Facebook and Atticus Finch

One of my mother’s favorite quotes is about Atticus Finch, the father in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird:

“Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets.”

There has been a lot of press and chatter around whether silly pictures on Facebook can cripple a new graduate’s job chances. Facebook allows me to live more publicly than my parents did, and to open up major life experiences to a wide group of friends and colleagues. As a fairly private person (who still has a LinkedIn, a Facebook, A Google Profile, and a Brazen Careerist Profile) I keep most silly pictures of myself off of Facebook and always think before changing my status (I mostly think of what my parents or cousins might comment).

What Jason Warner, who guest-wrote this post, says is that forward-looking companies won’t worry about silly pictures from weekend romps because those companies are not hiring who applicants are on the weekends–they are hiring who they are at work. He believes that companies will begin to re-clarify the line between public and private shared information, and try to ignore shared information which is private. I wonder if this is for the good.

Facebook gives me the opportunity to show that I am the same in my house as in the public street. That I am consistently the same Jessica at noon in Dupont Circle as I am at midnight in my room. Or that I am not. Facebook shows I take responsibility for all of my actions reflecting on me. Dan Savage talks about relationship resumes, finding out whether a potential partner ends relationships with scorched-earth campaigns or amicably. Facebook facilitates this life-resume checking. Every day I have to live up to what I did yesterday; Facebook just makes that accountability more public.

There are significant privacy issues surrounding Facebook-stalking someone to find out their relationship history, and public surveillance is not any way to encourage good behavior. However, with Facebook comes the opportunity to show the world we are ourselves anytime anyone should care to look.

Inspirational Quote:

“The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it – whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”–Atticus Finch, Chapter 23

FanFiction, Fan Studies, Copyright, Oh My!

I am hosting an occasional series on fanfiction, with guest posts from my best and brightest friends and colleagues. To help them out, I’ve assembled a collection of resources on fanfiction, copyright, and other forms of creative derivation.

For an overview on the history of copyright, the video and the chart in this blog post will be a good start (the video is the first Lawrence Lessig lecture I ever heard, and the chart visually depicts historical copyright extension).

For a general review on the law surrounding fanfiction, please see the Chilling Effects FAQ (Chilling Effects is run by the Electronic Frontier Foundation).

These are two of the most incredibly helpful papers I have ever read. Both are by an economist named Rufus Pollock at Cambridge University. One is on the value of the public domain (pdf). The other is on the optimal length of copyright (pdf), from an economic perspective. Amazing stuff.

FanLore has a neat fan studies wiki:

• FanLore on FanFiction
• FanLore on Vidding
• FanLore on FanArt

A great example of an academic article dealing with fanfiction and fan communities (addressing the issues of Tara’s death in Buffy).

Some recent news stories on lawsuits surrounding high-profile derivative, published works:

• J.D. Salinger is attacking a Swedish author for writing what may or may not be a sequel to Catcher in the Rye.
• There is a similiar dispute over the perpetual copyright of Peter Pan.

5 derivative copyrighted worked which–if they weren’t either riffing off of public domain works or authorized–would clearly be fanfiction (in my opinion).

1. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Elizabeth and Darcy court while fighting the undead)
2. March (the story of the absent father from Little Women)
3. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (worm’s eye view of Hamlet)
4. Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic books (more adventures of the Scoobies)
5. The Red Tent (the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob–of the multicolored dream-coat–who is briefly mentioned in Genesis; this book is called “what the Bible might have been had it been written by God’s daughters, instead of her sons“).

This series is shaping up to be incredible. I have commitments to write from an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major at MIT, a Public Policy and Computer Science dual major at William and Mary, and from Carnegie Mellon I have two Dramaturgy majors and a Directing major. Gosh I have cool friends.

Inspirational Quote:

“Slash fandom is subversive and media creators tend to hate it, if they are even aware of it.”–Judith L. Tabron

Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me (My Names and Elkmont)

Remains of Creekmore family cabin in Elkmont, TN

My full legal name is Jessica Katherine Creekmore Dickinson Goodman. Each of those names is very important to me, but “Creekmore” is the one which attaches me to the South. It was my grandmother’s maiden name, and the name of my family in Tennessee. Recently some family moved back to Knoxville, and over Spring Break my Freshman year I went down to visit them (I just found where I put the photos I took there).

