A Rhetoric of Ruins: Darvaza Gas Crater

Beware the reveries of desert travelers. In the same way that some tourists who wander the crowded quarters and narrow alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City may confuse themselves with Christ dragging His cross down the Via Dolorosa, the traveler just back from the undulating sweep of sand dunes and juniper and sedge may be forgiven for boasting some deep and newfound understanding of things heretofore unknown when they stumble, perhaps mad from the heat, into civilization. After a recent trip into Central Asia’s Karakum Desert, I might have fallen prey to that same conceit. For it is here where I visited a place known previously to me only through strange and affecting photographs of a locale, termed a ruin, now transformed into a peculiar tourist site: Turkmenistan’s Darvaza Gas Crater.

~

Before we visit the crater, let me tell you a little more about the process of getting to this place. Like virtually every visitor to Turkmenistan, I employed an agency that, among other conveniences, secured me the all-important Letter of Invitation. Given the nation’s role as the world’s fourth largest producer of natural gas, Turkmenistan makes enough money from its natural resources to sustain its political leadership without joining fellow Central Asian nations who have gone into the international hospitality business. One local expert assured me that his country admits barely 20,000 tourists a year. [Understandably, the State Committee on Tourism reports higher numbers.]

One senses that the nation would just as soon avoid the hassle of too many strangers skipping across the borders with Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, bringing a little hard currency but also the threat of cultural contagion. Turkmenistan appears to have concluded that tourists are simply not worth the hassle. As a result, I was obligated to secure the services of a state-approved guide to enter the country. Indeed, I recall few words uttered more sternly upon my arrival at an international airport than when the officer, after surveying my passport and stamping my newly affixed tourist visa, offered his no-nonsense admonition:

“Welcome to Turkmenistan. Never travel without guide.”

Technically this rule does not apply to visitors who remain in the capital city of Ashgabat. And travelers who manage to score short-term transit-visas may also avoid this stricture altogether. But after nearly 24 hours of omnitopian flow produced by a structural and perceptual bubble of elevators, shuttles, pedways, buses, trains, and airplanes, departing from my previous abode in Finland to enter this marble and gold enclosure of Turkmenistan’s international airport, I was not inclined to quibble.

Exiting the airport, which is shaped like a falcon spreading its wings, I notice more and more the traditional clothing of local folks, particularly the long, colorful caftans and headgear worn by women – often sporting vibrant scarves that cover expansive skull caps to manifest an aristocratic bearing, while also providing insulation from the heat. Some younger women, recent brides, bite down on their scarves while in public, reflecting a pledge to stay silent until given permission by their in-laws. [One should add Turkmen women, stemming from a people whose traditions of pride and bravery recognize no barriers of gender, have no problem learning to speak through clenched teeth]. I also notice that men often wear colorful taqiyahs, or sometimes telpeks (also known by outsiders, not without some derision, as “big furry hats”). And among many women and men in this country, gold-capped teeth are still viewed as a sign of wealth. [Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan’s first post-Soviet president, a dentist before he rose to power, condemned this practice as a threat to personal and national hygiene. Still, some traditions remain stubbornly hard to eradicate.]

One discerns in Turkmenistan an ever-present sense of formality and decorum. Like Ashgabat’s march of cookie-cutter apartments that arouse visions of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, this place is a monument to order. Still, as it does everywhere, the surveillance state leaks with humanity. People here are friendly and easy-going – although the overly enthusiastic smile of an earnest tourist may be met with bemusement, or even scorn. Again, this is a post-Soviet society, which means that unwarranted exuberance is often interpreted as foolishness, or deception. Even so, Turkmens are tolerant of strangers, a practical necessity given this nation’s historical position as a desert oasis. Thus, despite the rare appearance of dedicated taxis, most local folks hitch rides by standing alongside the road, hands stretched downward (though without the “patting the dog” maneuver practiced in other countries), awaiting a car driven by anyone looking to score a few Manats. A quick check of destination, a brief negotiation for price, and folks get where they want to go with minimum hassle.

Perhaps it’s the blazing sun that explains why local folks prefer not to draw unnecessary heat in their public lives. By admittedly playful illustration, I would note that beards are discouraged in Turkmenistan. Given my own stylistic choices, I am happy to report that they are technically allowed, though you can hardly expect to find any worn. President Niyazov condemned them as signs of religious excess against his secular state. Accordingly while most folks here adhere to the Sunni brand of Islam, and quite a few seek their own kind of solace in Russian Orthodoxy, one finds no condemnation for those who practice other faiths. This is, one should remember, the norm across most of the Islamic world; no one would confuse Turkmenistan with Saudi Arabia.

That being said, the government allows virtually nothing in the way of public dissent, political opposition, journalistic freedom, or disrespect toward its president. In fact Ashgabat is positively aglow with golden statues commemorating Niyazov, augmented by a growing number of portraits celebrating his successor, the current president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. Instead one finds a multitude of advertisements for the state brand, typically projected on large video displays. On these electronic murals, the president may be shown surrounded by children, cupping his hands upward in piety, or occasionally sitting astride his horse, a symbol of pride among a people famed for their equestrian skills. And, yes, travelers on Turkmenistan’s national airline will find his portrait gracing each cabin, receiving assurance for a safe flight under his watchful eye. In this omnipresent reminder of Niyazov’s legacy and Berdimuhamedow’s benevolence, one gradually leans inward and toward the disciplinary contours of docility, the ever-fine tendrils of reverence, that perpetuate the performance of control.

Statue commemorating Ruhnama,
Saparmurat Niyazov's book of spiritual guidance for the Turkmen people

Beyond the airport, the nation’s surveillance structure expands ever more intricately along physical and digital pathways that connect cameras and other tools of observation nestled among lighting fixtures and inserted throughout other nodes of public life. I would also not be surprised if Turkmenistan has chosen to follow the authoritarian model advanced by China to employ facial recognition devices and algorithmic assessments to mark the movements of every person in the country’s larger cities – or at least hopes to do so in the near future. In the meantime, access to social media outlets like Facebook and Instagram is banned.

As for more surreptitious forms of surveillance, I can offer no specific experience. I would merely presume that all tourists, some surely more than others, receive their portion of special attention by the nation’s security apparatus. Augmenting this diffused brand of panopticism, one grows familiar with the sight of baton-twirling cops in blue uniforms and high-peaked hats who stand on seemingly every major street corner, sometimes chatting amiably with each other but seldom abandoning their alert gaze. Mirroring the eight-pointed star, the ubiquitous mark of the nation woven into carpets, etched along walls, and even used to shape the Turkmenistan’s Wedding Palace, this government does not shirk from its desire to maintain an environment of pleasantly total jurisdiction. The eye of state sees in all directions.

