Here in Lycoming County, I cannot get tested because I do not have symptoms [yet?] I am 72, have a compromised immune system and a COPD. If I want to get tested, the closest location is an hour and a half away each way. I do not have a car. In Williamsport, no busses outside the city limits. No public train services. The leading cab company in town has closed. The Williamsport Regional Airport used to be served publicly only by American Airlines, which used to do a terrible job, now no job, plus it is bankrupt.Coming soon, the death rate per capital where I live will make NYC seem like a clam bank by comparison.
“Mandarin is by far the largest of the seven or ten Chinese dialect groups, spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area, stretching from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. This is generally attributed to the greater ease of travel and communication.
“We had two 3-ring notebooks in the office – Bob Price, fresh from his ministerial training, labeled the one with the Regulations the Mishnah and the one with the Interpretive Memoranda the Gemara.
“But we didn’t use the Act much – we mainly used the Regulations instead. We had a subscription so the Selective Service System would send us updates to the Regulations and new Memoranda as they appeared.
“I took a lot of people through the CO process, including many of my friends – Joel Solkoff, for example, and Geoff Greene. I was pretty rigorous in exploring the issues. You say you don’t believe in the use of force? How about using force to open a window? And so on Socratically until we got to what the man really believed. In many cases he was not quite sure what he believed. We were careful not to maneuver people into positions which satisfied the law if those positions did not truly reflect their beliefs. A lot of what I did in CO counseling was help people, who may not have been any more certain than I was when I filled out my own form, figure out just what they really did believe.
“We were very good also at technical details. Don’t ask for the form until you’ve prepared answers to the questions first. A teaching job will (or won’t) get you a II-A because. You’re too old for a statutory II-S, you need Local Board permission, and given your circumstances here’s what you might say in your request. This I-A may look scary but it doesn’t mean you’re about to be drafted, only reclassified. And lots more of the same. It was great training for a lawyer and I think it is the reason I was later admitted to Penn Law despite my spotty academic record.
“We also counseled people who wanted to break the law – by not registering, by refusing induction, by burning their draft cards, or by fleeing to Canada. We were very scrupulous not to tell people to break the law, but we did tell them very specifically what was involved, what was legal and what was not, what they could expect if they did what they were planning to do. We urged people at least to consider using lawful methods first – do you need to ignore the classification process and get prosecuted if you can qualify as a CO or get a deferment or an exemption? There were conscientious reasons why people might want to do this, and we respected them – we just wanted to be sure people understood what they were doing and knew the full range of their options.”
I am a 72 year old paraplegic, I do not have spleen and have a COPD diagnosis.
Critically, I needed to have the battery for my pacemaker replaced within the next month or I will get very sick. My pacemaker keeps me alive, Without a pacemaker, I probably would be dead by the end of the day, With it, I can function well for 10 years. Nearly twenty years ago, a surgeon inserted the pacemaker shortly after a heart attack.
My Hero https://www.susquehannahealth.org/doctors/sree-hari-kesan-md
My 2001 recovery took place at Philadelphia’s superb Thomas Jefferson Hospital. My excellent cardiologist surgeon also inserted a stent which continues to hold my heart walls up so blood arrives unimpeded.
Several
My 2001 recovery took place at Philadelphia’s superb Thomas Jefferson Hospital. My excellent cardiologist surgeon also inserted a stent which continues to hold my heart walls up so blood arrives unimpeded.
My 2001 recovery took place at Philadelphia’s superb Thomas Jefferson Hospital. My excellent cardiologist surgeon also inserted a stent which continues to hold my heart walls up so blood arrives unimpeded. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/pacemaker/about/pac-20384689
Every ten years or so, the pacemaker requires a new battery. Medicare being Medicare insists that I wait a lengthy time between the period when I become sick and the time I die.
This is the government’s notion of just in time delivery.
Last week, a health worker in my local hospital here in rural PA where the place is all too briefly empty, tested my pacemaker.
I have one month before I become very ill. I remember how ill because 10 years ago I endured the wait.
This time, under Medicare regulations, I might not die until August.
In the interim, the sickness coupled with a compromised immune system will put me at greater risk.
Further, by then the now empty hospital will be filled with Corona virus victims making routine surgery the moral equivalent of death.
