on the International Program Committee for CATaC: Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication (Montreal, Canada, 2002; and Karlstad, Sweden, 2004); as a Reviewer for the Communication and Technology Division of the 53rd Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (San Diego, California, 2003); on the Program Committee for Social Intelligence Design 2006 (Osaka, Japan, 2006); as a Reviewer for the Showing, Demonstrating Colloquium (Université de Marne-laVallée, France, 2007); and on the Program Committee for DIAC-2008: Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing (University of California, Berkeley, 2008).

I have welcomed opportunities to share academic ideas with larger, more general, and diverse audiences through print media, especially newspapers and magazines. In October 1997, Wired magazine used the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies (RCCS) to talk about college classes in cyberculture and in 2001 the Chronicle of Higher Education featured RCCS in “Internet Studies 1.0: a Discipline Is Born,” which discussed the formation of a new academic field of study. (See Appendix: “Culture Crash Course,” Wired, October 1997; and Scott McLemee, "Internet Studies 1.0: a Discipline Is Born," Chronicle of Higher Education, March 30, 2001.) I have tried my best to inject sensible discourse about the internet and contemporary culture through interviews for outlets like the Associated Press, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, The Observer, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Seattle Times. (See Appendix: Media Appearances; and Joyce Cohen, “He-Mails, She-Mails: Where Sender Meets Gender Men,” New York Times, May 17, 2001).

My favorite and most long-standing service to the field is the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies, or RCCS, which I designed and launched in 1996 as a free, public, and user-submitted archive of relevant college-level syllabi and calls for conferences. In 1997, I began publishing monthly full-length book reviews of books about contemporary media and culture. From the start, I decided RCCS would review books for two reasons: 1) books often contain interesting, well-developed ideas and arguments, something a new field of study needs and thrives on; and 2) books, unlike Web sites which began to multiple and remix at an alarming rate by 1997, are finite in number. Soon after, I began publishing author responses alongside the book reviews. Soon after that, I began publishing multiple book reviews of a single book. These days, it is common for RCCS to feature three, four, or even five reviews of a single book, which, combined with an author response, offers a rich and engaging conversation between reviewers and authors. To date, RCCS has published over 550 book reviews of over 400 books with over 150 author responses. (See Appendix: Books Reviewed by RCCS.) My favorite part of RCCS is that it is written and read by all kinds of scholars – professors, graduate students, librarians, and independent artists and scholars representing all kinds of fields and disciplines within the arts, humanities, technologies, and sciences.

08-08-08

yesterday afternoon, sarah and i converged in arcata, and by late last night she was here in the octagon at stonelake farm. in the morning, i explained to her how the eight-sided tenure narrative writing machine works and she suggested a few excellent configurations. later, sarah surveyed stonelake's garden and created one of her signature salads.


happy great eights day!

reading while writing

lately, i've been spending my morning coffee on a bench outside the octagon overlooking the lower fields and forests of stonelake farm. in the morning, i read a page or two of david samuels' recent new yorker piece "dr. kush."


at night, after group dinner and washed dishes, i steal away to the same bench, this time with whatever remains in the night's bottle. under a hundred million stars and sarah's headlamp, i read a chapter or two of lisa lutz's the spellman files.

a box full of scholarship

sometime before moving to seattle, i met up with my dissertation chair john caughey for lunch. after we finished our meals and talked about this and that, i asked john if he had any advice for me getting tenure.

he thought for a while and then answered: "when you get to UW, get a box and set it aside. a good strong box. anytime you do anything - anything research, anything teaching, anything service - get some kind of physical evidence of the thing you do. then, put that physical evidence in the box. when you publish something, put a copy in the box. when you finish a new syllabus or get an award, put it in the box. when you get a letter of appreciation from a student or colleague or member of the community, put it in the box. then, when tenure time comes around, you'll have a box full of scholarship."

i thought for a while and said, "that's a great idea! thanks, john!"

in the center of the octagon there is an eight-sided pit. this morning i placed my tenure box in the pit and began taking out the box's contents. instead of me arranging the work into three categories (teaching, research, service), the work arranged itself: first as pods, then as clusters, then as blobs that suggest some kind of a continuum of scholarship. currently and curiously, the work seems to have settled into eight rough blobs.

