Category Grand Rapids

Entries 20 Total Description

Subcat of ‘Cities.’ An honorary Michigander since August 2009.

The purpose of this post is to make you jealous

Apr 13, ’12 3:30 AM

Can I tell you how lucky I am? I have such wonderful friends in Grand Rapids.

  • Heather Bryant, who checks in on me at least once every two weeks. She suggested the kale challenge as our friendship project.
  • Danny Lynn, who cops to missing my hugs despite being hug averse.
  • Katie Bauer, part one of a two-punch powerhouse penning the only lifestyle blog I subscribe to: colors, outfits, patterns, yes. Did I also mention regular music mixes?
  • George Wietor, who still includes me as he thinks through his design work and spruces up his Rapidian pieces. Or acquires another shiny tool for Issue Press operations.
  • And Mark Rumsey, who texts me out of the green to tell me he’s eating kale (and probably polishing some theoretical turd).

These are just a few of the folks whom I love. I’m three months out of GR now, but I still feel connected in the most important ways.

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Effort or thought: What makes art profound?

Mar 26, ’12 1:33 AM

Every ArtPrize, the walking population of Grand Rapids, Mich. metastasizes to urban proportions. For a few weeks, downtown GR is a mine field of makeshift galleries as artists compete for the popular vote that determines who will receive a cash prize.

Without fail, it sparks controversy among the GR artistic community about who benefits, the type of art ArtPrize attracts, how proud citizens want their city perceived and more. And at least one of my friends made it a deadline to move out of Grand Rapids before the third year of ArtPrize kicked off.

A close-up of "Cavalry" by Chris LaPorte, a vintage photo reproduced and enlarged as a drawing by way of pen scratches // Photo by Cliff Muller

Mark Rumsey was the first to give it a name via The Rapidian; one theme and common discussion point in GR is the West Michigan Aesthetic.

The correlation of how long it is perceived that an art object took to make is directly proportional to its value on the WMA scale. We understand time and we value time. When something looks like it took days or weeks or months to make, then we assign it value according to the labor invested.

This suspicion speaks to winners of the last two ArtPrize: Chris LaPorte’s “Cavalry” (get a sense of scale in Brian Kelly’s video) and, more embarrassingly, Mia Tavonatti’s “Crucifixion.” These works took diligence, effort and meticulous detail. But what thought did they actually provoke? What question did they pose? In other words, what are the responsibilities that come with art as an applied label?

Mia Tavonatti's "Crucifixion" is an assemblage of thousands of pieces of cut glass // Photo by David Guthrie

The most recent RadioLab short pushes this even further. It explores the beliefs of Alan Turing (father of artificial intelligence) that humans are machines, and machines are human if they claim and exhibit sentience.

At 20:16 -

James Gleick: “I think we’re just machines. I think we’re just made of matter… but for me, that doesn’t make me feel that we’re any less special. What a wonderful thing that a collection of matter created by a process of evolution that lasted billions of years, how wonderful that this process and that these little collections of matter are able to produce Cezanne’s water colors and Bach’s preludes. I can live with that.”
Robert Krulwich: “If I built you a computer that could create equally beautiful watercolors and equally beautiful musical compositions, would you feel happier or diminished?”
JG: “I think in a way, you’re asking, if you see how the trick is done, does it then vanish? Does it just become a trick, the trick being a great painting or a great piece of music? I feel the art I love is always art that I don’t fully understand. There’s some mystery there always. I don’t quite fathom it. So if the computer is churning out a bunch of notes and you know exactly what the rules are that the computer is following and there’s no mystery, how can that possibly be a great piece of music? And the answer is… we don’t know how the machine is gonna do it, and when the machine produces music that is as lovely as the music you and I love, I believe it will still be unfathomable.”

In a world where machines can be programmed to create works of art at the skill level of master artists, how does that change the conversation as we evaluate the merits of art?

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If you could meet anyone…

Mar 22, ’12 3:13 PM

A year ago, I began a blog entry that faded into the annals of unpublished entries. At the time, I was the citizen journalism coordinator for The Rapidian, and a young woman asked to interview me.

