We have two days left to finish this–but we can add Monday the 14th if the site is not done by then.

Since you probably don’t want to do that, your tasks for today are:

1. A number of you have not read or commented on anyone else’s commute. One of you has not even posted a commute! If you have not read and commented on someone else’s commute, you should do so first thing today. Your comments should be constructive and specific, suggesting needed changes (whether in language, visuals, etc.) and pointing out grammatical errors. You should NOT comment on a commute if someone else has already done so (unless that someone is me, or all the commutes have comments).

2. Each group should do the same with the posts of another group. Here are your assignments:

Finance/RE will critique Entertainment
Entertainment will critique Food
Food will critique Protest
Protest will critique Immigration
Immigration will critique Culture
Culture will critique Finance/RE

3. The final part of this, once you have completed the critiques, is to go back to your own commute and transfer point posts and FIX THEM in response to the critiques. Pay particular attention to citation (remember that Jill showed you how to do this last Wednesday). If you don’t have time to do this in class, then you must do it between Monday night and Wednesday morning.

1. Many of you need to include visuals and a brief history/demographic snapshot of your neighborhood on your commute page. This doesn’t have to be lengthy, and you should feel free to include a quote from the 1939 Federal Writers Guide for the history part of it. If you’re struggling to find sources for this, email me–I can help.

Those of you who need to include some demographic data in your commute should go to the library databases, select Social Explorer, and choose the “Reports” tab. You’ll have the option of using data in the American Community Survey (ACS), 2006-2010. There, you can find options that include race, country of origin, sex, income, etc., and you can easily narrow down the geographic area to the census tract level (you can find the correct tracts by zooming in on New York in Social Explorer’s map section–pick the ACS tract function if you want to use ACS data, or the Census tract function for Census data).

Two good models for how to do your commute page are Anastasia’s and Ivan’s pages.

2. Over the weekend, you should fix your citations the way Jill showed you in class today.

3. I’d like each of you to read someone else’s commute page and comment on it. If someone else has already commented on that page, move on until you find one that has no comments (if everything is taken, then you can double up). Make sure to suggest changes, corrections (even to stuff like grammar, structure, etc.), and ways to improve the post.

4. Make sure to upload your autosaved drafts so that I know what the most recent version of your work is.

5. Let me and/or Jill know about any new transfer point pages that go up after class today.

As I wrote up on the board today, here are our deadlines for the final two weeks of the course:

Monday, April 30: All content for personal commute pages must be done and uploaded. After this point, our design people and other students can begin making the commute pages uniform.

Wednesday, May 2: All content for transfer points should be uploaded. Of course, you’ll need to tinker with this material, and you might end up adding more graphics, tweaking some of the content, etc., but your rough drafts need to be complete in order for you to begin polishing this stuff.

May 7 and May 9: Final edits, uploading of the front page, final additions, and general chaos.

Remember that you should have at least a rough draft of your own commute pages in place by next Wednesday.

After staring at the subway map until my eyes started to cross, I put together a list of your transfer points and then organized them by possible themes or topics. My original thought is that people should probably choose a particular theme and work on it, but many transfer points really epitomize several themes. Perhaps we should start by winnowing down the following into maybe five or six themes. Anyway, please comment on these, especially which ones you’d like to see included in the project and which ones we should exclude. Also, what I have missed here, either in terms of themes or transfer points that represent them?

Protest Then: Union Square (Q/6/5)
Protest Now: Fulton Nassau (A/Z/J/2/5) near Zuccotti Park

Immigration Then: Essex/Delancey on LES (F/Z/J), Canal Street (Q/Z/J/6)
Immigration Now: Canal Street (Q/Z/J/6); Jackson Heights (7/F); Queensboro Plaza (7/Q); Atlantic/Flatbush (Q/2/5); 125th Street (5/6)

Transit then: GCT (5/6/7)
Transit now: GCT (5/6/7); 42nd Street Port Authority Bus Terminal (A/Q/7/2); Atlantic Ave/Flatbush (Q/2/5)

Entertainment then and now: Times Square (2/7/Q); 125th Street (5/6)

Food then: GCT (5/6/7) and Bryant Park (7/F) [this took a little research, but there seem to have been many fine dining establishments around GCT and the offices near midtown]
Food now: Gramercy; West 4th (A/F); Lorimer (J/Z) [?];Canal Street (Q/Z/J/6); Jackson Heights (7/F); Union Square (Q/6/5); Soho-Broadway/Lafayette (6/F)

Recreation then: Coney Island (Q/F)
Recreation now: Coney Island (Q/F); Atlantic/Flatbush (Q/2/5)

Culture then: West 4th (A/F); 125th Street (5/6)
Culture now: Soho-Broadway/Lafayette (6/F); West 4th (A/F); Lorimer (J/Z) [?]

Government then and now: Centre/Chambers (J/Z/5/6); Jay St./Boro Hall (F/A)

Finance then and now: Fulton Nassau (A/Z/J/2/5)

Shopping then: Essex/Delancey on LES (F/Z/J) for the huge pushcart markets there and the Essex Street Market; 34th Street and Herald Square (F/Q) and 59th and Lexington (5/6/Q) for middle class buyers
Shopping now: 34th Street and Herald Square (F/Q) and 59th and Lexington (5/6/Q); Soho-Broadway/Lafayette (6/F); 59th Street/Columbus Circle (2/A)

Migration then: West 4th (A/F); 125th Street (5/6)
Migration now: Essex/Delancey on LES (F/Z/J); ?—not sure about this one—maybe Lorimer (J/Z), but since the J/Z are basically the same, maybe not?