text:
KIM SO-W?L'S CHINDALLAEKKOT (AZALEAS) AS AN IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENT
Author: DE FREMERY WAYNE, KIM JUSUB
Publish: Acta Koreana Volume 17, Issue1, p5~27, June 2014
According to English poet Sir Philip Sidney's well-known Apology, poetry is meant to instruct and delight. In the spirit of this assertion, our ongoing experiments algorithmically detect patterns in vernacular Korean poetic texts and manifest them creatively in digital environments. Our aspiration is to deepen the discussion of vernacular Korean poetry by enabling engagements with Korean poetic texts that privilege image over discourse, if only temporarily. The aim is to see, quite literally, what Korean poems can be in order to deepen discussions of what they are or might mean. This project extends the authors' previous work by attempting to visualize an entire book of poetry in immersive space as a forest rather than envisioning individual poems as two-dimensional trees. Taking liberties with the theme of the conference where this work was presented for the first time, sensibility and landscape in Korean literature and film, we explore Korean literature as landscape.
The performative/deformative processes of computing described here include programmatic morphological linguistic analysis and L-Systems procedural modeling. Specifically, we map the bibliographic and linguistic codes of Kim So-wŏl's canonical Chindallaekkot (Azaleas, 1925) into three-dimensional digital space to create interactive paintings from Kim So-wŏl's "speaking pictures," to borrow again from Sidney. This is done by expressing linguistic elements in Kim's poems (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs) and their structural bibliographic elements (stanzas, lines, white spaces) in the grammar of L-systems in order to create commands that (re)render Kim's poems visually as trees.
In this article we detail ongoing experiments to create a new, immersive edition of Kim So-wŏl's canonical book of poetry Chindallaekkot (Azaleas). The first print edition, according to its colophons, was printed as two alternate issues on December 23, 1925. Only one of these issues was widely known to scholars until recently: the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue of Chindallaekkkot, so named to distinguish it from the recently rediscovered Chungan Sŏrim issue. Since Chindallaekkot's initial publication, hundreds of books and critical papers have been written about Kim So-wŏl and his poetry, securing an iconic position for him and his book in Korean cultural history. Books and papers written about Kim So-wŏl since the 1980s, when scholarly interest in the poet became truly frenetic, were composed based on a facsimile edition of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue of Chindallaekkot created by publisher Munhak Sasang in the mid-1970s. We know this because, for reasons that are unclear, the editors at Munhak Sasang doctored the images of their copy-text, introducing small, but not insignificant, changes to the text of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue of Chindallaekkot that can be traced through every significant critical edition of Kim So-wŏl's poetry produced after 1980.2
This brief textual history of Chindallaekkot suggests the reasons for our new edition and the technologies we employ to create it. Despite the mass of scholar-ship about Kim So-wŏl, the material texts and modes of production that present and reiterate So-wŏl's verse have gone essentially unseen, which means that how Kim's texts have been physically iterated through time has been left untheorized. The ways in which the language of Kim So-wŏl's poetry may evoke the natural environment and, in particular, the emotional vistas of the author and his era have been described at length in the critical discourse about Kim. However, the human technologies of print that have articulated Kim's language and the ways in which these technologies have transformed his poems through time have been over-looked. To foreground these transformations and consider how we might productively "socialize,"3 to borrow a term from bibliographer and literary critic Jerome McGann, this modern classic using today's technologies, our immersive digital edition of Chindallaekkot rearticulates the physical structures of Chin-dallaekkot's printed iterations and the language of its poems in immersive digital space.
Our reproduction of Kim So-wŏl's book foregrounds these transformations by presenting an intentional and calculated (literally) misreading of Kim's classic. As the bibliographer D. F. McKenzie describes, every iteration of a text is a "mis-reading" of its antecedents, which is to say that the fine details of a text's physical presentation changes every time it is reproduced, influencing the ways that it can be interpreted. Agreeing with theorists such as Bruno Latour and Adam Lowe that the interpretation of a work of art can be aided by experiencing it in a form that is utterly distinct from its previous iterations, our misreading of Chindallaekkot aims to enable new interpretive opportunities by presenting Kim So-wŏl's book as it has never been: a visual performance in a theater-like space performed by the calculations of a computer. McGann, along with Lisa Samuels, Stephen Ramsay and Johanna Drucker would call what we have created a "deformance," a critical term they use to suggest the critical fecundity of thinking of interpretive acts as both performative and (de)formative. Appropriating this term, our radical "de-formance" of Kim's poems as trees is orchestrated to bring the historical mani-festations of Chindallaekkot, which are also presented in the environment, into view by juxtaposing what Kim So-wŏl's texts can be with what they have been.
Below, we describe the techniques used to create our sylvan visualizations, such as the tools we used to programmatically analyze the linguistic morphology of Kim So-wŏl's poems and model the environment's woodland. This is followed by a description of what is presented to viewers in our immersive digital edition, as well as how we prepared the copy-texts used to algorithmically manifest our forest. A more detailed discussion of our motives and future aspirations con-cludes the paper.
1The authors would like to thank the organizers of Sensibility and Landscape in Korean Literature and Film, the Seventh Keimyung International Conference on Korean Studies, held in Taegu, South Korea for inviting us to present an early version of this article. The authors would also like to thank Seyoung Kim for her assistance programming elements of Chindallaekkot as an immersive environment. This work was supported by the Sogang University Research Grant of 2012. 2See Wayne de Fremery, "How Poetry Mattered in 1920s Korea," (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2011). 3By "socialization," McGann means editorial attempts to imaginatively reconstitute or approximate the literary and aesthetic horizons of literary texts when they are reiterated in new forms, such as new editions. See Jerome McGann, "The Socialization of Texts," in The Textual Condition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 39–46.
MODELING CHINDALLAEKKOT AS AN IMMERSIVE FOREST4
A technical description of how we transform the poems in Chindallaekkot into a forest will help clarify the abstract description just presented and set the stage for a description of what viewers experience in our immersive reproduction of Kim's work. Chindallaekkot is modeled as a forest through a number of interrelated processes. These processes might be summarized as follows: Text files cor-responding to individual poems are read, then compiled, then drawn. That is to say the language in the files is scanned by software that reads it for linguistic content. Then, during the compilation process, the texts of the poems are re-written based on the results of these linguistic analyses into a series of commands for drawing the poems as trees. These instructions are then rendered as an image during the drawing phase. We employ the grammar of Lindenmayer-systems to compile and render the trees in our forest. The linguistic analysis is performed by Komoran (v. 1.12) by Shineware;5 the coding has been done in Processing 2. 6
Lindenmayer-systems, or L-systems, bear the name of the man who initially developed them in 1968, Aristid Lindenmayer. The aim of these systems is to define complex objects by means of reiterating simpler ones. An L-system is com-prised of a collection of symbols that are restated by a formal grammar, a process known as "rewriting," in order to iterate complex bodies. Alvy Ray Smith adapted L-systems to computer graphics in 1984 and, since then, the technique has been used frequently to model objects such as plants and trees.7 Understanding L-systems in more detail will help to elucidate how we grow trees from the fertile language of Kim So-wŏl's poems.
L-systems function by means of substitutions. For example, in the following expression, F[+F]F is made to substitute for F.
If F is the initial variable and the function is run twice, it becomes,
When alphabetic symbols are assigned geometric values, shapes can be drawn algorithmically according to the rules defined by the variables. For example, if the symbols in the function above are given the values below, and the function is run twice, it produces an image that looks like the branch of a tree.
[Figure 1] Using L-Systems to Draw a Branch
The botanical metaphor we employ when visualizing Kim So-wŏl's poems was chosen because, using L-systems, the intricate structures of his poetry can be productively associated with similarly complex assemblages. Although it is not the only metaphor that can be imagined,8 stanzas, lines, phrases, words, vowel quality, etc. can all be mapped to the branches of a tree, its leaves and their colors. The botanical form enables us to suggest the patterns found in Kim So-wŏl's poetry without resorting to the less interesting graphic idioms of the sciences, such as pie charts, bar graphs, and radial diagrams, which dominate information visualization techniques. We hope that examples from previous work that describe how we suggest the form and content of poems, as well as their relative literariness, with our visualizations will help illuminate our basic technique.
Figure 2 helps to illustrate how the basic morphology of the trees we present is created from the coded bibliographic form of a poem. The image below is of a poem by Chŏng Chi-yong (1902–1950), a contemporary of Kim So-wŏl, called "Hosu 1" (Lake 1) that we have reiterated as a tree using the text of the poem presented by Kwŏn Yŏng-min in his Chŏng Chi-yong si: 126 p'yŏn tasi ilkki (The poetry of Chŏng Chi-yong: Re-reading 126 poems).9
[Figure 2] Hosu 1
As is seen in Figure 2, the structural morphology of the poem—which is to say the bibliographic structures of the text, especially the white spaces that determine stanzas and lines, as well as the glyphs that suggest units of linguistic meaning—can be easily mapped to the morphology of a tree. The two stanzas of Chŏng's poem are suggested by the two large branches growing out of the tree's trunk. The order of the stanzas is expressed by a left-to-right arrangement of the branches, and the lines of each stanza, in a similar arrangement, are expressed as smaller branches. The number of linguistically meaningful units in a line, as defined by white space in Kwŏn's germinative text, determines the number of leaves that grow from branches that correspond to the lines in Chŏng's poem. Three leaves on each branch, organized left-to-right again to suggest their order in the originating text, grow from each branch. Finally, the thickness of the leaves is determined by the number of glyphs in each linguistic unit. For example, in the last line of the poem, the leaf that corresponds to the single glyph "눈" (nun, eyes) is half as thick as the leaves that correspond to "감을" (kamŭl, close) and "밖에" (pakke, only), each of which comprises two glyphs.
