Over the past few months, I've been working on a few websites for myself, friends & a few nonprofits. After learning about about the relatively new field of S.E.O. (search engine optimization), I thought I'd check to see which search terms were sending people to my website. Here's are the top 2:
1. "trashy old ladies" ranked #5
2. "gradual student" ranked #2
I'm not really sure why these pop out in Google's brain, but I'm sure that this post will only strengthen those rankings.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
New North House Website!
After a few months of sporadic work with Grace and the NHFS staff, the new North House Folk School Website is up and running (mostly) glitch-free. We're all really proud of the design, online-registration capabilities and ease of navigation. Explore the new website, let us know what you think and go enroll for a class!
http://www.northhouse.org/
We are (or soon will be) working on a few other sites for nonprofits in the area, so keep your eyes peeled for more updates.
http://www.northhouse.org/
We are (or soon will be) working on a few other sites for nonprofits in the area, so keep your eyes peeled for more updates.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
It Starts With a Seed
Over the coming January, I'll be working in Mali, Africa on a sustainable development project through the USDA and UST. Below is an article written by one of the students who worked on the project last year:
It Starts With a Seed
St.Thomas helps a Mali village prepare for a ripe future
by Nathaniel Minor : Photo by Anthony Caruso
BORKO, MALI - In the small village of Borko, Mali, you can spot a visitor from a mile away.
Even when they don’t carry cameras, tourists stand out because of ever-present crowds of children swarming them. The kids, poor and excited to see new faces, usually ask for a water bottle or a pen – something small and easy to give away. And the tourists are happy to oblige.
I experienced this firsthand in January, when I went to Borko as part of a project meant to give residents of this tiny village a new way to move beyond poverty.
The children of Borko were certainly persuasive, but we had been instructed not to give them any of our things; what we were trying to give them required more work and dedication than surrendering a water bottle.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture grant teamed St. Thomas with the Mali Agribusiness Centre. Multiple projects have been funded by the grant, which has brought a number of St. Thomas students and faculty from different disciplines to Mali.
UST students and faculty brought their skills to work on specific projects here, but we receive as much as we give.
The grant made it possible for Mali Agribusiness Centre members to visit St. Thomas and other U.S. colleges to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to fulfill their organization’s mission: to give Malians the tools they need to lift themselves from and stay out of poverty.
Centre member Madame Aissata Thera is working on a seed potato project in Borko.
“Borko is like most of the villages in Mali,” she said. “The people are poor; they have a lot of health and nutrition problems, and organizational problems. So, it’s always good to try and help them get out from that poverty cycle.”
The potato was once a big export for Mali, but a bacterial wilt disease not only wiped out potato plants across most of the country but also scarred the soil and made it unusable for future potato growth.
Most potatoes in Mali are now grown in the far south of the country, and all the seed potatoes are imported from Europe. Prices for these European seed potatoes, which often do not arrive at the correct time of year, are high.
Fortunately, farmers in Borko stopped planting potatoes before the bacterial wilt spread through the country. Its untainted soil also is very rich because of the abundance of water in the area, making it an ideal location to pilot a seed potato project.
The Malian seed potatoes would cost less, be more immune to disease in the soil, and be more certain to arrive at the correct planting time.
As a member of the sociology team, I spent five days in Borko with Thera, Dr. Susan Smith-Cunnien of the UST Sociology and Criminal Justice Department, and two other students. Serving as French translators were Dr. Ashley Shams of the St. Thomas Modern and Classical Languages Department and two of her students. We interviewed village leaders and farmers to gauge the village’s ability to grow the seed potatoes and report the status of the project.
The farmers of Borko grow a variety of crops; they store and eat some of them themselves, but they sell most of them. Garlic is a big cash crop in the village, but selling prices have dropped as the vegetable has become more available.
Still, it makes more economic sense to use money from these sales to buy food throughout the year, rather than to farm only for food.
The main subsistence foods are cereals: rice, millet and sorghum, none of which provide enough necessary nutrients when eaten alone. These crops all grow well, but the village is missing a crop that can be both sold for profit and eaten for its nutritional
value.
The centre hopes the seed potato (and in time, the ‘real’ potato) can fill the nutritional and financial needs of the village and provide a better seed potato for the rest of the country.
