Steel Wagstaff

Trying to do good things for good reasons

  • 57 Songs [June 2018]

    57 Songs [June 2018]

    Here’s a playlist of 57 songs I listened to and enjoyed in June 2018. We did a fair amount of traveling in June, which means that it was a light month for me musically–the whole playlist clocks in just over 3 1/2 hours. Nevertheless, the month still brought me a fair number of new favorites.…

  • 35 Songs [May 2018]

    35 Songs [May 2018]

    Here’s a playlist of 35 songs I listened to and enjoyed in May. Less active month for me musically, but really enjoyed records by Meernaa, Ben Sollee, Moses Sumney, Mccarthy Trenching, and LUMP (Laura Marling’s new project). Featured image by Steel Wagstaff.

  • 75 Songs [April 2018]

    75 Songs [April 2018]

    Here’s a playlist of just under five hours of music I listened to and enjoyed in April 2018 (a lot of it as I was finishing up my dissertation).  

  • 45 Songs [March 2018]

    45 Songs [March 2018]

    Here’s a playlist of songs I listened to and enjoyed in March 2018. Around 3 hours of music.

  • 55 Songs: February 2018

    55 Songs: February 2018

    Here’s a playlist of 55 songs I listened to and enjoyed in February 2018. Favorite records from the month were Young Fathers’ White Men Are Black Men Too, The Barr Brothers’ Sleeping Operator, and The Very Best‘s Makes a King. https://open.spotify.com/user/steelwagstaff/playlist/3jISE2sncCKpk3bwMNScIn?si=ItvPxvdZRhSwdSAWiDTpUw

  • 107 Songs: January 2018

    107 Songs: January 2018

    Here’s a playlist of 7 hours of music I listened to and enjoyed in January 2018. Happy New Year and all that. Records I spent a bit of time with were Villagers’ Darling Arithmetic, Monster Rally’s Flowering Jungle and Liam Hayes’ Slurrup, but it was a good month all around, and fairly eclectic. Hope you enjoy!

  • 40 Songs: December 2017

    40 Songs: December 2017

    Here’s a playlist of 40 songs I listened to and enjoyed in December 2017. It was a quieter month for me musically than usual, with end of semester deadlines and vacation, but it was still pleasant and full of some new discoveries that will stick with me for a while. Hope you enjoy!  

  • 2017: My Year in Reading

    2017: My Year in Reading

    This is the first year that I’ve really made an effort to keep track of my leisure reading. One of my goals for the year was to read less internet-based news and more books, and I think I was more or less successful, though some months were better for reading than others. In the end,…

    ;

  • 105 Songs: November 2017

    105 Songs: November 2017

    Here’s a playlist of 6+ hours of music I listened to and enjoyed in November 2017. Records I especially enjoyed included Blick Bassy’s Ako, Mavis Staples’ If All I Was Was Black, Brittany Howard’s Thunderbitch record,Mickhael Paskalev’s What’s Life Without Losers, Landhorne Slim’s Lost at Last, Joan Shelley’s Ginko, Dom La Nena’s Soyo, Max Richter’s…

  • My October and November Reading

    My October and November Reading

    In my last reading update, I mentioned that I had read the first book in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. Since then, apart from reading for my dissertation, that’s pretty much all I’ve read. I just finished The Yellow Admiral, which means that I’ve read 18 of the 21 books (one left unfinished at the author’s death) in the…

    ;

  • 95 Songs [October 2017]

    95 Songs [October 2017]

    Here are 95 songs I listened to and enjoyed in October 2017. Records I had on repeat included John Kennedy’s HA!, Balmorhea’s Clear Language, Alabama Shakes’ Sound & Color, Ane Brun’s Leave Me Breathless, Strand of Oaks’ HEAL, Langhorne Slim’s Life is Confusing EP, and Willie Watson’s Folksinger (vol. 1 & 2).  

  • Getting Started with Pressbooks: A guide for Higher Education use cases

    For the past few years, I’ve been helping faculty and other subject experts at UW-Madison develop and publish openly licensed textbooks and other learning activities using Pressbooks, free and openly licensed software which was originally conceived by Hugh McGuire as a way to extend WordPress in order to publish electronic books. I began this work…

  • Adding Interactivity to Web Annotation

    Adding Interactivity to Web Annotation

    For the past few years, I’ve been working to improve how content experts at my university can write, develop, and publish open educational resources. Early in 2016, I published my own set of core principles for an authoring & publishing tool. I first began developing these principles in the summer of 2015, and after comparing…

    ;

  • 100 Songs [September 2017]

    100 Songs [September 2017]

    Here’s a new playlist with 100 songs I listened to and enjoyed in September. On heavy rotation this month were Laura Marling,Pops Staples, Charlie Parr, Andy Shauf, Leatherbag, Elvis Perkins, Langhorne Slim, Nassau, Iron & Wine, John Martyn, and My Bubba & Elsa Håkansson. Featured image by Steel Wagstaff, CC-BY

  • 75 Songs [August 2017]

    75 Songs [August 2017]

    Here’s a playlist of 75 songs I listened to and enjoyed in August. I listened to a fair amount of My Bubba (I saw them live in Stoughton at the end of September), Odd Nosdam, Sylvan Esso, Quantic, Mariee Sioux, The Milk Carton Kids, and Yusuf / Cat Stevens this month. Featured image by Steel…

  • My Summer Reading

    My Summer Reading

    I haven’t kept up as regularly with these monthly updates as I had hoped, but I did keep reading through the summer. I stayed really plugged into my dissertation reading and research, which really cut down my leisure reading, but I still managed to get through several books that struck my fancy in some way…

  • 100 Songs [July 2017]

    100 Songs [July 2017]

    Here’s a new playlist of 100 songs I listened to and enjoyed in July 2017. Records I had on heavy rotation this month included Nightwares on Wax’ N.O.W. Is the Time, Flying Lotus’ You’re Dead!, Glass Animals’ 2014 release ZABA, Nathaniel Rateliff’s Closer, Guy Clark’s Workbench Songs, Michael Nau’s Some Twist. A lot of new discoveries for me…

  • 105 songs [June 2017]

    105 songs [June 2017]

    Here’s a big playlist (almost 7 1/2 hours) of music I listened to and enjoyed in June 2017. Hope you enjoy! Featured image by Steel Wagstaff

  • Adrianne Lenker & Buck Meek & Big Thief

    Adrianne Lenker & Buck Meek & Big Thief

    I don’t know exactly why or how it happened, but for the past several months I’ve been unusually absorbed by pretty much everything that Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek have ever recorded. I don’t know much about Buck other than that’s he’s from Texas, but here’s some part of Adrianne’s story in a nutshell: born…

  • The last years of J.B. Jackson

    Passages from William Langewiesche’s Inside the Sky interspersed with quotations from John Brinckerhoff Jackson’s own writing on landscape. Normally typeset passages from Langewiesche, block quotes from Jackson. *    *    * To his neighbors he was known simply as John, a patron of the community, yes, but also a profane and wizened old man who…

    ;;

About the Author

Hi, I’m Steel Wagstaff. I’m the product manager for Pressbooks, a Canadian company making open source book publishing software.

I live in Eugene, Oregon with my wife, Laurel Bastian, and our elementary-school aged son.

I love poetry, music, libraries, reading, playing pickup soccer, & eating vegetarian food.

Blog Categories