Wikipedia: In 1968, a series of protests at Columbia University in New York City were one among the various student demonstrations that occurred around the globe in that year. The Columbia protests erupted over the spring of that year after students discovered links between the university and the institutional apparatus supporting the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as their concern over an allegedly segregated gymnasium to be constructed in the nearby Morningside Park. The protests resulted in the student occupation of many university buildings and the eventual violent removal of protesters by the New York City Police Department.
Wikipedia: In 1968, a series of protests at Columbia University in New York City were one among the various student demonstrations that occurred around the globe in that year. The Columbia protests erupted over the spring of that year after students discovered links between the university and the institutional apparatus supporting the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as their concern over an allegedly segregated gymnasium to be constructed in the nearby Morningside Park. The protests resulted in the student occupation of many university buildings and the eventual violent removal of protesters by the New York City Police Department.
I was arrested twice at the 1968 student demonstrations at Columbia.
On April 30th I was arrested with my live-in girlfriend (in violation of Barnard College dormitory policy) Vicki Ruth Cohen. We were arrested in Mathematics Hall–the last of the buildings to be liberated by the police. Consequently, the pissed off New York City Police–generally a commendable group–were forced to act poorly on that occasion.
Boiling down the Six Demands (which I still support), there were, as Wikipedia points out lucidly, only three:
1 End Columbia’s shameful involvement in researching ways to kill Vietnamese.
2 Withdraw the gymnasium from Morning Side Park because it was architecturally a monument to racism; i.e. students and faculty entered through the nifty front door; members of the community; via. African-Americans, enter the back door at the bottom of the hill.
3. Do not punish the students; because why should we have been punished for demonstrating against the Vietnam War and Columbia’s racism: Amnesty. [Everybody got amnesty but me.]
Lost within our reminiscences was this reality. The student demonstrators—after taking over:
University President Grayson Kirk’s Office Loe Memorial Library
Hamilton Hall
Mathematics Hall
Avery Hall
and even the dope smokers at Fayerweather Hall (where in addition to weddings, sex also was reportedly taken place this was a demonstration by stuck-in-the-mud prudes who had not yet met (mind-meld) style
Jerry Ruben—one of the surprisingly small number of outside agitators SDS sent us while SDS had persuaded the press incorrectly that Mark Rudd was our leader. We were our leader.
Regarding the amnesty deal, I was one of the few students who did not get the deal. If you were arrested once at the spring 1968 Columbiademonstrations, free pass. Charges dropped. Record expunged.No deal if you were arrested in any of the two subsequent demonstrations.There were nearly-one thousand students. Men and women arrested holding hands and freeking the police out in a way that demonstrated why so many members of my class are named partners in establishment law firms.
The then gender segregated Columbia boys and Bernard girls understood in some visceral way that it drove the police crazy (many of whom had daughters that age in their homes) to see the brazen way so many Barnard women had adopted the fashion of the time: Flaunting the fact that they were bra-less, carelessly left their blouses only partially buttoned revealing other things, they had not shaving under their arms.
The vast-majority had enjoyed their first arrest but were in no way eager for the next. When we emerged from The Tombs, there was the Columbia strike–held outside in beautiful weather and in several neighborhood bars. Students were learning Greek in the Golden Rule. The media loved it. There were moments when Newsweek, The New York Times, and other publications (which have since redeemed themselves) combined to render of version of fake news that would make me sound like POTUS 45.++++ Unfortunately, I was also arrested in the Third Bust. Students had again taken over Hamilton Hall. This time black and white together. Police came almost instantly—with horses, of course.
The Dean announced students arrested inside Hamilton Hall would be expelled. I was arrested outside Hamilton Hall. I was beaten up. Put in the Tombs with a cast of characters out of Becket [an ice cream salesman wearing his white uniform– change device still around his belt as he stared through thick prison bars].
Later, I was indicted by a grand jury charged with conspiracy to commit riot with three other people I had not met until we were arrested together.Because I had rioted on the outside of Hamilton Hall, I was not expelled but graduated from Columbia in 1969 with a major in Medieval European History. The spring semester (when I was arrested twic) in 1968 ; the only semester I made dean’s list for praiseworthy academic performance. More than a year after everyone else got out from the First Bust, so did I. I was released from the first arrest simply because the district attorney had gotten sick of the whole thing.