Just as the morphological structures of a tree can be used to express what might be thought of as the coded bibliographic structures of Chŏng's poem, the leaves of the trees can be colored to express morphological aspects of the poem's linguistic content. To visualize aspects of a poem's linguistic content chromatically, we first use Komoran to identify and count morphological elements of the linguistic poems, such as parts of speech. We then map the result to chromatic elements, such as saturation and brightness. Nouns and particles, for example, because we associate them with solidity,10 are mapped to low saturation levels. Verbs and adjectives, because we associate them with description and motion, are associated with high saturation levels. To determine the hue of a leaf, values returned by Komoran for various parts of speech in a given linguistic unit, as defined by the white space of the instigating text, are averaged and associated with a shade of green. For example, in the image of the second stanza of Chŏng Chi-yong's poem below, the nouns "마음" (maŭm, heart) and "호수" (hosu, lake) are expressed as a completely desaturated green or, in other words, as gray. In contrast, the verbs that comprise the construction "보고 싶은" (pogo sipŭn), are expressed as two highly saturated green leaves.
[Table 1] Saturation Values and Parts of Speech
Vowels in han'gŭl have, since King Sejong developed Hunmun chŏngŭm in the fifteenth century, been associated with the philosophical concept of ŭmyang (yin-yang, 陰陽). Consequently, certain vowels are associated with yang, or brightness; others are associated with ŭm (yin), or darkness.11 We use these associations to suggest the relative sonorific brightness of linguistic units in the poetic texts we reiterate. To do this, we create values for the relative brightness of vowels found in a linguistic unit, average them for that unit, and use the value to determine the brightness of a leaf's color. For example, as is seen in Figure 3, leaves associated with "보고" (pogo) and "하니" (hani) are brightly colored. Those associated with "눈" (nun) and "싶은" (sipŭn) are darkly colored.
[Figure 3] Colored Second Stanza of Ch?ng Chi-yong's "Lake 1"
[Table 2] Vowel Color and Brightness
These techniques we have described so far can be used to reiterate any informational text. Attempting to suggest the relative literariness of the poems we rearticulate, we borrow a metaphor from Jerome McGann. He writes, "Whereas 'noise' is always a form of corruption for a channel of information, it can be exploited in literary texts for positive results. The thicker a description, so far as the artist is concerned, the better."12 To suggest the relative "thickness" of poetic description presented in the vernacular Korean poems we re-present repetition, which would be noise in an information channel, as the relative thickness of a tree's trunk and branches. We do this using the function below, where repetition, S, is defined for each linguistic unit, j:
Therefore, the repetition in a poem, S, is
Figure 4, which visualizes the first few lines of the second stanza of Yi Sang's (1910–1937) highly repetitive "Si che-il ho" (詩第一號, Poem No. 1), suggests how the relative literary "thickness" of a poem in our environment is expressed. As can be seen, the trunk and branches of our woody "Poem No. 1" are quite thick.
[Figure 4] Repetition and Thickness14
To summarize the processes involved in creating the trees in our forest more formulaically, the linguistic units of a poem are scanned in order of their appearance then recursively compiled as commands that are rendered as trees. We use rules available in L-system procedural modeling to compile the poems. For example, if F is the entire poem, when L-system procedures are applied once, branches associated with the poem's two stanzas will be made to extend in alternate directions in a similar fashion by means of the following expression:
To compile the poem's linguistic content so that it can be rendered as leaves in the manner described above, saturation, brightness and size are expressed on a scale of 0–9 and encoded as a string. The following would express a leaf with a saturation level of 6, a brightness of 3, and a thickness of 4:
Rendering the poem as a three-dimensional image is accomplished by associating the symbols in the compiled poem with geometric shapes and, using Bézier curves, displaying the figure of a tree.
4Much of the discussion presented here appears in Wayne de Fremery and Jusub Kim, "Algorijŭm kiban modelling ŭl iyonghan si sigakhwa pangbŏp yŏn'gu" (Experimental visualizations of Korean poetry using procedural modeling), Journal of Digital Design 13, no. 4 (2013): 61–70. 5Komoran is a software library for morphological analysis written in Java. It is freely available online. See Chun-su, Komoran [software], version 1.12, http://shineware.tistory.com/category/Project, accessed August 22, 2013. 6Ben Fry, Casey Reas, et al., Processing [software language/ development environment], version 2.0.2, http://processing.org, accessed August 22, 2013. 7David Ebert et. al, Texturing & Modeling: A Procedural Approach, 3rd ed. (Morgan Kaufmann, 2003), 307–309. 8We are also considering an architectural metaphor. L-systems can also be used to draw buildings. However, we have not yet had the opportunity to explore how the poetry of Kim So-wŏl or other Korean poets might be articulated as a house or cityscape. 9Kwŏn Yŏng-min, ed., Chŏng Chi-yong si: 126 p'yŏn tasi ilkki (The poetry of Chŏng Chi-yong: Re-reading 126 poems) (Seoul: Minŭmsa, 2004), 325. 10These assumptions are our own and can be productively debated. 11Young-Key Kim-Renaud, ed., The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997), 280. 12Jerome McGann, The Textual Condition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 75. 13Gonzalo Navarro, "A Guided Tour to Approximate String Matching," ACM Computing Surveys 33, no. 1 (2001): 31–88. 14The translation of Yi Sang's poem is by Walter Lew and found in the David McCann, ed., Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry (New York, Columbia University Press, 2004), 65.
INSIDE CHINDALLAEKKOT15
According to Gérard Genette, the paratexts of a book—textual elements such as the title or publisher's name embedded in the design of a cover or presented in a colophon—act as a threshold controlling one's whole reading of the text.16 Whether or not they controlled readers' entire experience can be debated but the paratextual differences between Chindallaekkot's two initial presentations along with their significant material differences—different covers, title pages, paper—have caused investigators of the two issues to reach different understandings of the book's significance, suggesting that these differences set the stage for ex-periencing the poetry in each issue quite differently. The environment we have created is designed to enable viewers to consider how alternate presentations of a text such as these may control the reading experience. These initial presentations of Chindallaekkot are not immediately presented to viewers. Instead, in order to suggest that how they were initially made was not inevitable, viewers arrive at them after navigating through a variety of alternate historical descendants of Kim So-wŏl's book, including our forest, as well as contemporary imagery frequently associated with Chindallaekkot and Kim.
Viewers in our environment are first presented with a long stream of images collected by conducting a Google search for "진달래꽃 김소월" (Chindallaekkot Kim So-wŏl)17 and capturing the results. In this way, viewers are presented with imagery frequently associated with Kim So-wŏl's book today. Visitors who navigate through these contemporary associations are then greeted by the forest we generate from Chindallaekkot's bibliographic and linguistic codes, a presentation of what else the book can be. Navigating through the woodland, users are presented with a number of important historical witnesses to Kim So-wŏl's text, including Chindallaekkot's initial iterations, to show them what Chindallaekkot has been.
The "stream" of contemporary images associated with Chindallaekkot that greets a viewer when they enter our environment was created using ImageJ (v1.47) software and the Image Montage plug-in created by Lev Manovich, Matias Giachino, and Jay Chow18 to organize the 637 pictures returned by our Google search. The montage encircles the viewer until s/he navigates "through it" by means of a wireless tracking pad that enables viewers to draw the circling montage "closer." When the images of the montage are brought so "close" to the viewer that they begin to pixelate and reveal themselves as digital artifacts, these images give way to a view of Chindallaekkot as a forest.
[Figure 5] Contemporary Images Associated with Chindallaekkot
The forest surrounding the viewers is generated through an algorithmic reading of the poems in Chindallaekkot and organized into sixteen "groves" that correspond to the sixteen sections of Chindallaekkot's initial instantiations that organize its 126 poems. For example, the ten poems that appear in the section "To My Love" (Nim ege), which begins the historical presentations of Chin-dallaekkot, are presented as a "grove" of ten trees. Like the poems in the colonial-era instantiations of the book, the "groves" are arranged so they can be read from right to left if a reader is inclined to follow the order of poems suggested by the book's initial publication. Arranged in this way, the groves can also be read by visitors to the environment as a kind of table of contents that, like similar tables in printed books, suggest the character of the different regions of Chindallaekkot as a forest. A grove with many unsaturated leaves, for example, would suggest a group of poems that contain a comparatively large number of nouns.
[Figure 6] Segment of Chindallaekkot as a Forest
Choosing a grove and navigating toward it with the cordless touch pad, the user will be "enveloped" by the trees of the selected grove when trees in other groves escape the viewer's peripheral vision as s/he moves closer to a grove of interest. Once inside one of Chindallaekkot's groves, the trees that comprise it will be arranged from right to left in the order in which the poems were initially organized in initial witnesses of Chindallaekkot. For example, if the user were to enter the title section of the book, "Chindallaekkot," s/he would be presented with fifteen trees corresponding to the fifteen poems in the section. The tree on the far right would correspond to "Kaeyŏul ŭi norae" (The stream's song), the first poem in this section. The tree that corresponds to "Sanyuhwa" (山有花, Mountain flowers), the final poem in the section, would appear on the far left.
