Photos from recent events

Into the Teeth of the Wind staff members putting up a poster next to a "pre-dental meeting" poster:

Teeth is currently accepting poetry for its 10th anniversary issue (no particular deadline - see website for details), and Spectrum is accepting writing and art until February 11. Both CCS publications are open to submissions from non-UCSB students.

Part of the crowd at Lit Collab's Scrabble evening on Friday:

See more pictures on Facebook. The top scorer was a biochemistry major, but that's OK. We'll have another rematch next quarter.

Quarterly updates

Summary of this past quarter in Lit Collab: we got to know each other, vented about classes and professors, distributed the Very Unofficial Collection of Helpful Hints for New Lit Students, went on a tour of the Book Arts lab, held a peer advising session for next quarter's classes, and started a little writing group. We also got a paper recycling bin in room 143. A few of us started using Wordie.

What is the Very Unofficial Collection of Helpful Hints for New Lit Students? It's a 10-page pamphlet/zine organized by last year's Lit Collab members for this year's new students. It includes notes about people and places, practical tips about classes, myths debunked, the library explained, a lot of recommendations for classes, secrets of the English department, information about Study Abroad, and more. You can download it as a PDF.

Our plans for next quarter: organizing another Scrabble evening (see photos of last year's Scrabble tournament), further decorating room 143, getting a stapler for the computer lab (and chaining it to the wall), bringing Robyn to one of our meetings to chat about the Lit program, holding a more effective peer advising session, and...who knows what else? Maybe designing and ordering some CCS Lit t-shirts?

I have a class next quarter during our usual meeting time, so we're probably going to move meetings from Wednesdays at 5 pm to Wednesdays at 2:30 pm.

Dictate III, winter blowout edition

Dictate was so much fun on Thursday evening! Here's who read: Heather Bartlett, Rachel Heine, Steph Soule-Maggio, Erin Johnson, me, Alyse Speyer, Sophie Gore Browne, Amy Katz, Franciscus Alex Rebro, and Morgan Burke. Amy Arani also played her lovely songs again.

Alyse Speyer ran the show and Jessica Delfanti helped organize the event, including obtaining the tasty treats (with Stacie Nellor's assistance). We were honored to have Dean Tiffney and Professor Corum in the audience among all our other fans.

A couple friends asked me for the names of the books I referenced in the essay I read, and I'm immodest so here's my whole works cited, but the two main ones are Oranges by John McPhee and The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. Anybody else, especially people who read at Dictate, can get their work posted here on the blog for everybody to read and re-read — just let me know if you're interested. Self-promotion is good for you.

CCS cleanup day

As promised, if you'd peeked into Building 494 on Sunday anytime from noon to 6 pm, you'd have seen dozens of chairs in the hallways and seven Literature majors (Janie Davis, Jessica Delfanti, Stacie Nellor, Nick Crosby, Carolyn Chiao, Mitch Shira, and me) scrubbing the place. Yay!

In room 143, we dusted and rearranged the chairs, cleaned the table, picked up the junk on the piano, mopped the floor, and decorated the walls:

There were more than enough blue tiles to make that room nice, so some of them got distributed around the hallways in random places. If you're curious, the tiles are removable and they're from Shalgo. (I didn't realize that these colors resemble my favorite website until my friend suspected covert promotional tactics.)

Next we tackled the student lounge, which was especially dirty from months — maybe years — of people spattering food residue in weird places. We cleaned the sink, scrubbed the walls and floor, disposed of the gross things in the refrigerator, shook out the rugs, dusted the tops of things, and organized the random books and magazines.

Then the computer lab got its trash picked up, keyboards cleaned, floor mopped, desktops cleared, and tables dusted. It also received a huge crossword puzzle with its top squares so high up on the wall that only CCS students could ever figure out how to fill them out. Here's an early part of the process of putting it up:

CCS staff provided many of the cleaning supplies and also fuel for us in the form of Woodstock's pizza. They're wonderful.

There are many more pictures on Facebook (a public album). We had fun, and we may do this again.

Dictate II

The second installment of Dictate (our open-mic series) took place Tuesday evening, and naturally everyone had a lot of fun again.

The lovely people who read their poetry and prose were: Stacie Nellor (pictured above), Franciscus Alex Rebro, Anna Becker, Nick Crosby, Erin Johnson, Jessica Delfanti, Alyse Speyer, Brittany Farmer, Sean Rys, Mitch Shira, and me (Britta Gustafson). I may have forgotten somebody or misspelled a name, so let me know if you have a correction.

We're planning to hold the next one on February 12 with something of a "love" theme. It may not be in the Old Little Theatre this time, so watch for the Facebook event.

Update February 7, 2008: Actually, we're going to skip February 12 and instead hold one big Dictate event on February 28 in the Old Little Theater. It works out better that way.

Spiffing up Building 494

Since we care about our friendly, creaky old building and we spend a lot of time in it, there are rumors that various people may descend on CCS in a couple weeks, armed with cleaning supplies and new decorations.

You can help decide what these decorations will look like. Possible options, with suggestions welcome:

1. More graphical wall decals, which would be like the blue and black birds already around CCS. (Janie voted for the Keith Haring decals in particular.)
2. A bunch of blue tile decals arranged in interesting patterns on walls.
3. An appropriate poster or two, maybe in the lounge.
4. A giant crossword puzzle, suggested by Stacie, maybe in the computer lab.
5. Fancy light switch plates, also suggested by Stacie.

This is important because the appearance of our building affects how people feel about CCS: is it grungy or delightful? So, if you're interested in helping clean or decorate, come to meetings! Or just let one of us know somehow.

Dictate! pictures

Tonight's Dictate! kickoff was great: entertaining readings by Literature and English students and Barry Spacks, music by Amy Arani, a good-sized crowd in the Old Little Theatre, and plenty of muffins and grape juice. The series will continue with an open-mic night in two weeks.

Here are pictures from before the main event. I blame my non-fancy camera for any possible blurriness you may notice.

Alyse Speyer, Erin Johnson, Lindsay Pullin, a mostly-hidden Stacie Nellor, and Nick Crosby.

Un-leader Mitch Shira practicing on the growing crowd.

The poet of honor, the podium-mover, and the featured musician.

Hello everybody!

This glorious blog will include:

• Meeting notes
• Event announcements
• Pictures of those events
• Bits and pieces of student work
• Constructive essays and opinions
• Videos of Mitch on the grass

So, it functions like a newsletter — a way of communicating internal stuff to each other and to the outside world — but it's better. This will help fulfill our goal of sharing information with each other, and hopefully it'll help everyone else understand us better too.