PlanetUSF

Opening hours for the PCC/USF Library:
Saturday July 1st - 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Sunday July 2nd - closed as usual
Monday July 3rd - 12:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Tuesday July 4th - closed for the holiday

Happy 4th of July to all!

City of pedestrians, angels really - of a lost art - walking
In the Concrete Jungle
Where you can find manhole covers
drop forged with Pacific Indian symbols
I saw long streets full of wind and trees
Just perfect streets - not lonely - full of shadow and sunny distance
At the Blarney Stone I watched France triumph against Saudi Arabia
With Jacob - a young man from Britanny
We talked about the power there, in France, the nuclear plants
He told me of the French government - their decade long outbidding of private power contracts
In his opinion setting the country back many years
Here in the USA - we’re still waiting for solar to get cheap
Like all our other choices
But Seattle - beneath the Needle
lies, for now, in a glass case about 3feet X 6feet
Garth’s Ampex tape recorder that captured the Basement Tapes (tape counter reads 099)
Levon’s Martin mandolin (haggered & Catskill’d)
Robbie’s Last Waltz’d gold Gibson (you can discern the slight ripples in the home made paint application)
It’s all history and it was in their hands at some point
No cameras allowed
The Japanese tourists next to me are leaning in
I get on the balls of my feet - check out the reproduction of the lyrics
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - looking for line outs of which there are none
Perfect song
There is an entire room devoted to Jimi
From birth to death
A note to his grandmother reads:
“Dear grandma I miss you how is Mrs. D we are having fun I went to a picnic I ate too much but I had fun love you Buster”
A hip Dad is telling his son something about choking on vomit because you have no gag reflex when you’re hammered
I won’t talk about the music room and the field trip of ants - the little kids running rampant while I try to find a drum kit to play on
Finally I’m trying to groove and the snare lever is broken sending the drum down near my ankles
all the while a young boy is standing in my face
Has he been drinking whiskey
His breath is straight no chaser
I’m staring at the clock
Two more come and say my time is up
I tell them the clock hasn’t started yet
This is before Jimi
All of his albums
A wall of vinyl and import 45’s in Spanish & Japanese
Electric Ladyland’s ladies are spread wide open - smirking or knowing
Jumpsuits guitars Mtich’s Gretsch kit the Purple Haze science fiction novel
notes on hotel pads legal pads scraps
The man’s a ghost and on display
I can hear Buddy Miles somewhere
I leave after seeing a piece of the shattered guitar body
Montreux the fire and this piece isn’t burned
Just broken
Sitting in a glass case

Friday, June 30, I will be in Tampa all day for meetings. I will be back on Monday, July 3rd.

This is from my trip last month on the Big Island. I can’t tell you how excited I was to see a sea turtle on my last day there! I’m going to add more videos from the trip to YouTube today.

The USF Lakeland phone system is down for the moment. You may not be able to reach me from outside USF. The problem is being worked on.

I found the following webpage that lists the differences between the PubMed and MEDLINE databases:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/dif_med_pub.html .

MEDLINE is a component of PubMed and both deal with the life sciences. PubMed is free and while it may be easier to use, MEDLINE will be more specialized and will link to more full-text. Both databases are still very useful to know. The USF Libraries gives you access to MEDLINE via different platforms; the OVID platform contains a subject headings map (a list of predetermined descriptors) - the MeSH - to help you formulate your queries. It is also available in PubMed. A common strategy is to use PubMed to draft a search query you will then use in MEDLINE.

The headline “Transvestite gang pesters Magazine Street” sounds too crazy to be true, but that’s New Orleans for you.

When I spent a summer as a costumer/drag queen’s “dresser” at Oz’s weekly drag show, I met some fabulous “ladies” who would never stoop to this level. But I guess if you’ve lived through Katrina, you can become desperate for fashion…for instance:

The transvestites first appeared in March when they raided Magazine Street like a marauding army of kleptomaniacal showgirls, said Davis, using clockwork precision and brute force to satisfy high-end boutique needs.

Lisa has several posts which offer links to text, audio and video. I can’t wait to read, listen and watch what I missed.

Though not a productive weekend, I am back on track with 2 killer cardio workouts, a bike ride on the beach and a visit to the library. Sure, the Harry Potter film festival I had with AJ and AC might not have been dissertation-realted, but can we at least call it a literary evening?

Courtesy of the Chronicle, which notes that “The map indicates that the most linked-to blogs focus on technology and social-political commentary”:

The size of the circles on Mr. Hurst’s map indicates the numbers of links to the blogs. The colors of the circles show the type of blog software used or on what kind of server the sites are hosted, telling technology-oriented researchers the more popular servers and software.

Welcome to University Experience

This is the first of hopefully many entries chronicling my 2 year (hopefully no more) journey through the MM program in Jazz Performance at the University. This will be quite a different experience from my undergrad, four years at a small, slow-growing, less-than-demanding music program.

Now, I am married and and 25 miles from campus. I have real responsibilities and a lot of commitments. This may turn out to be a study in time management (whether it is effective time management or not will reveal itself in the future). In the meantime, I’ve got more practicing to do.