[Figure 7] Title Section of Chindallaekkot as a Grove
Navigating toward an individual tree of interest, the user will be introduced, for the first time, to an iteration of the verbal text when the visual image of the tree begins to pixilate. For example, within the title section of Cindallaekkot, if a user were to enter the linguistic text of the title poem of the collection, "Chin-dallaekkot," s/he will be greeted by the title of the poem and then the lines "Na pogi ka yŏgyŏwŏ / kasil ttae e nŭn . . ." We anticipate that the user will feel as if s/he is walking into the flow of the verbal text that generated the tree, which, as described below, is based on a 2007 typographic transcription made by Kwŏn Yŏng-min of Chindallaekkot's initial witnesses.
[Figure 8] "Chindallaekkot" Drawn as a Tree
[Figure 9] Flowing Text of "Chindallaekkot"
Progressing through the Kwŏn text, those exploring the title poem "Chindallaekkot" in our environment will be led to the historical antecedent of Kwŏn's text, the poem in the Munhak Sasang facsimile upon which all scholarly anthologies of Kim So-wŏl's poems are based. Navigating through the Munhak Sasang facsimile and deeper into the environment, the viewer will be presented with a visual simulacrum of the poem as it is presented in the alternate issues of Chindallaekkot from the Japanese colonial period. For visual reference, the viewer will also be presented with images of the cover, title pages, and colophons of the alternate initial witnesses of Chindallaekkot. If a viewer maneuvers yet deeper into the environment, s/he will reemerge in the grove of trees that corresponds with the poem's position in the book.
[Figure 10] Initial Witnesses of "Chindallaekkot"
To explore other trees in a grove, the viewer can navigate "into" them with the touchpad. To investigate other trees/poems in other "groves," the user can "zoom out" of one grove with the touchpad and into another. Users can also zoom "all the way out" to the presentation of contemporary images associated with Kim So-wŏl and Chindallaekkot.
15A short video that presents the environment is available on YouTube at the following address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJDg6Cuncok&feature=youtube_gdata_player. 16Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin, Literature, Culture, Theory 20 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1–2. 17This search was performed during the late evening of October 12. It was done without logging into any Google account prior to performing it. "Safe Search" was enabled. A similar search was performed using the Korean search site Naver. It returned different results. Future versions of our project will incorporate the results of searches performed using a wide variety of search engines. 18Wayne Rasband, ImageJ: Image Processing and Analysis in Java [software], version 1.47, http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/, accessed October 10, 2013; Lev Manovich, Matias Giachino, and Jay Chow, Image Montage plug-in, July 13, 2013 version, http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/plugins/image-montage/index.html, accessed October 10, 2013.
OUR COPY-TEXTS
There are ten extant copies of Kim So-wŏl's Chindallaekkot that date to the Japanese colonial period. The remarkable generosity of a number of individuals and organizations including Ŏm Tong-sŏp, Ch'oe Ch'ŏr-hwan, Yŏ Sŭng-gu at Hwabong Mun'go, Kim Chŏng-hyŏn at the Appenzeller-Noble Memorial Museum, Kim Chae-hong at the Han'guk Hyŏndaesi Pangmulgwan, and the family of Kim Sŏng-hun have made it possible for one of us, Wayne de Fremery, to examine six of these books. These include two copies of what have, since August 2010, come to be called the Chungang Sŏrim p'anbon or Chungang Sŏrim pon (中央書林[版]本) and four copies of the Hansŏng Tosŏ p'anbon or Hansŏng Tosŏ pon (漢城圖書[版]本).19 This recently developed naming convention derives from the different distributors (ch'ong panmaeso), Chungang Sŏrim and Hansŏng Tosŏ, respectively, listed in the colophons. There are three additional copies of the Hansŏng Tosŏ pon currently housed in private collections that have not been examined by the authors, as well as one additional copy of the Chungang Sŏrim pon. The Chungang Sŏrim pon is housed in the private collection of Yun Kil-su and is discussed by Kwŏn Yŏng-min in the August 2010 Munhak sasang article announcing the rediscovery of the second issue of Chindallaekkot.20
The poetry in the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue is presented on a rough, natural-colored, ground-wood paper that complements the warm colors of its title page and cover. The hand-lettered title and simplistic representation of azalea flowers on the cover of the Hansŏng Tosŏ pon also suggest a certain warmth and romantic earthiness. Alternately, the poetry in the Chungang Sŏrim issue is pre-sented on a more refined, noticeably whiter, mojoji paper that coincides with the cool colors of its title page and the minimalist, imageless presentation of its cover.
The digital images of the two initial issues of Chindallaekkot that appear in our environment are of Chindallaekkot copies held in the private collections of Ŏm Tong-sŏp (Hansŏng Tosŏ issue) and Ch'oe Ch'ŏr-hwan (Chungang Sŏrim issue). These copies were initially scanned by Somyŏng Publishing at a resolution of 600 dpi and color corrected by Haingraph, a printing company in Seoul. The title page of the Ch'oe Ch'ŏr-hwan copy of the Chunang Sŏrim issue is not original and has been replaced in our environment with an image of the title page of the Chungang Sŏrim issue housed at the Seoul Poetry Museum.21 The Ŏm copy of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue of Chindallaekkot is missing pages 159 and 160. Images of these pages that appear in our environment were captured at the Appenzeller-Noble Memorial Museum, where a copy of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue is housed.22 Images of the Munhak Sasang facsimile of Chindalaekkot that appear in the environment were created by photocopying the copy of the facsimile held at the Sogang University library and scanning the photocopies at 600 dpi with a Fujitsu ScanSnap s1500 sheet-fed scanner. Because copies of initial printings of Chin-dallaekkot are so rare, the Munhak Sasang facsimile remains the primary witness utilized by readers who wish to view the "original" text of Chindallaekkot despite the fact, mentioned previously, that the creators of the Munhak Sasang facsimile altered their copy-text in a number of places.23
The text used to algorithmically create our virtual forest is based on the hyŏndaeŏ (contemporary language) presentation of Kim So-wŏl's poems found in Kwŏn Yŏng-min's 2007 Complete Poetry of Kim So-wŏl. We use Kwŏn's text in order to solve a technical problem and modify it in an attempt to honor the coded visual characteristics of Chindallaekkot as it was initially presented. At present, it is quite difficult to perform accurate computer-based morphological analysis of Korean texts from the early twentieth century. The variety of orthographic conventions from early twentieth century Korea, many of which are idiomatic—Chindallaekkot, the title of the book, for example, is spelled differently in its two initial issues—confound today's computer-based tools of morphological analysis. Therefore, to enable the computer-generated linguistic analyses of Kim So-wŏl's poems that facilitate the algorithmic drawing of our trees, we require a germinative text that transcribes Chindallaekkot's initial orthography into a contemporary idiom. Kwon's 2007 anthology includes just such a transcription. His hyŏndaeŏ presentation of the texts modernizes the spelling in So-wŏl's poems and repunctuates them, keeping punctuation marks such as periods and commas but altering the direction that the text is read (left to right horizontally as opposed to vertically from right to left) and the spaces between words in order to conform with contemporary South Korean orthographic conventions. As discussed above, the basic morphology of the trees in our environment is determined by the empty textual spaces that define a poem's basic structures. The number of stanzas and lines, which are indicated by blank space on a printed page (a hard return in our text files), determines the number of branches in our algorithmically generated trees; the number of blank spaces in a line determines how many leaves appear on a branch. Kwŏn's transliteration delineates Kim So-wŏl's poems so that stanzas and poetic lines mimic Chindallaekkot's initial witnesses but he alters the way that space is deployed between the words and phrases comprising Kim So-wŏl's poetic lines. To account for the way that visual space articulates Kim So-wŏl's poems in early witnesses of Chindallaekkkot while, at the same time, facilitating the computer-based linguistic analysis we require, the text that generates our trees follows Kwŏn's 2007 transcription except that it reproduces the spacing between words and phrases found in the first issues of Chindallaekkot. This means, for example, that the penultimate line of the first poem in the collection, "Mŏnhuil" (A day long from now), which is presented as "Onŭl to ŏje to aninitko" (아니닛고)24 in the colonial-era witnesses and as "Onŭl to ŏje to ani itko" (아니 잊고) in Kwŏn's 2007 hyŏndaeŏ text, is presented as "Onŭl to ŏje to aniitko" (아니잊고) in the modified Kwŏn text we use to visualize the poems as trees in our environment. Where there is a discrepancy between how the initial issues are punctuated, we follow the punctuation of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue.25
19The circumstances of my examinations of these six copies of Chindallaekkot varied. Consequently, the depth of my investigation of each book was not uniform. In some instances, I was able to spend considerable time with a specific copy and allowed to photograph the entire book. In other instances, time only allowed a cursory investigation and/or I was not permitted to photograph more than the cover, colophon, and a few pages of the body. 20Kwŏn Yŏng-min, "Kim So-wŏl ŭi sijip 'Chindallaekkot' ŭi tu kaji p'anbon" (The two issues of Kim So-wŏl's collection of poems Chindallaekkot), Munhak sasang (August 2010): 18–27. 21These images were captured on August 5, 2010 by Wayne de Fremery at 300 ppi with a Nikon D100. The images have been color corrected and sharpened using Photoshop. 22These images were captured on June 28, 2010 by Wayne de Fremery at 300 ppi with a Nikon D100. The images have been color corrected and sharpened using Photoshop. 23See de Fremery, "How Poetry Mattered in 1920s Korea." 24This line might be translated as "today and yesterday, I don't forget." 25It should be noted that the process of transcribing So-wŏl's texts into a modern typographical idiom is an interpretive one. In this sense, Kwŏn's reading of Kim So-wŏl's poems has greatly influenced ours.