the guestbook in the octagon

i spent the morning reading the first half of the octagon's guestbook. the guestbook's authors are everyone - kids, teenagers, college students, artists, writers, filmmakers, lovers, partners, parents. what runs through all of the entries i've read is deep, deep appreciation, wonder, hope, and gratitude for the octagon, for stonelake farm, and for everything francis and melinda are creating here. it's a multi-authored, collaboratively-designed book of renewal and gratitude.



there's a page in the guestbook from the fearless davies forum crew. i think amber mcchesney-young's entry in the guestbook sums it up nicely: "I've had a wonderful time here at Stonelake, chopping wood, cooking, eating, and listening to Francis' wisdom. There should definitely be a USF program here." great idea, amber!

michal, a student at scattergood friends school and part of the team that helped build the new outhouse and the solar shower deck, writes in the guestbook, "Francis, thanks for teaching us so many skills and giving us the opportunity to work through several rounds of trial and error."

wow, i thought, reading michal's sentence, what a wonderful compliment from a student! and then again - wow, what a wonderful definition of engaged teaching! engaged teaching is giving students opportunities to work through several rounds of trial and error. i'm totally using that in my teaching narrative.

greetings from tiny and zeta.

chores at stonelake farm

besides a few small chores like letting mesa, the barn dog/puppy, out in the morning and feeding her breakfast, my main assignment at stonelake farm is the lower garden.


each evening around six-thirty i water it all, except the potatoes and the squash which get watered every other day. i weed the weeds and then feed the weeds to the chickens. after watering, we plant - a new batch of carrots thursday and three new rows of potatoes friday.


my other important task is to harvest. this chore is the most delicious.

living in the octagon

i am currently a writer in residence at stonelake farm, living in the octagon.


my word-related goal is to finish my research, teaching, and service narratives, the three largest chunks of my tenure packet, which is due september 15.

early on, melinda stone (a media studies colleague who is also going for tenure this year) and i decided to use a good portion of the summer to plug away at our tenure packet. that is, instead of doing it last minute under duress, panic, and fear, we would write our narratives slowly and surely, and even learn a thing or two along the way.

currently, my research narrative (which andrew goodwin smartly suggested we write first) is about 15 pages long. it begins with a research bio (5 pages). then it traces four research streams: 1) early explorations; 2) the social construction of online communities; 3) RCCS and the emergence of digital media studies; and 4) the september project and public scholarship (8 pages). it concludes with a brief section titled "my blog as research activity" (2 pages).

what follows is a working version of the first section - my research bio.


Research Bio

In September 1986, I moved from San Luis Obispo, California, to Los Angeles to become an undergraduate at UCLA. A book lover, I declared English my major and took many inspiring classes like American Literature with Martha Banta, Ulysses with Cal Bedient, and two semesters of Shakespeare with Stephen Dickey. I minored in American studies which allowed me to pursue my growing interests in American media and popular culture with classes like Jazz and American Culture by the late great Leonard Feather and American History 1945-present with Bruce Schulman. My academic training was enriched by living in the Co-op, a student-owned, student-run housing collective for 500+ UCLA students. At the Co-op, I learned about communal living and collective action. I graduated magna cum laude in 1991.

Between 1991-94, I worked as a teacher's assistant at UCLA’s University Elementary School (UES) and as a private writing and conversation tutor in Los Angeles. It was during this time that I began fascinated in a thing we then called cyberspace (or what at some point has been called the Internet, the internet, the Information Superhighway, cyberculture, the World Wide Web, the Web, and Web 2.0). Further, living in LA during the Rodney King beatings in 1991, the officers’ acquittals and subsequent rebellion and riots in 1992, and OJ Simpson’s live-televised low-speed car chase down the 405 in 1994, increased my interest in the role of media and media makers in culture and society. Fueled by Howard Rheingold’s book The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, I wanted to study the Internet and other forms of citizen media at a graduate level. I decided to pursue American studies because of its interdisciplinarity and its acceptance of popular culture as a legitimate object of study. Although back then the Internet could hardly be called popular, I believed it had potential for growth – perhaps even mainstream adoption. I wanted to study this thing called the Internet.

