From Lane

Trent,

Craig is with us, though will be mindful of his time, and Pete has also expressed interest. I am fine with lurkers, or different levels of engagement, and I am also fine with people outside of our UWM circle joining in. Though I think it is best, first, to decide on 1) rules of engagement, and 2) platform/environment.

My idea with "Flowage Rebellion" is to set up a quasi-historical scenario that is liberally seeded with citations, apocrypha, contested histories, and retellings of events, centered around an at this time non-specific ecological conflict, with (duh!) water. As water is more and more in our current news, and will certainly be a huge crisis point of global proportions (if it isn't already), I'd like this project to have "water conflict" as a pivotal center point. I look to fictions such as Museum of Jurassic Technology, Walid Raad's "Atlas Group" and a growing list of wonderful projects (nice site at ) which in themselves merit further study. Books that are inspiring to me (for this) beyond Oulipo, are Watchmen (without the gimcrack Uberman shit, which I can't abide!), Anne Carson's amazing "Autobiography of Red" (get it and read it!) and "The Making of Morel" (thanks, Trent!), "The Third Policeman" among many others.

I like Trent's ideas stated below quite a bit, and would probably go with either the "Larry David" structure (writing towards some event, as yet unrevealed) or the email that Craig just sent, which seems an excellent beginning point. I'm not sure yet how character-driven this will be, as I am also interested in colloquial, vernacular, cross-genre forms that might not involve characters at all, or would involve them in the Borges sense, as the founder, secret society member, historian, recorder of such documents.. (but that is just me.. honestly, the excitement I have for this is that it can take its own form!)

Craig, would you want to set up the wiki, similar to your Prelim site, with the form you suggested, and give yourself, me and Trent edit level power, with all others included for gradual absorption?! (you *will* be assimilated!).

I am very comfortable with Blogs, and Lisa is a pro at customizing them in a robust way. We can go that route as well, but wikis seem more textual, and I think I would get less hung up on how it would *look*, and focus more on the writing. However, I could see Flowage Rebellion later drifting to blogspace or dedicated website, depending upon our results and interests.

Lane