Bibliographer D. F. McKenzie asserts in his seminal Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts that how a text may mean cannot be extricated from the "fine details" of its material presentation and, since the fine details are different with each witness, the history of any book must be a history of misreadings.26 In this sense, our im-mersive edition of Chidallaekkot is an exaggerated misreading meant to reveal Chindallaekkot's many other misreadings. The diligent medieval scribe has been an enabling metaphor, quelling the sometimes debilitating worries that our misreading of So-wŏl's texts will necessarily be inherently inferior to previous iterations, especially its first witnesses. "Inside the scriptorium of a monastery, all exemplars were facsimiles. No copyist would have said, this is the original, that a mere copy; distinctions were instead based on quality,"27 as Latour and Lowe write. Challenging Walter Benjamin's well known assertions about the immobility aura, Latour and Lowe suggest that in monastery scriptoria "The aura was able to travel and might very well have migrated to the newest and latest copy, excellently done on the best of parchments and double-checked against the best earlier sources."28 In this sense, the presence of an original can be orchestrated in alternate iterations by means of human diligence and the skillful use of available technologies.
We envision our iteration of Chinallaekkot as a performance of Kim So-wŏl's text in this sense: one that, by means of careful investigation and re-presentation, allows something of Chindallaekkot's originality to migrate into a digital environ-ment by revealing the book's many material manifestations and historical iterations. The theatrical space of an immersive digital environment at the Shin Y. K. Studio where our edition is mounted, which is organized like a theater-in-the-round, reinforces the idea that we are using today's technologies to replay Kim So-wŏl's poems. The immersive environment in which we enact these performances, along with the admittedly radical ways that we instantiate Kim So-wŏl's poems, en-courages readers of Kim So-wŏl's poems, we hope, to move past restrictive notions of origins so that we can evaluate the originality of So-wŏl's poetry anew. It is worth referencing Latour once more to emphasize the liberating potential of relinquishing concerns about any inherent inferiority of copies and thinking about textual (re)production as performance:
As Latour suggests, interpretation can be aided significantly by experiencing a text in a way that is utterly distinct from previous iterations. This is the generative idea behind presenting Kim So-wŏl's poems in distinctly unfamiliar visual forms. The theoretical groundwork for the idea of productively deforming a text in the service of hermeneutical practice, a key aspiration of this project, has been fruitfully explored by a number of theorists but perhaps most productively for our purposes by Jerome McGann, Lisa Samuels, and Stephen Ramsay.
A fragment of text composed by Emily Dickinson is the locus classicus for recent discussion about critical interventions that radically re-form a text, a procedure these authors describe as "deformance." On a scrap of paper Dickin-son wrote, "Did you ever read one of her Poems backward, because the plunge from the front overturned you? I sometimes (often have, many times) have—A something overtakes the Mind."30 Jerome McGann suggests the usefulness of Dickinson's critical move,
Our presentation of Chindallaekkot aims to create an environment where a similarly radical reconfiguration of Kim So-wŏl's poems can enable a similar "something" to overtake the mind.
Stephen Ramsay extends the arguments of McGann and Samuels to suggest the use of computational technologies to creatively disorder texts in critically useful ways—a process he calls "algorithmic criticism." The ideas Ramsay presents in his Reading Machines: Toward an Algorithmic Criticism inform our un-orthodox visualizations of Kim So-wŏl's poetry. As with the analog procedures described by McGann and Samuels, the aim of computational "deformance," according to Ramsay, is to bring readers to a position of critical insight. It is an aim our immersive Chindallaekkot shares. "'Algorithmic criticism'—the term I use to designate a reconceived computer-assisted literary criticism," writes Ramsay, "attempts to employ the rigid, inexorable, uncompromising logic of algorithmic transformation as the constraint under which critical vision may flourish."32 Like Ramsay, we employ the "rigid, inexorable, uncompromising" "logic" of algo-rithmic transformation to enable critical vision by presenting an unanticipated "vision" of Kim So-wŏl's poetry. In this sense, the forest of poetry we manifest through algorithmic means is a mode of critical reading that reveals So-wŏl's poems and the deformative techne of more widely used critical procedures of textual reproduction and exegesis. Recognizing the revelatory, if necessarily transformational, potential of artful reiterative critique, we aim earnestly to perform the kind of high criticism Oscar Wilde suggests with pithy irony when he writes, "The highest criticism is that which reveals in the work of Art what the artist had not put there." 33
The complex polysemy of literary texts requires, if anything is going to be said about them, procedures that refigure them. The question posed by McGann, Samuels, and Ramsay—one that our immersive figure extends—is what critical procedures are authorized. Ramsay's argument, which extends those made by McGann and Samuels, is that the inflexible processes of algorithmic textual transformation enabled by computers are as legitimate as more traditional forms of critical praxis, which, through paraphrase or reference to sociohistorical facts/alternate conceptual frameworks, similarly deform a literary text.
Our immersive environment makes the argument that the algorithmic deformative procedures of Ramsay can be taken a step farther to interrogate what McGann describes as the "Masoretic wall of the physical artifact [of a text]."34 The stability and integrity of the physical text are often taken as inviolable and frequently define the limits of critical interpretation.35 The basic operational instructions of a text, the rules that govern alphabets and non-alphabetic forms of writing, the ways that characters are arranged in textual space, the structural forms of words, phrases, and other higher morphemic/phonemic units are, according to McGann, "so basic and conventionally governed . . . that readers tend to treat them as pre-interpretive and pre-critical. In truth, however, they comprise the operating system of language, the basis that drives and supports the front-end software."36 Playing with McGann's conceit, we use the grammar of L-systems to, quite literally, rewrite the code of Chinallaekkot's operating system in order present the text as it has never been. Visually juxtaposing this new text run on our new "OS" with those that operate according to the algorithms of print reveals the elemental artifactual forms of Chindallaekkot's historical iterations—ink applied to the flat surfaces of many varieties of paper by various historical critics and typesetters in such a way that we take it to suggest the words, lines, and stanzas of poems—that have been bracketed from critical view but are integral to how Chindallaekkot matters.
26D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 25. 27Bruno Latour and Adam Lowe, "The Migration of Aura, Or How to Explore the Original through its Facsimiles," in Switching Codes Thinking through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts, Thomas Bartschere and Roderick Coover, eds., Kindle edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 28Ibid. 29Ibid. 30Quoted in Martha Nell Smith, "Because the Plunge from the Front Overturned Us: The Dickinson Electronic Archives Project," Dickinson Electronic Archives, http://archive.emilydickinson.org/plunge1.html, accessed July 4, 2013. 31Jerome McGann and Lisa Samuels, "Deformance and Interpretation," Jerome McGann Website, http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/jjm2f/old/deform.html, accessed October 10, 2013. This essay has been published in a number of places, including Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web (New York: Palgrave, 2001) and New Literary History 30 no. 1 (1999): 25–56. 32Stephen Ramsay, Reading Machines: Toward an Algorithmic Criticism, Kindle edition (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2011). 33Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist" in Intentions, Project Gutenberg Ebook, transcribed from the 1913 edition by David Price, http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/ntntn10h.htm, accessed October 11, 2013. 34McGann and Samuels, "Deformance and Interpretation." 35Ibid. 36Idid.
In a recent article about interface, Johanna Drucker writes, "Like tables of contents, indexes, marginalia, and commentary, an interface performs rhetorically, presenting an argument as if it were a statement of fact, but engages us by presenting options. Go here, follow this, click, point, play, listen, search."37 This is true of our Chindallaekkot. Like the codex books it re-presents and transforms, our immersive Chindallaekkot, by enabling, as well as disabling, certain modes of reading suggests that we need to see the manifest material multitudes of Korean literary works such as Chindallaekkot if we are to better understand how they mattered in the past and can matter in the future. Yet, as Drucker, writes in the same article, "Structuring an interface, like writing a book, only launches a probabilistic missive in the direction of a user or reader, whose interpretation produces a reading that is necessarily an act of 'deformance.'"38 Looking forward to how users may misread and deform our text, we also have plans to expand and repurpose the immersive environment that we have created.
Although the environment is currently organized to make the argument above, we have plans to add additional data and develop tools that will enable the space to be a more expansive exploratory tool for literary researchers, as well as an even richer learning environment for students, instructors, and the public. Only a fraction of Chindallaekkot's textual witnesses are included in the environment, let alone the hundreds of papers and books about Kim So-wŏl or the bibliographic data associated with all of these texts. In the future, in theory, all of these materials could be included in an immersive variorum edition of Chindallaekkot.
Of course, Chindallaekkot is only one book and we imagine productively comparing Chindalaekkot as an algorithmically generated forest with a similarly generated woodland grown from a book such as Han Yong-un's Nim ŭi ch'immuk (Silence of love, 1926), another important poetic text from the 1920s, or any other important works from Korea's literary tradition. Indeed, in time, "inclusive immersive anthologies" that display all the extant literary texts from a given period, whether canonical or not, could be created for the environment so that whole eras could be explored as literary ecosystems. Researchers might explore these environments by searching for key words in the texts or, taking advantage of the new ways that the texts are displayed, for trees that are morphologically similar or have similarly colored foliage. As the data in the environment becomes richer and its navigation systems are made more robust, we can hope that experts will be able to lead public tours through its timberlands, university professors and high school teachers will have the opportunity to hold class in particularly interesting groves, and younger school children can be set free to simply play and "maketh matter"39 from the digital space for their own conceits, having seen "nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done."40
37Johanna Drucker, "Reading Interface," PMLA 128.1(2013): 217. 38Johanna Drucker, "Reading Interface," 215. 39Philip Sidney, A Defence of Poesie and Poems, Project Gutenberg eText, prepared by David Price from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1962/pg1962.html, accessed October 11, 2013. 40Philip Sidney, A Defence of Poesie.
