Free thoughts

Take two pretty Underwood Champions from the 1930s, some colored cards ...

... a little ingenuity, and some guts. Mix and you get Free Thoughts — a pop-up project at Xavier University today. A colleague in the philosophy department and I sat outside the main classroom building and wrote reflections on any topics proposed by a steady stream of students and faculty.

I did much the same three years ago with another colleague. What a long three years it's been! Nobody had heard of Covid-19 then. Today, I wore a mask because I was recently exposed to the virus (later I tested negative).

Before we ventured out, we tried some typing in my office, picking prompts randomly from books. This was my favorite effort:

Here are some thoughts I typed for the public: 

(Should have been "bound for a destination unbounded"!)

And here are some of my friend's thoughts. (You'll notice duplicate themes. People offered a topic and we both wrote about it.)

We agreed: this was a great experience that we will repeat!

 

Writer Shed podcast interview

 It was a pleasure to speak with David W. Berner on his podcast, The Writer Shed.

Listen here, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Captive Remington

At the venerable Duttenhofer's, near the University of Cincinnati ...

... a lonely prisoner stares through the glass, hemmed in by volumes ...

... a Remington Rand Model 1 that probably hasn't been typed on for many decades.

Years ago, I offered to restore it to working condition for free, but my offer was promptly dismissed. What do you say? Should the Typewriter Liberation Front stage a raid and give this elegant machine a new chance to do what it's been longing to do?