The Puerto Rico Connection

The Puerto Rico Connection
The Puerto Rico Connection

A podcast and effort to show how people around the world care for Puerto Rico, that all started with a tweeted idea #care4sagdrao to send postcards to our colleague Antonio Vantaggiato and students at Universidad Sagrado del Córazon in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Episodes

  1. 11/29/2020

    Episode 15: Orange You Glad It’s Pumpkin Soup?

    https://prconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/ep015.mp3 Antonio and I recorded this episode on November 2, 2020. Was there anything of importance happening that day? Well, for me, it was a day to make soup from left over Halloween pumpkins, so you get kitchen pans rattling and oven buzzer actions going off as the orange bits were subjected to high temperatures. We spoke only of He Who Shall not Be named in critical terms… Okay, we talked a little bit about the US Elections, and what things looked like for Antonio and other US Citizens in Puerto Rico, who sad to say, have no voice in voting for the President or representation in Congress. How do we go from the Audacity of Hope to… the orange pumpkin baking in my oven? Alan gave a hearty recommendation for Pete Sousa’s The Way I See It Antonio shared how things were going for his INF115 (New Media) students, and how they still got so much out of their podcasting projects as well as the Daily photo activity (going on now, jump in!) Una Foto Cada Día. He also shared thoughts of rejuvenating his ~2011-2103 project The Zen of Teaching maybe as a new podcast series? See the original web site as well as a Wiki which Still Lives. This warms my heart as this was what I remember early or even first as my encounter with Antonio’s work. So by putting it here, maybe there’s a little extra pressure. Speaking of pressure, Alan completely fell down on our mission to up the frequency of our podcast production. The files sat in the pantry way too long, sorry Antonio! But at least the pumpkin soup was tasty and the Orange Menace is also on the shelf of expired items. Vote for Soup! Adding just this line to nudge the podcast rss feed…. Featured Image:

    37 min
  2. 10/26/2020

    Episode 14: I Lose You!

    https://prconnection.cogdog.casa/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/pr-connection-ep-14.mp3 I Lose You …is my 6th-grade-English equivalent to “I’m losing you”, the distress signal we use to mean there is a broken-line communication problem. In this case, thanks to Audacity editing I was able to lessen that issue as we faced poor Internet connection just when Alan and I were recording our 14th episode. It’s a common issue, now we are Zooming all over–but, as Alan says, it’s a sort of a miracle if the networks are still functioning given the amount of traffic any day. So, welcome to our 14th episode, and enjoy it as much as I did. The frequency of the PR Connection podcast has been steadily increasing, so I’m trying to publish this not so late after the recording. Done with Zencastr.org, a beautiful platform that records people’s tracks separately but perfectly in synch–even when someone drops off for a little. 2020/366/298 All Along The Split Rail Fence Line #flickr https://t.co/7vEOJDvb1X — Alan Levine (@cogdog) October 26, 2020 So, we rtalked a bit about life in quarantine, which I say “Keeps me in sync with another part of the world outside of classes etc.”, of COVID-19 Testing and lockdown That’s pretty fine, I hear myself as saying… Then we talk about Photo habits, particularly about Alan’s One Photo Every Day challenge, where he publishes 365–or-so imageas a year (on Flickr) , and also on Instagram. “You gotta find one thing that matters,” he replies… And then we talk about Zoom (what else) and how fantastic it is that the network infrastructure has not collapsed under the pressure. It’s pleasure to have these conversations together with Alan, as often as possible, and as well-recorded as possible! Now, please, go vote! “Vote for guy who respects women” https://t.co/z1Cq4TdanK — Alan Levine (@cogdog) October 26, 2020

