the C2 wiki.

I feel like I keep returning to the same types of projects.  Right now I'm collecting, editing and publishing historical rhetoric texts on a wiki so they can be used to create ebooks and can be edited and annotated by future classes.  In a perfect world, a wiki is  a sustainable ecosystem that is portable, accessible and accessible. I'm using Dokuwiki.  Students could, if they wanted, download the entire site as a folder with html files or as an epub that would fit on their phone.  It uses flat files rather than a backend database.  I found my page on the C2 wiki which was created by Ward Cunningham, one of the very first Wiki's and have revisited it over the years, but it appears to have been taken down.  This is sad, because I would update the page every few years, i.e. "I graduated!".  My son and his friend posted on the page when he was about 10 years old and Googled my name.  Rest in peace, C2 Wiki.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190522144801/https://wiki.c2.com/?MarkCrane

June 20, 2019: Update: it appears to be back online!

Kirk Rasmussen

 

I'm Not Scared to Reenter Society. I'm Just Not Sure I Want To. - The Atlantic

After a year in isolation, I, at least, have gotten acclimated to a different existence—quieter, calmer, and almost entirely devoid of bullpoop. If you'd told me in March 2020 that quarantine would last more than a year, I would have been appalled; I can't imagine how I would've reacted if you'd told me, once it ended, I would miss it.

The Atlantic: 

Antelope island and the bird refuge.

 I'm writing this here because Gmail does not want me to include any images in my email.  It keeps telling me that a 15mb image is too huge, and that the world will come to an end if I try to include it.

A friend recently wrote:

Are we all living essentially the same life, thanks to the homogenizing effects of steamrollering cultural capitalism? -- 

This is a repeat of my answer above, but yes. Absolutely! I recently heard Jon Stewart say that one of the biggest changes he has seen in his career is that there used to be 7-8 positions and dozens of hot takes about any given cultural or political issue, and now there are two. Always two. What's weird about this is that we all feel like we're having our own thoughts, but we're clearly not. It's like fashion: We feel like we independently think bell bottoms look cool at the exact moment in history when they are in fashion. Clearly, we're wrong. That aesthetic is being fed to us somehow without us even knowing it. Politics are now like that. We don't have our own thoughts, clearly. We believe what some unnamable force tells us to believe. And our intellectual prison is impossible to escape from because we don't even know we're in it!

It has been a week since you wrote this, and the general tone makes me wonder if you have started experimenting with weed gummies, because it's that sort of conversation.  Part of that time I was sick with a cold, and it was unsettling how tired and immobile I was, even though it wasn't Covid.  As soon as I got better Christine took us on her previously cancelled road trip to Antelope Island, in our camping van:

The new bison calves were out:

Later, at the Bear River Bird refuge we saw a bird eat a live snake.

 

We also stopped by Willard bay, named after my relative, Willard Richards. It's essentially a square-ish parking lot filled with water, but they made an artificial beach:

Here's a random canyon you could see from this spot:

I'm struck by how many amazing sites are within three hours of our house.  We can travel north to see this stuff, or be at Capitol Reef, surrounded by Californians.  Even Rock canyon, a few minutes away, is impressive. We're actually a five hour drive from Yellowstone, and ten hours from Rushmore.

I just chose the first Rock Canyon picture in Google photos.  That was December, 2020 and I'm sort of startled by the lack of snow.

Ok, just to continue the boring travelogue, we stopped by this giant rural supply store called Smith and Edwards that was started by my Great Uncle, and used to have tons of military surplus, but now that the young people run it, it is a lot less weird. He created a business from his hoarding, which makes him my hero. There are still a few remnants of its strange past:

Eventually we made it home, after visiting my brother in Ogden who is fifty and just had both of his knees replaced. 

As I was unloading the van, I saw this young, newly married couple from our ward who probably attend BYU, pushing their new baby around our cul de sac, and I thought "Oh, I'll say hi and introduce myself to them when they approach.  I'm sure they'll be happy to talk to a ward member, impressive person that I am. How kind of me to give them this special experience."  but as they got closer they pushed their stroller off of my sidewalk, out into the street to avoid any possible interaction.  

"Whoa, that was odd, why on earth would they do that?"  

Then I took a selfie so I could see myself as they saw me:

This is largely how I viewed the older ward members when we moved here in 2005, and I was only 39, a relative child. They were all so kind, and eager to talk to the young, new couple. To be fair, BYU students are probably especially uncomfortable around any signs of low income or anyone that might distract them from their chosen path to a life of managing UVU students.

The next day I was driving up to our house and another BYU student who looked like a male model or a professional golfer, standing on our porch, all teeth, tan and polo shirt, in the process of selling alarm systems or solar cells, looking at his clipboard.  Nobody was home but when I drove by his eyes locked on mine and behind that friendly smile I could see the gaze of a predator.  It was like he knew that I lived there.

I kept driving, like a coward, turned around at the end of the cul de sac, and went to Deseret Industries and bought a book of "micro fiction," or really short stories.  When I returned home I could see him prowling the neighborhood like a handsome serial killer. I just didn't have it in me to deal with all of that self-confidence, sublimated bullying and canned privilege.  Our neighborhood has a lot of middle class retired people and I've learned with my aging mother that they are a primary target for sales operations.  She has no ability to detect scams, whatsoever and will regularly ask me if she should get her ducts cleaned, or buy a warranty for her car.

This is what a 60 point loss to my wife looks like.