The seed potatoes are still in an incubator just outside of Bamako, Mali’s capital. The villagers in Borko often asked us why the project was taking so long. It’s easy to understand why they are so impatient: Most villagers are malnourished and extremely poor. It was hard to explain to those who can’t afford food for their children that you can’t help them in a more immediate and direct way.
As my classmates and I discussed this dilemma, we talked about all the projects that have come through Borko in the past. Earlier this year, a truckload of baby food was delivered to provide nutrition to children. It helped, but it didn’t last long.
Material aid definitely has a time and place, but in a place like Borko that has all the right tools to be independent, it seems more like pity.
Still, it is difficult to explain the long-term benefits of our project to people who have such immediate needs.
Souleymane Kassambara, the deputy mayor of Borko, told us the villagers will have a hard time waiting for seed potatoes. “It’s difficult for them, because they are used to having cash back right away. They are not rich and need the money for life expenses,” Kassambara said.
I asked Thera why she is so dedicated to something that can seem so full of empty promises to the people of Borko: “[Their doubt is] normal,” she said. “I think that because I’m educated, I can see things differently … to help them see what I’m seeing. And if you have a good way to convince them, a good way to show them… I think they will [be patient].”
Of course, we didn’t just drive into Borko and start telling people what to do. Doing that would have been disrespectful of their culture and abilities; it would have been cultural imperialism. So, it is important for us to spend sufficient time and effort on this project, to cultivate trusting relationships with both the residents of Borko and our colleagues at the centre.
Keeping up relationships with people 5,000 miles away is never easy, but it is even harder to navigate the cultural differences. The most immediate obstacle is the language barrier. Most of the centre members spoke fluent English but that was not the case in Borko, where no one spoke English and only a handful spoke French. Our interviews involved two layers of translation, from English to French, and then to the native Dogon and back again. The French students gained fantastic experience, but it was a tedious system at best.
To complicate matters, the Malian concept of time is very different from ours. Danielle LeCorps, one of the French students, summed up the difference: “Where we in the United States see time as money, the [Malians] see time as something you have to enjoy. They make every second count for them, but not for everyone else.”
Because our hosts in Borko were so generous in every other way, we knew they weren’t being selfish with their time; it was just the way they do things.
Still, time spent waiting often put us further and further behind with our work. “We had expectations when we came to Borko that we would probably interview two or three times the number of people we actually did,” Smith-Cunnien said.
When you consider the impoverished state of Mali – and this could be true for other areas with similar economic circumstances – the reason that time is treated in such a seemingly casual way becomes obvious.
“It’s the most valuable thing they have,” LeCorps said. “They don’t have a lot of money, they don’t have a lot of basic necessities. … [Time] is the only thing they can hold on to, and the only thing they can say they have, so they try to cherish it as much as possible.”
Once we understood this cultural difference, our work goals didn’t seem as important as they once were. Our method of communication was slow, but it worked. The amount of surveys completed wasn’t as vital as the time we spent getting to know the people around us. We no longer saw the people of Borko as a list of names on one of our surveys but, rather, as people we knew and trusted.
The overall goal of our project was not to give the residents of Borko a truckload of nutritional vegetables to feed their families; it was to share our expertise, skills and ideas.
Although the material things we provided will one day run out, the ideas we shared with them will last much longer. Families can eat for a week on a truckload of potatoes, but to feed their children, and their children’s children, they will need more.
“To me, development is not ‘Give food, give things,’” Thera said. “It is to teach them, to be able to have, to create [for] themselves their own income. They need to learn something with which they could produce, make a profit, get income and take care of themselves.”
About the Author:
Nathaniel Minor is a junior majoring in sociology and communication and journalism.
It Starts With a Seed
St.Thomas helps a Mali village prepare for a ripe future
by Nathaniel Minor : Photo by Anthony Caruso
BORKO, MALI - In the small village of Borko, Mali, you can spot a visitor from a mile away.
Even when they don’t carry cameras, tourists stand out because of ever-present crowds of children swarming them. The kids, poor and excited to see new faces, usually ask for a water bottle or a pen – something small and easy to give away. And the tourists are happy to oblige.
I experienced this firsthand in January, when I went to Borko as part of a project meant to give residents of this tiny village a new way to move beyond poverty.
The children of Borko were certainly persuasive, but we had been instructed not to give them any of our things; what we were trying to give them required more work and dedication than surrendering a water bottle.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture grant teamed St. Thomas with the Mali Agribusiness Centre. Multiple projects have been funded by the grant, which has brought a number of St. Thomas students and faculty from different disciplines to Mali.
