Dollar Scholars Fellowship Deadline Extended

Dear Friends,
  Becca and I have decided to extend the deadline for the Dollar Scholars Fellowship because some of our Guideline Letters were delayed in being sent out due to Becca's trip to India and my bad secretarial skills.
We have received one fantastic entry so far, but the competition is still open and the fellowship will be conferred on 2 lucky recipients who have written a letter about letters. In case you have forgotten, the fellows' letter on letters will be processed by us (copied and enveloped, stamped, and posted) and all costs for the copying and mailing will be provided by our fund. Send entries to R.S.V.P. (two copies please) to Genese Grill, 39 Strong Street, Burlington, VT, 05401 or Rebecca Mack, 57 North Winooski Avenue, no.3, Burlington, VT, 05401 (or one copy to each address) by June 1st, 2013.
                                  Love, Genese

CREDO

Credo

We are embodied thinkers who crave learning.
We are engaged in our communities.

Our scholarship need not be costly,
In fact, it shall be free
and not in service to
income production.

It shall be free, passionate, and alive

Our work need not be isolating,
In fact, it shall connect our thoughts
to our lives, our loves, our homes,
and our neighborhoods

We support the love of research.
We celebrate the work of thinking.

-Research Sharing Via Paper (RSVP), 
Burlington Vermont, 2012

Correspondence Circle Adresses in Progress

Rebecca Mack. 57 North Winooski Avenue, Burlington, VT, 05401

Genese Grill. 39 Strong Street, Burlington, VT, 05401 (also Brendan Dempsey, Bronwen Hudson, Stephen Callahan, and Rachael Townsend at same address)

Alex Gaydos. 12 William street, Cambridge, ma 02139.

Liza Carmen Cannon. 9 Avenue de Barcelone

09000 Foix, France

David Symons, 1317 Lesseps Street, NOLA, LA, 70117
Rebecca Hampden.  95 Park Terrace East apt.AC
New York, NY 10034
Brian Goblik, 406 South Union Street, Apt. 4, Burlington, VT, 05401

Kate Barush & James Riches. 616 East Street NW, apt. 808, Washington DC, 20004

Roxanne Vought and Nate Plascha, 43 Front Street, Burlington, VT, 05401       

Joel Schlemowitz, 427 5th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215

Brendan Lorber and Tracey McTague, 316 23rd Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215

Ethan O’Hara, Tyler van Lieuw, and Ren Wiener. 198 Pearl St #2

Jeffrey and Carol Hoffeld. 740 West End Avenue, #131, NY NY 10025

Ben Aleshire Temorary Address (til March?): c/o Mudlark Theatre, 1200 Port St. New Orleans, LA, 70117

Mannie Lionni, 63 Lakeview Terrace, Burlington, VT, o5401
Erin Stoble,   8 Kelly Ct. Monroe Twp. NJ 08831

Sharon Webster and Dave Cavanaugh, 164 Park Street

Forrest McGregor and Kelly Green, 20 Prospect Street, Randolph, VT, 05060

Daghjve, 61/2 N. Winooski Avenue, no. 1, Burlington, VT, 05401

Sam Mayfield, 109 Intervale Ave, No.1, Burlington, VT, 05401
 Mary Provenzano, 10 Crombie street, Butrlington, VT 05401
Kathleen DeSimone, 77 north Winooski Ave #4, Burlington, VT 05401
Martin Owens, 35 Fuller St, Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Salka Thali, 132 Hayward St, Burlington, VT 05401
Ari Adelstein, 50 Loomis St, Burlington, VT 05401
Chiara Ambrosio (and Mikey), Flat B, 13 Burma Road, London, N16 9BH, United Kingdom

Peter Nakonecznyj box 74, Ripton, VT, 05766

Gilbert Foley. 1251 Eckert Ave., Reading, PA 19602

Erik Rehman. 32 Convent Square, no. 1, Burlington

Annabel Lee and Michael Moynahan: 2553 Gregg Hill Road, Waterbury Center VT, 05677