Nonetheless I did not come to Turkmenistan to study its surveillance practices. I simply took them for granted. Like the irksome blinking light found on smoke detectors in hotels around the world, this reality first vexed me before it became a less troubling feature of life. So with a healthy respect for my surveilled status, nodding politely at cops broiling in the heat, I toured the nation’s capital city – a Central Asian version of Las Vegas sprawling with gleaming programmatic architecture – as a cheerful tourist. 

So, yes, in fact and in spirit, I would marvel at the city’s blocks of white apartment buildings that stretch in geometric repetition along the city’s monumental boulevards. Naturally I would delight at the sight of splashing fountains that dance with gaudy excess amid the desert that covers about 80 percent of the country. Led by Murad Arrykov, my guide and translator, I would also tour the ruins of the Old Nissa fortress and visit the Silk Road “Wandering City” of Merv near the city of Mary, a short domestic hop away. And I did come to love those ancient ruins, drawn to the universal desire to trace some passageway between the hyper-present and the distant past. Of course, my trip was centered on that crater in the desert.

~

Driving north of Turkmenistan’s capital city of Ashgabat on a day that burned hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I figured AC/DC’s Highway to Hell was the right tune for the trip. The Aussies, after all, know something about deserts. The Red Center drive from Alice Springs to Uluru, the chance to barrel past hopping kangaroos and bounding wallabies remains one of the highlights of my life. But I trusted Murad who insisted that Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally, that ode to promiscuity and purgatory, the slippery divide between coming and going, was the perfect choice for the moment when we pulled off the main drag, just before the Daşoguz checkpoint, to see the pit.

Hopping over the rocky, rutted pathway toward our destination, we cranked Sally up loud enough to bang our heads, though our 4X4 made plenty of percussion on its own. Our driver, a taciturn dude whose eyes squinted sharply under the blazing blue sky, kept his focus on the road. No “да, да, да” of agreement here; if the driver dug the tune, I would never know. Nearing our destination, Murad pointed out details through the windshield, displaying his mastery of culture, history, archeology, flora, and fauna. Yet from time to time he too adopted the reserved pose of the driver. And I joined his silence. Just a few miles more, we would find what locals supposedly call the Door to Hell. And then, at that moment, Little Richard belted out a line from Long Tall Sally that made perfect sense: “He has the blues but he has a lot of fun.” This, as much as anything, is the mantra for a place that gathers people to reside between pleasure and despair. 

We arrived in late afternoon, after making stops at two nearby craters produced by failed gas mining efforts. One was filled by water; the other was filled with mud. At these initial stops, my guide and driver waited long enough for me to walk their perimeters. Ambling around the second crater, which bubbled and smelled faintly of sulfur, I recall feeling a similar vibe to the process one endures to circle the labyrinth in a cathedral like Chartres. Whether surrounded by fellow travelers or, in this case, alone, I could still sense a long-needed stillness, a reverential silence. Later, tracing our route from crater to crater, though playing a bit with the order of elements, Murad would remind me of a conversation we had the previous day, while visiting Nissa, concerning the Zoroastrian triangle of earth, water, and fire. Despite my tendency to overstate my perceptions of these experiences, I can confirm the existence of a primal, elemental feeling in this place.

After three and a half hours of banging along rugged terrain, dusty villages, ragged camels, and the occasional highway roamer pointing a hand downward in hopes for a ride, we arrived at the gas crater. The pit, about 230 feet across and more than 60 feet deep, marks a site where 70s-era Soviet geologists hoped to mine natural gas. Despite their best efforts, though, a vapor pocket exploded, wrecking the drilling rig, and collapsing the land into a crater. The immediate economic and human costs were bad enough. Worse still was the potential for poisonous gasses to kill nearby villagers. In response, engineers would eventually decide to set the chasm on fire, hoping that this operation would burn off the dangerous fumes. The plan would supposedly need only a few weeks to work. 

Decades later, the fires still burn.

I must confess that the crater did not impress me at first. In afternoon light, the pit was lit by small flickering bursts of flame that trickled from blackened, flinty surface below. Standing inside the protective rail, I saw gentle waves of heat that rippled like sand dunes, interesting but hardly a spectacle. All at once, I was blown back by a furnace of heat as the wind shifted in my direction. I began to picture the horror that would overcome anyone who might plummet below, caught between life and death just long enough to anticipate a fate they could not hope to avoid. I admit it: I also anticipated how easy it would be to jump to my death, to suffer that horror. The feeling passed, but not the guilt of such dismal musing.

I then lowered my shorts and pissed into the crater.

Since we had set up camp, I had all evening to practice Murad’s advice that I should return again and again to the pit. As the sky darkened and shadows lengthened, I began to notice that the black edges of the crater began to glow, subtly at first and then with an angrier hue. The flames did not change in any actual way, but they appeared to pop more fiercely from their torrents. Then I observed something that I had never seen before, except when studying the change of light through a camera viewfinder. As the spurts of conflagration broke through the surface, I could actually feel the irises of my eyes adjusting, producing a jerking response as vision compensated for rapid shifts from deep red to bright yellow and back again. And here, unlike the Chartres-memory summoned by the mud crater, I did indeed imagine a glimpse of hell – perhaps more closely akin to the "Doomsday Machine" that haunted the heroes, and one guilty survivor, of the eponymous Star Trek episode. Thinking about Commodore Decker piloting a stolen, doomed shuttle into the flaming center of a weapon “right out of hell,” I wondered more gravely what guilt would compel me to contemplate such a leap.

I had come a long way to see this place, to consider these questions, though I could hardly explain why. If Murad and our driver remained awed by the crater, they did not show it. They had completed this drive countless times, usually taking small caravans of tourists into the beautiful, brutal desert. They had learned to negotiate the jagged trail of broken stone with professional detachment. No doubt, they came to tolerate the standard questions posed in places like this, the typical fears and exaggerated responses. And surely, patiently, they waited for their doughy visitors to drift off to sleep in tents while guide and driver opted to rest under the stars (or sleep in the 4X4). This time, aside from some Japanese tourists who had come to rent yurts on the other side of the crater, we were alone. I figured this was as good a time as any to ask Murad his opinion: Why do people come here?

As his usual habit, Murad looked me directly in the eyes, forming words from a smile but with a no bullshit demeanor. His reply was poetic, and though memory does not serve to quote him directly, I was moved by his clarity of analysis. First, he said, the crater is unique. There is nothing quite like this place anywhere in the world – a sensible enough hypothesis. Then he paused, gazing solemnly as he chose his next words. At this point, the sun fully dipped below the horizon, setting forth a radiant band of blue and purple. The breeze had begun to pick up and a nearby hill had started to glow with reflected fire. It’s the flames, he concluded. That’s what attracts us all to places like this. And he makes a good point. Since the beginning of all civilization, people have been drawn around the campfire to share the safety of numbers, to tell stories.