UST students and faculty brought their skills to work on specific projects here, but we receive as much as we give.
The grant made it possible for Mali Agribusiness Centre members to visit St. Thomas and other U.S. colleges to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to fulfill their organization’s mission: to give Malians the tools they need to lift themselves from and stay out of poverty.
Centre member Madame Aissata Thera is working on a seed potato project in Borko.
“Borko is like most of the villages in Mali,” she said. “The people are poor; they have a lot of health and nutrition problems, and organizational problems. So, it’s always good to try and help them get out from that poverty cycle.”
The potato was once a big export for Mali, but a bacterial wilt disease not only wiped out potato plants across most of the country but also scarred the soil and made it unusable for future potato growth.
Most potatoes in Mali are now grown in the far south of the country, and all the seed potatoes are imported from Europe. Prices for these European seed potatoes, which often do not arrive at the correct time of year, are high.
Fortunately, farmers in Borko stopped planting potatoes before the bacterial wilt spread through the country. Its untainted soil also is very rich because of the abundance of water in the area, making it an ideal location to pilot a seed potato project.
The Malian seed potatoes would cost less, be more immune to disease in the soil, and be more certain to arrive at the correct planting time.
As a member of the sociology team, I spent five days in Borko with Thera, Dr. Susan Smith-Cunnien of the UST Sociology and Criminal Justice Department, and two other students. Serving as French translators were Dr. Ashley Shams of the St. Thomas Modern and Classical Languages Department and two of her students. We interviewed village leaders and farmers to gauge the village’s ability to grow the seed potatoes and report the status of the project.
The farmers of Borko grow a variety of crops; they store and eat some of them themselves, but they sell most of them. Garlic is a big cash crop in the village, but selling prices have dropped as the vegetable has become more available.
Still, it makes more economic sense to use money from these sales to buy food throughout the year, rather than to farm only for food.
The main subsistence foods are cereals: rice, millet and sorghum, none of which provide enough necessary nutrients when eaten alone. These crops all grow well, but the village is missing a crop that can be both sold for profit and eaten for its nutritional
value.
The centre hopes the seed potato (and in time, the ‘real’ potato) can fill the nutritional and financial needs of the village and provide a better seed potato for the rest of the country.
The seed potatoes are still in an incubator just outside of Bamako, Mali’s capital. The villagers in Borko often asked us why the project was taking so long. It’s easy to understand why they are so impatient: Most villagers are malnourished and extremely poor. It was hard to explain to those who can’t afford food for their children that you can’t help them in a more immediate and direct way.
As my classmates and I discussed this dilemma, we talked about all the projects that have come through Borko in the past. Earlier this year, a truckload of baby food was delivered to provide nutrition to children. It helped, but it didn’t last long.
Material aid definitely has a time and place, but in a place like Borko that has all the right tools to be independent, it seems more like pity.
Still, it is difficult to explain the long-term benefits of our project to people who have such immediate needs.
Souleymane Kassambara, the deputy mayor of Borko, told us the villagers will have a hard time waiting for seed potatoes. “It’s difficult for them, because they are used to having cash back right away. They are not rich and need the money for life expenses,” Kassambara said.
I asked Thera why she is so dedicated to something that can seem so full of empty promises to the people of Borko: “[Their doubt is] normal,” she said. “I think that because I’m educated, I can see things differently … to help them see what I’m seeing. And if you have a good way to convince them, a good way to show them… I think they will [be patient].”
Of course, we didn’t just drive into Borko and start telling people what to do. Doing that would have been disrespectful of their culture and abilities; it would have been cultural imperialism. So, it is important for us to spend sufficient time and effort on this project, to cultivate trusting relationships with both the residents of Borko and our colleagues at the centre.
Keeping up relationships with people 5,000 miles away is never easy, but it is even harder to navigate the cultural differences. The most immediate obstacle is the language barrier. Most of the centre members spoke fluent English but that was not the case in Borko, where no one spoke English and only a handful spoke French. Our interviews involved two layers of translation, from English to French, and then to the native Dogon and back again. The French students gained fantastic experience, but it was a tedious system at best.