    39 min
  3. 09/15/2020

    Episode 13: Feeling Lucky

    https://prconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/ep013.mp3 Do you feel lucky? Antonio and I do. It’s been almost exactly 3 months since our last podcast (is this a confession booth?). Antonio and I have expectations of a new frequency. Maybe we spend too much time editing and writing detailed show notes. So the new model is all about S-P-E-E-D. We record, insert into our Audacity template that has opening and closing music, and then we just pop out an mp3. Leave the gaffes and ums. And then no fancy editing here. I will only spend enough time writing this to wait for the file to be sent up to the cloud. We tried a new setup I have been using for another project. A trick I learned from Terry Greene of Gettin’ Air. We record in Zencastr (I am on the cheapo freebie version) which saves each attendee’s voice as a separate audio. I have it connected to my DropBox so the files just show up. It quite saved our butts this time. About 1/3 the way in, Antonio’s router went kerflooie (technical term) and his audio went off track and then disappeared. He returned and the recording kept going. Amazingly, Zencastr kept all of the audio in sync. There was one spot where he was talking and I was talking but we could not hear each other. That was the one edit, I zeroed out my audio trying to talk while Antonio was gone. Uh oh, audio is done! So is my editing. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as Antonio and I did. If this thing takes off, the monthly costs might top 50 cents. As promised one link shared that Antonio requested (I will grab it from the tweet he saw). Impressively done. Doing a 100 word story podcast a day since 2005. Until he dies. https://t.co/BAIH3QqiHl pic.twitter.com/BjsP8EeAcb — Alan Levine (@cogdog) September 14, 2020 Us lucky podcasts could only aspire to this kind of daily habit. Image Credit: Lucky 13 flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

    43 min
  4. 06/16/2020

    Episode 12: The No Knead Podcast, 3 Months To Rise

    https://prconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/ep012.mp3 Some recipes claim to be easy. This podcast was in the oven for almost three months, and the fault is all mine. Antonio and I recorded this episode on March 21, way back in the early part of pandemic lockdown. Then I just let it sit. But in a way, it’s interesting to hear us talk while this was a bit of a novelty, not the dread filled mire it has become. Oh, was that pessimistic? No worries, because my colleague and friend Antonio is a primo optimist. Just listen to him! I did learn some Italian, OMS in Italian, is “Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità” or what you might say, as in WHO (World Health Organization). Antonio was understandably concerned about his 90+ year old mother in Italy. Antonio described that in Puerto Rico there were night time curfews. Students at his University. Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, had to leave their dorms and return to home on the island. He says that things at Sagrado were done in orderly manner for lockdown. This was his preparation week for the “online pivoting” (insert ballet puns). He noted that after Hurricane Maria, Sagrado was first in Puerto Rico to reinstate classes as hybrid (under tents), so they were used to dealing with calamity. Because that seems pretty regular there, be it from natural forces or the boot of the US Government. He described the hashtag #EsteVirusLoParamosUnidos or “We Stop this virus united” – Check out the 150,000 photos tagged on instagram. But as “always an optimist” Antonio was ready to do remote teaching. I shared a great retweet form Moia, and 80+ year old high spirited professor from Mexico I got to know form the UDG Agora Project Este es un virusito que anda buscando un descuidadito, pero si te cuidas, no va a encontrar un nidito y se va a morir solito. @ArturoZaldivarL @lopezobrador_ @BeatrizGMuller @nestora_salgado @SusanaHarp @NapoleonGomezUr @galvanochoa @AristeguiOnline @lydiacachosi @cogdog https://t.co/sIceH0ENrv — moiacost (@moiacost) March 21, 2020 Antonio noted the first COVID-19 death in Puerto Rico happened recently, a tourist from a cruise ship. I wondered if there was any singing from balconies in Puerto Rico. Antonio talked about planning for teaching his Italian film class– he was using some sites for co-watching films, and that he had plans to watch soon a Mario Bava movie with Jim Groom (who blogged it thus). Antonio’s strategies including Mixing asynchronous and synchronous. His INF115 New Media students, like always, publish to blog class summaries, with blog syndication to the main site, doing daily photos, and a class podcast project (see a href="https://blogs.netedu.