While visiting, we went up to visit Elkmont in the Appalachian mountains. Elkmont was a summer community in the Appalachian mountains in Tennessee, where my grandmother and mother spent their summers as girls. All of the cabins they stayed in have been left to rot by the U.S. National Part Service* (the Sierra Club did its part in ensuring that traces of this community were destroyed). Visiting Elkmont hurt: all that is left of that community is slowly being let to rot while the U.S. National Park Service decides whether to preserve it.

The picture on the right shows the decaying front of my family’s old cabin. I grew up on stories about Elkmont–the songs J.T. sang, the spiders come upon suddenly in the sink, the intense games of charades. In high school, I became a lot more familiar with the history of Elkmont as my family helped Eleanor Dickinson, my grandmother, write a book on Elkmont (publication coming soon).

The creek is there, a nasty sign from the U.S. National Park Service (calling the cabins “chateaus” and speaking ill of the families who lived there in the summers) is still there, much of the Creekmore family cabin is still there. Wanting to feel what my mother and grandmother had felt before me at Elkmont, I took off my shoes, rolled up my jeans, and waded into Jake’s creek. I felt ageless: I was doing what Creekmores had done for more than 50 years.

Though I lived in California my whole life, I felt connected to Elkmont through those stories and the book. As I slipped on smooth, old stones which layered the creek bed, I felt those virtual roots take hold. Even when all of the cabins are rotted away, I will have a connection to that land; because I am a Creekmore.

Inspirational Quote:

“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”–De Tocqueville

*I am usually a huge fan of the National Park Service–I go camping every year if I can manage it, and take as many friends along as possible. I also am usually a fan of the Sierra Club. The Elkmont controversy seems to bring out both of those organizations’ preference for history-from-before-1900 and ecological preservation over historical preservation and local history-from-after-1900.

Defining “Splurging” (or, How I am Using Tags on Wesabe)

I recently joined Brazen Careerist, a network of young professionals (mostly with blogs). It is currently a blast–people are open, interesting, and literally within 5 minutes of finishing my profile I made contact with someone who administers a fellowship in which I am interested. Good stuff. Anyway, one of the blogs on Brazen Careerist had a neat post on the “3 White Lies We Tell Ourselves When Spending Money.” The author then asked readers to post their little white lie in the comments section. I wrote the following:

The white lie I am always fighting with is the “it doesn’t count as splurging, because I need it!” lie. The “it” can be a cab ride (instead of finding a friend to drive me), a $10 meal (when I should have packed lunch), or a nice hotel on a trip (when I would have been fine at a Best Western).

In my Wesabe tags (Wesabe is like Mint, but with a money-tracking focus) I’ve defined a “splurge” as anything for which I could have paid less. I couldn’t pay less than X for my cellphone bill, because they they would take away my phone. But I could have paid less for lunch.

This does not mean I do not continue to tell myself this lie .

To try and fight this little white lie, I have been working with Wesabe to better understand my finances: where I spend money, why I spend it, and what I can do to keep my spending sensible. I do not have money problems, nor am I in debt, but since most of my passions do not pay much, learning to live below my means will be a good life skill.

I recently took the over 30 tags I have started using, and condensed them into 8  static tags for spending:

1. bill
2. charity
3. crosscountrytravel
4. education
5. food
6. housing
7. localtravel
8. splurge

currently 4 short-term tags for spending (so I can keep track of how much I spend on short-term projects):

1. pfour
   [more on pfour]
2. qatarphotoshow
   [some images from this photoshow]
3. qatartrip
   [more info on my trip to cmu-qatar]
4. summerinternship09
   [more on my internship]

and 5 tags for income:

1. interest
2. grants
3. parents
4. refund
5. work

All of these are (fairly) objective tags–”localtravel” is for what I spend on Caltrain or the Metro, “crosscountrytravel” for what I spend on airfare. “parents” is how much money my parents give me, “work” how much I make at work.

“splurge” is the most difficult to define tag because it encompasses my most discretionary purchases. I formally defined “splurge” to cover anything that I could have spent less on. Wesabe has a great culture that supports spending that is responsible. When I take a cab, or eat out with friends, or spend money on a hotel during travel, in the back of my head I am thinking: how much is this worth to me? If I only spend $5 on lunch, I will have $5 more towards my “buy cute sandals” fund (something else which would go under “splurge”).