The worst part was Jerry Rubin. He was in our group and I had to see a lot of him.My indictment for conspiracy to riot [I had rioted but did not conspired to do so; rioting just came over me suddenly and never again] involved initially my attorney William Kunstler.
Unfortunately, Kunstler was the worst kind of attorney for this kind of thing because his outlook was ideological; mine was keeping my ass out of jail. Plus, my worried mother flew up from Florida distraught by the predicament her only son had gotten into seeking solace from my attorney and she nearly received too much. When my mother’s eyes hit Kunstler’s, sexual sparks hit the air. I am convinced they would have done it before my eyes were there not four black panthers in the waiting room.
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Years ( a seeming 1978 lifetime) later, President Jimmy Carter honored me with a political appointment writing speeches for the number two person at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Among my duties was reading CIA documents. This required a security clearance. Of course, I revealed all my arrests to the FBI agents in my office adding additional paper which was needed. Then, I showed my security form to my boss Deputy Secretary of Labor Robert J. Brown, who was a dyed-in-the wool United Automobile Workers labor skate who had worked for seven years on the assembly line,
Deputy Secretary Brown was jealous. “Damn; you were arrested, but I wasn’t.”
—30– Joel Solkoff, Class of 1969 Columbia College. My father Isadore was Class of 1925 . Joel is the author of The Politics of Food. He is a paraplegic and is a disabilities rights advocate in Rust Belt, Pennsylvania
The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli circa 1480.
Is this relevant?
We were sitting at an upscale bar in Richmond waiting for me to appear on the evening news. NBC. My book Learning to Live Again had just been published. It was a hot summer. Diana, my lover for three years and wife for two, and I had more than survived marriage. Would we survive the autobiographic book I had just published in 1983 describing a previous romance to Laura, the woman whose love made it possible to get through my first experience with cancer?
The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli circa 1480. Is this relevant?
My egregious violation of the rules of gentlemanly behavior would never have happened if I were not a writer continually hell bent on publication regardless of the consequences. Thomas Wolfe had written Look Homeward, Angel unwilling/unable to keep the autobiography from his novel’s pages–revealing the secrets of his Ashville, North Carolina home town. In the process, he made it impossible to go home again. Later, Wolfe claimed all novels are autobiographical saying even Gulliver’s Travels was autobiography.
I made no pretense of hiding behind a novel. My chance at becoming a full-time writer of books was this one published by Holt Rinehart & Winston. It had been based on a New York Times Magazine article that had resulted in my appearing with great fanfare on Good Morning America. It was not impossible–nor a forgone conclusion either. As my friend Bill Gahr (and my boss at the General Accounting Office) had said, “When you have a chance at the brass ring, you go for it.” If Learning to Live Again succeeded, I could fulfill the dream of writing books for the rest of my life. This was my big chance.
Richmond television initially was the best I could do on the road for hopeful success. Diana had spent much of our years together watching me write and rewrite expressing the belief her love for me was so great eventually my passion for another woman would be transmuted by her love for me. Thus far her belief seemed to be working. We were happily married. Through the day of press, radio, and television interviews Diana was by my side supporting me totally.
Then the human interest clip at the end of the evening news appeared. The story line went on about the fear of surviving cancer and how a woman’s love had helped me through it. Neither Diana nor I had realized the interview, filmed in a park, had included (after we thought it over) a shot of Diana and me romantically holding hands as we crossed a bucolic bridge. Yet there it was.
Diana and I were sitting at the bar. Several others were also watching the news. The cameraman was not as expert as one might hope. The clip ended as Diana and I holding hands suddenly disappearing as if Merlon, the magician, had said Poof. “Where’d they go?” some of drinkers asked each other who were as puzzled as we.
Diana is a proud woman. Mixing our romance with another was a bridge too far. Never again did she appear with me as I hustled the book. Was this a defining moment? It did not seem so at the time.
The book received good reviews but did not earn enough to repay the advance. I published another book. This time on agriculture policy. One does not receive the kind of advances required to pay the mortgage and support children from a book on agriculture policy. Instead, I had to return to speech writing and then become a technical writer.
As for our relationship, did it matter? We did have two children and remained together as a couple for twenty years. Much of the time a happy time. Did Richmond matter?
On Saturday August 13, 2017, Heather Heyer, 32 years old, was murdered by a white separatist in Charlottsville, VA because she demonstrated for racial equality.