Night had fallen and the cavern glowed in searing eruptions of red and orange, not quite belching but rather constantly streaming a hiss of natural gas set aflame. At first we sat on a carpet, offering some protection from the stony ground, an imaginary shield from jumping camel spiders and pinching scarab beetles. But then Murad stood up and took out a mobile phone and launched an astronomy application that employs augmented reality to layer digital constellations over the display. As soothing music rolled out of the device's speakers, he swung around in a wide arc to reveal a network of otherwise invisible lines. Aided by GPS, he could pick out stars and planets with precision that would have mystified the ancient travelers who relied upon celestial objects to chart their own paths across the unforgiving desert.

And then, fueled no doubt by a fulsome meal of chicken, lamb, tomatoes, and eggplant, and four cans of Turkmen Zip beer, Murad and I began reciting bits and pieces of Homer’s Iliad to each other. Murad began by asking if I had seen Troy, Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 epic starring Brad Pitt as Achilles and Eric Bana as Hector. We both share an affinity for movies, so, despite the middling nature of the film, I could affirm I had indeed seen it. “I like Hector,” Murad stated. “He died, but he died as a man.” I had to agree. While the Trojans are cast as antagonists to those fractious seafaring heroes who would later be called “Greeks,” I hoped that I too could face my fate with the courage mustered by Hector. 

Gradually our conversation turned to Homer’s original tale, which features gods who meddle in the affairs of human beings. I recalled how the poets sang of the tricks that Athena played upon Hector, using her supernatural powers to give the Achilles an unfair advantage. Hector, in noble contrast, stood alone, knowing that he would be slain this day. But, Murad emphasized, the Trojan hero would perish as a man. In turns, we recalled how Achilles heaved his spear at Hector who, by now, could rely only on his sword. Impaled and near death, Hector begged the wrathful Achilles not to spare his life but rather to spare the indignity of his body being ravaged by dogs. At this moment, Murad and I exclaimed in unison, “But he wouldn’t do it!” Then and now, I share my guide’s respect for Hector, but that is not quite the point. Like the Trojans who heretofore had awaited the coming of the Greeks where “a thousand camp-fires gleamed upon the plain,” we too sought ways to reckon with forces and powers beyond our control. There together, drinking and talking, we could imagine ourselves like those heroes who gathered under the stars to share stories of men and gods, lit only by firelight.

Ours was a convivial party, even adding one more fellow for awhile, a young skinny fellow crossing nearby in search of his friends. Speaking not in Russian but in Turkmen, the guy apologized for his intrusion and asked us to share some water. We naturally shared a friendly portion and wished him well as returned to his path. Anyone who lives here knows the necessary ethic of such an act, and it felt good to share these moments. Yet ultimately I had come to the desert to stand a few moments alone. So I began to trudge up the hill that rose behind us for a God’s eye view of the crater. Under a nearly full moon, the valley was bathed in soft light. Still, I added an extra coat of protection with the beam of my phone’s lamp that rendered the ruts and rocks more navigable. I made my steps carefully, with the reverence one might imagine when climbing the stone steps of Teotihuacan toward the sun. At last I reached the summit and turned to face the panorama above and below. 

The small party of Japanese tourists were snapping pictures of the crater, posing with arms outstretched pointing toward the flame. Next to that yawning chasm of burning gas, buffeted by occasional gusts of wind that could char a person with frightening heat, they traced confident circles and laughed. This, I think, is something of that desert reverie that I mentioned earlier, that feeling that one comes to know in a place like this, and a giddy power to impose upon those forces that constrain us, that belittle us, that frighten us. I wonder if each of us who visit Turkmenistan’s Darvaza Gas Crater, and places like it, come to find a power to gaze into the abyss of our mortality and face it, perhaps even to inscribe upon it some markings of permanence. In this manner our stories, photographs, our etchings, our graffiti become totems of our power to confront the inevitability of ruin with a certainty that, no matter how ephemeral, bolsters our abilities to endure questions beyond answer.

~

These are the sorts of stories I hope to tell in my book, tentatively titled A Rhetoric of Ruins. I want to understand more thoroughly why people come to places like this – not to ancient structures suspended in a state of arrested decay such as those found in Angkor, Cambodia; Khajuraho, India; or the Acropolis in Greece, but rather to modern ruins: a more contemporary constellation of places such as industrial accident-sites, Soviet-era showplace relics, abandoned Olympic stadiums, economic ghost towns, and the like – those abandoned and sometimes fascinatingly repurposed locales that call forth ambivalence, despair, or even the guilty pleasure associated with the term “ruin porn." I hope to read those remnants that provide a medium through which we may interpret, resist, and potentially transform our encounters with late-modernity. In future iterations of this essay, I will trace more rigorously the intellectual underpinnings of my project. But for now I conclude this note, a first tentative draft, with thanks to Murad and our various drivers during a five-day visit, and hopes that I will return to Turkmenistan one day, to better understand this country’s ambivalence about tourism, to study its bold and increasingly sophisticated surveillance mechanisms, and, of course, to savor once more the strange and guilty pleasures of the Darvaza Gas Crater.

Goofy Grocery Warning

Yeah, it's been quite a while since I've attended to this blog. Spring has sprung a plethora of projects and deadlines: new humanities lectures, off-site presentations, final deliberations on a book set to appear in April (I hope!) - and more potently, reminders from outside my normal flow of teaching, writing, chatting, and traveling that other parts of my life must occasionally take precedence. No complaints here, just an observation that John Lennon was right: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." One consequence is that I find myself falling into the old blogging trap that presumes that all posts must somehow mean something. They don't, of course, any more than any exercise must "mean something." Blogging is gesture, blogging is practice, blogging is invite, blogging is draft, blogging is ephemeral. It can be more, but it doesn't have to be. Accordingly I offer nothing more than a goofy warning sign I spotted yesterday at the Scotts Valley Nob Hill. Make of it what you will. Or don't. Either way, I'll be back soon.

Shameless Plug: Origami Urbanism

I'm pleased to announce that my latest essay, "Origami Urbanism amid the Flat City: An Omnitopian Analysis of Commercials Depicting Mutability in Urban Life," has been published in Communicative Cities in the 21st Century: The Urban Communication Reader III (Peter Lang).