This is a rather radical definition of a “splurge”: most budgets I have seen, “splurge” or “fun money” or “pocket-change” or “misc” are for untracked purchases. But I rather like to track those purchases that I most enjoy making. Anyone else have a different approach?

Inspirational Quote:

“We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.” Rigoberta Menchu, Guatemala Nobel Peace Prize Winner, 1992

How to Create Pseudonyms

At my internship I write the life-stories of people whose identities are confidential. The struggle between revealing the empathetic details of a life as part of good storytelling and concealing identifying details as part of our legal and ethical obligation to our clients is a difficult one. In most of the cases I have written up, we’re talking asylum and Convention Against Torture stuff, and the names of our clients redacted: P-C-, G-M-, Y-R-. But redacted names are difficult to sympathize with, hard to really grab onto and mourn for. It was a problem I grew out of, because after internalizing their life-stories by writing about them I did not need a name to empathize. But with about 300 words per page, educated readers will spend about 30 seconds reading each of our clients’ stories, and I want to make it easy for readers to get emotionally involved, which is difficult to do with redacted names.

I started researching pseudonyms. I found that baby-name sites were my best resources. Renaming grown adults for the purposes of the website was one of the most uncomfortable jobs I have given myself this summer. The only way I could do it was to choose the names with seriousness and respect, and tried to choose names which were hopeful. P-C- is from Albania, and so I gave her a traditional Albanian name: Besa, meaning faith. G-M- is from Togo, and so I gave her Rabia, a traditional West African name, meaning breeze. Y-R- is from Guatemala, and I called her Sofia, meaning wisdom. Choosing hopeful names was my simple prayer for the well-being of men and women whose lives have held too much pain.

I see my job as bringing the stories of our clients to life. To do that effectively, and continue to conceal their identities, I needed to find meaningful pseudonyms. Working on the website is satisfying, but sometimes it bothers me that I am not really doing anything for our clients: I tell their stories but have no effect on their stories. Choosing  new, hopeful names for them gave me a chance to give their stories some peace in a tangible way.

Inspirational Quote:

“Although we are in different boats you in your boat and we in our canoe we share the same river of life.” Chief Oren Lyons, Onandaga Nation, USA

Lessons from a (not so cruddy) Customer Service Job

A good friend says a person is not a person until she has held a cruddy customer service job (the language she used should go on paninis, it is so salty). A lot of people I admire repeat some version of this, and so I am glad my weekend job is in customer service.

I am learning what it means to have a service job. Walking into my current job I have to say was prepared for an unfair boss who disregards labor rules, trying physical labor and obnoxious hazing. What I found is a bunch of guys who like bicycles, and enjoy selling bicycles. I have a fair boss who is good about breaks, I’ve not experienced any hazing, and I rather like the physical labor.

As far as I can tell, Revolution Cycles is a nicer place to work than most. But I think there is a deeper reason I am enjoying my work there: I am suited to it. I enjoy chatting with people, talking about fitness and the logistics of their lives. I enjoy learning new systems, working with my hands, and most of all, I like people-watching. I wonder if much of the misery in the customer service industry comes from bad fits–social people alone in cubicles, or solitary people serving coffee.

I am sure that a lot of people in the customer service industry wear down because they have unfair bosses, because living at minimum wage in a big city is very hard, because customers can be really wearying. But I think, for some people, customer service is just a bad fit. I remember reading a book in middle school about a society which required all of its citizens to take tests to see what they were good at, and then you had to work that job. But there were always people who were not really good at any of the jobs the state had, and so they had to keep taking the tests for their whole lives. The main character’s father is placed in this group (for political reasons I think) and he finds that most of the people there are good at things, they are just not useful things for their society. There was the man who knew everything about cloud shapes, and another very grouchy many who it turned out had a mad passion for brewing tea.

Perhaps the people who would be good at editing manuscripts but are stuck shelving TVs, or people who would thrive rushing around in a kitchen but are stuck in an office are unhappy because they are bad fits for their jobs. Their interests and their jobs do not intersect. In building my work-life balance for the first time in Washington DC, I am trying to figure out how other people do it–how they can sit all day when they need to move to be happy.