I’ll not spoil it here except to say it has come full circle! On March 8, Hacks/Hackers and CUNY J-School hosted a talk by Jonathan Harris!

Ignore the top right portion, where I steamed about $11 for a cookie + smoothie + espresso. Oh, NYC.

APRIL 2011 - On a cold day, I biked up to Grandville Avenue Arts and Humanities for a site visit with the Press Club, our bureau partner focused on youth reporting. A set of magnet letters were arranged on the filing cabinet, scribbles on the white board spelled out what the kids talk about nowadays:  ”Chocolate Martinez” and “Peanut Colada” (I thought hard about that last one). Four cubs made it to class, and a shy young lady asked to interview me.

A few routine questions – Tyesha and I are both twins, we both like purple – and then: If you could meet anyone in the world, who would it be?

Justin Bieber? she asked. Lady Gaga? I timed out. I may have said “Vladmir Nabokov” half-heartedly.

If I were Tyesha’s age, I would have answered Amelia Earhart. After watching a scene in Madeline where our heroine loop-de-loops around Paris (about 7:25), I was determined to become a pilot, and Amelia was the real thing. But what would I say to her? Hey how was it under those murky depths when we were all looking for you?

So I switched the setting: Who would I want to grab a beer with?

Maybe Jonathan Harris, whom I admire for his experimentation with aesthetics and interactive data to push people to engage with the world. How’s a kid going to understand that one, I thought. But who says it has to be a real person? Sherlock Holmes? I had a literary crush on him all through high school but ended our relationship when it became clear he could not give up the coke. Perhaps T-Rex (or Ryan North dressed as T-Rex)! I am irrationally into Dinosaur Comics, and his quips are so adorable. Imagine the antics!

Alas, a month later, I still haven’t settled on any one being.

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Women In Technology: Community and virtuous cycles

Feb 21, ’12 11:45 PM

Can I share something with you that really lit up my day today? It made me so happy that I want to tell the world!

On February 28, Grand Rapids will host its first women-led hackathon.

See, nearly a year ago, I initiated a monthly social called Women In Tech for women working in high-level technology environments. This is commonplace in many cities, but Grand Rapids was not home to such support. In fact, for all the distance that GR has come and continues to go, it is still a place where women technologists are assailed with assumptions. Show up to a tech meetup, and people ask you if you’re there with your husband. Instead of talking Rails, you get questions about gardening. Volunteer at a code sprint, and someone may ask if you’re there to help with the food. These are all stories that women have shared.

I left GR a month ago yesterday, and one of the women sent me a link to the WIT Hackathon, generously prefacing, “Your hard work… here is your return, friend!”

This is what I love most (and the type of work I love most): Regardless of who catalyzed it, the point at which others feel such a sense of ownership and make it their own. And because they have made it their own, it grows in a virtuous cycle of sharing.

♥♥♥

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Smoke in mirrors

Nov 15, ’11 10:19 AM

In between shifts with The Rapidian and The Journalism Accelerator, I stopped by Washington, DC. There, I caught up with Grand Rapids expat Trevor Corlett, owner of MadCap Coffee.

A specialty coffee invitational at Madcap in January in which MadCap and guest baristas from Minneapolis practiced presentation and creativity in prep for the regional competition.

Trevor has a captivating story as an entrepreneur who dropped out of college with just two semesters to go. He abandoned information systems in favor of coffee. Following diverse retail experience and a few failed startups, GR’s MadCap has become a local and tourist magnet alike and is one of the leaders in the emerging specialty coffee realm. In fact, Trevor flies all over the country to train baristas and edits curriculum for certification programs to elevate the role into a life-long profession.

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See you again | Goodbye to The Rapidian

Nov 1, ’11 4:14 PM

I’ve recently left The Rapidian as its first citizen journalism coordinator and only full-time employee. This was my goodbye editorial to The Rapidian community, crossposted from The Rapidian.

Dusk was setting in, and as I lifted my arms over my head in yoga class, I thought about all the ways to say goodbye. I didn’t have a clear idea of how, so mostly, I nestled into the sound of it.

To say that I worked with The Rapidian for two and a half years would be accurate but, more than that, I breathed it.

