This has been a terrible week. I’ll just quote from my weekly newsletter:
This has been a terrible week, made only barely survivable with the gift of some booze-filled truffles sent to me by my dear friend Sean. Partly the terribleness resulted from the steady stream of awfulness coming out of Washington DC (and Helsinki) and Silicon Valley. Partly it was the steady stream of rainwater gushing out of the ceiling and walls of our apartment bathroom. I think the apartment will need to be completely gutted. At this rate, our country is going to be as well.
It started to rain in our bathroom on Tuesday. Last night, it started to rain in the kitchen. (Buckets of rain.) This apartment is not habitable, even though the superintendent and the landlord seem quite unconcerned with the water damage.
Kin and I have been talking quite a bit lately about “what’s next” – do we stay in New York when our lease is up in October? We were leaning towards staying because moving sucks. But now it seems as though our hand has been forced. We can’t stay in this apartment – not even for another week if I am judging the weather forecast correctly.
I think we’re going to head back to Hermosa Beach. I mean, I can make some jokes about the lack of rainfall in Los Angeles, if nothing else. Or the plan this morning, at least, is we are buying some boxes today and starting to pack and then probably getting a UHaul in the next 24 hours or so and then driving. Somewhere. West.
This past week in New York has defeated me, just when I had started to forget how close the winter came to defeating me. I can’t handle the humidity. I certainly can’t handle it when the humidity’s seeping out from the water-soaked walls of my home. I have a book to write, and I cannot work like this. I cannot live like this. I consider myself fortunate that I do not have to. Kin and I can work and live anywhere.
All that being said, I actually made a huge breakthrough with my book this week – with how I’m conceptualizing the scope and “the story.” The book has to be my focus right now, and I just don’t think I can focus under my current living conditions.
Travel 
- ???
- Upcoming week: ???
Hack Education 
Writing Here and Elsewhere 
- HEWN, No. 275 via tinyletter.com
Teaching Machines 
- A Progress Report
- That progress report was written on Wednesday and towards the end of the week, as I tried to do some journal and newspaper research on Norman Crowder, I made some big realizations about the scope of the book. I’m going to try to write about that in more detail today. I also finally made contact with someone from his family. He’s such an important figure, and yet always brushed over in education technology histories – you get a paragraph (maybe) about how his teaching machines were different than Skinner’s. There’s a bigger story to tell there… and I’m the person to do it.
Other Projects 
- I updated pigeons.hackeducation.com with links to a couple of pigeon stories: 1 and 2
- I owe revisions to people. It isn’t happening for the next week or so, my friends – I’m sorry
Reading and Viewing 
- I read Computers in Education and Computer Environments for Children
- I’m re-reading Mismeasure of Man
- I started watching Season 3 of Last Chance U
Icon credits: The Noun Project