1. de Fremery Wayne 2011 "How Poetry Mattered in 1920s Korea."
2. de Fremery Wayne, Kim Jusub (2013) "Algorij?m kiban modelling ?l iyonghan si sigakhwa pangb?p y?n'gu" (Experimental visualizations of Korean poetry using procedural modeling). [Journal of Digital Design] Vol.13 P.61-70
3. Drucker Johanna (2013) "Reading Interface." [PMLA] Vol.128 P.213-220
4. Ebert David 2003 Texturing & Modeling: A Procedural Approach
5. Genette Gerard 1997 Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Literature, Culture, Theory 20.
6. Kim Renaud, Young-Key 1997 The Korean Alphabet: its History and Structure.
7. Kw?n Y?ng-min 2004 Ch?ng Chi-yong si: 126 p'y?n tasi ilkki (The poetry of Ch?ng Chi-yong: Re-reading 126 poems).
8. Kw?n Y?ng-min 2007 Kim So-w?l si ch?njip (Complete collected poetry of Kim Sow?l).
9. Kw?n Y?ng-min (2010) "Kim So-w?l ?i sijip 'Chindallaekkot' ?i tu kaji p'anbon" (The two issues of Kim So-w?l's collection of poems Chindallaekkot). [Munhak sasang] P.18-27
10. Latour Bruno, Adam Lowe 2011 "The Migration of Aura, Or How to Explore the Original through its Facsimiles." In Switching Codes Thinking through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts. Thomas Bartschere and Roderick Coover, eds.
11. McGann Jerome 1991 The Textual Condition.
12. McGann Jerome, Lisa Samuels "Deformance and Interpretation."
13. McKenzie D.F. 1999 Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts.
14. Navarro Gonzalo (2001) "A Guided Tour to Approximate String Matching." [ACM Computing Surveys] Vol.33 P.31-88
15. Ramsay Stephen 2011 Reading Machines: Toward an Algorithmic Criticism.
16. Sidney Philip A Defence of Poesie and Poems. Prepared by David Price from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition.
17. Wilde Oscar "The Critic as Artist." In Intentions transcribed from the 1913 edition by David Price.
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text:
Beto at Clint Border Patrol station: Kids watching how we respond during 'defining moment of truth'
Daniel Borunda
CLINT, Texas — Beto O'Rourke, presidential candidate and former U.S. Congressman from El Paso, had a rally outside the Clint Border Patrol station to end what he called President Donald Trump's inhumane policies toward children.
The facility, which is the hub for unaccompanied children stopped at the El Paso border, has faced backlash after lawyers who visited the facility in early June alleged children were being neglected.
In response, officials with the Border Patrol El Paso sector led media on a tour of the facility to refute allegations kids were being held in filthy conditions.
"The generations that follow us, our kids and grandkids who are watching us right now to see how we respond at this defining moment of truth," O'Rourke said, adding that the country should never separate families again.
In the courts:Advocates seek emergency order, say child migrant sites are 'endangering children's lives'
A crowd of about 100 chanted for the end of child detention at the rally held on the rock landscaping outside the station entrance.
"Hey, hey, ho ho, child detention has got to go," the crowd chanted.
O'Rourke said the detainment of migrant children is the largest mass incarceration of innocent children in the U.S. since the Japanese Internment camps during World War II.
He said the Civil Rights movements of the past didn't come from government officials, but from the people.
A handful of Trump supporters waved flags next to the rally.
More:2020 Election: Democratic Candidate Beto O'Rourke unveils immigration reform plan
Julian Castro, presidential candidate and former mayor of San Antonio, went to the facility Saturday, but was denied a tour because he didn't have an appointment. He appeared with El Paso area state Rep. Mary Gonzalez and laid out his immigration plan outside the station.
The two Texas candidates clashed last week during the first Democratic debate when Castro challenged O'Rourke and other candidates to support repealing Section 1325, criminalizing illegal entry into the United States.
Before speaking in Clint, O'Rourke met with asylum seekers at a migrant shelter in Juárez.
Standing on a small hill of landscaped rocks, O'Rourke spoke about meeting a couple with a 4-year-old son from El Salvador who made an asylum claim at the U.S. border but were returned to wait in potential danger in Mexico.
Want more news from the border? Click here to subscribe to elpasotimes.com.
Under the Trump administration's Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly called the Remain in Mexico policy, asylum seekers are essentially forced to wait months in Juárez for their U.S. court hearings.
"Mexico — for those families who arrived penniless without a friend, or a connection or a network to join — are subject to those who prey on human misery right here in our binational community of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, Texas," O'Rourke said.
Speakers at the rally included El Paso city Reps. Alexsandra Annello and Cassandra Hernandez, El Paso state Reps. Joe Moody and Lina Ortega and El Paso County Commissioners David Stout and Vince Perez.
A system that criminalizes undocumented immigrants results in children and families in detention centers, Perez said.
"We overutilize the criminal justice system for problems that don't belong in our criminal justice system," Perez said, also mentioning the jailing of people with mental illness.
Perez also reissued his criticism about the El Paso County Jail contracted to hold immigration inmates for federal agencies. El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles has defended the contracts, saying his jail is better than the private jails holding immigrants.
Socorro retiree Josefina Tabullo said she attended the rally with her husband, Antonio, to show support for detained migrant children and their parents.
Tabullo backed O'Rourke in his losing bid for the U.S. Senate last year and is backing him in his run for president.
"Hopefully, he will end up at the very top," Tabullo said.
Daniel Borunda may be reached at 546-6102; dborunda@elpasotimes.com; @BorundaDaniel on Twitter.
More:Migrant children detention concerns continue on first anniversary of Tornillo protests
More:Jesse Jackson plans march for migrant children: 'This should not be happening in America'

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HC at Simmons
Omar Lopez/Unsplash
10 Reasons to Join SCDC
Anastasia Maher
The Simmons College Dance Company (SCDC) is the all-inclusive organization on campus for dancers new and old to come together to share their passion for dance in a safe and empowering environment. Find out why over 60 students join each semester, and why you should join, too. The list is endless, but here are the 10 best reasons to join SCDC:
1. Continue your passion
Transitioning to college can be difficult; we often have to leave many things behind. Dance shouldn't have to be one of them. Emily ('21) says "Coming to Boston was a scary experience for me. It was the first time I was alone and away from my small town. I was afraid of falling behind, being home sick, and not fitting in. But all I needed was dance; it's what calms my stress, makes me happy, and encourages me to get tasks done. When I went to the first events of SCDC, I was so genuinely excited to have a group I could possible fit in with. After those first rehearsals and bonding events, I knew I had made the right decision. I joined a family and this family encourages me, cheers me on, and always acknowledges my presence around campus. I made the best decision joining SCDC."
2. Try something new
SCDC is an all-inclusive organization, and no dance experience is necessary to join! All dancers who come to our semi-annual auditions are invited to join the company. Nicole ('20) says "I always kind of dreamt of dancing, but never had the opportunity. Then, even when I discovered SCDC I felt I wouldn't be able to do it. But thanks to the encouragement of my dancing friends, I finally joined. And it was wonderful! From the most experienced member of the company to other first-time dancers, everyone was so supportive and friendly."
Photo by Jack Tan
Even if you have danced before, there is always an opportunity to try something new! Many dancers use their time in SCDC to try a new style. Kaelin ('20) says "I have been a tapper my whole life; and while I am grateful to continue that, I am also excited because SCDC has allowed me to try hip-hop and lyrical. It was my way of pushing myself a little outside my comfort zone each semester."
3. Dance in a no-pressure environment
For many of us, dance in high school unfortunately came with things like drama, dance moms, and unnecessary stress. SCDC is a completely student-run organization, and it is part of our mission statement to "provide Simmons students with a safe and inclusive space to continue their growth as dancers and movers while in college. We aim to create a nurturing environment for the arts by promoting a variety of dance styles, allowing experimentation with movement and encouraging members to take artistic risks." Instead of competing, we perform once a semester in front of a supportive audience of family, friends, and Simmons community members. Kalei ('20) says "In high school, I was on a highly competitive dance team/pom squad/drill team/color guard. The understanding was that if you didn't uphold the workout regime, diet, community service schedule, were sick or injured, show up for practice at 6:45 am, or so much as had one eyelash out of place (forget a hair, or God forbid, a misplaced dance step!) you were failing your teammates. On SCDC, I'm glad to say that my fellow dancers are still my best friends, but they could care less if I did any of these things. In fact, they are more likely to bring me food to lower my stress levels! We may not hold national titles or professional accolades, but we have dancers who, whether their dance experience extends 20 years or 0, love the art. It is not just a stress-free atmosphere; it is a stress relieving atmosphere, and a group I am proud to be a part of."
4. Stay connected across campus
As the largest student organization on campus, you will always see a friendly face eating at Bartol, sitting in Common Grounds, or sweating with you at Zumba. Sunnie ('20) says "I love seeing other SCDC dancers around campus. It always puts a smile on my face and brightens my day when I need it most."
5. Branch out into the Simmons and Boston community
SCDC always loves collaborating with different organizations across campus to introduce dance to new people. In fall 2017, we had a blast teaching a dance workshop to 70 young girls as part of the Simmons Strong Women Strong Girls (SWSG) field trip day. Kelly ('19) said "it really empowered me to see these girls so engaged in expressing themselves through dance."
In spring 2018, we were invited to perform at the New England's Best Showcase, held at Boston University. Dozens of routines from area colleges and universities gathered to celebrate dance and the hard work we do as collegiate dancers each year.