On Saturday August 13, 2017, Heather Heyer, 32 years old, was murdered by a white separatist in Charlottesville, VA because she demonstrated for racial equality.
From the President of Synagogue Beit Israel, Charlottesville, VA
At Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, VA, we are deeply grateful for the support and prayers of the broader Reform Jewish community. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of Heather Heyer and the two Virginia State Police officers, H. Jay Cullen and Berke Bates, who lost their lives on Saturday, and with the many people injured in the attack who are still recovering.
The loss of life far outweighs any fear or concern felt by me or the Jewish community during the past several weeks as we braced for this Nazi rally – but the effects of both will each linger.
On Saturday morning, I stood outside our synagogue with the armed security guard we hired after the police department refused to provide us with an officer during morning services. (Even the police department’s limited promise of an observer near our building was not kept — and note, we did not ask for protection of our property, only our people as they worshipped).
Forty congregants were inside. Here’s what I witnessed during that time.
For half an hour, three men dressed in fatigues and armed with semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the temple. Had they tried to enter, I don’t know what I could have done to stop them, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them, either. Perhaps the presence of our armed guard deterred them. Perhaps their presence was just a coincidence, and I’m paranoid. I don’t know.
Several times, parades of Nazis passed our building, shouting, “There’s the synagogue!” followed by chants of “Seig Heil” and other anti-Semitic language. Some carried flags with swastikas and other Nazi symbols.
A guy in a white polo shirt walked by the synagogue a few times, arousing suspicion. Was he casing the building, or trying to build up courage to commit a crime? We didn’t know. Later, I noticed that the man accused in the automobile terror attack wore the same polo shirt as the man who kept walking by our synagogue; apparently it’s the uniform of a white supremacist group. Even now, that gives me a chill.
When services ended, my heart broke as I advised congregants that it would be safer to leave the temple through the back entrance rather than through the front, and to please go in groups.
This is 2017 in the United States of America.
Later that day, I arrived on the scene shortly after the car plowed into peaceful protesters. It was a horrific and bloody scene. Soon, we learned that Nazi websites had posted a call to burn our synagogue. I sat with one of our rabbis and wondered whether we should go back to the temple to protect the building. What could I do if I were there? Fortunately, it was just talk – but we had already deemed such an attack within the realm of possibilities, taking the precautionary step of removing our Torahs, including a Holocaust scroll, from the premises.
Again: This is in America in 2017.
At the end of the day, we felt we had no choice but to cancel a Havdalah service at a congregant’s home. It had been announced on a public Facebook page, and we were fearful that Nazi elements might be aware of the event. Again, we sought police protection – not a battalion of police, just a single officer – but we were told simply to cancel the event.
Local police faced an unprecedented problem that day, but make no mistake, Jews are a specific target of these groups, and despite nods of understanding from officials about our concerns – and despite the fact that the mayor himself is Jewish – we were left to our own devices. The fact that a calamity did not befall the Jewish community of Charlottesville on Saturday was not thanks to our politicians, our police, or even our own efforts, but to the grace of God.
And yet, in the midst of all that, other moments stand out for me, as well.
John Aguilar, a 30-year Navy veteran, took it upon himself to stand watch over the synagogue through services Friday evening and Saturday, along with our armed guard. He just felt he should.
We experienced wonderful turnout for services both Friday night and Saturday morning to observe Shabbat, including several non-Jews who said they came to show solidarity (though a number of congregants, particularly elderly ones, told me they were afraid to come to synagogue).
A frail, elderly woman approached me Saturday morning as I stood on the steps in front of our sanctuary, crying, to tell me that while she was Roman Catholic, she wanted to stay and watch over the synagogue with us. At one point, she asked, “Why do they hate you?” I had no answer to the question we’ve been asking ourselves for thousands of years.
At least a dozen complete strangers stopped by as we stood in front the synagogue Saturday to ask if we wanted them to stand with us.
And our wonderful rabbis stood on the front lines with other Charlottesville clergy, opposing hate.
Most attention now is, and for the foreseeable future will be, focused on the deaths and injuries that occurred, and that is as it should be. But for most people, before the week is out, Saturday’s events will degenerate into the all-to-familiar bickering that is part of the larger, ongoing political narrative. The media will move on — and all it will take is some new outrageous Trump tweet to change the subject.
