At least with a reporter - there are what seem to be guidelines established through years of practice (by reporters and related administrators) and rule-making around news-making and reporting. When a reporter meets us f2f for a story or is going to be amidst us in a public venue we are aware that we will likely be “reported” on.

But what of the daily blogger - what are the warning signs for someone who is going to be written about in a blog? What are power dynamics at play - when a high ranking academic blogs vs when a graduate student blogs - what social capital permits the blogging of certain events (bloggers are hardly ever about stating multiple perspectives - they state their own and those of their friends - just as I do - not that reporters are objective necessarily either but there are other checks and balances…)

I have so many recent events happening around me and that I have been a part of that I want to report on and comment on on my blog - but hesitate because I feel that my view on some of these events will not be taken too kindly …

This is not an issue of marginalization and empowerment - it is an issue of judgement and viewership.

Specific situated audience communities interacting with Writers produce “texts” - but where the blog goes - we cant always map the route.

but I may blog the reports eventually anyway.

to find out more about what it means to “quilt conceptually” according to rad Zabibha (born in 2006) and Cyb Tabla (born in 2004)

go to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Brouwer/172/149/42

work in-progress - always

considering also linking to Diva’s earlier moo projects - at least those that are still accessible

The archives aren’t updated yet - but when they do you can find the discussion…

Meanwhile - cutting and pasting a part of my most recent post to invite anyone in-world to IM me to be a part of the group I am forming.

THIS discussion is to me about SL education and how we as educators can use these tools (if we must) responsibly and to explore if this medium is indeed enhancing or hampering our ability to pedagogically negotiate the complexities of representational practices world wide. When are we as educators part of the solution and when do we become part of the problem?

I am starting a group on SL on the politics of representation and pedagogy - anyone interested should IM me inworld - rad Zabibha.

This fall I teach a course on Pedagogy at the grad level and hope to have them participate in an SL based assignment that will include this group and discussions with them. Therefore the group is about more than “SLED” - it is about Pedagogy and representational practices.

Finally. A moment to write. To quickly swiftly wiggle my fingers over the keyboard. When I took this job – did I think it would slow down my writing and research? Yes I was warned. But I also knew that if I did not write I would stop breathing…. So I cannot stop writing.

But I stop to think – is it because of the busy schedule of being Graduate Coordinator that stops me from writing in response to Adrienne’s call that we start to focus on disruption of family secrets - or is it – yet again - my mind refusing to reveal secrets to my typing fingers?

This morning as I chugged away on the exercise machines – first running on the treadmill and then moving on the elliptical runner – with my ipod trinket playing in my ears, my mind seeking out words of wisdom, some sign perhaps from all the songs I’ve heard many times before over and over again. Hoping for the random shuffling of the songs to talk to me – knowing I have embedded my father’s voice and his poem for my mother in the midst of a medley of old and new bollywood songs, South Indian and North India classical music, Western Classical music, a bit of remix and desi rap as well as some other mixed music from the 80s and 90s…. Every morning its pretty much the same – I seek to get a sign from all these technologies I use. Perhaps this is the root of my fascination with technologies – they are my modern day spirits. Like Samantha in Bewitched and Jeannie in I dream of Jeannie – I will twitch my nose or blink my eyes and my family and friends will teleport towards me – converse with me, laugh with me and give me words of wisdom or sarcasm to live and laugh by….

So I entered second life again and clicked something and found myself on a boat with a guy who was cursing about lag…

“Hello” he said

he said….

Dorothy is not in Kansas anymore, I thought.

Darn those English metaphors again

But I am writing in English … .my audience wont get my linguistic twists and metaphors from another language and context – and if I tried to explain they would be no fun any more…

Yes that is why I disappear into techno-spaces. That is why I am so aware of technologies – for you, my audience, here and now are the technologies shaping me and speaking to me and giving me a “sign” –that I must interpret as either validation or rejection or neither through my own lenses of understanding and affect…

You sit around me… and I think – what are my secrets today?

I click on your profile button – but it tells me nothing I want to know

I set my profile button – to tell you nothing you need not know

But we must establish some bonds of trust if we are to write together like this….

So I will start my narration….

వూరు

“Vooru” – I punch that into the Padma telugu transformer – remember that at the theory cluster meeting they asked me if that was a form of insult.

But of course I cant cut and paste it onto the word document - but it works here - so maybe I should continue the notes here and set it to protected….

anyway to get the vooru in my word document (because Ileap or baraha wont work on the mac) I grabbed and saved…

what can I say?

whose voices am I consuming as I say

why can I not say

when you can

but yet you want their authentic voices

what I tell you cannot be trusted

that’s what you say

as if you had heard the authentic

yourself

then why do you need me to reveal it to you

if you know what it should look like?

so what is the nature of evidence in the academe - who is required to provide what evidence and why…

how may you be made ready to hear the voice(s) you ask me/us to reveal to you?

why do you want us to reveal that “authentic” voice to you?

who decided that if I put something in quotes it becomes his authentic voice?

how may you be made ready to hear the voices you think you will hear if we reveal his words to you?

how would you know his “authentic” voice when you do not take the trouble to go there and hear it as a voice in context?

why do you wish me to pull forth his voice for you to pull forth with the click of a mouse

how does that make you the judge of whether or not it is really his voice

why is she assumed to be voiceless

when the conceptualization of “voice” is in your control

still

(k)no(w) you

we will not “give” you her voicings

you will just have to make the effort of trying to understand within what we write

or come down and try to translate it yourself - but be assured you are being watched as you

confident of your ability to translate

invade, capture and preview

hers

and

his

voice

so that they may be pulled up and analyzed and understood

even as you take their daily living away as in the capturing and replaying

you take no note of what they seem to be asking for

because the complexity of what they say cannot be captured, recorded, shifted and replayed

outside

de-contextually

where

all so that you may feel you are a part of the community of protest

you have replayed, captured and colonized his meaning

yet again.

Grandmother of the heights