(If any organizations are interested in working with SCDC, please email us at dance@simmons.edu)
6. Be a part of Simmons history
For decades now, SCDC has been a main feature of Simmons' annual May Day celebration. The college comes together to celebrate the end of the Boston winter, and we participate by dancing around the Maypole. Katie ('20) has lead the May Day dance for two years now. She says "It's wonderful to combine my love for dance with a long-standing Simmons tradition that has thrived for over 100 years: we still wear pretty white dresses and colorful flower crowns, and of course, dance around the Maypole with its rainbow of flowing ribbons. Through choreographing the Maypole dance, I have had the chance to meet dancers on the company who I have not met before through our regular dances. Dancing around the Maypole with friends who love to dance has been one of my favorite memories at Simmons, and I look forward to the May Day celebrations ahead."
Back in 2016, we helped the Simmons community open our new athletic space, Daly Field. As Simmons changes and advances, SCDC will be right beside it.
7. Become a leader
Like any org at Simmons, SCDC is run by a student e-board. Our e-board includes Presidents, Vice Presidents, Secretary, Treasurer, Marketing Chair, Events Coordinator, and more. Being an e-board member is a way to get more involved in SCDC and gain valuable skills for college and after. Caroline ('19) says "what I love most about being on e-board is being able to see the impact that you have on the SCDC community. It's totally student run and it's really awesome to be able to step up to the challenge and see all your hard work come together to make something that is a huge success!"
8. Explore more of Boston
While we are fortunate for our studios to sit in the lovely Fenway neighborhood, we love to get out an explore other parts of our favorite city. Some of our bonding events each year take us on new and interesting adventures around Boston. In the past we've gone to Newbury Street and the Boston Common, the Prudential Center, and Kane's Donuts.
9. Work with renowned choreographers and artists (at no cost to you!)
SCDC has been fortunate to have access to a number of excellent professional dancers. We bring in dancers to hold free workshops and classes for SCDC and all Simmons students. Most recently, we have had the great opportunity to work with DeAnna Pellecchia, a Boston-based artist who had established herself as one of the area's most prominent dance-makers.
10. Meet your best friends
I owe most of my friendships to SCDC. If I didn't meet a friend through SCDC, I convinced them to join us the next semester. My SCDC friends understand me like no other, and my college experience would be much less colorful without them.
If this made you want to join SCDC, be on the lookout on campus for information on our Fall Welcome Dinner and All-Inclusive Auditions.
Still need convincing? Check out our Instagram (@scdcdance), Facebook page (Simmons College Dance Company), and Youtube (@simmonscollegedancecompany) to see more of what it's like to be a part of SCDC.
Have questions? Email us at dance@simmons.edu
Simmons '20
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text:
This Delivery Service Will Give You A Serious High (And It's Legal)
Hanni Fox
Hand-written letters. The Sunday New York Times. Girl Scout Cookies. Get ready to add to the list of things you love getting delivered to your doorstep. Tonx, the Los Angeles-based mail-order coffee company has hit the scene and they're bringing their delish coffee straight to you. Owners Tony Konecny and Nik Bauman procure batches of beautifully flavored, fresh coffee beans and mail them straight to your door—think "milk-chocolate-inflected Finca La Folie from Guatemala." And for those of you that love a good deal as much as a piping hot cup of Joe, make sure you sign up for their monthly subscription service. For just $35, you'll get a 12-ounce bag of fresh beans every two weeks right at your doorstep—trust, it's so much better than a singing telegram.
For more information and to sign up for the monthly subscription service click here.
Cool New Coffee Company Delivers To Your Door
written by Hanni Fox
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Pepper wash clean contact, wash clean cushioning bottom plate scratch shell out Hans wafers enough. Gouge plans in fresh squid and outer layers escape split into two panels and internal POS mazes and sliced into pieces. Pepper, carrots and fresh squid boiled water blanched for 6 minutes, then extracted for use.
Put oil waiting or cooking oil in a frying pan and pour hot hoyophsaeng garlic fries, garlic and ginger. Then pour the meat and squid flavour ingredients, including flour, Sun cushions) by nheabdai slight flavour ingredients, go back down and scoop cupboard decorated according to your preferences, and you're done.


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Christine Jessop's killer identified: Solved cold case raises questions about genetic privacy
by Julia Creet, Professor of English, York University, Canada October 26, 2020
Research & Development Risk & Compliance Technology / IIoT Public Sector
Should we forgo our privacy in the interests of solving violent crime, old and new?
On Oct. 15, Toronto police announced that they had finally solved the 1984 murder of Christine Jessop using DNA evidence and genetic genealogy websites. Identifying Calvin Hoover as Jessop's killer has provided immense relief to the family and those close to the case, and in particular to Guy Paul Morin, who was wrongfully convicted and later exonerated after serving 18 months in prison.
The announcement highlights a conundrum: at risk is the genetic privacy of everyone who has uploaded — and, mostly, not uploaded — a DNA sample to a commercial genealogy site.
Genealogists never anticipated that their benign but passionate interest in tracking relations through records and DNA would ever lead to law enforcement's most potent cold case tool kit. In 2018, public awareness of law enforcement's mining of genetic genealogy came to light with the 2018 identification of the Golden State Killer. The identification of Joseph James DeAngelo relied on freely uploaded DNA results alongside painstaking genealogical research.
Data industry
Since then, law enforcement's mining of genealogical data has become an industry in itself, with hundreds of notorious cases solved and the emergence of celebrity genealogists and a reality TV series.
Even as we appreciate the profound relief that comes to families with the resolution of cases decades old and the prosecution of heinous criminals, it's important that we ask hard questions about genetic privacy and law enforcement's access to people who have never given away their DNA to commercial sites nor consented to have their DNA scrutinized.
At the heart of the problem is the nature of DNA. Our most intimate substance is a powerful identifier because each of us possesses an utterly unique combination. But our DNA doesn't belong just to us: it also belongs to everyone we are related to.
We have many more genetic relatives than we can possibly know. If we upload a sample of our DNA to a database that allows for police searches then we are making that decision for everyone who is related to us, past and future, known and unknown, rendering the notion of consent nonsensical.
DNA fragments
A very degraded sample of DNA taken from semen found on Jessop's clothing was analyzed by Othram Inc., which specializes in human identification from difficult human DNA evidence. It's part of a growing industry known as the Human Identification Market.
Once DNA is analyzed, the forensics company uploads the results to GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA, the two genetic genealogy databases that explicitly inform their users that their DNA data may be searched by law enforcement. Most other large commercial databases such as Ancestry and 23andMe insist on warrants. Nonetheless, sales of genetic genealogy testing kits plummeted in the summer of 2019, in no small part because of the perception of privacy risks.
On May 18, 2019, consumers at GEDmatch were given the choice whether to opt in or out. That change made little difference. In November of 2019, the Orlando police obtained a warrant to search the entire database, rendering the notion of consent useless once again.
And in December 2019, GEDmatch, was sold to Verogen, a forensics company that services law enforcement because, ironically, the founders of GEDmatch could no longer manage the privacy issues that surfaced with each police use.
Solving crime, invading privacy
While there is public support for the idea that genetic genealogy should be used to solve violent crime, only 14 per cent of GEDmatch users chose to make their DNA results available for law enforcement matches. This severely restricts the usefulness of the database to the police, according to Anthony Redgrave, the forensic genealogist who identified Jessop's killer after six months of intensive research.
Redgrave is also the founder of the Trans Doe Task Force, created to research cold cases in which the subject's lived experience may not match given descriptions. He laments these restrictions as a failure of public education, even as he acknowledges that unethical use of the databases by police and other genealogists is still endemic.
Genetic privacy policies
So new is the question of law enforcement's access to genetic genealogy databases that privacy law has yet to catch up. Since the databases are located in the United States, U.S. privacy law applies.
In 2019, recognizing that the databases were vulnerable to misuse by law enforcement, the U.S. Department of Justice issued an interim policy on forensic genetic genealogical DNA analysis and searching. The policy contains two stipulations: first, that investigative agencies must identify themselves as police to genetic genealogy services, and second, these agencies can only search profiles that "provide explicit notice to their service users and the public that law enforcement may use their service sites to investigate crimes or to identify unidentified human remains."
Also crucial is the principle that: "A suspect shall not be arrested based solely on a genetic association generated by a [genetic genealogy] service." Any identifying information supplied to police must be corroborated by other means. While reassuring on paper, Redgrave suggested that police are still accessing the databases inappropriately and that the policy has no enforcement teeth.
Discretionary ethics
Steve Smith, the lead investigator on the Jessop case, agreed that the ethical use of genetic genealogy resources rests primarily with the police force working the cases. Unethical use of the databases has created a perception of privacy risks that has reduced the number of users who will allow their records to be searched.
Consumer consent is the linchpin, a notoriously slippery idea given the number of times we click agree without reading the terms of service.
In an interview with the CBC, Clayton Ruby, the lawyer for wrongfully convicted Morin, declared that it had been an open secret that the police were interested in these databases years ago, why hadn't they accessed them earlier?
When I corresponded with him over email, he wrote: "It would be easy to apply the same safeguards we use for Criminal Code Production Orders, [judicial authorization that compels people and organizations to disclose documents and records to the police], instead of leaving the decision to the commercial companies. We have not had enough time to figure out the ways the police will misuse this process. But they will."
In the absence of any regulation, and given the piecemeal approaches of police throughout Canada, Smith is setting up a genealogical working group to establish Ontario guidelines.
We are faced with the problem of regulating what Brenda McPhail of the Canadian Civil Liberties Union has called a "bulk surveillance technology," which fundamentally changes our social expectations of personal privacy.