    55 min
  5. 10/24/2019

    Episode 11: The Broken One

    https://prconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/ep011.mp3 In which Alan & Antonio deal with strong cellular deficiency And they talk aimlessly about connection (quite rightly) and other high-level stuff. Hello, planet Earth, do you hear? Instead of raising the bar, we have the lowest possible quality. Zero. But I love these conversations a little more every time, because it’s nice to talk tech (and other stuff) with Alan. And please listen through the end since he has got a special surprise with the outro. So this episode seems a weird radio program from the 70’s, with some joker at some place having fun of listeners. The worst podcast ever. How can I not worry, Antonio? Charting our frequency? Seems to be increasing. [What are we talking about?] The battery. Welcome back. OMG. Talking disruptions. And I keep forgetting the English language. Radio… photography… Tom Woodward‘s WordPress Timeline JS Plugin useful to visualize an interactive timeline of blogs. And Fleabag?? I almost watch no tv. What? I love #Fleabag. I love that a show about a dry-witted, grief-stricken, hypersexual, depressed person is even getting attention. I love that Phoebe Waller-Bridge won for her performance. I just love #Fleabag. One of the most perfect shows I’ve ever seen. #Emmys2019 pic.twitter.com/zWRGilieaX — Michael Boo-nlein👻🎃 (@MichaelBCompany) September 23, 2019 Then there’s Lucy. Of course the broken connections means Alan thinks I’m talking about the other Lucy from I Love Lucy. But no, at the time I didn’t know nothin’ about this Lucy #2. For me the one and only is the One From The Peanuts, a memory from my adolescence. And talking about comics: You want the Italians? Diabolik, Satanik, Alan Ford, Jacovitti… Yes, Satanik was drawn by the very Max Bunker (Luciano Secchi) of Alan Ford and written by Magnus (Roberto Raviola). Last, there is Jacovitti, a genius telling Western-style stories, with dumb cigarette-smoking horses, pencils, salami-on-foot and worms on the ground. I learn that Alan looks at his browser’s cookies (to check privacy etc.) Usage of facebook. Usefullness? I find myself saying: No other medium to contact far-away friends besides calling them FTW?? Alan Tweets In ALL CAPS: I'M A VICTIM OF THIS PHONY CONSTITUTION THING. — Alan Levine (@cogdog) October 22, 2019 Then, there’s Terry Greene‘s podcast Gettin’ Air from VoiceEd.ca,

    26 min
  6. 09/22/2019

    Episode 10: Low Frequency

    https://prconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/ep010.mp3 It’s been 148 days since our last episode; does the low frequency of publication mean we are no longer a podcast? Antonio and I don’t care; we have abolished rules before. But we did manage to record this one on September 4, and looking at we have a calendar item on September 23 to record another, it was time to push the editing into high gear. Antonio was sitting outside on campus at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, so you will hear the sounds of students walking by. And birds. And street traffic. Apparently, he is without office while he is assigned a new one (“like a Zombie”), so he roams campus. I did talk some about the possibility of ceasing the publication of our audio on Amazon S3, this in the face of getting am 18 cent bill last month. But I decided to leave things as they are. If we get a spike in audience, where maybe it costs $2.00 a month, I will reconsider. Antonio described the podcasting assignments he is doing this semester with his New Media INF115 students. Again they will be collaborating on their shared podcast show, La Situación. Antonio described how he was planning to have his students discuss the political story that took place over the summer, where public protests led to the forcing out of their governor Ricardo Rosselló. He shared his observations how the public protests were heavily attended by young people and very peaceful. I was rather impressed with the ability of a population that was able to unseat unfit leaders. Maybe it can happen elsewhere (cough cough). Antonio will again have students do their version of the DS106 Daily Create, or what he calls sting to Una Foto Cada Día (see more about his plans in his recent blog post). He mentioned coming across a great Canadian Podcast, which turned out to be my colleague and friend Terry Greene’s Gettin’ Air. Small internet world. Right after the show, I DM-ed Terry in twitter and suggested doing an episode featuring Antonio. It’s in the works. We rounded out the show with a quasi plan for the next one… and it may be a better frequency! Technically 148 days is the Period, time between cycles. The inverse of that is the frequency, converted to seconds, that is 0.00000078 Hz — Alan Levine (@cogdog) September 23, 2019 Featured Image: Image from page 799 of “The Bell System technical journal” (1922) flickr photo by Internet Archive Book Images shared with no copyright restriction (Flickr Commons)