To complicate matters, the Malian concept of time is very different from ours. Danielle LeCorps, one of the French students, summed up the difference: “Where we in the United States see time as money, the [Malians] see time as something you have to enjoy. They make every second count for them, but not for everyone else.”
Because our hosts in Borko were so generous in every other way, we knew they weren’t being selfish with their time; it was just the way they do things.
Still, time spent waiting often put us further and further behind with our work. “We had expectations when we came to Borko that we would probably interview two or three times the number of people we actually did,” Smith-Cunnien said.
When you consider the impoverished state of Mali – and this could be true for other areas with similar economic circumstances – the reason that time is treated in such a seemingly casual way becomes obvious.
“It’s the most valuable thing they have,” LeCorps said. “They don’t have a lot of money, they don’t have a lot of basic necessities. … [Time] is the only thing they can hold on to, and the only thing they can say they have, so they try to cherish it as much as possible.”
Once we understood this cultural difference, our work goals didn’t seem as important as they once were. Our method of communication was slow, but it worked. The amount of surveys completed wasn’t as vital as the time we spent getting to know the people around us. We no longer saw the people of Borko as a list of names on one of our surveys but, rather, as people we knew and trusted.
The overall goal of our project was not to give the residents of Borko a truckload of nutritional vegetables to feed their families; it was to share our expertise, skills and ideas.
Although the material things we provided will one day run out, the ideas we shared with them will last much longer. Families can eat for a week on a truckload of potatoes, but to feed their children, and their children’s children, they will need more.
“To me, development is not ‘Give food, give things,’” Thera said. “It is to teach them, to be able to have, to create [for] themselves their own income. They need to learn something with which they could produce, make a profit, get income and take care of themselves.”
About the Author:
Nathaniel Minor is a junior majoring in sociology and communication and journalism.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
SUMMER!
Hi all,
I'm down in Costa Rica for the summer teaching a course on Sea Turtles biology and tropical systems. I'm not really supposed to be writing about our experiences here, but if you want to keep tabs on me until the end of July, visit the group's blog here:
http://www.academictreks.com/whatsup/update.asp?sg=735
I'm down in Costa Rica for the summer teaching a course on Sea Turtles biology and tropical systems. I'm not really supposed to be writing about our experiences here, but if you want to keep tabs on me until the end of July, visit the group's blog here:
http://www.academictreks.com/whatsup/update.asp?sg=735
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Pete is in Africa!
My brother, Pete, is coaching a roller hockey team and working on some hockey development projects in Namibia, Africa.
Read about his adventures here:
http://petekamman.blogspot.com
Read about his adventures here:
http://petekamman.blogspot.com
Guatemala!
Sorry for the long post:
I spent the month of January in Guatemala travelling around and spending a good chunk of time at Eco-Escuela de Español. I managed to convince three friends to join me for the trip: Josh (SJU/Bemidji), Shane & Kayla (Bemidji). I should really make a point of putting thoughts down immediately after returning, but I’ll to my best to give a brief synopsis of our trip:
We landed in Guatemala City from our respective flights and, on the advice of Shane’s sister and former Guatemala peace corper, we immediately hopped a cab to Antigua. We spent the first few days wandering Antigua, a cute town but pretty touristy. We went on a day-long excursion to climb a volcano and ended up just feet from flowing lava. Amazing! After having our fill of Antigua, we grabbed a night bus to the town of Flores in the northern province of Peten. After a full day in Flores we caught our boat across lake Peten Itza to the smaller town of San Andres, where our school was located.
Our time spent in San Andres was great. We each lived with host families and met with private Spanish instructors for four hours per day. I lived with Nidia and her family (see picture) and studied with a great instructor named Elga. Neither of them spoke English, so it was great opportunity to work on developing speaking skills. During the afternoons, we usually had some activities planned with the school: meeting a local witch doctor (of sorts), fishing (and catching our bait), drinking at the director’s “cantina”, swimming in the lake. San Andres was, as Shane called it, “a very pleasant sh**hole”. It was an endearing town, with steep-hill roads, pigs, chickens, “chicken busses” and feral dogs everywhere. The people were friendly and everything was ridiculously inexpensive. Good times. I’d like to go back.
One of the most memorable places we visited during a weekend break from school was Tikal, the largest of the mayan city ruins. It’s an amazing place. We just happened to visit on day preceding a full moon. A guard sparked a conversation with us and, through awkward broken Spanish, we managed to bribe him enough to allow us to stay past 6pm park closing. We stayed until about 9pm and had the entire Mayan city to ourselves and watch the moon rise from one of the famous giant towers. It was amazing.