The ethical questions abound: Should we forgo our privacy in the interests of solving violent crime, old and new? Or should we charge the government to limit access to these new forensic tools? The question of the greater good of law enforcement access to genetic genealogy databases needs to be publicly and strenuously argued.
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Band to Business: Deals
By Ernie Ball on June 17, 2020 in How To
In Episode 2 of Band to Business we're talking about 'Deals'. Talking about money feels uncomfortable for everybody. But you should know what the financial deal is before you agree to play and feel confident asking to get paid at the show. It might feel weird at first, but you'll get more comfortable with it. Anytime you are ever handed cash, be sure to count it immediately, and in front of the person. It has nothing to do with trust; humans make mistakes sometimes. Then, if you feel uncomfortable physically carrying a "large amount" of cash on you, remember that if you act normal, no one will know what's in your pocket. Put it in something inconspicuous like an envelope or normal bag, not a portable safe or bank bag with a lock that screams "I have money in here!". And remember, money is dirty, so if you are going to spread it out on your hotel bed to roll around in, at the very least wash your hands after.
Tune in below for the second episode of Band to Business: 'Deals'.
Check out the full 'Deals' workshop and more Concert Business Basics on Jen Kellogg's website.
Band to Business was created to help in the business of artistic endeavors, and shed some insight into the behind-the-scenes jobs that make it all happen. See you next time!
About Jen Kellogg
Jen Kellogg has spent over 25 adventurous years in the concert industry as a roadie, talent buyer, educator and entrepreneur. During her quarantine, she's hosting a virtual workshop series called "Concert Business Basics" to help those starting their career in the concert industry, and established professionals interested in expanding beyond their existing areas of expertise. She crunched numbers as the tour accountant for the Vans Warped Tour from 2009-2017. During that time she co-founded The Entertainment Institute and brought the fan's unique backstage workshops with artists on the tour. Prior to that, as a talent buyer at Jam Productions, she booked theaters and arenas, and specialized in minor league baseball parks. Her first full tour was with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and it sparked her love of the road life. Jen teaches Producing and Touring Live Entertainment at Columbia College Chicago and has spoken at highly respected industry conferences including SXSW and Pollstar.
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Home2009 Penny
Get To Know 2009 Penny Briefly
2009 Lincoln Penny - 2009 was a special year for Pennies. Because in that year there were four different design variations of the backside of the coin. Not infrequently people today are also curious about the 2009 Lincoln penny.
It should be noted that the design commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln penny and the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. So it will have a different design with rare coins as before.
The United States has printed the 2009 Penny without any mint marks and also applies to the 2009 D and 2009 S Proof Penny. The mint mark, if any, can be found on the front side of the coin, just below the date.
In addition to standard pennies as well as anti-copper cents, Mint sells special edition copper pennies in a satin finish as part of a set. The money isn't put out for circulation so you won't find it on your dime.
The weight of the 2009 copper coin is 3.11 grams. This coin has the same weight as the old copper Lincoln coin from 1909 – 1982. As for the 2009 zinc coin, it weighs 2.5 grams.
Design Penny 2009
As it is known that currently there are four varieties of different designs on the reverse side of the coin. Where the design turned out to show the four stages of the life of Abraham Lincoln.
And the phrase "E PLURIBUS UNUM" will be written on each design. Where the meaning of the expression is "one of many". Of course, every design has a similar creation and none is more valuable than the other.
Birth and Early Childhood
2009 Penny Birth and Early Childhood
In this design you can see on the backside of the 2009 Abraham Lincoln penny there will be a picture of a log cabin that almost looks like the residence where Lincoln's parents are.
And it is also believed that Lincoln was born in his parents' log cabin. The year 1809 What is written in the city itself is a sign of the year when Lincoln was born.
Formative Years
2009 Penny Formative Years
In the design of this coin, you can also see that on the back, you will see a picture of Abraham Lincoln when he was young, sitting on a piece of wood.
In the picture, it can be seen that Lincoln is reading a book while resting after chopping wood. Because it can be seen that Lincoln also worked as a rail divider.
Professional Life of Penny 2009
In the design, you can see a picture of an adult Abraham Lincoln on the back of the coin. The picture shows Lincoln standing in front of the state capital of Illinois.
It turns out that he once represented Sangamon County in the Illinois House of Representatives and later represented the Illinois 7th district in the United States House of Representatives.
2009 Penny Presidency
The last design that can be seen on the back of the penny is an image of the U.S. Capitol Dome when Lincoln was in office.
The image symbolizes how the nation was torn apart by slavery and the US civil war. So that's the difference between the four 2009 Lincoln penny.
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All About 1940 Wheat Penny Value
What is the Value of the 2009 Penny?
So previously you already know about some variations of the 2009 Penny. So now you can find out what the value of each penny variation is.
Below is information on a list of the value creation prices of each 2009 penny.
The value of this penny can be grouped into several designs. So by distinguishing them based on the design and also the materials used.
2009 Birth and Early Childhood Lincoln Penny,
If the penny is made with Zinc material & and the condition is Brilliant, so it can be valued at 20+ cents.
If it has Copper base material and has a Satin Finish touch condition, then it can be priced around $8.
If you have Zinc as the base material, and the grade you have is Brilliant Uncirculated, you can get around 20+ cents.
If the mint type is 2009-s, then it has Copper base material & and the quality grade is Proof, then it can be priced around $3.50+
2009 Formative Years Lincoln Penny
For pennies with this type of design, if the penny is made with the main material Zinc, and has a Brilliant Uncirculated grade, then you can appreciate it around 20+ cents.
If the main material for making a penny with this design is Copper and added with a touch of Satin Finish then the value is around about $ 8+.
If this penny has a "D" mintmark and is made with the Copper base material and a Satin Finish touch, it can be priced around $8+
Different from penny with mintmark "S", because the price is cheaper even though it is made with Copper material, and has a Proof grade because the price is only around $3.50
2009 Professional Life Lincoln Penny,
Penny with this design which is made with Zinc base material and has Brilliant Uncirculated grade, you can appreciate it around 20+ cents
If the penny is made with Copper material and finished with a touch of Satin Finish, then it can be valued at 8+ cents
With the "D" mintmark on the 2009 penny this design and made with Zinc & still in Brilliant Uncirculated grade, the value is equivalent to 20+ cents
Even though it has a "D" mintmark but if it is made with Copper & Satin Finish, it can be seen that the price is around 8+ cents
If it has an "S" mintmark and it is made of Copper & graded Proof, you will know that it is around $3.50+
So that's a comprehensive list of the values of the 2009 Lincoln penny by variation.
Importance Of The 2009 Pennies' Mint
If we don't know what mint is yet. Mint is the place where coins are made. So if you delve deeper into rare coins, you will often hear some mints. Examples include the Philadelphia Mint, Denver Mint, and the San Francisco Mint.
Read: Learn More About 1984 D Penny Value
Each mint produces a different number of coins. This varies greatly in price and depends on a particular case. Also, know that where the coin is made is one of the most important factors.
2009 Penny D Score: Rare and Valuable Mistakes
In the case of these pennies, there are only two mints, namely Philadelphia and Denver. If it's Philadelphia output then there will be no sign or Mint. However, if manufactured in Denver, the coin will have the letter "D" marked under the year of manufacture.
The 2009 Penny is not one of those coins with common errors like other coins. So it's only natural that you rarely find a coin with printing defects. And that's an important factor to increase the price.
Although there are no exclusive fault characteristics of the coin, you can find several specimens with the same error:
2009 Penny - Rare – Double Minting
We found the reverse of the 2009 Lincoln Penny Formative Years and the rare and valuable Lincoln Early Childhood error, which was double printing. In other designs, it will likely appear, but in the two variations, this coin will have more characteristics.
This includes hitting the coin twice during creation, which will give it a thicker or doubled design. As in the case of the 2009 Penny Lincoln Formative Years, we can appreciate the faults at the hands of Lincoln, which were somewhat flawed and slightly multiplied by mistakes.
In Lincoln Early Childhood, the type of error was also the same and can be seen in the cabin log which turns out to have a thicker composition than usual. Or mistakes like these can cost anywhere from $30 to $50 in medium-high quality. Because this makes the 2009 cent very rare.
What Happened When the 2009 Penny was Made?
As we previously announced, 2009 was also an important year for Penny. In addition, 2009 was also quite busy in the news. And there are several occasions when the year in which this penny was made?
The United States inaugurated its 44th president and vice president. Namely Barack Obama and Joe Biden
Michael Jackson died in 2009 which gave grief to the lovers of Pop songs. He died at the age of 50 years. Even his funeral procession was broadcast nationally on various media networks.
During a live TV broadcast by Kanye West during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Taylor Swift is especially interrupted
181 people die in the worst bushfires Australia has ever experienced.
So at this time for you a collector, of course, you must know various information about rare coins. Whereof the many pennies Lincoln coins, the 2009 penny is quite interesting. Because it has a design that is quite different from the previous coins and even has four designs at once.
This was made to commemorate Lincoln's 100th cent anniversary. the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. So it will have a different design with rare coins as before. It can also be seen that the 2009 Lincoln Penny has different values.
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According to recent reports, most Americans live paycheck to paycheck. If you have been scraping by for a while then it can feel near impossible to get out of your financial hole. But there are family financial planning steps you can take to give it your best effort.
Read on to learn the steps you can take to get yourself and your family to a healthy financial point.
If you have a lot of money going out the door and you don't know where you spent it, then there is a problem. You and your partner need to have a discussion about family finances and come up with a solid plan for your spending.