We will get back to normal, also. We have two b’nai mitzvah coming up, and soon, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur will be upon us, too.
After the nation moves on, we will be left to pick up the pieces. Fortunately, this is a very strong and capable Jewish community, blessed to be led by incredible rabbis. We have committed lay leadership, and a congregation committed to Jewish values and our synagogue. In some ways, we will come out of it stronger – just as tempering metals make them tougher and harder.
Alan Zimmerman is the president of Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, VA.Published: 8/14/2017
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Monday, August 14, 2017. Tonight a trilogy of three MSNBC, programs demonstrating the power of television (not seen since the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the South in the 1960s), clarified the consequences of President Trump’s failure to say the right thing at the right time.
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The first of the three programs was The Rachel Maddow Show: “Long Division.” Maddow has created a new art form within television news. Hitherto, news programs catered to the viewers’ requirement to get to the point instantly. In a medium where the term “breaking news” is employed to excess–as in “Earthquake Hits San Francisco”–the broadcaster immediately informs on what, where, and when. Not Maddow.
Maddow requires the viewer to be patient. Her detractors complain that 20, 30, or more minutes into her broadcast, they still do not know the purpose of the tale she is weaving before our eyes.
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How white supremacy is like a national drug addiction
Maddow features as the focus for her lengthy broadcast, Anderson’s article in The Guardian:
“America is hooked on the drug of white supremacy. We’re paying for that today”
“In 1968, Richard Nixon dabbled in it [white racism] when he ran for office on the Southern Strategy, which promised a curtailment of black civil rights in order to woo disaffected white Americans from the Democratic party into the Republican party. And the disaffection ran deep.
The second of the three programs was Brian Williams’s aptly named and carefully crafted Eleventh Hour. When the program ends, I suspect you may reach the same conclusion I reached. The Presidency of Donald Trump ended on Saturday August 12th when our President failed in his moral duty to condemn the Ku Klux Klan by name, David Duke, by name, White Separatists by name.
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Monday’s tepid Trump denunciation of the Klan was too little too late. Hours earlier on Monday–before denunciations from the President’s own party forced him to read without the requisite emotion–the requisite condemnation of white separatists, the Ku Klux Klan and racists–the President (our President!)–vilified Kenneth Frazier, chief executive officer of Merk Pharmaceuticals (who happens to be an African-American), for leaving the President’s manufacturers group because of Trump’s failure to label appropriate the blame on Saturday for the premeditated murder of Heather Heyer.
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Hours before the President finally read from the teleprompter the words, I denounce the Ku Klux Klan, Trump excoriated the chief executive officer of Merk Pharmaceuticals for criticizing the President’s disgraceful remarks on Saturday.
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“The Little Rock Nine became an integral part of the fight for equal opportunity in American education when they dared to challenge segregation in public schools by enrolling at the all-white Central High School in 1957. Learn more about the Little Rock Nine with the Library Research Guide.”
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Brian Williams provided this example of Presidential leadership in a time of crisis–leadership sadly lacking on Saturday when it was so badly needed.
President George W. Bush’s Remarks At Ground Zero September 14, 2001
September 14, 2001 – Standing upon the ashes of the worst terrorist attack on American soil at Ground Zero (Word Trade Center) that occurred three days earlier … President George W. Bush pledges to New York City first responders… “I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
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Phil Ochs comes instantly to mind.
If you drag her muddy river, nameless bodies you will find. whoa the fat trees of the forest have hid a thousand crimes, the calender is lyin’ when it reads the present time. Whoa here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of, Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of!
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Lawrence O’Donnell’s invocation of Heather Heyer’s murder as only the most recent of a number (too large to count) of those who died that we might have racial justice in our country brought to mind the murder of Medgar Evers. Evers was murdered because he sought to register African-Americans to vote in Mississippi.
Read the transcript of Donald Trump’s jaw-dropping press conference
“Trump: I will tell you something. I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people watched it, and you have. You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now. You had a group, you had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent.”
On the Friday night that preceded the murder of Heather Heyer, white separatists carrying torches shouted “Jews won’t take our place in the streets of Charlottesville.”
Details on the murder of Heather Hyer and the alleged murderer
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Published on Aug 15, 2017
A white supremacist saying he’s ready to die for his convictions and a political activist saying he’s exposing evil were at an event that ended with one woman dead and at least 19 injured.