In September 1994, I moved from Los Angeles to College Park, Maryland to be a graduate student in American studies at the University of Maryland. The strength of the department and university was the diverse offerings. From Myron Lounsbury, I learned about media and cultural theory; from Mary Corbin Sies and fellow grad student Kelly Quinn, I learned about material culture; from Katie King (Women’s Studies), I learned about the history of technology and feminist writing technologies; from Bob Kolker (English), I learned about film form, film history, and film future; and from John Caughey, I learned about ethnography, ethnographic methods, and how to listen. John also supervised my dissertation. Through research assistantships and grants, I also worked with and learned from Martha Nell Smith (English) and fellow grad student Jason Rhody at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), Randy Bass (English, Georgetown University), and the late great Roy Rosenzweig (Center for History and New Media, George Mason University).

By 1996, I became frustrated with the lack of an academic community around the study of the Internet. Back then, studying and teaching the Internet was a marginal if not frowned upon topic of academic focus and expertise. To fill this void, I designed and built the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies, or RCCS, an entirely online center that featured archived syllabi and conference calls. By bringing together disciplinarily-diverse syllabi, we could begin to see and build a curriculum. By bringing together disciplinarily-diverse calls for conferences, we could begin to meet and build community. A year later, in 1997, I began using RCCS as a publishing platform for monthly book reviews and author responses.

In September 1998, I began research for my dissertation, a comparative and ethnographic study of the Blacksburg Electronic Village (in Blacksburg, Virginia) and the Seattle Community Network (in Seattle, Washington). I moved from College Park to Washington, DC to be closer to my main mentor: the Library of Congress. With support from a dissertation fellowship from The Aspen Institute, I completed my dissertation in 2000.

In September 2000, I began a one-year position as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Georgetown had recently developed a unique master’s program in Communication, Culture, and Technology (CCT), and I jumped at the opportunity to design and teach a graduate seminar. My course, Cultures of Cyberspace, was offered in fall and spring semesters, and I enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) working with an exceptional class of graduate students, including Mary Madden, Jeff Young, and many others. In the summer of 2001, I returned to UCLA to take part in a NEH Summer Seminar called “Literature in Transition: The Impact of Information Technologies.” The seminar was taught by Kate Hayles and included future colleagues and collaborators Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Tara McPherson, and Michele White.

In September 2001, I moved to Seattle for a tenure-track position at the University of Washington. I began as an assistant professor in the School of Communications which a year later merged with the Department of Rhetoric to become the Department of Communication. As I discuss further in the sections that follow, research-wise, I was creative and productive. I published about the social construction of online communities and the emergence of cyberculture studies as articles in communication and new media journals and as book chapters in important anthologies. I presented papers at academic conferences organized by the American Studies Association (ASA), the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), the National Communication Association (NCA), and the Rhetorical Society of America (RSA). I received a large grant from the Ford Foundation to organize an interdisciplinary symposium about the current and future directions of cyberculture studies and received over a dozen smaller grants to support RCCS, the Digital Media Working Group (co-organized by Kirsten Foot, Beth Kolko, Phillip Thurtle, and myself), and The September Project. Support-wise, I wasn’t getting it from the Department and after five years I entered the job market looking for a better fit.

In September 2006, I moved from Seattle to San Francisco to be an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco. As I discuss in greater detail in the sections that follow this research bio, I have spent the last two years working on various research projects. I have continued my research on the emerging academic field of digital media with Critical Cyberculture Studies (NYU Press, 2006), co-edited with Adrienne Massanari. I have presented my research at the Association of Internet Researchers conference in Vancouver, Canada (and will do so again, this October, in Copenhagen, Denmark), at the Media in Transition conference at MIT, and at the Directions and Implications for Advanced Computing conference at UC Berkeley.

I have also ramped up my research into scholarly communication by significantly increasing the capacity of RCCS book reviews and author responses. Originally, RCCS would publish a single review of a single book each month. These days, RCCS is publishing multiple reviews of multiple books followed by author responses. It is common for RCCS to feature three, four, or even five reviews of a single book, which, combined with an author response, offers a rich and engaging conversation between reviewers and authors. My current research project is to redesign the interactivity of RCCS to include readers into the conversation. RCCS readers should be able to comment, tag, and annotate the book reviews and author responses. I’m trying to migrate RCCS from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. Last year I wrote an unsuccessful grant proposal for the HASTAC / MacArthur Foundation's 2007-08 Digital Media and Learning Competition and plan to revise the proposal for other grant opportunities.