You don't want to be living paycheck to paycheck forever. Help yourself get ahead and lead a more relaxed lifestyle.
There are many experts out there who will tell you how much to spend on what part of your life, but you need to take all of that with a grain of salt. Only you know where the most important places to spend your money are. But make it part of your plan, don't try to force yourself into a cookie cutter plan that doesn't make you happy.
Many people have debt from child support. If you are paying child support, make sure that you are up to date on your payments and that your children have what they need. Contact Ashby Law for help negotiating a new agreement in Washington state.
But there are other kinds of debt that people carry as well. If you have student loans, credit card debt, or car payments, then you need to evaluate your expenses and find ways to pay these things down.
You never know what is going to happen in life and while there are always ways to solve problems, most of them are solved more easily with a little bit of money. You need to have some sort of cushion to fall back onto.
Otherwise, you're constantly living on the balance and are very close to going without the things you need in the face of a tragedy.
In this ever-changing world, many people are working a lot longer. Just look at Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who recently returned back to work as a Supreme Court justice following a lung surgery at 85. In her position, she has survived both colorectal and pancreatic cancer.
Retirement does not have to be an eventuality, if you do what you are passionate about, you will want to do it until you die.
But for those who are punching the clock and counting the days to their gold watch, make sure you evaluate your retirement plan and make sure you have enough to live off of–whatever that will mean in 2060. Truthfully, you should probably live for today and chase your dreams, you just might catch them.
If you aren't being somewhat risky with your investments, then you are leaving a lot of potential money on the table. And if you go for long term stock options, then you have a high probability of success.
The thing you have to remember about stocks is you haven't lost anything until you sell. If you invest in companies that you feel confident will be around for the long-haul, then you can ride out fluctuations and sell at a point where you have made a good amount of money.
Just don't wait for the crest of the wave, they break unexpectedly. Sell when you're profitable.
There is always some room to save money on at least one of the different insurance policies that you own. Make sure you shop around for the best rate and only purchase the coverage you need.
But also, don't underinsure yourself or save yourself money by setting an unreasonably high deductible. Whatever your deductible will be should be an amount you already have in savings for in case something happens.
And you should have enough insurance to ensure you are protected in the case you get hit by an uninsured motorist or have extensive health issues following an accident.
If you are paying a hefty portion of your salary towards a company health insurance plan, then you need to reevaluate if that's really necessary.
Many companies offer multiple levels of insurance and different kinds of insurance that make sense for different families. Make sure you find out what all of your options are and choose the policy that makes sense for your family, not just the default policy.
If you follow the sales in your neighborhood, you should be able to plan out biweekly trips to your favorite bulk food stores like Costco and Sam's Club.
You should also look to see if there are any restaurant depots in your neighborhood where you can go to buy restaurant-quality food in bulk. That way you're buying from a community run business and potentially getting great quality local produce.
It's time to take up the mantle! Coupons are out there for you to save money. Make sure you take the time to look to see if there are any savings available on the items you buy.
But make sure you don't allow coupons to serve their other, more dubious purpose, making you buy something you didn't intend to. Remember, you can't save money on something you weren't going to buy in the first place–also a good tip for Target!
Family financial planning is incredibly important if you want to have a healthy home environment where you can grow as a family.
One great way to make money is by starting a blog online. Check out our blog for guidance today.


The Captain Fin Alex Knost Classic 9.5" Fin. The latest addition to the Captain Fin line up from our friend Alex Knost. This fin has a wide base to hold down the line speed with an upright profile for maneuverability. Great for your midlenghts and logs.


First up, we bring you a foaming pint of pop-ups.
Wheesht Bar is a new pop-up which opens today on Claremont Street in Glasgow. Slinging drinks from 5pm to late, Wednesday to Sunday, it is billed as 'Glasgow's speakeasy'.
They are currently taking appointments for table bookings. Their Facebook page doesn't give much away but we'll eat our chuddies if cocktails are not involved.
Sticking with Finnieston, we see that Derby Lane is advertising for staff.
Pencilled in for an April opening, the Argyll Street bar and restaurant will be dishing up everything from breakfast to cocktails.
A hop, skip and a jump away, the long-running Avalon Bar on Kent Road by the Mitchell Library is changing tack.
Serving drinks since when Queen Victoria was on the throne, the pub has served the local community for more than a hundred years.
Most recently, it has announced plans to go for more of a dive bar aesthetic.
Look out for DJs and live acts.
In Edinburgh, the Pop-Up Geeks are back on Market Street with Blood and Wine (main pic above is from their Facebook), their Westeros-inspired drinks bar. Running until Sunday 26th May, the pop-up is timed perfectly for the release of the final season of Game of Thrones.
If you can't get enough GOT then you may want to grab tickets for their related event - Wines of the Seven Kingdoms.
Taking place at The Hub on Sunday 14th April, visitors can taste upwards of 40 different wines chosen to match those mentioned by George R.R.Martin in his epic work A Song of Ice and Fire.
We understand that medieval food options will be available. Probs best leave your sword and longbow at home though.
A few blogs back, we mentioned that The Little White Pig pub was going to open on Dublin Street.
Back then, we had no menu details. Now we do.
Guests can tuck into little bites such as chorizo in cider; salt and pepper squid; padron peppers and our old chum, chips.
If you have a larger appetite, you might want to tackle a plate of milk-poached, smoked haddock; mussels with bacon or the steak of the day.
There are also breakfast choices such as the house take on eggs Benedict - local free range eggs, shredded and glazed gammon, Hollandaise, toasted sour dough and pea shoots.


You probably use your garage door more frequently than your front door. It is the primary method of entrance for many people. Have you ever thought about what it takes to lift and drop your garage door? It weighs hundreds of pounds, endures the elements, and moves multiple times in a day. It is a simple contraption, but it needs to work thousands of times without failure.
The key to lifting and dropping your garage door is the springs. These vital components reduce the gravitational pull on the door, allowing the motor and you to move it. If the springs are damaged, the garage door cannot open or close correctly.
There are three basic types of springs: extension, torsion, and TorqueMaster. Extension springs are the most common variant. They are found on older, more economical garage doors. You can tell if you have these because they run parallel to your garage door tracks. These will stretch when the door is lowered and contract when it is raised.
Torsion springs are used on many modern garage doors. These coil around a shaft and tighten as the door is dropped, then release energy as the door is raised back up. You can tell you have torsion springs if you see a horizontal bar attached to the wall. If the garage door is open, you can't see the bar.
TorqueMaster springs are a registered brand and are an advanced version of the torsion spring. TorqueMaster springs are enclosed and have a centralized spring.
What causes springs to fail?
Garage door springs are, on average, rated to last 10,000 cycles (with each lift and drop counting as a cycle). So, they are good for about seven years, assuming you use the garage door four times a day (morning and evening commute). However, garage door springs don't always break or snap. Sometimes, they get stretched out. You can see the springs getting stretched if there is a gap. If you see any gaps, these components will have to be replaced.
Cold weather causes springs to contract and to become more brittle. When it is extremely cold, these parts could even snap. Repeated exposure to hot and cold weather alters the tension in the springs, which could cause damage. For example, if your garage is heated, every time you open the garage door your springs are buffeted by cold air. This can also happen from the exhaust from your car. Another major issue that comes up is condensation. The constant flow of hot and cold air can create condensation which results in rust.
You can't really extend the life cycle of your garage door springs, unless they are the torsion type, which you can apply lubricant to. It is best to consult with garage door experts to explore your options when it comes to taking care of your garage door and its components.
You should never attempt to maintain or repair your garage door springs on your own, especially if they are near the end of their life cycle. They can snap or break apart at this time. The springs are under so much tension that if this happens, they can cause physical harm to you and damage your property. You should check to make sure that the safety cables are present and in good shape, which should prevent any damage.
Do you need help with your garage door?
If you need assistance with your garage door, it is best to call on the experts. At Integrity Overhead Door, we offer high-quality, reliable service throughout the Amarillo area. We are experienced in providing Repair for residential, Commercial, and Industrial doors, as well as Installation. Call us at (806) 552-9519 or Contact Us by email to learn more about the brands and services we have to offer.


Last night I made a cake for our Quilt group party tonight, utilizing July's abundance of fresh berries. The card is a 5″ x 7″ index card with stitched fabric letters, "happy" and "birthday" written in red and blue Sharpie, and four candles holding it in place, one for each of us with a July birthday.
1) Prepare cake according to directions on box, adding Almond extract while mixing. Bake according to directions on box. Cool completely before adding topping.
2) Prepare pudding according to package directions, adding only 1.75 cups of milk. Add Almond extract after removing from stove, stirring in well. Cool pudding to room temperature, then Chill for 30 minutes.
3) Fold whipped topping into chilled pudding. Spread over cake. Top with berries and serve.
This can be made as a layer cake, spreading pudding topping and berries between each layer. I have to travel with it this evening, so I used a 9″ x 13″ pan with a cover instead.
Stay tuned, next week you might just get lucky with a birthday giveaway!
My hubby is giving me a Very strange look…. is it becuase I'm licking my screen? LOL that cake looks and sounds absolutely YUM!
My birthday is in July too, and I grew up with 2 friends who were born on the same day. It's a fun month to celebrate, though! Thanks for the recipe, I'll have to try it!
Nice recipe, to be saved for baking on a day the air-conditioner isn't needed. Sorry I don't fit into your July birthdays crowd. Happy birthday to you, though!
This looks quite tasty! I love these kinds of fruity desserts in summer cuz they don't feel so heavy. Happy birthday to all the July people out there!