I make maps to understand what it means to be blind, and a flaneur . Those ideas are elusive destinations. Think of them as streets you can wander along with me. Start with the first post, ![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. 
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in 
![Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charlotte_casiraghi_red_dress.jpg "Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]")
When I figured out who Charlotte Casiraghi was, I realized that I once sent a poem to her mother. 
Poet and street artist Miss Tic isn't exactly a kid in a hoodie with a can of spray paint. Maybe she can still run like hell when the police show up, but can she sprint in high heels? Well-known in international avant-garde circles, her work is exhibited now at the Venice Biennale as well as the alleys of Paris. I must confess, as did On The Media’s Bob Garfield, that until last week “I’d never read a single word of David Foster Wallace’s work because he’s reputed as a novelist to be very dense and difficult, along Thomas Pynchon/James Joyce lines, and I didn’t even know he did journalism. But …, I’ve been […]
Entries Tagged as 'media'
David Foster Wallace’s Long-form Journalism
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September 23, 2023 at 6:00am
by Mark Willis
media · writing Add Your Comment
Hip-Hopping With The Big Bang
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September 10, 2023 at 7:28pm
by Mark Willis
Scientists at CERN, the European nuclear research institute in Geneva, fired up the Large Hadron Collider at 4:27 a.m. EDST. For the record, the world did not end then, as some Luddites feared. That could still happen several weeks from now when a beam of subatomic particles coursing one way through the collider smashes into […]
Big Bang · science · media Add Your Comment
MiT6: Stone & Papyrus, Storage & Transmission
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August 8, 2023 at 12:10am
by Mark Willis
The Media in Transition 6 conference (MiT6) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is scheduled for April 24-26, 2009. The conference theme is “Stone and Papyrus, Storage and Transmission.” The deadline for submitting proposals is January 9, 2009.
Ms. Modigliani and I went to MiT5 in 2007, and we found it to be one of […]
media · conferences · accessibility · fair use · Ms. Modigliani Add Your Comment
The Times — Are They A-Changin’?
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July 22, 2023 at 2:14pm
by Mark Willis
JibJab is back with a new satirical video for the 2008 election — Time for Some Campaignin’. JibJab seemed to invent the Internet video mashup in 2004 with This Land!, which presaged YouTube by two years. Now JibJab has a YT channel and a commercial site. According to their YT profile:
Brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis […]
media · satire · politics · pop culture Add Your Comment
The Daisy Ad: ‘Either Love Each Other, Or Die’
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June 18, 2023 at 12:15am
by Mark Willis
I remember the daisy ad. Anyone alive in 1964 has to remember. What I didn’t realize until the death of its creator, Tony Schwartz, is the fact that it was broadcast as a TV ad only once. After that, it was news. Then it became a legend.
I was nine years old. I wouldn’t admit to […]
media · rhetoric · 1960s · politics · memoir Add Your Comment
‘Born Without Earlids’: Tony Schwartz (1923-2008)
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June 18, 2023 at 12:05am
by Mark Willis
Media consultant Tony Schwartz died in New York June 15 at age 84. While he is best known for the legendary “daisy” TV ad that evoked nuclear madness in the 1964 Presidential election, I like to think of him as a flaneur who loved the ambient sounds of his city and knew how to play […]
NYT · media · New York · pop culture · NPR · Playing by Ear Add Your Comment