The School of Stenotype Exclusively

In the last post, which I wrote as the fall semester was wrapping up, I wrote: "During my time off, I'm hoping to write more frequently on this blog, and I'd like to expand my website a bit as well."

Ha! My full spring semester starts tomorrow (One of the schools I work for started last week, so I've already CARTed two classes, but the rest of the week was fairly open, so I still felt like I was on vacation), and have I posted anything to this blog since then? Well, not until now, I haven't. Sigh. I was able to add an installment to Steno 101 over at the Plover Blog, and I have made a few subtle tweaks to the StenoKnight webpage (most noticeably to my resume), but this blog has been sadly neglected during my break. I had a lovely vacation, all in all. I did a lot of cooking, stayed up after midnight and slept in late, trudged blissfully through the snow-covered parks of Upper Manhattan, and read lots of novels without feeling guilty about putting off transcript editing.

As of tomorrow it's back to business, though, and I have a few ideas for long-form blog entries that are more like articles than the little dispatches I can bang out in half an hour or so, such as an essay on the guild model versus the firm model with respect to the future of CART, and my long-promised story of How Coworking Saved My Home Life. The trouble is that it's sometimes hard to fill the gaps between long portentous posts. The little one-liners go to Twitter or, more rarely, Facebook, and the longer stuff sometimes seems too intimidating to post without a lot of deep thought and careful polishing. So in the spirit of fluffiness, triviality, and hurriedly dashed-off blog entries, have a t-shirt.



I made this in August 2009, and as far as I know, I'm the only one who's ever ordered one, but I wear it all the time (only on my days off, of course; when I'm CARTing I always wear basic black), and it makes me grin whenever it comes up on laundry rotation. It's inspired by my steno school alma mater, which is currently called The New York Career Institute (a perfectly fine school, as steno schools go, but could the name be any blander?), previously called Stenotype Academy, and when it was founded, in 1941, was known as The School of Stenotype Exclusively, which is probably my favorite institutional name, bar none. Rather than buy generic NYCI gear, I figured I could make a better keepsake to help me remember my speedbuilding days. So there it is: A School of Stenotype Exclusively T-Shirt. I know Zazzle prices are a bit steep, but I didn't take any markup, so it's as about as low as print-on-demand t-shirts generally go. If you decide that you absolutely must wear such a thing, feel free to order one with my blessing! If not, forgive me if you meet me at a convention one day and I'm wearing mine. I just couldn't resist.