After a few weeks at the eco-escuela we headed out for a week or so of travelling. Our first stop was the town of Lanquin, or at least it was supposed to be. We ran into some trouble with our chartered bus driver refusing to go farther than Coban (about 2 hours shy of our destination). While it was pretty frustrating, it was, retrospectively, pretty cool to see all of us arguing and comprehending responses in Spanish. I’ve got a long way to go, but it was a nice way to start.
After finally arriving in Lanquin we found a great place to stay under thatch roof in the mountains on a river with amazing food… $5 a night. We stayed there for a number of days. It was a crazy series of 2 or 3 days that lends itself to a list explanation more than a narrative:
-Traveled into the rainforest in the back of a cattle-hauling pickup
-Giant rope swing into murky tropical river
-tubed down said river
-jumped off a 30-40 foot bridge into said river
-explored a cave by candlelight in waste to neck-deep water
-jumped off a cliff in the dark of the cave
-hiked up a mountain to overlook Semuc Champey (see picture)
-Went swimming in Semuc Champey, one of the most gorgeous places I’ve ever seen
-wood-fired sauna
-Watched Obama’s inauguration speech under a thatched roof building, overdubbed in Spanish
-Stayed late in a cave to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of bats flying out.
-ate way too much.
After Lanquinn, Josh and I returned to Antigua a few days prior to our return flight. We spent the last two days wandering around, visiting a coffee plantation and an organic macadamia nut farm.
Great month.
I spent the month of January in Guatemala travelling around and spending a good chunk of time at Eco-Escuela de Español. I managed to convince three friends to join me for the trip: Josh (SJU/Bemidji), Shane & Kayla (Bemidji). I should really make a point of putting thoughts down immediately after returning, but I’ll to my best to give a brief synopsis of our trip:
We landed in Guatemala City from our respective flights and, on the advice of Shane’s sister and former Guatemala peace corper, we immediately hopped a cab to Antigua. We spent the first few days wandering Antigua, a cute town but pretty touristy. We went on a day-long excursion to climb a volcano and ended up just feet from flowing lava. Amazing! After having our fill of Antigua, we grabbed a night bus to the town of Flores in the northern province of Peten. After a full day in Flores we caught our boat across lake Peten Itza to the smaller town of San Andres, where our school was located.
Our time spent in San Andres was great. We each lived with host families and met with private Spanish instructors for four hours per day. I lived with Nidia and her family (see picture) and studied with a great instructor named Elga. Neither of them spoke English, so it was great opportunity to work on developing speaking skills. During the afternoons, we usually had some activities planned with the school: meeting a local witch doctor (of sorts), fishing (and catching our bait), drinking at the director’s “cantina”, swimming in the lake. San Andres was, as Shane called it, “a very pleasant sh**hole”. It was an endearing town, with steep-hill roads, pigs, chickens, “chicken busses” and feral dogs everywhere. The people were friendly and everything was ridiculously inexpensive. Good times. I’d like to go back.
One of the most memorable places we visited during a weekend break from school was Tikal, the largest of the mayan city ruins. It’s an amazing place. We just happened to visit on day preceding a full moon. A guard sparked a conversation with us and, through awkward broken Spanish, we managed to bribe him enough to allow us to stay past 6pm park closing. We stayed until about 9pm and had the entire Mayan city to ourselves and watch the moon rise from one of the famous giant towers. It was amazing.
After a few weeks at the eco-escuela we headed out for a week or so of travelling. Our first stop was the town of Lanquin, or at least it was supposed to be. We ran into some trouble with our chartered bus driver refusing to go farther than Coban (about 2 hours shy of our destination). While it was pretty frustrating, it was, retrospectively, pretty cool to see all of us arguing and comprehending responses in Spanish. I’ve got a long way to go, but it was a nice way to start.