Angelica Caterino. 131 Elm Street, no. 2. Montpelier, VT, 05602

Anna Blackburn. 211 Elliot Terrace, 2. Brattleboro, VT, 05301

Frances Cannon and Emily, and Friends. 61 Spring Street, Burlington, VT, 05401

April Clemens. 68 Elmwood Avenue, Burlington

Selene Colburn. 49 Latham Court, Burlington

Janifer Dumas. 234 Pearl Street, no.2, Burlington, VT, 05401

Trish Denton. 48 Henry Street, Burlington, VT, 05401

Mickey Western, 14 Peru Street, Burlington

Michael Chan

Emer Pond Feeney,  23 Meadow Lane, South Burlington, VT,05403

Pamela and Victor. 100 Locust Street, Burlington, VT, 05401

Neil Grill & Judy Smith. 670 West End Avenue, 12 A. NY, NY, 10025

Angela Chaffee, 25 Pine Place, no. 2, Burlington, VT

Jen Berger, 14 Decatur Street, Burlington, VT, 05401

Chiara Ambrosia

Sima Gerber. 704 Burns Street. Forest Hills Gardens, NY, 11375

Christopher Nelson Gray. 1875 Georgeville Road, no. 10. Magog, Quebec

Diane Horstmyer. 122 Ontario Street, Providence, RI, 02907

Kenneth Harrison. 836 Lepere Ave, C. St. Louis, Missouri, 63132-4448

April Howard and Ben Dangl. 69 Marble Avenue, Burlington, VT, 05401

Clark Jackowe. 5 Spring Street, 1E, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, 10706

Stefanie Lindahl and Corey Schaff. 203 East Street. Sharon, CT, 06069

Suzanne Levine and Andy Zimmerman, 7 Ridge Street, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, 10706

Marchette Dubois,PO Box 45636, Seattle, WA, 98145

Stella Marrs and Al Larsen. 83 North Champlain Street, B, Burlington, VT, 05401

Jeremy Novak and Nilsa Martinez. 601 W. 112^th Street, no.75, NY, NY, 10025

Terry McCants. 1713 Seabright. Santa Cruz, CA, 95062

Meara McGinnis and Anna Blackmer,  83 Lakeview Terrace, Burlington

Dharman Rice. 21 Stewart Road, Westford, VT, 05494.

Amber Sulick and Scott Broderick. 142 Oak Road, Charlotte, VT, 05445.

Jane Snyder. 70 Barlow Street. Apt. A. Winooski, VT, 05404

Jackie and Matt Schlein.

Konstantin and Lauren von Krusenstiern. 15 Mt. View Ave. Brattleboro, VT, 03301.

Hillary Washburn

Chris Weisman. 31 Cherry St, Apt 2. Brattleboro, VT 05301-6795

Baeree Wyman. PO Box 6, Plainfield, VT, 05667

Zev David Deans. 1610 Avenue P, 2 L, Brooklyn, NY, 11229

Zoe Lasden Lyman, 209 Hancock st apt 4r Brooklyn NY, 11216

Welcoming and Instructions for Use

The Core Intentions of Our Project:

To stimulate discussion, questioning, excitations. To learn what people want to learn about.  To incite interests, passions, and concerns. To give these words, agency, life, reality. To sharpen our own thinking through discussions, challenges, inter-disciplinarity, symphilosophieren (Friedrich Schlegel’s term for inter-related philosophizing among a group of thinkers devoted to shared causes).

To take what is good and useful about academic learning and appropriate it for our own neighborhood purposes. 

You Might be Interested in Participating if:

You are or would like to be a writer: One intention of the project is to provide people who might be inhibited or blocked in their writing a non-threatening medium for putting their thoughts in order and inviting responses.

You are or would like to continue your studies outside of the academy: We would like to create a community of  auto-didactic scholarship outside of the walls of the university or institution, for people who crave deeper study and discussion.

You are an inventor, experimenter, crafts person:  We would love to create a venue for people to share their expertise, their skills, and their knowledge of traditions and innovations for new practices in art, craft, building, scientific tinkering, world-making.