Here's the abstract: "This chapter analyzes a genre of television commercials recognizable for their invocation of origami urbanism, a process through which viewers are trained to imagine themselves as producers, not mere consumers, of their circumstances by their idealized interactions with editable urban environments. Origami urbanism reflects a broader reification of the modern project, epitomized initially by the Haussmannization of the medieval world into the Victorian flat city and perfected in the 20th century through that era's world's fairs and international expositions, and subsequently through more subtle enclosures of ideology and human interaction, which the author labels omnitopia. Four components of the omnitopian enclave, a structural and perceptual enclave whose apparently distinct locales convey inhabitants to a singular place, are relatively well defined: dislocation, conflation, fragmentation, and mobility. However a fifth, mutability, requires further explication. This chapter, therefore, examines origami urbanism in order to provide a more nuanced analysis of mutability through the analysis of two dyads: thought/action, in which the internal mind appears to act upon the external world, and private/public, by which one may occupy that world with one's solitary concerns. Reading communicative cities as increasingly enclavic, the chapter argues that the modern project is no longer authored in an institutional sense, but is instead reinforced through individual tactics of resistance that affirm our collective alienation from agency and each other."

Want a PDF? Let me know!

More Alive at 45

I remember a former SJSU colleague popping into my office a few years back to announce, "Being 50 sucks." This guy was (and I'm sure still is) almost superhumanly fit and active. And here he was standing in the doorway, assuring me that the next decade will be filled with aching joints and cloudy thoughts. Joy. At least this decade has been a blast. I feel more comfortable in my own skin, less concerned about pleasing others, and I'm increasingly focused on challenges and opportunities that seemed invisible just a few years back.

Given that my birthday comes near the beginning of the year, I'm especially inclined to think of this day as an opportunity to look ahead. So far, 2013 is shaping up to be quite an adventure (though I hope it won't be as crushingly packed as its predecessor). I'm just about done working through a delightful holiday bout with pneumonia, a fighter that likes to sneak back into the ring after the bell's already been rung, and I'll soon submit grades for a winter public speaking course. Spring semester is coming. Time to clear the desk.

So what's next? Well, I've received a contract to co-author a book entitled Die ortlose Stadt: Die Virtualisierung des Urbanen [The placeless City: The Virtualization of the Urban - Yep, it's for a German press], I'm working with David Terry on an essay about rhetoric in the DPRK, and I'm collaborating with Kathleen McConnell on a project designed to help students think about writing as a form of navigation. The "Origami Urbanism" piece is in press, and, of course, I've got a gaggle of Humanities Honors lectures to write. My mind is spinning, but in a good way.

Travel plans, strangely, remain inchoate. I hope to spend a week or so somewhere on the road this spring, though I've yet to finalize an itinerary. I'm tentatively scheduled to lecture this summer in Austria - again, details remain to be ironed out - and I'm hoping that Jenny and I will take a side-trip to Russia for a week or so. I'm kinda bummed that there's no China travel in the near future (though looking at pictures of Beijing smog, I might be lucky to take a break from the PRC).

Anticipating the year to come, I've got to acknowledge that my plans wrap too tightly around professional objectives, not enough around friends and family. Sure, the various parts of my life overlap in occasionally surprising ways. And I simply can't imagine a meaningful divide between my work and some of my closest relationships. Still I hope to define myself less by the things I do and the places I go, to be someone who is more present with people. That's my goal at 45.

Here's hoping...

2013's Banned List (Part 1 of 2)

OK, let's get this out of the way: I'm gonna trash some words, phrases, and things as being so clichéd and hackneyed that they should be banned in 2013. Problem is, "Banned Lists" are themselves a cliché. So beware. This post is so overdone, it might consume itself and set off a self-referential chain reaction that turns the universe inside out. That proviso aside, we'll proceed.

"Where's my jetpack?" Remember the turn of the century? The Year 2000? That's when we were promised flying cars, robot butlers and, of course, jetpacks. We got George Bush, jr. instead. Naturally we're all disappointed. Problem is we've been inundated with that "Where's my jetpack?" lament ever since. "Where's my jetpack?" has become an all-purpose stand-in for all manner of Great Disappointment. It's been 13 years, folks. There's no jetpack in your future. Let it go.

"Double-down" Every politician these days is a gambler, announcing some initiative or policy and then, faced with opposition, actually sticking with their idea. It sounds daring, but mostly the "double down" comes across as a screw-you to political foes. GOP: "You thought you hated us when we threatened to send us over the cliff? Just wait until we close down the whole government!" Lame Commentator: "Looks like they're doubling down." Doubly stupid.

Baby Bump In celebrity culture, pregnancy seems like the ultimate product spin-off ("This fall we're releasing a new movie, my first album is dropping, and, oh!, I'm having a baby!"). Turns out, producing an Actual Human Being is kind of a big deal. Labeling it a "bump" makes the kid sound like an add-on feature, something you complain about when the hotel tries to charge extra at check-out. We're already doomed to follow Every Moment Of Kim Kardashian's Pregnancy. Let's at least give her kid a break.

Selfie When our future robot overlords look back upon today's society, these happy years before machines become sentient and start sporting baby bumps of their own, they'll remember the one thing that made their rise possible: We were so busy taking "selfies" (most egregiously holding up iPhones and, ye Gods, iPads in the bathroom to take duckface portraits) that we never saw them coming. Let's cut back on the selfies, or at least get a tripod.

LOL We laugh. And most of the time we laugh out loud. That's lovely. Laughing is lovely, and we should let loose at least one good guffaw each day. But every time I see someone comment on a Facebook post with LOL (or worse, lol), I just think to myself, "No you didn't. You did not laugh out loud. Why would you lie to me? You're supposed to be my friend!" What's worse, by the way, is when folks append this acronym to something snarky ("Your duckface Selfie looks like someone tried to iron your lips lol."). Please, no more.

[Check back tomorrow for Part 2]

Omnitopia as Urban Epistemology

Preparing for my Weimar presentation, I found myself bumping up against the idea of "urban epistemology," wondering is contemporary knowledge doesn't merely arise in the city but also through the city. Naturally it didn't take me long to then wonder what an omnitopian urban epistemology might be.

Generally I approach omnitopia from a critical perspective (not as a "critical scholar," of course - though that's a slightly different issue). At the same time I find pleasure and relevance to the omnitopian performance.

I therefore wonder: Can the same principles that produce a structural and perceptual enclave whose apparently distinct locales convey inhabitants to a singular place convey us also to some truth about the world? To explore this idea, I offer these notes:

1. Omnitopia is not a fact; it is a framework. Its value lies less in what it is than what it reveals.

2. We might imagine omnitopia as a sort of urban epistemology: a way of knowing that yields potentially useful insights.

3. Omnitopia-as-urban-epistemology does not promise a grand narrative; there is no one-size-fits-all producer of universal meaning.

