The deadline for the 2008 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, a $2,500 grant given to a woman writer of 32 years or younger, is this Thursday, May 15. For more information, click here. - - - -

A Convergence of Convergences: A Contest. - - - - For more information about this contest, click here. - - - - Contest Winner No. 35. - - - - Disseminations: Internet, Dandelions, Flight Paths. By Sarah Daegling - - - - Internet map: Something so rigid-seeming and technological ends up looking like a huge tangle of veins and dandelions, all made of brightly colored thread floating through space. Cool. - - - - Weschler Responds. - - - - Lovely indeed. I was immediately put in mind of some of Tom and Maria Eisner's equally evocative dandelion images—the first one taken in nature, the second and third ones created through a simple new process invented by Tom (under black velvet on a color photocopier) ... I wrote Tom a note asking for clarification as to what exactly we were looking at in these images. His reply: What we call the puffball in a dandelion, what as kids we liked to blow apart, is actually the mature seed package of the plant. In it the seeds are precisely assembled, in a loose globular arrangement easily shattered by wind. The seeds are thus set adrift, each suspended by its own little parachute, for distances that may amount to miles. A puffball may produce upward of 100 seeds in a dandelion, with a germination rate as high as 90 percent. The two close-up photos are actually of puffballs of a relative of the dandelion (goatsbeard, Tragopogon pratensis). The third picture, taken outdoors rather than with the copier, is of a dandelion (Taraxacum officinale). So there's that. But then as well there's this video graphic I came upon the other day, Aaron Koblin's uncanny time-lapse visualization of all the flights coming in and out of the U.S. airspace over a single 24-hour period: (Click to watch.) Talk about dissemination! - - - - OTHER WINNERS. - - - - 1. Evolving, Evolved by Charlie Hopper 2. Primal Forces, Basic Colors by Andy Hunter 3. The End of the Beginning by Holly Dunsworth Intermezzo by Lawrence Weschler 4. This Is Not an Ad by Jimmy Chen 5. Catskills Vagina by Dan Clem 6. The Antipodes by Chris Zic 7. Self-Made Constriction by Sam Gaskin 8. We Are the Son by Danny Erker 9. Painfully Unaware by Dan Park 10. Gutshot by Jason Torchinsky Weschler's Second Interlude 11. Love and War by Kim Wood 12. Inside and Out There by Lena Webb 13. The March by Emily Marvosh 14. Feminine Divine Triptych by Margit Christenson 15. Time's Deliberate Convergence by Steve Denyszyn 16. A Rousseau/Hirshfield Convergence by Adam Webb Beirut/Warsaw by Lawrence Weschler 17. Clothesline Raising Over Carlisle, Indiana by Charlie Hopper Carnival of Convergences Weschler's Fourth Interlude Aftersquib to the Foregoing 18. Pelvises All the Way Down by John Peter Rickgauer 19. Ovary Night? by Maya Muñoz 20. Christ in Space by Jonathan Shipley A Pair of Convergences Off of Tina Barney Another Carnival of Convergences 21. Moral Confusion: Iraq, Munich, and Vietnam by Donald Rumsfeld 22. Seeing the Tree for the Forest by Walter Murch An Addendum to the Foregoing, and a Visitor Challenge 23, 24, and 25. Far Out by Michael Benson, Brian Christian, and Walter Murch 26. Jewish Bunk Beds by Monica S. Bland Those Damn Swedish Trees, Take 3: Convergence of the Blogs 27. Degenerate Boogie-Woogie by Lisa Lee Carnival of Convergences No. 3 28. Sand and Moon by Alison Cornyn Actaeon: An Ovidian Impromptu by Lawrence Weschler 29 and 30. Hoods and Veils by Vero Testa and Lauren Redniss The Onion/Bickle Convergence by Lawrence Weschler 31. The Lone Figure Against the Armored Swarm by Michele Siegel 32. Muscle and Flow by Benjamin R. Cohen An Addendum to the Foregoing: Cities, Brains, Orchestras by Lawrence Weschler Saint and Princess by Lawrence Weschler Beauty Queen and Baghdad Hummer by Lawrence Weschler Carnival of Convergences No. 4 Laughing, Clapping, Constantly Forgetting: A Trill of Readerly Associations by Lawrence Weschler 33. Lithographica by R.A. Villanueva 34. Papal Fire (Papa Lux) by Nick Feia Addendum to "Laughing, Clapping ..." and, More Specifically, to the Stalinist-Applause Anecdote by Lawrence Weschler 35. Disseminations: Internet, Dandelions, Flight Paths by Sarah Daegling 36. Black and White and in Color by Walter Murch Carnival of Convergences No. 5 Lee Friedlander's Visionary Trees: An Addendum to the Last Chapters of Everything That Rises by Lawrence Weschler 37. Shipwrecked Desperation by Charles Mudede via Matt Haber 38. Life Forms by Ariel Winter   MORE ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT RISES

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