I want to practice law. I will spend most of my life sitting, reading, and writing if I go the mainstream route into that profession. I really enjoy walking, working with my hands, talking with strangers, teaching, and singing. I also enjoy writing, reading, being alone, talking with close friends,  playing boardgames,  and people-watching. It is easier to think while walking or writing, but easier to make decisions while alone or talking with strangers.

How much of each of these things do I need to do to be happy? Am I an extrovert or an introvert? Does it matter? Who can I emulate who has managed to fulfill their intellectual passion and their physical needs symbiotically?

I take notes from all of the people I watch–I heard some lawyers speak who work at an HIV/AIDS medical clinic, and have to walk around to see their clients. I have also met attorneys who spend their days driving to advise people in detention centers. I have a lawyer uncle who swims in the Pacific in the morning before going into work, and plays with his energy-rich children after work.

I am taking advice from anyone I can find, and trying to figure out what balance of these loves I need to be happy. It will probably take a lifetime.

Inspirational Quote:

“I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.”–Michael Crichton

3 Fair Use Fanworks

Is all fanfiction a violation of copyright? Can something which draws on a copyrighted work for inspiration do so without a license? Can a fanvid be transformative and therefore qualify as fair use?

Simply, fair use is the permissible, unauthorized use of copyrighted materials. Everyone reading this has benefited from fair use–every time I quote someone in a paper, read a parody, or (I would argue) read some kinds of fanfiction, I am benefiting from this legal exception to the norms of copyright restrictions.

For the purposes of this post, I would like to group fanfiction, fanart and fanvids under the term “fanworks”. Below are three fanworks which I think qualify (wholly or partially) as fair use.

Here is a Twilight/Buffy the Vampire Slayer mash-up with a good explanation of what fair use is (thanks to Anthea for the link). Also, this video is an excellent summary of why Edward could be considered a stalker:

I think this Twilight fan video is original enough to be considered fair use. I do not think the use of the music is fair, since it is simply an untransformed copy.Tying into the impressive feminist critique of the previous video, note that the song accompanying the following fanvid is “Run” by Snow Patrol, aka, “As if You Had a Choice.” A neat summary of the disempowerment which dogs female Twilight characters. Read the YouTube description for a plot summary of the following video–this creator took a brief mention in the book (Twilight by Stephanie Meyers) about a previous relationship between vampires James and Alice, and spent months tracking down footage of those characters’ actors or lookalikes to tell the story. Impressive effort and  carry-through. Enjoy:

This is a collection of fanart for the epic fantasy series by George R.R. Martin. Again, I don’t think the use of the song is fair.

Inspirational Quote:

“Common sense is not so common.”–Voltaire

Learning to Network (or, the art of being social)

Networking is like making crepes: effortless to some (usually benefiting from years of practice), or a crusty, burnt mess. Penelope Trunk linked to one of the best articles I have found describing the right attitude for networking is found here. At this point, I have read yards of pixels about why people should network (it is how to recruit, how to get hired, how to get work done, waka waka waka). But missing from those narratives is what I found in this one: a fully realized networking lifestyle looks like.

It made it that much easier to shake hands and hand out business cards to the other CMU Alums at last week’s event (after 1 semester all students of CMU are officially alums). More on that later.

PS: One of the big reasons to intern in Washington DC is for the opportunities to network. Here is an interesting article on the economics and ethics of unpaid (intern) labor.

Inspirational Quote:

“Life is a succession of moments, to live each one is to succeed.”–Corita Kent

Truman Pieces (3 of 3)

Please see this post explaining why I am posting this here.

Question 8 of the Truman Scholarship Application7. Describe one specific example of your leadership. (The writer of your letter of recommendation re: Leadership Abilities and Potential must confirm this experience.)

With the sand barely shaken from my shoes, I am back in Pittsburgh with a mission: design and mount a photo display in my dorm by the end of the year. It is March 2009, I have just returned from a week-long trip to Carnegie Mellon Qatar with the IMPAQT group. I had already posted my photos on flickr and blogged about them, but I wanted to reach a much larger audience: that of the 700-1000 people who walk through Morewood Gardens every day. With my beautiful borrowed camera, a loan from a CMU-Q student exemplifying Qatari hospitality, I had taken over 1000 pictures while in Qatar. With 10 people in the IMPAQT group, and most of them skilled photographers, we reveled in documenting our experience as we introduced ourselves to Gulf culture. Back in the states, the price of our documentary exuberance came due: we had to sort the photos.