4. Omnitopia-as-urban-epistemology instead offers a way of seeing - a layer of augmented reality that highlights some phenomena (while admittedly obscuring others).

5. From this perspective [and employing the framework that appears in my book City Ubiquitous] an omnitopian urban epistemology would reflect five principles:

Dislocation: Knowledge should be unfixed from its authors and origins; it should be easily shared. To borrow from Stewart Brand: "Information wants to be free." This does not suppose that we abandon a literal marketplace of ideas any more than we should abandon our obligations to act ethically. Yet when knowledge is easily shared, (freed, as it were, from all but the most necessary constraints) meaningful insight can grow. In contrast, knowledge without broad access (illustrated but not limited by the principle of peer review) may possess only a passing similarity to anything that resembles truth.

Conflation: Knowledge should value synthesis over analysis. To be sure, one may dwell deeply in the particulars of the world, just as one grows attached to a particular cafe or pub or diner. Yet when the production of knowledge works simply to strip away extraneous elements from a supposedly elemental truth, the outcome almost invariably produces little more than the sum of one's limitations. Expanding our intellectual maps, connecting seemingly disparate nodes, need not turn us into dilettantes. [And even if we face such scorn, we might prefer that pejorative to the risk of becoming pedants.]

Fragmentation: Knowledge frequently arises when apparently complete narratives are breached, broken, and cut against the grain. As an urban phenomenon and a necessary counterpoint to conflation, fragmentation often reveals itself as the destruction of communities who have been split by broad boulevards or managed as imperial categories. At the same time, individuals and groups possess an emancipatory tool when they seize that same power, acting to fragment otherwise overwhelming urban narratives. Truth tends to form in the cracks of previously impenetrable facades.

Mobility: Knowledge accrues less in stasis than in motion. Its truth is best measured when subject to the jostles and jolts of transmission. As such, knowledge can hardly be delineated from communication. Indeed, it can't exist without discourse. From another perspective, consider the knowledge of the metro, and compare its insights to the knowledge of the easy chair. From that latter position, one may easily reflect and refine on what is known. Yet the process of moving from place to place enables a cascade of momentary, partial (and, yes, sometimes distracting) utterances. Signs, sounds, objects: each provoke new connections. Knowledge that results from such mobility brings us closer to understanding.

Mutability: Knowledge must be twisted from its comforting alignments to be useful. Again we learn from the city. The planner's perspective may allow for coming and going, to-ing and fro-ing, but the purpose of most design is to fix meaning upon place. Few visionaries of the urban milieu genuinely build change into their plans. Growth, repair, renewal, yes. But change that may transform one place into another? Such is rare. At the same time, the power to produce an illusion of mutability is a frequent component of most efforts at command and control. This is the projection of "nimble force," of "rapid deployment," of "shock and awe." Such mutability must be practiced by anyone who would seek to know the world and to challenge its would-be authors. This is the stolen moment of the impromptu concert, the flash mob, the unscripted conversation. In these moments, knowledge takes root and may grow wild.

Love and Theft Online

"What’s yours may not be yours anymore if others find a better way to package it."

David Carr offers this warning in his NYT article about efforts to fashion a system for ethical citation, aggregation, and "curation" of web content.

His article explores two potential solutions: one, a semi-top-down "seal of approval" approach; the other, a "curator's code" adopted from the bottom up.

Examining these options, Carr poses the interesting question: "Where is the line between promoting the good work of others and simply lifting it? Naughty aggregation is analogous to pornography: You know it when you see it."

Read more: A Code of Conduct for Content Aggregators

NCA 2012 Abstract

Following up on yesterday's post, I've selected a name for my NCA 2012 paper, "Trade Your Trouble for a Bubble: Imagining the Enclavic Future at the 2010 Shanghai World's Fair." Here's the abstract:

Shanghai's 2010 world's fair epitomizes an enclavic rhetoric whose blurring of place, mobility, and communication provides a therapeutic response to the threats of public life. Transcending the Hausmannization of Victorian utopianism, though affirming an indisputably Chinese appeal to discipline, the Shanghai Expo's theme of "Better Life, Better City" advertises a vision of 21st century urbanism that departs from its predecessors in notable ways. Analyzing a constellation of texts, images, and responses concerning the SAIC-GM Pavilion (along with useful counterpoints found in pavilions hosted by Spain, Chile, and the United Kingdom), this paper introduces a theoretical revision of the omnitopian strategy of dislocation and, more importantly, considers the implications of Chinese urbanism that has learned much from Walt Disney.

Origami Urbanism Update

Finally wrapping up my chapter for the Urban Communication Reader! Here's some of the new stuff...

To this post-place we now turn, learning to read the city that unfolds itself to our gaze. This is the modern city too, in a way; it is the perfection of modernity, no longer limited by the plane-truth. In this city, flat power is dispelled with a magic trick, a mediated fantasy of moving parts with no mechanism aside from consumer choice. Such power--strange, illusory, intoxicating--must first be recognized as such; its users must be trained to recognize themselves as its masters, to see themselves as artists, engineers, poets, creators. This is post-industrial power, when reality-television allows even the otherwise disadvantaged among us to become producers of icons, to brand themselves. This power is the child’s plaything, the personal totem, the solitary confidence. Easily crumbled, burst with merely a word, this pleasure transcends vast chasms between ideas and action, between self and other.

Origami urbanism reveals the sensual pleasure of this manipulation, our technological means of ascending to the summit of a God’s-eye view once more. Amid the flat city, origami urbanism recall’s Gatsby’s “constant flicker”: the flick of a finger upon an iPad, swiping the world into digital shape.  Such is the power and pleasure of mobile communication devices, the means to produce frames of reference that alter themselves according to our perpetually shifting positions, thickening homogeneity in an internal performance. With these new personal data, navigation, and entertainment devices, we need not be tied to fixed locations but may create new ones instead, building our own multidimensional worlds atop the flat screen.  We wander the boulevard, texting rather than speaking, posting rather than engaging, editing rather than experiencing, and our fantasy worlds appear to convulse with every stroke. The pleasures of origami urbanism appear, to the uninitiated at least, like an addiction.

Learning to Decode Scholarly Journal Articles (Part 1)

[One of my favorite parts of blogging is the opportunity to draft language for specialized projects - and potentially receive feedback from a much broader community of readers. Toward that end I'm sharing a preliminary version of a note I hope to share with students struggling to make sense of scholarly journal articles.]

Learning to read the professional journals of your chosen field of study can sometimes feel like stepping into quicksand. Most likely you began your coursework reading textbooks, workbooks, and other introductory materials designed with you as the primary audience. These resources typically include glossaries to help you master new terms and pictures to illustrate complex concepts, along with other components meant to aid student learning. These tools are rarely exciting, but navigating them should be easy.

