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5 min read 28

UofWinds 441, Week 28, 2026: The Guts & Glory of Cape Verde, Now is the time of facing monsters, Writing Together


Good morning. My husband is at Ford Field and all the children and cats in the house are sleeping. For today's soundtrack, I've opted to listen to some joyful house music that was broadcast last night across the airways of Windsor and Detroit. There is going to be a two-day electronic music festival being held this weekend mere blocks away from where I live. It is going to be held at the park where I sometimes enjoy swimming laps on summer mornings. I like this idea of small EDM festivals in parks, especially those where you can listen to music while you picnic.

How does one day differ from the next? Why is that I woke up this morning, looked into the mirror and decided that I no longer like my glasses?

This summer I'm trying to write more and to read more books (and less internet). If I have been successful in running a Couch to 5K in the past, I should be able to read to 5K in future?

The Guts and the Glory of Capo Verde


If you have been watching The World Cup, then you already know who has won the games. Now, you have to understand that by winning, I don't mean the final game of the tournament which is still to come. No, I mean that Capo Verde's team won the world's heart, at the least those of the world that watch World Cup soccer.

If you don't understand this hyperbolic claim, some context might be necessary. Capo Verde is a series of 10 islands off the West coast of Africa that only gained its independence from Portugal in 1975. The population of these islands is less than 500,000, although a similar number of Capo Verdeans now live elsewhere in the world. One of these proud people is Janine de Novais who was recently interviewed for The Away End podcast (that's available on YouTube) and it was this conversation that really helped me understand how utterly extraordinary the win of the Men's Capo Verde Football Team was and what it means to the country.

Capo Verde faced Spain, Uruguay, and Saudi Arabia and tied them all, which was an extraordinary event. The team did eventually lose to Argentina in the knock-out round of 32, but in overtime. Capo Verde were undefeated in regulation time.

Now is the time of facing monsters


On June 22nd, I delivered the opening keynote for the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians. I had been working on my talk for some weeks before hand, and I have to admit I felt hella nervous as I delivered my talk via zoom from my office. It was a talk in which I wanted to give a warning about the darker consequences we can expect from the use of Ai, but I didn't want to approach the topic directly. So instead I talked about games and systems.

What I am trying to tell you is that I tried to give a talk that had multiple layers to encourage re-visiting and further reading, but would also be of interest to those who were listening in a less engaged and more ambient way. I don't think I was entirely successful with this ambitious goal but I have received some warm feedback and so I am comforted knowing that I did reach some people this way.

This keynote will address the contemporary intersection of technology and academic libraries using the framework of Eric Zimmerman’s Manifesto of the Ludic Century. Zimmerman argues that games are the definitional cultural form of the 21st century and that the logic of games will increasingly shape culture.

The 45-minute talk, Now is the Time of Facing Monsters, is now available on YouTube if you would like to watch it.

I've also placed my slides online using Twine to turn the talk into something to explore. As someone who explored that version put it, the Itch version connects “game theory, how we got to the current moment, and speculative fiction as a mechanism for building a new world.”

Writing Together


I've already confessed to you that I am going to try a structured and social approach to reading more books this summer. And now I am going to share with you that I have already done something similar with my writing.

I have found that writing with others is tremendously rewarding in many different ways. And I am not the only one who is trying such experiments. Scholar Brandon Walsh recently wrote up the process by which himself and his friend and colleague will take on a project to formalize how they will Write Together.

What we settled on was a project that we would together, about writing, in a way that mixed public and private. The format that we settled on was to physically send a journal back and forth to each other in which we would carry on a regular conversation. Each time we get the journal, we have three days to write an entry to the other person in response to their previous one. And we’ll end each of our entries with a prompt or question to the other person that they will then respond with. We’ll go where it goes, but as we initially framed things we will reflect on writing, what it means for us and for each other, how writing intersects with for our jobs, how it enriches our lives for our lives, and more. We’ll then send the thing back in the mail to the other person again. So this document will unfold over time, growing with each new handwritten note to the other person. Our plan is to follow up by regularly transcribing the entries and sharing portions of them publicly with a few contextual reflections. The result should be a blending of public and private, outcome and process.

This particular project reminds me of two-person journaling games such as Marginalia, which is an "asynchronous RPG game made for 2 or more players to be played through the pages of a book. Players will create and adopt worlds and characters in which to tell stories in, and will take turns writing within the margins of an pre-existing book."

Shing Yin Khor's game January "is a postcard writing game for two, printed in postcard book format, about distant but persistent friendships in an alternate universe filled with kaiju. It's about living ordinary lives in the face of impending horrors, and small friendships tended for decades."

Earlier this week I played the solo-RPG writing game, The Librarian's Apprentice, which I enjoyed but I can't completely recommend (I like the mechanics of the game but I think the play needs a better way to structure and generate a satisfying ending. The gameplay is great at the start but I got bored of the repetition).

I'm currently collecting examples of writing games and metagames. If you know of one that you would recommend, please share it with us in the comments! Thank you!

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