An eventful day – December 15, 2016 – ramblings

If it were an album, we could call this the title cut. #MidwinterDay, part one. pic.twitter.com/t2QUhGxPsR

— Ray Maxwell (@hsifnihplod) December 16, 2016

Two books mark the day.  Finally finishing Horton and Freire’s We Make the Road by Walking with a group on Twitter (I fell behind, but I finished, mostly on subway rides to Capitol South and back.). I have three or four Freire books in my collection that I have actually read, and loved. Now this one will join that group (there will be more about this reading and the book in a subsequent post. I found a pdf of the book here, but eventually found a hard copy via interlibrary loan. There are copies for sale at used bookstores and on Amazon marketplace). The book is an ongoing dialogue between Myles Horton, of Highlander fame, and the Brazilian educator and philosopher, Paulo Freire, whom I have blogged about here previously.

And I embarked on a journey of reading Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day in the remaining days preceding the winter solstice (see the tweet above). I linked to an excerpt online, but I hope you will go to your nearest independent bookstore and purchase a copy. I met Bernadette Mayer a couple of years ago at Kelly Writers House, here is a separate link from that event with Phillip Good at the Writer’s House, the home base for ModPo on the UPenn campus.

Not really sure how my name got on the list, but I received an email invitation to attend a Tech Salon. So I signed up and went Thursday morning. It was a cold and windy hike up the hill from Dupont Circle. The theme was technology and development in the new Trump government (as usual, mine was the only brown face at the table, well, I shouldn’t say that because there were a couple of folks there of Indian descent who were dark. I’m accustomed to both.)

One attendee described the Trump base as composed of four sometimes warring tribes. They are 1) the cyberlibertarians; 2) the evangelical Christians; 3) the populists, tea-partyers, and American 1st-ers, and 4) the GHWB/Wall Street republicans. At any point in time, 3 of these 4 groups are or may be very interested in development overseas and may be helpful to efforts by the development groups. Someone else mentioned that the anti-immigration folks might buy into efforts to support startups and entrepreneurs who build business and create jobs in their home countries. Someone else mentioned the CVE (countering violent extremism) results of local job creation. There was a lot of discussion about broadband and about internet policy that I found interesting. Also interesting chat about using data analytics to focus aid delivery.

A handful of folks appeared to still be in denial about the Clinton defeat. One or two people kept making jokes. The majority seemed to be engaged in finding solutions, work-arounds, and possible advantages in the years to come. Most believed, as I do, that development won’t be high on the agenda immediately, and that existent (and already funded) programs will continue operating under the radar. I’ve always found hand-wringing to be a bit silly – show me the parameters, the constraints, and let’s get on with it, whatever it is.

And a book was recommended, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, which I hope to find at my library.

p.s. One more rambling thought before the day is done. Just read the Vanity Fair piece about Clinton machine post-election insider fighting. In her defense, Huma’s that is, I had a handful of interactions with her back in the day and always found her to be cordial, collegial and helpful, unlike most of the 7th floor sharks and carp who made up the Queen’s court. Yes, she was high up on the totem pole and I was just a lowly office director whose calls she didn’t really have to return. But return them she did, and always with helpful information for the task we were trying to accomplish. The other folks in Brooklyn need to get a grip!