Scholarly articles, in contrast, tend to be thick and weighty. Start reading and you may quickly get bogged down in all those endless paragraphs. The vocabulary alone may intimidate you. This feeling can be especially frustrating if you are a student of communication studies. Read a few paragraphs from Quarterly Journal of Speech and you might think, "For supposed experts in communication, these folks are awfully dense." After wading through a few pages, you might even wonder if you chose the wrong field.

The good news is that you're not alone. Professors can feel overwhelmed by scholarly journal articles too. Some authors pile ideas and references into a structure so thick that their articles seem like walls built to obscure understanding rather than windows designed for illumination. Articles should be accessible. In fact, the multiple drafts and revisions necessary for a scholarly article to be published should all but ensure their readability. Unfortunately though, layers of anonymous peer review and editorial feedback can add unnecessary complexity. And some scholarly articles, no matter how complex they might be, suffer a simple problem: they are poorly written and/or carelessly edited.

Still, you should not immediately dismiss a challenging scholarly article as pointlessly overwritten, at least without first considering a basic question: Who is the intended audience for this piece of writing? In most cases, scholarly articles are written for a relatively narrow community of experts for whom simple terminology can actually impede understanding. It's strange but true. Scholarly articles often include exactingly specific concepts that require precise vocabulary. Their authors select terms carefully to signal their identification with particular schools of thought, ways of researching, and even groups of people.

Chances are you've employed a similar strategy. Think about the care you devote to selecting clothes before a job interview or a date. To someone outside of your peer group (present or future), your attire might not merit close scrutiny. Shoes are shoes, right? And who cares about the label on your jeans or the brand of your coat? But you're hoping that your potential employer or romantic partner will read the signs you've chosen to communicate. Your particular choice of shoe, which might be meaningless to a cultural outsider, says much about your identity and much about the community with which you prefer to affiliate. The same applies to the other signs you arrange to communicate your nonverbal message.

What's more, your selection from potential meanings will become more precise as your notion of community becomes more refined. Consider a cover story about romantic relationships appearing in a glossy magazine like Cosmopolitan. The article might be titled, "What does his body language really mean?," which could be an interesting topic for communication research. But scholars of nonverbal communication would require much more specific wording. After all, when we speak of "body language" do we mean "ritualistic facework" or "paralinguistic turn-relinquishing signals"? Do we employ a "positivist" paradigm or an "interpretivist” approach? And what about "mutual or co-active influences"?

These phrases may seem needlessly opaque to the casual reader. But they reflect specific ideas that cannot be easily conveyed by the generic term, "body language." Yes, the choice to use these words and phrases will not appeal to all readers. Yet a scholarly article isn't intended for all readers; it's meant for professionals who practice a particular approach toward a topic.

Cracking the professional's code requires more than a dictionary; this feat calls for context. Accordingly you should read a scholarly article as an interested and open-minded stranger wandering around a new city. Initially you might be confused or frustrated by seemingly meaningless things said by members of that community. You will likely need a guide at first, a friendly insider who can help you interpret the subtle and nuanced meanings of the messages you see (while directing your attention to messages you can't quite discern). You will certainly require patience and time to endure this initial encounter.

Eventually, you will recognize the purpose behind these seemingly strange messages; you'll know why they were selected and to whom they are intended. And then, almost without knowing it, you'll find yourself reading and speaking like a "local" in a place that once felt so foreign. At that point you'll be in a much better position to assess the selection of words and symbols in your community. You might even work to open up your profession to new members by increasing the accessibility of the words valued by your group. It all begins with one step.

Read - not just to understand but also to join.

[In a forthcoming post I'll offer additional tips for deciphering the typical components of a communication studies journal article.]

Wood's Writing Guide: State, Don't Believe

As a professor I often reflect on how students can write better essays. One suggestion: Lose phrases like "I think" or "I believe."

If you're a student, especially if you're taking courses in the social sciences and the humanities, you've probably written a similar phrase once or twice. In many of those courses, professors like me allow - and even encourage - folks to write in the first-person.

Moreover, some of those assignments might actually leave room for you to express your beliefs and philosophy. For instance you might be asked to reflect upon how something relates to your personal life. In that case you might write something like this:

"Watching the State of the Union address reminds me of Thanksgiving at my own house. Once a year the family gets together and performs the old rituals. Everyone plays their roles, but conflicts still always seems to seethe below the surface. Of course, I believe that conflict can be useful. Thus I smiled when Justice Alito mouthed 'Not true' during President Obama's 2010 State of the Union speech. All families need a crazy uncle who's not afraid to tell the truth."

As a reader, I may agree or disagree with your analysis. But I'd have no problem with you writing "I believe" in an assignment that seeks that sort of personal reflection.

At the same time, such license generally does not extend to assignments that ask you to advance an argument or express an opinion. In these cases, you are undoubtedly affected by your beliefs. But your audience will rarely find those beliefs to be sufficient as a means of proof.

Consider this hypothetical prompt: "What was the most significant technological innovation of the 20th century?" Sure, you might believe that the atomic bomb was more important than the invention of penicillin. But you are actually being asked to advance an argument that requires different forms of proof.

In this case you are expected to deploy facts, statistics, testimony, illustrations, and other well-reasoned proofs to advance your claim. Your beliefs, though certainly related to your thinking, contribute little to supporting your claim. Indeed, phrases like "I believe" add unnecessary delay, requiring the reader to sort through the phrase before getting to your point. [She believes. Does that mean she doesn't know?"]

Of course you might be inclined to add "I believe" precisely because you don't know with 100% certainty. As a student you might wish to admit that your assertion comes from limited knowledge. You know a little about this topic, but you don't claim to be a subject matter expert. Thus you "believe," or you "think," or you offer this claim "in my opinion."

Even so, don't do it.

When you are asked to state an opinion, you can remind yourself, "I don't know everything about this topic, so everything I say can be questioned." You can even write that phrase in your first draft when you're still sorting out your arguments. But when you submit your final draft, search your document for unnecessary modifiers like "I believe" - and remove them.

When the time has come to express your opinion, state it simply and clearly, with no prevarication. Offer multiple forms of proof, considering the standards of your reader(s), not just your personal preferences, and then keep an open mind for contrary responses. When you're tempted to write, "I believe that the atomic bomb was more important than the invention of penicillin," cut those first three words.

State your claim and make your case.

Sabbatical Success

They say that sabbatical is related to the word "sabbath" - as in "abstinence from work"... rest. And I'm not going to kid anyone here: I intend to relax a little. But I also plan to complete projects I'd never had time or bandwidth to attempt during the regular academic year.