    32 min
  7. 04/26/2019

    Episode 9: Black holes and links

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/prconnection/ep009.mp3 At last I get to work on the latest, ninth episode of The Puerto Rico Connection. But on the New Media class on Thursday 25th, there was no connection. Alan tried his best to give a talk to my students. Unfortunately the networks did not collaborate. My students and I tried every possible route: Wifi, Ethernet and cellular hotspots, to no avail. Blame the Internetz! Until Alan found the culprit, We know who to blame. El Orange Chupacabra — Alan Levine (@cogdog) April 26, 2019 See? In the previous post (Preparing for the 9th episode) there are the ideas Alan and I played with during our fine conversation. In fact, he was smart to gear it towards the recent first-image-ever of a black hole. From there, it was a freewheeling talk on what’s a photo of a black hole vs. an image; the singularity idea of a point in spacetime where not even light can escape from; and the digression to the limit when we discussed what would happen if we reduced the podcast’s timing to zero, little by little? It’s a joke, but mathematicians use this “limit” idea pretty often and with beautiful results. So, how would we open and close a recording which lasts exactly zero point zero time? If it were 0.0001 seconds, we might image being very very very quick. But with no time at all, would it still make sense? A line, if you reduce its length progressively up to zero, will become a point. It makes sense as a point but it’s difficult to see a point as an abstract line taken to the limit. But a recording? Of course it’s non-sense, but one it was fun to talk about! Anyhow, see the previous post to read a bit more on this. On the episode we talked about other stuff, of course. No spoilers here. And we said we would publish here the links we collect and share and we’d like to discuss on the air. We didn’t discuss them on this episode, though, since we hadn’t had a chance to read them beforehand. So, it’s for next time. Here, I’ll paste a copy of the feed coming from the shared tag prcon: www.diigo.com/rss/tag/prcon?tab=153 where the tab=153 means to get only the recent links. Now, the diigo page for these links (diigo.com/tag/prcon?tab=153) would not return the description of each link. Fortunately, the Firefox add-on Want My RSS does. And this is the result. To activate Hypothes.is and annotate this page please, click below, then activate the tool by clicking on the arrow at the northeast corner of the page: Annotate this Online tools for random words, Word to HTML, other free tools. 4/14/2019, 3:08:40 PM This website features text and html changing, converting, and generating tools designed to save you time making web pages or preparing content for web publishing projects or other groovy stuff. Or even use the site to make a random choice. If you’ve… Tags: IFTTT Pinboard webdesign a href="https://www.diigo.

    30 min
  8. 01/15/2019

    Episode 8: Baby, It’s Cold!

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/prconnection/ep008.mp3 Talking to Antonio in December he made it sound like he was in a scene from The Day After Tomorrow. He was claiming it was “freezing” in his office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but he did provide some photographic evidence. View this post on Instagram This is my frozen cold self while talking with Alan @cogdog for our Puerto Rico Connection podcast today. My office is freezing! Podcast at http://prconnection.cogdog.casa. #prconnection A post shared by Antonio (@avunque) on Dec 6, 2018 at 9:25am PST Meanwhile, here at home in Saskatchewan, I’m sitting in a t-shirt but looking out the window at snow. View this post on Instagram While @avunque is bundled up in parka down in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in this mornings podcast recording with him from home in Mortlach, Saskatchewan, I was warm in t-shirt with snow out the window. Next episode to be published at https://prconnection.cogdog.casa A post shared by Alan Levine (@cogdog) on Dec 6, 2018 at 9:32am PST So it goes, but we were overdue, as usual for another podcast. And despite my best intentions to get this episode published in 2018, the holidays we spoke of put the kabosh on that. And with a mid recording interruption when one of us lost our internet connection, we lost track on timing. There goes the Twenty Minute Rule, trashed again. After some opening banter about holiday celebrations, we started with the oft repeated / never proven Blogging is Dead assertion. I had this on my mind having just again blogged about blogging. Is it pointless incessant barking, or is it a sleeping dog? But more than our own use as grey beard bloggers, we focused more about our use with students blogging,

    36 min
  9. 10/24/2018

    Episode 7: Maria Plus One Year (and rule busting)

