Poem dispenser

Once upon a time, I started my Poem-A-Day Project in September 2011. After a whole bunch of writing, I gathered a bunch of poems.

In the summer of 2013, I brought this poem dispenser to the Printer’s Row Lit Fest.


            On the weekend of June 8 and June 9, 2013, Printer’s Row Lit Fest was held on a block of Dearborn where printing and publishing houses were located. In previous years, I have only ever attended Lit Fest as a casual observer of the beautifully bound vintage books, the old movie posters, the speakers, panels, and cooking demonstrations. This year, working with Here’s the Story, I helped man the table where we sold t-shirts, talked about our organization, and my gumball machine poem dispenser made its debut.

My overall experience of Printer’s Row Lit Fest was a warm one. In addition to the heat pounding on the tops of our heads, we were met by the warm words of countless people who stopped by at the Here’s the Story table. Setting up a gumball machine dispensing poems printed on brightly colored paper meant that people stopped to buy poems, take pictures, or talk to the poet and the organization that supported her.

With the exception of one vocal person.

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Marquette University: The 1969 Chapel Incident

Tuesday, April 22, 1969 began like any other spring day at Marquette University. Classes were in session, and Father Raynor (1969) sent a memo to Moeller directing him to “appoint a committee of faculty, administrators, and students to address itself to points c. and d. raised by the ASMU sub-committee investigating ROTC.” This marks two months passing since the formation of the ASMU sub-committee and six months since the original Coalition for Peace request. 

“Members of the Anti-ROTC Coalition attended the mass [in the St. Joan of Arc Chapel] celebrated by Father Patrick Burns, SJ, assistant professor of theology. After mass, the students asked him to get word to Fr. Raynor that they wanted to meet with him” (Riordan, 1969, p. 4) to discuss issues related to the ROTC program. According to Riordan (1969), “the statement demanded a dialogue with ‘the man whose name is on the Defense Contract’ and said that the students were occupying the chapel until ‘the channels of communication are opened'” (p. 4). 

Want to read the full paper?



Sources:

Raynor, John P. (1969, April 22). Committee to study points c. and d. raised by the ASMU sub-committee investigating ROTC at Marquette (Series 20.2, Box 12). Rev. John P. Raynor, S.J., Chronological File, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI.

Riordan, R. (1969, May 2). MU still unravelling confusion of chapel incident. The Marquette Tribune, 53(57), 1, 4.

Yelp


I don’t think a whole lot of people spend as much time on Yelp as I do. I’m not a regular community member, but I like to think I contribute to the community.

One of my favorite things to do is paint a picture of a business and my experience there. More often than not, I write about restaurants or coffee shops, and since I love them all so much, my reviews are usually pretty effusive. You have to mess up big time to get fewer than four stars from me. And even then, I’m still pretty nice about it.

Would I say that Yelp is a hobby? Probably. It’s an added bonus that it has the potential to help people connect with local businesses that they too might fall in love with. It makes me feel like the fairy godmother to the city, dropping in, being a regular person, writing a review, and poof! More people find the business! That feels like magic to me.