I have also continued to co-direct, with Sarah Washburn, The September Project, now in its fifth year. As discussed in detail below, The September Project is a grassroots effort to encourage events about freedom and democracy in all libraries in all countries during the month of September. My work with libraries, both through the September Project and through my teaching, has generated a number of exciting and prestigious speaking engagements, including keynote talks at the Association of College & Research Libraries Conference, the Art Libraries Society of North America Conference, ACRL – Oklahoma Chapter Conference, the California Clearinghouse on Library Instruction Workshop, the Illinois School Library Media Association Conference, and the University of Maastricht’s Creating New Perspectives for Academic Libraries Symposium. My favorite research (and teaching) collaborators are librarians.

Holding together my various research activities is my blog, silver in sf. Here I blog about current developments in digital media and culture, about new RCCS book reviews, and about relevant conferences and grant opportunities. I also use silver in sf as a presentation platform for academic conferences, often blogging the talks I give (see previous paragraph) and the talks I attend (see MiT5 @ MIT and Beyond Broadcast). I also use silver in sf as a public platform for my gone series, a collection of politicians, mostly linked to George W. Bush, who have recently resigned, been fired, or been thrown in jail. I also use silver in sf to share my interest in the intersections among sustainable living and participatory media or what some of us like to call green media. For my work on blogging, I was awarded USF’s Faculty Innovation Award in spring 2008.

now back to stonelake farm ...

the davies forum at stonelake farm

as we left the barn, francis turned to us to see if we had any questions.

lulu had one: "do you ever let the goats out from their regular fields?"

"sure," replied francis, "on the field below the octagon. i let them graze for a few hours while i watch the sunset."


late last week, the davies forum on digital literacy traveled to stonelake farm, an organic, off-the-grid homestead in humboldt county. we - amber, blake, kelly, lis, lulu, sara, steven, and me - drove six hours in two cars stuffed with backpacks, blankets, sleeping bags, and good food from rainbow.

from our arrival to our departure four days later, we agreed to six strict rules:

1. all of us must work on the farm for at least one hour a day;

2. those who cook a meal do not have to wash dishes;

3. lulu can't cook every meal;

4. if anyone gets unruly, everyone has the right and responsibility to approach him or her and say, "hey, settle down";

5. we are allowed to use the internet, cell phones, and text, but use as little as possible; and

6. be mindful about as much as possible.


on friday afternoon, francis lake, one-half of the team that runs stonelake farm, shared with us the farm's history and its back-to-the-land roots (the same back-to-the-land roots, btw, that show up in fred turner's from counterculture to cyberculture). then, he led us on a guided tour of stonelake's many natural resources, animals, tools and technologies. during the tour and throughout our stay, francis offered us concrete and profound examples of sustainable living. at stonelake, nearly everything consumed is remixed back into the farm: the worms get our spent coffee grounds, the goats get our apple cores, the chickens get nearly everything, the fruit trees get our poop from the outhouse, and la luna and meza get an occasional dropped pancake or bite of french toast.


as a class, our goal was to live more intentionally for a few days. i wanted all of us to experience organic living first hand, in first life, as unmediated as possible. and while we were doing that, i wanted us to be as collaborative as possible.

i had been to stonelake farm before - twice with sarah, once alone as an artist in residence - and have always found life there to be intentional, sustainable, less mediated, and collaborative. i had to remind myself, though, that my prior visits to stonelake were during the summer and early autumn, when school's out, the sun and sunflowers are high, and everything is beautiful and bountiful. this visit was different. this visit had seven students. this visit had snow.

most of our farm work involved gathering wood for heat. we'd gather wood, chop wood, and saw wood. we gathered a few trees francis brought down and hand-sawed them into logs - logs for the campfire, logs for future octagonians, and, most importantly, logs for the wood stove that gave us heat, sweet frickin' heat, from the cold out doors.