Why Zotero is so useful for writing a dissertation
How to install Zotero
How to collect websites, pdf files, and an interface for adding books to a bibliography
How to organize by adding a collection at the Zotero Library interface screen
How to cite references
How to share citations and references;namely, how to insert the material into the Word document you are using to write your dissertation
How to select the right style manual when Zotero offers over 500 options
Ongoing discussion of related observations–provided in the form of notes marked as such. An item marked Note may distract the reader from the central focus of this user guide. Nonetheless, I hope each Note provides information you find useful.
Why Zotero is so useful for writing a dissertation
I have not been able to find documentation which teaches me how to use Zotero. Zotero is an effective but complicate tool that removes the grunt work– notably citations and bibliographies-involved with writing a dissertation.
I am writing this manual to help me master Zotero for a technical paper I am completing. I am trying to master Zotero because it will help me complete my technical report. My experience using software to automate dissertation writing; primarily dissertation, but also other academic writing such as articles for the Journal of Electrical Engineering or technical reports for Dr. Ali Memari’s Penn State’s Housing Research Center.
Several years ago, I worked with Dr. Somali Kumar on her dissertation entitled:
Professor John Messner first introduced me to Zotero.
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This guide is directed specifically to graduate students at Penn State’s Department of Architectural Engineer. This is my effort to help you learn quickly, this program for automating citations and inserting them into your documents can make your life much easier.
Zotero is the oldest and most popular software for relieving graduate students from the most tedious part of their work. Several graduate students who used End Note for bibliography and were unhappy at the experience. Joche Astro J. Gayles, who recently received her doctorate from Penn States’ Department of Home Development & Family Standards (HDFP), said that she “. The best example of Zotero’s virtue is its ability to insert citations according to style manuals. Worth noting: Case in point:
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Penn State libraries resources for mastering Zotero
Here is a quick example of the resources the library provides
At the Penn State Libraries home page, enter “Zotero” at the library’ s CAT search engine.
Seek and you shall find
Tip: Angela is the Department of Architectural Engineering’s library liaison. Make an appointment with Angela. She can help you with Zotero. She can also help you by suggesting data bases and helping navigate them. Making an appointment with Angela is an excellent investment for helping complete your dissertation.
“As an academic writer, I always prided myself on my technical savvy. Until recently, I believed that I had developed a sophisticated system of bookmarks, email messages to myself, word documents, and the like to save useful references, citations, and other resources that I felt were essential to my clinical and academic productivity. In my system, I would manually save portable document format (PDF) files by manually typing in the title of the article, the journal it was published in, and the year of publication. However, I recently discovered a freely available computer software called Zotero that has made my life easier and my so-called “sophisticated” system obsolete.”
Angela’s Davis’ email with link to Zotero tutorials
Hello Joel,
Thanks for the question you asked via the Ask A Librarian system. I wanted to introduce myself as the librarian specialist for Architectural Engineering.
I would be more than happy to assist you in using the library. And would love to meet with you and discuss the ways that the library could help you, but I have found that these work best if you have a specific research project you are would like assistance with. I am also available for help via email or phone, for any questions you may have. Please contact me in whichever way is most comfortable for you.
If you would like a basic overview of how to navigate library resources, the Online Tutorials page is an excellent starting place. These are geared towards undergraduates but they provide the basics that everyone can use.
Please let me know how I could be of assistance to you and I look forward to working with you in the future,
At the Zotero home page library, I chose an item and inserted it into the style manual for the American Psychological Association, the style manual I recommend for graduate students at Penn State’s Department of Architectural Engineering.
Note: Confession makes good pedagogy. For simplicity, I use the word “dissertation” as shorthand for a range of academic publications including articles for the Journal of Architectural Engineering. My confession refers to the technical report I am completing (having procrastinated ) for publication for the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center (PHRC).
Using Zotero will help me complete my project. By extension I hope these step-by-step instructions for using Zotero will help speed completion of your dissertation.] Zotero can also help you navigate The Cloud.
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Your home in Zotero is this interface screen that appears immediately after login
Zotero historically was designed as an extension working within Firefox. Now there is a standalone version as well as Zotero residing within other browsers such as Chrome and IE.