After finally arriving in Lanquin we found a great place to stay under thatch roof in the mountains on a river with amazing food… $5 a night. We stayed there for a number of days. It was a crazy series of 2 or 3 days that lends itself to a list explanation more than a narrative:
-Traveled into the rainforest in the back of a cattle-hauling pickup
-Giant rope swing into murky tropical river
-tubed down said river
-jumped off a 30-40 foot bridge into said river
-explored a cave by candlelight in waste to neck-deep water
-jumped off a cliff in the dark of the cave
-hiked up a mountain to overlook Semuc Champey (see picture)
-Went swimming in Semuc Champey, one of the most gorgeous places I’ve ever seen
-wood-fired sauna
-Watched Obama’s inauguration speech under a thatched roof building, overdubbed in Spanish
-Stayed late in a cave to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of bats flying out.
-ate way too much.
After Lanquinn, Josh and I returned to Antigua a few days prior to our return flight. We spent the last two days wandering around, visiting a coffee plantation and an organic macadamia nut farm.
Great month.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Happy (1/2)Octo, Novem, Decembeard
The Guatemala crew (excluding Kayla) is going until we return, the end of Jan. Take that, UST dress code.
Monday, November 17, 2008
DNR rule changes
Below is a letter written to some aquatic biologist friends regarding a DNR rule change open for public comment. If anyone out there is willing to send a letter to the judge in favor of these rule changes, it could greatly affect the outcome of the judicial hearing. Minnesota needs this rule change. I watched the opposition to these rulings (largely Lake Minnetonka property owners at this particular meeting), NOT a pretty site.
For more on this, take a look at a friend’s summary of the issues:
http://beltramiswcd.blogspot.com/search?q=Minnesotan's
Hi Science/Water-nerds,
I've spoken with some of you regarding the pending DNR rule changes for aquatic plant management. During an internship this past summer, I had a chance to closely follow the politics and science of the proposed changes. The short version of the story: The DNR would like to decrease the amount of submerged vegetation that can be mechanically and/or chemically removed by lake shore landowners. The opposition, Minnesotans For Healthy Lakes http://www.mnhealthylakes.org/(ironic, I know), is well-organized, vocal, angry and willfully uninformed. Go here for more on the proposed rule changes: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/input/rules/apm/index.html
I'd very much like to see this rule pass. If any of you are willing to utilize whatever scientific and/or political sway you can muster, it would be appreciated.
The rule has been opened for public comment and the judge is accepting written comments until 4:30pm on Dec. 1st.
Send comments to:
Administrative Law Judge Richard C. Luis
Office of Administrative Hearings
600 North Robert Street
P.O. Box 64620
St. Paul, Minnesota 55164-0620
Thanks, I hope all is well!
John Kamman
For more on this, take a look at a friend’s summary of the issues:
http://beltramiswcd.blogspot.com/search?q=Minnesotan's
Hi Science/Water-nerds,
I've spoken with some of you regarding the pending DNR rule changes for aquatic plant management. During an internship this past summer, I had a chance to closely follow the politics and science of the proposed changes. The short version of the story: The DNR would like to decrease the amount of submerged vegetation that can be mechanically and/or chemically removed by lake shore landowners. The opposition, Minnesotans For Healthy Lakes http://www.mnhealthylakes.org/(ironic, I know), is well-organized, vocal, angry and willfully uninformed. Go here for more on the proposed rule changes: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/input/rules/apm/index.html
I'd very much like to see this rule pass. If any of you are willing to utilize whatever scientific and/or political sway you can muster, it would be appreciated.
The rule has been opened for public comment and the judge is accepting written comments until 4:30pm on Dec. 1st.
Send comments to:
Administrative Law Judge Richard C. Luis
Office of Administrative Hearings
600 North Robert Street
P.O. Box 64620
St. Paul, Minnesota 55164-0620
Thanks, I hope all is well!
John Kamman
A brief update:
Sorry to those of you who still check in on this periodically.
Update:
1. I’m in S. Minneapolis and going to school at the University of St. Thomas. I’m working towards my MBA with an emphasis in Nonprofit Management. Music has, unfortunately, taken a back seat to school work. I’m trying to change that soon. Life here is good.
2. In about a month and a half I’ll be heading to Guatemala for the month January at this school: http://www.ecoescuelaespanol.org/ Should be great!
3. Over the summer I’ll be guiding two biology courses through Costa Rica with this program: http://www.academictreks.com/programs/gl/sts_gl.asp I’ll be rafting, canopy-touring, turtleing…etc Should be a great summer job.
Update:
1. I’m in S. Minneapolis and going to school at the University of St. Thomas. I’m working towards my MBA with an emphasis in Nonprofit Management. Music has, unfortunately, taken a back seat to school work. I’m trying to change that soon. Life here is good.