all of our meals were collaboratively made and extremely delicious. and whenever possible, we'd eat together outside.






by saturday, melinda stone, the second-half of the stonelake team and my media studies friend and colleague, arrived to the farm. melinda brought with her seven baby ducks and one mild snow storm. because it was butt-cold outside, my students decided that saturday's dinner would be a fava beans-and-greens feast served inside, in the octagon. the meal was prepared and cooked collaboratively by the students and declared absolutely delicious by all of us.



before arriving to stonelake, i gave my students an assignment: while at the farm, digitally disconnect and reflect deeply about something important to you. before returning to the city, i gave my students a homework assignment: write your best blog post ever. log off before you blog off.

and they did:

Amber McChesney-Young's Reflections on StoneLake Farm

Blake Wilberding's Stonelake Farm

Kelly Pretzer's Stonelake Farm

Lis Bartlett's The Best Blog Post Ever

Lulu McAllister's The Digitally Literate Go Back to the Land

Sara Bassett's StoneLake Farm

Steven Barnett's coming-soon podcast thingy (i will update this link when the post goes live).

back in class on tuesday, one by one we'd read out loud our best blog posts ever. i projected individual blog posts from my laptop to the screen on the wall and the author of the post would come to the front of the room and read his or her own writing. then we took a few minutes to discuss the post and share what we thought worked and what didn't. then, individually, we'd write on paper a list of tags that we associated with the blog post - food, firewood, logging off, snow, sustainability. finally, we'd record the tags and their frequency on the white board on the wall.


as class ended, it became clear that we had covered a lot of ground in the last few days.

and then, silently and stealthily, davies student sara collected the tags and their frequencies, logged back on, and dumped them through TagCrowd. what she created was this, a pretty accurate tagcloud of what went down and an excellent way to end a blog post about the davies forum at stonelake farm.

off the grid

if stonelake farm is off the grid, how come the octagon has lights? how come the octagon has running water to cook, wash, and shower? and how am i able to access the internet to upload this blog post? where's the electricity coming from? where's the running water coming from? and how can it be that my showers are hot?

it starts here, at the top of stonelake's property, where pipes and storage tanks collect water from the creek.


the pipes take the creek water downstream and down the hill, all the while gaining velocity.


this contraption, a pelton wheel, inputs gushing water and outputs electricity.


electricity is stored in two car batteries tucked neatly away in this wooden box.


at the same time, stonelake farm derives energy from the sun. multiple solar panels, including these two outside melinda and francis' home, input the sun and output electricity. the first panel supplies much of the farm its electricity; the second panel supplies melinda's editing studio and the farm's internet cafe. access to the internet is limited at stonelake farm and i was able to use it for two hours a day. one thing i learned at stonelake farm was that two hours of the internet a day is more than enough.


the secret to the octagon's hot showers is the nearby solar panel. the water comes from the creek, travels from one side of the farm to the other through pipes, and is made piping hot by this solar panel.


in addition to being a natural wonder, stone lake farm is a technological wonder.

now i'm home. tomorrow morning, i leave for a week at new york university for a faculty workshop on teaching with technology. while in new york, i'll finally get to meet my two new nephews.

farming

there are many animals living on stonelake farm.

there are lots of chickens, maybe a dozen, most of them hens. collectively, they pump out around ten eggs a week. the eggs are delicious. they taste the way eggs used to taste. at times, the chickens are allowed to peck and poke their way through fallow fields in the garden. they feed on and distribute the compost (mulch), peck peck peck on the ground (hoe), and poop all over (manure). the chickens, while not too smart, are experts at prepping garden beds.

there is one dog and her name is lalune. lalune is the most self-confident, self-assured dog ever. if you see lalune, there's a good chance that francis is nearby.


during various points of time, stonelake farm's duck population ranged from two to twenty; currently, two ducks - duckalito and duckalita - call stonelake home. early in the morning, the ducks quack and flap their way into the garden where they, hypothetically, find the fattest slugs and snails and eat them uncooked. realistically, duckalito and duckalita spend most of their time tearing through the garden indianapolis 500-style. when possible, the ducks' poop is mixed with hay and made into mulch for the garden and orchards.


