Here's a few things I learned from the John Giorno Foundation:
* Dial-a-Poem is back, with 286 recordings by 130 poets! Call 917-994-8949.
* Dial-a-Poem was the first Dial-a effort, begun in 1968 at the Architectural League of NY. It was so popular that the telephone company threatened to shut it down.
* "With Dial-A-Poem, I stumbled on the phenomena of the telephone as a new media, connecting three things: publicity, a telephone number, and content accessed by a huge audience. Before Dial-A-Poem, the telephone was used one-to-one. Dial-A-Poem's success gave rise to a Dial-A-Something industry, from Dial-A-Joke, Dial-A-Horoscope, Dial-A-Stock Quotation, Dial Sports, to the 900 number paying for a call, to phone sex, and ever more extraordinary technology. Dial-A-Poem, by chance, ushered in a new era in telecommunications." ~ John Giorno, 2012
* And on my own, I learned that trying to make ° into a bullet adds a stupid transparent box to my screen that I can't get rid of & a few other unwanted computer glitches. There was a lot of heat-addled attempts to undo it but they didn't work.