You are an utopian, an  activist, a reformer, a concerned citizen:  We hope to encourage thinking that is directly related to the continual improvement of our lives and our world and any discourse which engages in creative critique and explorations of social practices and possible new modes of living.

HOW WE ENVISION THIS ALL HAPPENING:

We are looking to stimulate and be stimulated by an exchange of letters which explore the interests and concerns of our wider community.  In the tradition of dialogic, open-ended inquiry, we are not looking for finished, perfected conclusions or completed works of art, but rather IDEAS IN PROGRESS.  The letters can be as sketchy as you like, and need not be typed or even proofread, but we are hoping that you use the process of writing to synthesize and take your ideas to the next level and that you do include some measure of research  into your own ideas. We want to know what you are reading, and hope in this way to widen the chorus of voices and ideas beyond our local scope and to pay tribute to everyone everywhere who has cared enough to deeply investigate some idea, some occurrence, some phenomenon, some dream and to put it into considered words.

WHY LETTERS, WHY WRITING, WHY THROUGH THE MAIL?

We have chosen to limit the discussion to letters through the mail for a number of reasons. For one thing, letters are personal and suggest a connection to our lives. They tend to link whatever abstract thoughts we are having to our everyday concerns and experiences. Letters have  traditionally been written widely  outside of institutions and are often not regulated or controlled by old boys’ networks, by marketplace concerns, by publishers, governments, etc.. They require very little in the way of overhead, electricity, machinery, technology.  Letters have traditionally been means of subversive, peripheral, underground communication, utilized particularly by women to spread ideas and share experiences.  We believe that the act of writing a letter on paper and putting it in an envelope to mail off encourages a different level of reflection and focus than an electronically-generated missive (email). We want to encourage this sort of concentrated quiet in all of our lives.  Writing (as opposed to group discussion, lectures, etc), also encourages a depth of responsibility, personal exploration and  depth of thinking. There are special kinds of insights actuated through the difficult act of putting ideas into sentences  and committing them to paper; the process demands a sort of honesty of thinking, a struggle and commitment, a level of clarity and self-examination not to be matched by the looser, more chaotic process of communal conversation (as important and beautiful as conversation is).

We are also committed to doing our part to make sure that our postal workers have something more noble to carry than junk mail.

IN WHAT WAY MIGHT YOU PARTICIPATE?

1.       Answer a letter in writing, through the mail.  Respond to the ideas presented in a letter you receive, provide further resources or information that might add to or challenge the writer’s premises, ask the writer some questions.

2.       Send a copy of the letter you receive to someone else who you think would find it interesting or have something to say about it. Keep the discussion moving!

3.       Request a letter from a particular person on a particular topic or question. Does someone you know spend a lot of time studying or practicing something? Ask her or him to explain it to us.

4.       Write your own letter and send it to whomever you please  (including Becca and me so we have a copy of all that goes out). Also make and send  a copy of the credo and the explanation at the bottom of the letters we sent you (feel free to handwrite or paint or print the credo and explanation however you please). Since some of you said that you did not know to whom to send your letters, you will find a morphing and up-dated list of addresses here on this blog.  People will be able to add their addresses and also take them off the list when and if they do not want to be included in further mailings. (If you do not want your address on this semi-public forum, please let us know and we will remove it.)

5.       Submit a letter to our Dollar Scholars fellowship. Since the cost of copying and mailing each letter comes to approximately .97 cents, we are initiating the Dollar Scholar fellowship. To be considered, please send Becca and me each a copy of a letter on the topic of letters by April 1^st 2013. Two fellowships will be awarded covering the cost of postage and copying and including administrative handling (folding, stamping, mailing) of 50 letters from each recipient.

6.       Donate money, stamps, envelopes, copying facilities, ink, stationary to the cause. Please make checks payable to Fools’ Gold Artists’ Fund.

Thank You for Your Patience and Creative Collaboration!   Most Sincerely,

                                Rebecca Mack & Genese Grill