2. In about a month and a half I’ll be heading to Guatemala for the month January at this school: http://www.ecoescuelaespanol.org/ Should be great!
3. Over the summer I’ll be guiding two biology courses through Costa Rica with this program: http://www.academictreks.com/programs/gl/sts_gl.asp I’ll be rafting, canopy-touring, turtleing…etc Should be a great summer job.
Friday, July 25, 2008
SUNDAY!
My submission to Minnesota Public Radio's "Songs from Scratch" project that I mentioned in the previous post will be aired on MPR's "Local Show" (89.3 The Current) this Sunday between 5 & 6pm. I got a little email today about it and don't know any other details. Exciting nonetheless. If you're bored, tune in at 89.3 or online here.
Also on Sunday, the same song will be featured on the front page of Redfizz, an independent music feedback forum.
It's worth having a listen to Jeremy Messersmith's version. He's great.
Also on Sunday, the same song will be featured on the front page of Redfizz, an independent music feedback forum.
It's worth having a listen to Jeremy Messersmith's version. He's great.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
A Song from Scratch
I know this makes me a crappy songwriter, but my least favorite part of making a song is writing lyrics. Just not my thing. I haven't written or recorded since moving to the cities primarily due to a permanent writers block. A combination of loads of free time and a fun project by MPR pushed me to start recording again. MPR announced their 2nd annual "songs from scratch" project, in which musicians create songs around the words of a reputable lyricist, Adam Levy. I thought it might be fun... so, here it is. Not my favorite ever and hasn't been propperly mixed, but its fun to record again:
It's All Within You
It's All Within You
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Overdue Update
1. Done with School! I graduated from Bemidji State University with an MS in Biology. I will be defending my thesis sometime this summer. It turned out nicely.
2. Not Done with School! I’ll be attending the full-time MBA program at University of St. Thomas (Minneapolis) to focus on nonprofit management. Biology + Nonprofit management should set me up well to work in the environmental conservation world.
3. On a similar note, I’ve moved to the twin cities and will be living near lake Hiawatha
4. New Music: I released a little ep. There are a few good songs and a few crappy songs, but if you’re looking for album cohesion, you’ve found the wrong album. Its free…don’t complain. You can download it at http://www.jckamman.com/
5. I just got back from a week-long trip to the Boundary Waters…it was great.
6. I started a fight up in good ol' conservative Bemidji, before I left, that got attention from some local newspapers and a nationally top-ranked science blog and is still going on, kind of:
-http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/kbsu_peddling_nonsense.php
-http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/kbsu_respondsunsatisfactorily.php
-http://www.northernstudent.com/content/view/1096/36/
-http://seekingaponia.blogspot.com/2008/04/kbsu-church-sponsored-station.html
-http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/articles/index.cfm?id=16316§ion=Opinion
-http://seekingaponia.blogspot.com/2008/05/kbsu-response-more-professional-still.html
-http://seekingaponia.blogspot.com/2008/05/kbsu-grand-finale.html
-http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/articles/index.cfm?id=17072
2. Not Done with School! I’ll be attending the full-time MBA program at University of St. Thomas (Minneapolis) to focus on nonprofit management. Biology + Nonprofit management should set me up well to work in the environmental conservation world.
3. On a similar note, I’ve moved to the twin cities and will be living near lake Hiawatha
4. New Music: I released a little ep. There are a few good songs and a few crappy songs, but if you’re looking for album cohesion, you’ve found the wrong album. Its free…don’t complain. You can download it at http://www.jckamman.com/
6. I started a fight up in good ol' conservative Bemidji, before I left, that got attention from some local newspapers and a nationally top-ranked science blog and is still going on, kind of:
-http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/kbsu_peddling_nonsense.php
-http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/kbsu_respondsunsatisfactorily.php
-http://www.northernstudent.com/content/view/1096/36/
-http://seekingaponia.blogspot.com/2008/04/kbsu-church-sponsored-station.html
-http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/articles/index.cfm?id=16316§ion=Opinion
-http://seekingaponia.blogspot.com/2008/05/kbsu-response-more-professional-still.html
-http://seekingaponia.blogspot.com/2008/05/kbsu-grand-finale.html
-http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/articles/index.cfm?id=17072
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