Daily Thoughts

The Reading Girl, marble sculpture by John Adams Jackson (1825–1879), now displayed in Mudd Library, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, USA.

Daily Thoughts

I got a little extra sleep today in anticipation of my split day. I am going to be reading some poetry at 4:00 p.m. at my library. Hopefully, it will be a good turnout. It is not too cold like last time. It was 18 degree outside at the last open microphone. I think more people will show up this time.

Black Dust

The sky burned red

A Poisoned wind blew

From the eastern oceans

The wind blew cold

Taking away summer

Freezing hard cold earth

Plants wilted brown died

Animals littered the plains

The earth took them

They are black dust

The earth is poisoned

Blackened with ruin

A man treks across

Plains, mountains, cities

Searching empty ruins

He travels northward

No hot sun shines

In the perpetual grey

He finally reaches the

The equator where the

Poison did not fall

Light comes through clouds

This is an attempt at a poem about nuclear winter.

Shatter

Shatter your preconceptions

March forward ever onward

In the open world

I should be going to the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in a few minutes. I think that I'll be a little more ready this time. I still have the second part of the first day of the conference to write up. I got some extra sleep last night.

I spent the morning listening to the keynote speakers at the conference. Then I wandered through the exhibitor floor, checking each exhibitor and seeing what was there. There were things there which I heard about and saw which were astounding. The New York Times is developing a customizable newspaper kiosk where you can have a customized newspaper printed for you on the spot. There is a turnkey machine for printing completed books which they are planning on leasing or selling to large libraries.

I saw the future written large. It was clearly more change than most people can imagine coming within the next year or two. Stanza, the most people ereader for the iphone in their presentation said they had their software for reading ebooks on iphones downloaded over 1.3 million times. They were planning to also provide software for other platforms as well.

I held the Plastic Logic ebook reader which is a half inch deep, 8 1/2 x 11 inch book reader. It runs on electronic ink and is almost completely made of polymers. It appears to be very light and very readable. It is as readable as newsprint.

I am beginning to think electronic ink very well could be a Gutenberg moment in the written word. There may be a more immediate world where every bit of information is on demand and right there in front of your face. It is coming faster than you might imagine.

The conference was eye opening. I am just starting to process everything which I have learned in the last few days. It is not easy. I have a lot to think and write about.

I had to run to work to get things going on time. The first thing I did was make sure the open microphone poetry reading was going to be set up on time. It was a little late. We had the AARP tax people finishing up their free tax preparation. Still, the reading went well. A local poet volunteered to do a workshop on poetry writing in April. There were eleven people and a bunch of kids who came over from the children rooms who wanted cookies and soda from the refreshments.

After the poetry reading, we have a business workshop for starting a small business in the community room right now. There are ten people downstairs listening to a presentation on entrepreneurship. I am hoping that it will go well.

Everything seems to be happening at once.

I finished reading Hope's Folly by Linnea Sinclair on the way home from work. This may take me a little bit to write a proper review for it.