Just for fun, I'll keep track of 'em on this page.

Fri, Jan 20: Updated laptop to OSX Lion to start playing with iBooks Author.

Sat, Jan 21: Downloaded Zotero desktop version and finally got my small but growing reference library integrated with Word.

Sun, Jan 22: Got Networked Blogs to post Woodland Shoppers Paradise-posts onto my Facebook account.

Mon, Jan 23: Created my first interactive graphic on iBooks Author.

Tue, Jan 24: Went on my first run in about two years. Only a mile (and a pretty pathetic time at that) but a start to better health. Used Nike's GPS runner's app to track my course, distance, and time.

Wed, Jan 25: Installed a piece of software (EndNote - a potential competitor to Zotero as my primary bibliography management system) and made solid progress on COMM ebook.

Thu, Jan 26: Started building a Picaboo book on roadside relics.

Fri, Jan 27: Finished first draft of Roadside Relics book.

Sat, Jan 28: Jenny and I managed to repair and reinstall our chimney cap - without falling off our roof.

Sun, Jan 29: Uploaded final draft of Roadside Relics.

Mon, Jan 30: Installed new versions of Photoshop and Acrobat. (Seriously, I've had this software for more than half a year and never had time to get the serial numbers to complete the installation process.)

Tue, Jan 31: Finished and mailed “Origami Urbanism Amid the Flat City: An Omnitopian Analysis of Commercials Depicting Mutability in Urban Life.”

Wed, Feb 1: Revised every voice-over and almost every edit of my GTI video.

Thu, Feb 2: Wrote abstract for potential NCA paper, "Trade Your Trouble for a Bubble: Imagining the Enclavic Future at the 2010 Shanghai World's Fair."

Fri, Feb 3: Starting getting my head around Pinterest. Started DPRK visa process.

Sat, Feb 4: Began building Roadside Relics iBooks version.

Sun, Feb 5: Continued developing Roadside Relics for iBooks, watched Super Bowl commercials.

Mon, Feb 6: Learned how to create Keynote "video" that can be exported to iPad.

Tue, Feb 7: Built iBooks interactive graphic for APA referencing.

Web, Feb 8: Prepped kick-off meetings for Salzburg and Beijing summer trips.

Thu, Feb 9: Created COMM 101 graphic that illustrates how student-selected articles can build upon one another - and built a Salzburg Talking About Global Topics Activity.

Fri, Feb 10: Participated in kick-off activities for Salzburg trip.

Sat, Feb 11: Led kick-off activities for Beijing trip.

Sun, Feb 12: Built personal Google-map for upcoming solo trip itinerary.

Mon, Feb 13: Organized visa applications for Beijing 2012 students.

Tue, Feb 14: Worked on all sorts of projects (but more importantly) sent hourly Valentines to Jenny.

Wed, Feb 15: Lengthy lunch with longtime pal (and future office-mate).

Thu, Feb 16: Photographed West Oakland street art.

Fri, Feb 17: Organized Salzburg passport information for airfare purchase

Sat, Feb 18: Photographed East Oakland street art.

Sun, Feb 19: Enjoyed Battlestar Galactica marathon with the fam.

Mon, Feb 20: Began prepping Humanities Honors lecture on 20th century art.

Tue, Feb 21: Took care of bank wire for international travel. Prepped more of honors lecture.

Wed, Feb 22: Prepped more of honors lecture.

Thu, Feb 23: Met with colleague to discuss potential book project.

Fri, Feb 24: Attended to logistical issues about three back-to-back trips.

Sat, Feb 25: Built collaborative Beijing map.

Sun, Feb 26: Improved Beijing map and began to finalize RSQ article edits.

Mon, Feb 27: Completed version 2.0 of "Regionalization and the construction of ephemeral co-location."

Tue, Feb 28: Arranged itinerary for upcoming solo roadtrip.

Wed, Feb 29 [Leap Day!]: Planned flights for summer Europe trip and brainstormed with colleague for potential book project.

Thu, Mar 1: Finished initial layout for Humanities Honors lecture on modern art

Fri, Mar 2: Updated itinerary for solo roadtrip, discussed Humanities Honors performance with colleague, shot animated neon sign in Boulder Creek

Sat, Mar 3: Dinner at home with friends

Sun, Mar 4: Met with writer's group to discuss new projects

Mon, Mar 5: Completed (mostly) the Salzburg student ticketing process and five hours of consulting

Tue, Mar 6: Chased down paperwork, composed massive Beijing 2012 update message, and built Salzburg 2012 map

Wed, Mar 7: Picked up Beijing 2012 visas and continued Oakland street art search

Thu, Mar 8: Revised RSQ article and read Liquid Modernity

Fri, Mar 9: Wrapped up Weimar travel plans and began COMM 149 refresh

Sat, Mar 10: Devoted most of the day to COMM 149 refresh

Sun, Mar 11: Improved, revised solo road trip

Mon, Mar 12: Completed solo road trip itinerary

Tue, Mar 13: Skyped with colleague about literature review project

Wed, Mar 14: Met on campus to discuss Salzburg video revisions

Thu, Mar 15: Resolved minor software crash (not all sabbatical projects are fun)

Fri, Mar 16: Freed up gigs of hard drive space (again, not all sabbatical projects are fun)

Sat, Mar 17: Attended Salzburg BBQ and packed for epic three week road trip

Sun, Mar 18 through Sun, Apr 8: 7,400 mile road trip from home to L.A., across the south to Georgia, then north to Chicago, and back to L.A. across Route 66 - and then back home to Scotts Valley. Final weekend back home: editing video and pix.

Mon, Apr 9: Wrote two "nodes" for literature review project

Tue, Apr 10: Visited Santa Cruz court house for potential jury duty

Wed, Apr 11: On-site jury selection process slowly proceeds

Thu, Apr 12: Three days of jury selection - oaths in court, voir dire, the whole bit - and my number never came up. I appreciate that serving on a jury is a privilege, and I know how fascinating it can be, but in this case, wow, I'm grateful they didn't call my name.