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/prconnection/ep007.mp3 Yes, there was a summer long length of time since episode 6 of the Puerto Rico Collection (just published yesterday), but we are back in action. I was moved into action seeing Antonio’s post on September 20 titled Hurricane María–The flashback: A lot has been said and written on hurricane María and our experience of it and our experience of its aftermath. Today, exactly one year after its passage, let me commemorate it and all the students who with me have stepped through such a hard time. Today we watched hare at Sagrado the premiére of my friend Sonia Fritz’s documentary Después de María. Las 2 orillas (After Maria. The Two Shores). Of course I–and all the public within the theater–was moved. Impossible to retain the wave of emotions while the images passed by. But they were not images of wind and rain and water and debris. Those we know too well: In fact, more or less at this very moment one year ago I was working with my neighbors to clean up our street, just hours after the hurricane left us. This is what started this whole podcast concept, first with the idea of sending postcards of care to Antonio (published October 13, 2017) and our first podcast on November 11. Connectivity was not reliable enough them for a conversation, so Antonio and I did segments by posting and replying audio files on a Google Drive. What has happened to Antonio and his students in Puerto Rico since? That is today’s topic, and why I reached out with an email titled “Not an Anniversary” as it was really nothing to celebrate. We started with Antonio recalling the scene of destruction, with no electricity, he observed from the roof of the student center at his campus in San Juan, Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. He reports the campus is fine, although there are still roofs of some buildings that have not been repaired, mainly because payment has been slow from insurance companies. More generators have been purchased for the future. He described when flying in by plane now you will see a lot of FEMA blue rooftops where the roofs are plastic tarps. Electricity is restored to most of the island, but he notes that the island of Vieques still only has power from generators. Antonio reports people on campus are doing fine; his Fundamentos de Informática (INF103) students are working on media projects documenting their Hurricane Maria stories which should be on the site soon. Everyone has the phenomenon in their minds. But I don’t want to say it’s over. It’s not. There’s still a lot of things in the air. We still have a fiscal board that oversees everything here. He referenced the stories told in the documentary by his colleague Sonia Fritz; check out the trailer. I asked Antonio if it feels like the world has forgotten about Puerto Rico. As nice as he is, Antonio stays positive- he feels there is more attention and awareness of the situation in Puerto Rico. He had about 6 or 7 students who did leave Puerto Rico and he worked with some of them to help them finish their students, but there are others he has never heard from. We moved on to hear about Antonio’s two month summer visit...

    48 min
  10. 10/20/2018

    Episode 6: Reclaiming The End of Semester

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/prconnection/ep006.mp3 This podcast is being published after quite some time from its recording, due to Antonio’s Reclaiming The End of Semester (hence, the awesome title). Not only did he take a long free time with his mother in Italy, far away from his official duties (but still working somehow…), but he has been also been detached from the social networks that he so adamantly insists teaching with & about. After saying the usual Hola, Alan and Antonio start this episode talking about the long and winding and meaningful road trip Alan had been doing across Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, up to beautiful Canada. They let him pass through the border, apparently without questions. He Who Hath No Fame! Who, Alan? So they begin talking about the end of semester, and Antonio’s compiling his students’ most interesting work (through their syndicated blogs), which will be published soon(er or later). Alan asks about the hurricane’s lingering effects on his students and Antonio says this has been a very pleasant semester, especially when compared with the last under Maria’s effects. Still, there was still many so-called no-power pockets, particularly in the south-east up in the mountain zones, which help Alan remember the bubble… meaning the privileged area around San Juan, where residents have had a little break others haven’t. Here is the post he did last year with close-up photos of his students. flickr photo by avunque shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license Antonio speaks highly about the many ONG’s and particularly Casa Pueblo (the Organización de Autogestión Comunitaria) in the town of Adjuntas, which has been providing people with solar-powered alternatives and built a solar-powered cinema. I couldn’t help saying that one needs to live in a bubble to survive, when such horrific  events happen and when a country is subject to an oppressive regime from a Fiscal Board that stands above the elected government itself. Alan did talk about the incredible generosity of Parisa Mehran and her students,  who we had the fortune of crossing our paths with–here is a shot of her students’ bookmarks. Bookmarks from Parisa in Japan! flickr photo by avunque shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license And here is her tweet pointing to her post recounting everything. Hello and thanks, Parisa! Connecting to #PuertoRico thro #AR #VR #MAVRa href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/care4sagrado?

    21 min

About

A podcast and effort to show how people around the world care for Puerto Rico, that all started with a tweeted idea #care4sagdrao to send postcards to our colleague Antonio Vantaggiato and students at Universidad Sagrado del Córazon in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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