there are currently six humans at stonelake. most of what we eat comes from the garden (plus the eggs from the chickens), most of what we throw away is composted, and our trash is kept to a bare minimum. francis and melinda's home comes with a composting toilet, a living system that converts human waste into humanure, which is then fed to the fruit-bearing trees in the upper orchards. farm visitors use the outhouse and our wastes nourish future fruit-bearing trees on the lower orchard. it also affords views like this.


there are six goats - three adult goats, three baby goats - on the farm. tiny, the proud mama, is one hellava goat - friendly, social, vain. she's making a lot of milk, which is a good thing - the three little goats require three bottles of milk three times a day. although tiny is the only one making milk, all of the goats make poop, which is, i believe, the farm's main source of mulch and manure. on a farm, goats are all-stars.

the three baby goats - florence, zetta, and alfalfa sprout - are 100% cutie pies. the baby goats are comprised almost entirely of leg, and they are not exactly sure how to use them. they jump - upward, with a mid-air booty-shake to one side - for no apparent reason.

raining

barbara kingsolver begins animal, vegetable, miracle with a perfect anecdote. kingsolver's family of four (plus dog) are in a quick-stop convenient market just outside the city limits of tucson, arizona. they have packed up all their belongings and are driving east, to a farm in southwestern virginia, to live a year (or more) of what kingsolver magically calls "food life."

at the time, it had not rained in tucson for over two hundred days. so when the sky suddenly darkened, kingsolver, her husband steven, and the young cashier at the quickie-mart took notice.

"dang," the cashier said, according to kingsolver, "it's going to rain."

"i hope so," steven replies.

the cashier, a "bleached-blond guardian of gas pumps and snack food," scowls at steven and says, "it better not, is all i can say."

"but we need it," kingsolver says.

cashier: "i know that's what they're saying, but i don't care. tomorrow's my first day off in two weeks and i want to wash my car."

eeks.

yesterday it rained at stonelake farm. it wasn't a torrential downpour, but neither was it a wimpy drizzle. it was a beautiful rain and it lasted nearly the whole day and evening. the rain watered buck mountain, the trees, and the surrounding fields of grass, some of which, as a result, has turned from hay-like yellow to grass-like green. naturally, the rain also watered the garden.



i spent most of the day in the coopala, dividing my time between reading kingsolver's book, listening to the rain fall, and being mindful.


that night melinda, francis, sarah lewison, and the two interns, montana and kelson, joined me in the octagon for dinner. the whole meal was delicious, especially the centerpiece, a fresh salad made from at least ten different greens from the garden.


all of us were, i am sure, more than thankful for the rain.

gardening

each morning at 10:30, i report to francis, stonelake farm's garden director. he assigns me a task in the garden that takes about an hour. in exchange, i receive fresh farm eggs and delicious dinners that come straight from the garden. plus, i learn a whole lotta new gardening knowledge and skills. the deal is sweet.

first task: working with melinda, we built supports for the tomatoes.


second task: digging and prepping circles for watermelons, cantaloupes, and winter squashes.


the garden requires an unbelievable amount of forethought, attention, research, love, and labor. task done, i roll - to go read, to go eat, to go be mindful, to go find the waterfall. francis and melinda stay put and keep working.

from my standards, the garden is huge and includes one main section and about four or five smaller, terraced plots. the goal, melinda says, is for the garden to feed her and francis as well as visitors to the farm.




a week ago, while in omaha, sarah and i saw author/farmer/humanitarian barbara kingsolver on the television. we only caught the last five minutes but everything she said made so much sense. upon returning to the city, i bought her new book, animal, vegetable, miracle, thinking it would be a perfect book to read at stonelake farm.

it is.

with excellent help from her husband steven and eldest daughter camille, kingsolver manages to horrify and delight. she horrifies with stories of terminator genes, genetically modified seeds that after one year of life are programmed to commence a species-wide suicide - killing the plant, preventing the farmer from saving seeds for next year's crop, and boosting profit for corporations like monsanto. and she delights by recounting how much health and joy and well being and pleasure she and her family gather from working in and eating from their garden.

kingsolver's book and stonelake farm share many similar characteristics, i think, and one of them is this - both are rooted in growing solutions not merely bemoaning situations.