Fri, Apr 13: Edited and posted pix of St. Louis street art

Sat, Apr 14: Edited Blue Swallow Motel video

Sun, Apr 15: Began prepping 20th Century arts lecture

Mon, Apr 16: Wrote John's Modern Cabin's blog post, continued prepping 20th Century arts lecture

Tue, Apr 17: Wrote "Bigger Classes, Better Outcomes?" blog post, reviewed thesis prospectus, worked on literature review project

Wed, Apr 18: Continued prepping 20th Century arts lecture

Thu, Apr 19: Reviewed thesis topic sentences and prepped Beijing 2012 course

Fri, Apr 20: Adopted Fall 2012 books, prepped for 20th Century arts lecture

Sat, Apr 21: Posted my Route 66 video on Buzzfeed and finalized 20th Century arts lecture

Sun, Apr 22: Practiced 20th Century arts lecture

Mon, Apr 23: Practiced 20th Century arts lecture

Tue, Apr 24: Presented 20th Century arts lecture and had a celebratory beer with colleague

Wed, Apr 25: Flew to Chicago for Illinois Institute of Technology department review; dinner at Mercat a la Planxa

Thu, Apr 26: All-day work on Illinois Institute of Technology department review; dinner at Chicago Club

Fri, Apr 27: Co-wrote Illinois Institute of Technology department report; returned home

Sat, Apr 28: Relaxed at home with Jenny; enjoyed Scorsese's The Departed

Sun, Apr 29: Finally cleaned bedroom post-painting mess

Mon, Apr 30: Final edits (I hope!) on IIT document; reviewed Beijing handbook

Tue, May 1: Wrote Missouri rest stop blog; ditched crazy-unwieldy collection of to-read clippings; integrated Pocket snipper/saver into my workflow; wrote two more literature review nodes

Wed, May 2: Addressed lotsa Beijing 2012 logistics in the morning; started planning Weimar keynote lecture in the afternoon

Thu, May 3: More work on Weimar talk

Fri, May 4: Finally resolved (I think!) my dual Google account problem. At last, one account to rule them all!

Sat, May 5: More work on Weimar talk, studied the cinematography of Michael Mann's Heat.

Sun, May 6: Much-needed relaxation with the family - even took a long walk together!

Mon, May 7: Consulting in the morning; Lit Review project in the afternoon

Tue, May 8: Laborious correspondence and campus details in the morning; Fresno Street Art project in the afternoon/evening

Wed, May 9: More correspondance - then some editing and time with our foster kitties

Thu, May 10: Sent feedback on RSQ page proofs

Fri, May 11: SJSU premier of Salzburg video "Ripples Across the Pond"

Sat, May 12: Started playing with HandBrake software

Sun, May 13: Enjoyed Mother's Day with Jenny and Vienna

Mon, May 14: Began packing and granular writing process for Weimar speech

Tue, May 15: More Weimar logistics and two new Lit Review project nodes

Wed, May 16: Picky travel details (calling banks, etc.) and Weimar work

Thu, May 17: Wrote "Omnitopia as Urban Epistemology"

Fri, May 18: Weimar talk prep and dinner with friends

I'm concluding this post here, given that my sabbatical ends with the spring semester. In summer I'm traveling to Europe and to China (twice!), and I'll be blogging much less than normal during that time. Later on, I'll reflect on the value on this sabbatical. I didn't do all the reading I'd hoped, but I did finish projects large and small that would never have been possible during a typical semester - and I made real headway toward one (and potentially two) book projects. As always, I'm grateful for the time and investment that SJSU made in my personal and professional life. I hope that the results are worthwhile!

iBook-it?

Have I found a reason to jump onto the iPad bandwagon? Maybe so.

Today Apple announced its iBooks Author app that may provide me the tools necessary to produce the sort of post-traditional press project I've long imagined - maybe my world's fair book, maybe something else entirely - a "book" that is dynamic, malleable, engaging, and much more updatable than the current model.

Reviewing Andy Ihnatko's initial assessment, I see lots to like about iBooks. Integration with iTunes, intuitive design, multimedia content… Nice. Then of course there are the typical caveats as Apple continues to expand creative options while managing distribution its patented brand of granular control. Oh, and let's not forget the hardware costs (never a one-time-only proposition).

Considering the potential and the pitfalls of today's announcement, I don't plan to rush to my nearest Apple store and buy iPad's next iteration (the one supposedly arriving this spring). I've got plenty of work ahead of me for the next year or so, just developing content. You know: words and stuff. We haven't advanced quite so far as to forget those minor items, have we?

At the same time, I've got to admit: I sure would like to play with an iPad right about now.

I-44

Turning 44 today doesn't lead me to much reflection on the past 12 months. Mostly I'm focused on the road ahead. That's a benefit of having a birthday in January, I guess: I'm inclined to see the day as a chance to plan ahead.

So what's the plan for Year 44?

Certainly I hope to use my spring sabbatical as a chance to start building the structure of a book on world's fairs I've long been threatening to write. I'll start with an essay on the 2010 Shanghai Fair, while also sketching more detail into the framework of the overall book project.

I'm not yet thinking about securing a publisher, though. Heck, I'm not sure that the traditional publishing model works anymore - either in terms of remuneration or in terms of flexibility to deliver content in a compelling way. So I'll spend some time contemplating form as well as content. Without the stresses of tenure and promotion to freeze my imagination, I feel no need to reproduce past accomplishments. I want to try something new.

I'm also fired up about the opportunity to lead student groups to Beijing and Salzburg this summer. I feel so lucky to return to parts of the world that continue to fascinate me. Yet I'm aware of the complexity of the tasks I've chosen to tackle. Some of spring will therefore be dedicated to necessary preparations - even as I work on a potential plan to augment my China travels with an odd but potentially amazing side trip (more news on that topic later).

Year 44 will also include plenty of other travels in the U.S., most notably a cross-country solo road trip that may inspire a video about animated neon signs (You know, the stuff you see at motels, bowling alleys, and diners). Jenny and I will likely return to Yosemite too, hoping to climb Half Dome. And there's always time for a Highway 163 sojourn. Monument Valley never ceases to quiet my soul.

I also look forward to friends coming to California this year as we prepare to celebrate Vienna's nuptials in fall. I have a pretty clear idea of how Jenny will manage that particular transition. For myself, I am less sure. I'm hopeful that my daughter is embarking on a wonderful adventure. Still I can't quite shake a father's anxieties.

In the interstitial moments between big changes, I hope to read some of the books that have been piling up on night stands and lamp tables around our house. While my mind has hardly stagnated in these past busy years, I feel an acute need to rethink old ideas, perhaps to jettison a few altogether. One gift I offer myself today is the assurance that I may continue to change my mind.

Most importantly, though, I spend more time with good friends this year. Indeed I've read recently that failure to nourish genuine friendships constitutes one of the great regrets many folks discover when they near death. I don't foresee a chance to prove that theory any time soon. I merely hope to refresh those relationships that are mutually meaningful.

Here I emphasize my aim to be less concerned about folks for whom friendship is divvied according to utility or convenience. I hope to be kind and helpful to acquaintances, of course. But my fondest hope is to be a better friend to those people who have added so much to my life - both when it's easy and when it's hard.

No doubt my 44th year will include plenty of both.