I made up my job title: citizen journalism coordinator. Vague, right? That was intentional, and as we grew, I’ve had my hands in everything, from partnerships and collaborations to editorial structure and web strategy to design and outreach. Whew. I was always spinning from the rush and sparkle of more opportunities than we had time to grasp.

After more than two years in a city where I’ve learned (and am still learning) what’s important, I am stepping down to pursue other opportunities. It’s tempting to stay where you are when you’re content, but that’s the best time to push onward and open up.

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#Occupy and The Silent Majority

Oct 18, ’11 5:59 PM

Several weeks ago, I attended the first general assembly for Occupy Grand Rapids. I jotted down many notes. I intended to write an in-depth analysis. I’ve stewed on it since.

Today, I saw this collection of photos worldwide from The Big Picture, and I knew that for all my musings and observations, it really came down to this:

Hong Kong, Barcelona, Costa Rica, Seoul, Berlin… My thoughts keep circling back to whether this is The Silent Majority, and it has found a universal enough cause to give it voice.

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“What’s your native country?”

Oct 15, ’11 3:54 PM

“The United States.”

“Yes, yes, but what’s your native country?”

It doesn’t matter how nice you are. If you can’t ask the right question, you won’t get the answer you’re looking for.

I might pick up on what you mean, but this is on you, not me.

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What’s working for community engagement at The Rapidian

Sep 27, ’11 3:45 PM

I was asked to write a guest post for the Block by Block Independent Publishers Community about what has changed at The Rapidian in the one year when we first mentioned community engagement as a strength. This is the third installment of a five-part series from BxB publishers leading up to the news summit this week.

One year ago, 145 participants answered two questions prior to the inaugural Block by Block summit. To pierce the heart of the issue, event organizer Michele McClellan asked us: “What do you want to learn? What do you have to offer?”

Over in Grand Rapids, Mich., we were forming a groove in community engagement. Starting with the premise that every person’s contribution from participating only by pinning Rapidian “flair” to a lapel to taking up the gauntlet as a regular news contributor should be recognized and celebrated, our goal is to generate civic engagement and open dialogue in Grand Rapids through the vehicle of news and community information. 

Now two years old, The Rapidian’s scope has grown, and yet our team size remains the same. Cultivating and maintaining citizen reporters continues to be a high touch process. We had formed perhaps a stable enough cadre of citizen reporters to apportion effort to other goals, most of all empowering underserved communities to determine the news agenda on The Rapidian.

Read the rest at Block by Block’s site

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Failure to launch

Sep 19, ’11 6:19 PM

Dave Cohn and I will be co-panelists for I screwed up (and you will, too) at this week’s Online News Association conference. Dave published a post on lessons he’s learned from failures and inspired this post as well.

This last week, I was invited to the Knight Community Information Challenge Boot Camp as one of the panelists and consultants to 20 new grantees in North America that are using media to enhance refugee information networks, entrepreneurship in rural communities, etc.

One focusing on addressing food deserts reminded me of a past “failure,” Nibs + Noms. The project was a dual media platform in the form of a quarterly zine (Nibs) and an ongoing community site (Noms). So much of this renaissance of food culture is focused on self-sufficiency (meal calculators 1 and 2) to empowerment (I CAN model a chocolate-covered strawberry after a football!), but I’ve not come across anything that connects people to one another. Magazines such as the Edible Communities (my original inspiration) tell the story behind food, but editors are the ones who determine when and whose stories are told.

N+N was meant to give Grand Rapidians the opportunity to connect with one another across class, nationalities and ethnicities by telling their own stories and connections to age-old recipes, fast-food favorites, etc. After all, we all eat.

Food: the most delicious embodiment of memories and storytelling. We all eat, and we all have stories, from whipping up family classics to the corner eatery serving up comfort in a bowl. Nibs + Noms is a platform and resource for Grand Rapidians to interpret ways of collecting, making and eating food, and a chance to explore food curiosities. Nibs is a collaborative, themed zine that will be published on a quarterly basis and Noms is a site for Grand Rapidians to share sustenance-related content that catches their whimsy.

My conceptual mockup. Click to enlarge

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