The WhereProject

Dissertation

  • A Done Dissertation

    A Done Dissertation

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    Place Blogging: Local Economies of Attention in the Network  

  • Correspondences

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    The Transcendentalists were fond of looking for “correspondences” between the external world and the inner world, between say the weather and one’s emotions. As I sit working on the last revisions to my dissertation (I have the week off), such connections seem pretty clear. It’s a cold, rainy march day, drab above and below. The…

  • Facebook and Blogging

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    I've been working on the preface to my dissertation this morning, a kind of personal narrative of how I got interested in place blogging and where I've ended up now as I finish up. I began wondering if the rise of Facebook has affected the blogging practices of those I've been following in my projec,…

  • Dancing My Dissertation

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    This last week I began the final Dissertation Smackdown, the last days of vacation I take to try to finish up the dissertation. When I have to spent extended periods of time writing, my body needs some role to play while my mind is doing most of the heavy lifting. Often my body gets involved…

  • Savoring Fall

    Savoring Fall

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    Many autumns just slip by, with only moments of awareness, a few accidental fleeting changes to soak it in and enjoy the particular pleasures of the season. This particularly unfortunate in New England, where the fall presentation is done so expertly. I expected I would be even less attentive to fall this time around, given…

  • Mt. Washington and a week of Dissercation

    Mt. Washington and a week of Dissercation

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    This past week I took the week off to work on my dissertation–more like a "staycation" than a real vacation. Or perhaps I should call it a "dissercation," to coin a really ugly word. It like the way it has hints of "diss" words (dissatisfied, diservice, dissipate, dissonance) on one end and of "altercation" on…

  • The Heart and Soul of Places

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    I spent last Thursday and Friday in Woodstock, VT with a group of people invited by the Orton Foundation to discuss their "Heart and Soul" approach to planning. The invitation seemed to come out of the blue a few months ago, since I was aware of the Orton Foundation's work but not involved with them…

  • An (Un-edited) Ecotone Reader

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    It seems like a long time ago that I first ran across the Ecotone Wiki and was first exposed to the notion of place blogging, a topic compelling enough to keep me slogging away on this dissertation for quite some time. I've enjoyed spending time with the folks involved in the wiki, reading their blogs,…

  • Learning to Be a Big Spender

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    It's one thing to not follow your own advice; it's even worse when you've forgotten what that advice was in the first place. I used to dispense insights about writing to my freshman writing students; now I feel like getting back in touch to see if I can borrow their notes (yes, let's pretend they…

  • Sustainable Waters in a Changing World

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    Yesterday I spend the day "Sustainable Waters in a Changing World " conference at UMass Amherst where I gave a presentation on "Blogging Places: Using Social Media to Foster Place Identification and Share Local Knowledge," my standard place blogging spiel revised for audience of scientists and environmentalists. Here's the abstract: If Henry David Thoreau were…