As is my custom and joy at the end of the year, I am going through some old online material and cleaning stuff up. As is often the case in any reminiscences, the father I go back the more interesting it gets.
Before there was easy online storage, I used to put things into subfolders on a website I have called Poetry And Technology. I made it in December 2002 and it was the second website I ever made. Here’s how I described the site:
This site is based on a simple premise– that both poetry and technology are necessary to support human life.
I’ve focused much of my personal and professional life broadly pursuing both.
This site is a collection of the poetry and technology that I bring to classrooms all over Chicago.
Over time, as I learned of the glory of FTP, I stuck a lot of things into folders on this website, none of which were ever linked to from the index page. Here’s a look:
ccd-2nd-grade-lessons: this is PDFs of every lesson that my son Christian learned in CCD at Queen of Angels Parish. His teacher was Mrs. Monica Hohner, a glorious person who still does the work today. I also taught CCD at the time, and was interested in documenting my own curriculum. Since Mrs. Hohner sent her sheets home with the kids every week, I figured I’d scan them and spread them around. Here they are as a Flickr set.
comm_comm: This was something of an intranet for the Queen of Angels Communications Committee, which I chaired. The files aren’t there anymore, but I do have them in Dropbox. They contain super-detailed info on our plans for growing enrollment, which was dropping. Interesting first-hand pieced of neighborhood history.
economics: This folder is a joy. It contains a PDF of my fourth book of poetry, with cutlines, as exported from Quark Xpress and sent to the printer. Also has some pics from the press check.
emo_geo: Files gone. This is a project extranet for Emotional Geography, a web-based business that allows users to create customized maps with highlighted points of personal interest. The maps are configured online with a simple web form, printed at a central location, and mailed to the user.
jj: This is a single-page take on a website I made with my brother Kevin called, “Letters to the Editor, by Jack O’Neil, Sewickley”. It’s the complete text of all letters to the editor written to the Pittsburgh Press and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by our father. The text is augmented by Daniel X. O’Neil and Kevin O’Neil using the principles of hypertext enjambment. Here’s a full take.
john_f_burns: This is an early take on my attempt to archive every story written for the New York Times by John F. Burns, who is the greatest living war correspondent. I later used Blogger for this, and the site remains. I copy/ pasted 186 stories dating from January 1, 1999 to November 28, 2005 from the NY Times search function (this was before they had all of their content accessible online). As I write this, it seems slightly nutty. I will leave it to the reader to decide. All hail John F. Burns.
pittsburgh_july_2003: This is a series of photos I took when my kids were 4 and 2 and I took them to visit my father for the first time. Pre-Flickr, but I ended up placing them there, too.
school_board: This was something of an intranet for the Queen of Angels School Boar, which I chaired. The files aren’t there anymore, but I do have them in Dropbox. Every agenda, all meeting minutes. Quite a trove.
shane_2_detail: These are two images containing details of Wesley Willis drawings owned by the artist Shane Swank.
signs: This is a set of photos I took of ghost signs in Chicago.
war_brands: This is a series of photos from Iraq I found on the Internet during the George W. Bush Gulf War (the one we lost) that contained brand names.
wide_right_turn: This is one of my life’s masterpieces: the first online home for my Wide Right Turns series. Bonus: it was linked to on Metafilter in 2006.
winfield_halloween: This is a photo album for Winfield School First Grade Halloween Party, October 31, 2005.