Author: Laurel L. Russwurm

is a self publishing novelist and photographer.

gentrification

19th Century Advertising: Seagram Distillers sign

When I was a child I didn’t much like downtown Waterloo because of the pervasive smell of the Seagram’s Distillery that hung over the city core.

Those days are long past, as manufacturing that decreases the quality of life is better relegated to more isolated locales. Waterloo today enjoys the reputation of being one of Ontario’s more livable cities.

Seagram loft windows with cheery blue probably decorative shutters

The Seagram industrial complex was remade into upscale loft housing some years back.

Barrel Warehouse Park sign

Originally there was an enormous pyramid of old barrels out front, making a wonderful historic bit of historic public art, but that has now been replaced by the more sedate “Barrel Warehouse Park”.

Seagrams Public Art

These days the park is graced by public art consisting of a few gigantic bits of miscellaneous machinery that presumably were once employed in the distillery business.

manmade waterfall in concrete

There is also an odd little man-made waterfall cascading out of a featureless concrete wall…

walled on the left side and at the back, a sloped concrete floor goes down to where a forlorn puddle forms beneath the waterfall

… to the floor of a sloped concrete enclosure. Presumably the puddle at the bottom is intended as a wading pool for local children.

ows of windows under the brick dentition at the top of the original exterior wall

But it is the ranks of identical windows flanked on one side by identical blue shutters that provides the real art to this architectural gentrification project.

rows of shutters


Comment on Decentralized Social Networks Do Exist by Laurel L. Russwurm

Certainly, and you don’t even need to ask, as the license info is in the sidebar. This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License . . . which means the only restriction is that you can’t license it with greater restriction, you couldn’t add “No Derivatives” or “Non Commercial” or even “Copyright All Rights Reserved.”

However, even if your blog/webpage is itself published under a more restrictive licence, you can still use my work as long as you use the same or similar license as the one I’m using on the page on which you use it.

Comment on Geek vs. Nerd isn’t even the real question by Laurel L. Russwurm

Difficult questions, Deanna. I rather think that what we need is equality. The culture is made up of people, and so we are the ones who have to make changes.

I was horrified to see the house league soccer league we were with for years decided to segregate the genders for the kids younger than mine. This was apparently decided to protect the little girls from having to interact with the boys. This seems the opposite direction we need to be going. Nothing motivates gender co-operation more than sharing goals

Comment on Geek vs. Nerd isn’t even the real question by Deanna Dahlsad aka Pop Tart

Thanks for stopping by, Laurel :) Thanks for continuing the conversation!

I agree with you about the creators of the infographic being marketing hipsters, but the info for the graphic was pulled from somewhere. And while labels are not important to me, the whole thing makes me uncomfortable with the lack of recognizing women as part of these (however entwined) communities. And that’s rather my point.

Ultimately, many of the problems with this infographic actually mirror what’s wrong the culture itself.

How can we encourage women to profit from so-called geek and nerd professions (such as math, science, technology), to be proud of their brainy activities when the female-dominated professions of librarians, for example, are so dismissed? Why would women even to pursue such fields when they are so dismissed — and even are treated as sexist toys or gifts — in the culture?

Comment on Geek vs. Nerd isn’t even the real question by Shevi Arnold

I saw this poster on a friend’s Pinterest board. I agree with you: it’s so wrong!

I do see a difference between the terms “geek” and “nerd,” but it’s only in that being a geek is about being extremely enthusiastic about something, while being a “nerd” is about being extremely knowledgeable about something.

As in a Lord of the Rings geek loves Lord of the Rings; while a Lord of the Rings nerd know things about Lord of the Rings most fans don’t even know.

Geeks and nerds tend to have the same interests. You can be a tech geek (I am), but you can also be a tech nerd (sadly, I’m not that knowledgeable). I’m a book nerd, because I know a lot about books and writing. I’m also a book geek, because I love books with a passion. I’m also both a comics geek and a comics nerd. And I love Nerdcore almost to the point of geekiness (but not quite).

I think being knowledgeable and enthusiastic are wonderful traits, so I’m a proud nerd and a proud geek. We should ALL be. The world would be a better place if we could all unabashedly embrace our passions. Nerds and geeks rule!