I believe photos can communicate commonalities of humanity which speeches and textbooks cannot. That is why I and my team worked to choose the more evocative photos we could to help student in Pittsburgh .

The easy communication we had enjoyed on the trip started to break down as homework piled up—I found email communication was simply inadequate for the kind of group communication and compromise we needed to get this show up. I asked each member of the group to choose 30 photos to show to the group in one of our brief meetings, as I wanted the show to have a strong group vision. We ended up with 12 amazing pictures.

No one had ever tried to mount a gallery show in my dorm’s common space before. When I first proposed to use the space, its walls were covered with old movie posters and vintage ice-cream ads: no student work. As a team, we cut and spray-mounted the photos, and started hanging them on the walls. With one week until the end of school, everyone was terribly busy, but we made our deadline and the show was mounted.

It is nearly 7000 miles from Pittsburgh to Doha. But because of my team’s photo-show, CMU-Pittsburgh students have a common visual language with CMU-Qatar students. They have both seen the souqs (markets), looked at the Doha skyline at night, seen mid-day prayers. To be true global citizens, we need these commonalities.

Inspirational Quote:

“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.”–Lawrence Clark Powell

Truman Pieces (2 of 3)

Please see this post explaining why I am posting this here.

Question 8 of the Truman Scholarship Application

Describe a recent particularly satisfying public service activity (do not repeat experience described in 7).

I wince a little inside when a woman pulls her daughter away from me early on a Saturday morning. She is a pro-life protester and I am a clinic escort helping a woman walk to Pittsburgh’s downtown Planned Parenthood. I was not expecting a smile, but I am still not used to the hate in her eyes. I escort from 7:30am to 10:30am a few Saturdays a month. It is one the hardest things I do.

This morning is during Lent, and so there are around fifty protesters on a half a block of sidewalk; about 7 for every escort. I guide the older woman I am escorting into the clinic, and walk back down the line of protesters. Some pray quietly, some mutter ugly things, and the little girl swings her rosaries impatiently. There is a woman on a megaphone shouting through the clinic doors. I get to my corner and wait, chatting with the other escorts and jiggling to keep my feet warm in this Pittsburgh February. With only 10 or 15 clients on a Saturday and only the 15 second walk from my corner to the clinic to occupy me, most of my morning is waiting.

I do not escort because I am pro-choice. Something as abstract as being pro-choice (or pro-life) would not get me up at 6:30am in the morning. I get out of bed on those Saturday morning because I am a blackbelt. For 14 years I was trained to use my body to protect others, and to never be a bully. I escort because some of the protesters are bullies and I can do something to protect the women they are bullying. As morally difficult as the abortion debate is, I have no trouble choosing who I stand with outside the clinic: I am with the women being screamed at, never with the screamers. When a protester stands in the way of a woman walking into the clinic, I am standing next to her. When a protester is screaming “Mommy, Mommy, don’t kill me, Mommy!” I  am the calm voice chatting about the weather. When a protester pushes me to get at a couple, I stand firm and keep going.

As I wait, I can feel the rule of law strong around me: the first amendment protecting the protesters, the Bubble Zone law protecting the clinic and the patients, the normal laws which guard traffic and restaurants and construction. If I had to stand here, knowing the law did not support me, I do not know how long I could keep escorting. But knowing that the rules are designed to be fair and balanced, knowing I can rely on the police if someone gets out of hand—knowing, as Sandra Day O’Conner said, “what the rules are”, that makes it possible for me to escort.

It’s 10:30am. All of the clients made it to the clinic and the protesters are dispersing. The tension of the morning seems to ease away as protesters and escorts alike walk to busses and cars. I get home, put on my karate uniform, and go to teach my morning class. Escorting is the hardest things I do. Nevertheless, I escort because I must stand beside those who are without power. It is how I was trained.

Inspirational Quote:

Napoleon Bonaparte – “Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.”