Zotero has four applications
Collecting articles, web pages, books, and other references
Organizing, reading, and making notes of the collected material
Citing the collected material in one’s own writing.
Sharing, as in inserting Zotero citations into your dissertation when you are writing it using Microsoft Word.
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You can access Zotero from web browsers and Windows, Apple, and Unix operating systems; hence this cautionary slogan
Great seal of the United States showing the Latin motto translated: From many one
As with the motto on the Great Seal of the United States, there are many ways to get to the Zotero interface. These methods include, but are not limited to:
Add-on to the Firefox browser
Add-on (plug-in [query: documentation uses add-ons and plug-ins interchangeably; is this correct?]) for Chrome and other browsers
Standalones for Unix, GNU/Linux and Mac OS
Available features include the ability–while writing your dissertation–to download citations into Microsoft Word
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What to do when you reach the basic Zotero interface, Basic level.
What matters most–that is what makes your life easiest–is not the multiple options, but rather what to do when you reach the basic Zotero interface, here at log-in, now twice in this posting to increase your familiarity with your essential home screen:
Application 1: COLLECTING
Collecting video
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/14188877[/vimeo]
Six methods for incorporating material into your Zotero library
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To simplify, arbitrarily I have chosen to provide examples from Zotero standalone downloaded onto Windows 7 and linked to Chrome. This involved:
From Chrome, I keyed in Zotero at the Google prompt which directed me to this download page.
This screen shot shows I had already established a Zotero account. I originally established this account in a bye-gone era when one could obtain Zotero as an add-on to Firefox. Before downloading standalone from Chrome, I had logged into Zotero’s home page. If you do not have a Zotero account you can establish one and log in either before or after the download.
2. Zotero standalone shortcut on my messy desktop
Zotero shortcut on my messy desktop. Advice: A messy desktop is a bad idea. Messy slows down performance and hinders organization. Do as I advise; not, as I do.
3. Clicking on the shortcut brings you here
Clicking on Zotero shortcut bring me here. That is because I had already logged in at the Zotero home page navigating to the library. Otherwise, one reaches the homepage where one must log in. {Are my details too detailed?}
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Using the Zotero connector to collect websites, books, articles, pdf files, and what have you
Zotero’s explanation of how the connector collects
Left mouse clip providing menu item “Add to Zotero”
Manual insert books etc. into Zotero’s home page
Explicit.
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Application 2: ORGANIZING
The first step in organizing is to add a collection to the Zotero library.
Collections are often compared to Itunes playlists. Suggestion: Incorporate as many projects as one can–career and personal. That way one becomes more fluent in using Zotero.
Application 3: CITING
At the Zotero home page library, I chose an item and inserted it into the style manual for the American Psychological Association, the style manual I recommend for graduate students at Penn State’s Department of Architectural Engineering
“Citations and bibliographies generated by the word processor plugins might appear in a different style (font, font-size, etc) than the surrounding text. The appearance of the generated text can be changed by changing the default style. E.g. in LibreOffice, open the styles manager in ‘Format’ > ‘Styles and Formatting‘ or by hitting F12. Right click on Default, select ‘Modify‘, and make the desired changes to this style.”
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It always helps (I find) to put work into a larger perspective
That way, I do not become overwhelming by the seriousness of my efforts. As you labor away at the process of receiving a doctorate, you might find comfort in the legendary William James‘ 1903 classic critique of the process in which you are currently engaged: The Ph.D. Octopus.
“Some years ago, we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant student of Philosophy, who…received an appointment to teach English Literature at a sister-institution of learning. The governors of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the appointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled upon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D. degree…
“His appointment had thus been made under a misunderstanding. He was not the proper man; and there was nothing to do but inform him of the fact… [O]ur Subject, being a man of spirit, took up the challenge… grinding his psychology, logic, and history of philosophy up again, so as to pass our formidable ordeals. When the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it. Brilliancy and originality by themselves won’t save a thesis for the doctorate….”
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Idiosyncratic footnote section
My preference for footnotes does not diminish the reality that in the Engineering and sciences academic departments footnotes are banned.
Final note
Benny Goodman’s clarinet (and of course vocals by Miss Peggy Lee influenced the writing of this post. I am sentimental about the clarinet. Salvatore, my grandfather, played in the clarinet at the orchestra of a silent movie, when my grandmother fell in love with him.
