Bomba Charger

I Like What You've Done With Your Basement!

Sat, 11 May 2013 21:25:20 -0500

Rolling Down That Hill

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:55:00 -0500

Of course there are Tumblr’s made up of nothing but Twin...

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:05:00 -0600

Of course there are Tumblr’s made up of nothing but Twin Peaks GIFs! Some better than others, of course, seeing as the endless pop-cultural loop, of finding the perfect edit (will it be a seamlessly smooth loop, or like the above example, will it end abruptly, hauntingly, before relaunching), is not something to be trifled with. Because a really good GIF captures the essence of something and can effortlessly draw you in, it’s like a haiku, so compact and bursting forth, like a firework.

This may have been the best from the several hundred I viewed. From episode 1, no? A video filmed by James on the occasion of his outing with Donna and Laura. Donna’s watching this video on a television monitor at the the police station, still in shock over the loss of her best friend.

Seconds later, Agent Cooper will freeze the frame and see reflected in Laura Palmer’s eye somebody sitting on a motorcycle.

Bowling. The first picture is of Megan (on the right) and her...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 16:19:00 -0600

Bowling. The first picture is of Megan (on the right) and her friend, Helen, who, in tandem with the bumpers, offered friendly assistance. In the second picture Helen and Megan are demonstrating their highly effective knee-roll while Abby leaps in the foreground.

Happy Birthday to my 7-year old!

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 20:54:52 -0600

Happy Birthday to my 7-year old!

Briefly Megan (Taken with Cinemagram)

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 19:56:28 -0600

Briefly Megan (Taken with Cinemagram)

On Megan Turning 4

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 20:32:40 -0600

Having experienced first hand the joy of jumping on giant inflatables, Megan has vigorously advocated over this past year for a “jump party” when she turned 4. Attentive as we are to the dreams and ambitions of our children, Cathy and I looked forward to providing her unfettered access to those giant, generator fed (the droning din of the giant warehouse establishment housing these things is impressive), germ du jour ridden inflatables when that day at last arrived.

"In smaller, more familiar things, memory weaves her strongest enchantments, holding us at her mercy..."

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:06:00 -0600

“In smaller, more familiar things, memory weaves her strongest enchantments, holding us at her mercy with some trifle, some echo, a tone of voice, a scent of tar and seaweed on the quay. This surely is the meaning of home. A place where every day is multiplied by all the days before it.”

- Freya Stark, Perseus In The Wind, 1948

So I finally started making some of the video-essays I’ve...

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:28:02 -0500

So I finally started making some of the video-essays I’ve been thinking about making for a few years now. I’m hoping to make roughly a dozen 3 to 5-minute long videos exploring ideas about home, place and community over the next year. This first one is a Halloween-inspired piece silliness. The next one should come along in a week or two.

You Know You Like It: AlunaGeorge It’s October and only now has...

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 01:24:00 -0500

You Know You Like It: AlunaGeorge

It’s October and only now has it become abundantly clear this was my summer jam. The percolating bass line was what first buttered my ears in the early days of June, so by July I had completely fallen for the elegant slink of its groove. The better part of August I was fully under the spell of Aluna Francis’ gorgeous delivery (her lovely English accent is the song’s secret sauce), and by summer’s end, as mid-September gave way to autumn, I was unreservedly smitten by its giant bubblegum hook of a chorus (on the above video, this hook drops at 48 seconds in) and had taken to, on more than one occasion, dancing to the song while wearing headphones. I wish you could have joined me.

Which reminds me. I think the way Aluna Francis dances in this video to be the embodiment of what has sadly come to be known as adorkable. Zooey Deschanel must cede some ground.

suitep: Eight-year old Make-A-Wish child Janiya Penny reacts...

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:05:39 -0500

suitep:

Eight-year old Make-A-Wish child Janiya Penny reacts after meeting President Barack Obama as he welcomes her family to the Oval Office, Aug. 8, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Something about this picture really walloped me.

"A popular Government without poplular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue..."

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 07:46:41 -0500

“A popular Government without poplular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

- James Madison

Book of the Week: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 23:10:45 -0500

‘Dunno what about the review compelled me to check out this book the other day, though I’m glad I did. A remarkable premise (the earth is slowing, natural rhythms are thrown disastrously out of whack) propelled by the stately, almost hypnotic narrative of a solitary and deeply sympathetic teenage girl coming of age in deeply troubling times.

For a debut, Walker’s prose, the control she commands over her narrative and the refined aesthetic that propels her story, it’s pretty remarkable. For a book with so many apocalyptic events occurring (crop failure, mass extinction of animal life, power grid collapse), it’s an uncommonly still, beautifully refined book. No fireworks. It’s insular, drawing you deep into its southern Californian domestic interiors and the slow unraveling happening within them. Everything, including the protagonist, feels on the cusp of disappearing.

The first picture is of Neil Armstrong, taken not long after his...

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 15:41:00 -0500

The first picture is of Neil Armstrong, taken not long after his first moonwalk. The second picture is the Onion’s appropriate headline response to that moonwalk.

Abby and Megan getting down in the backyard.

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 10:30:25 -0500

Abby and Megan getting down in the backyard.

When Gore Vidal Becomes His Words

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 00:09:00 -0500

“I have never considered death to be much in the way of completion.”

-Tennessee Williams

"To be a success these days, you are more likely to be an athlete than a drug addict,” Van Zandt told..."

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:32:00 -0500

““To be a success these days, you are more likely to be an athlete than a drug addict,” Van Zandt told me. “You go through the phase of drugs and drinking, and if you get through it you see that all the rewards are in longevity. Longevity is more fun than the drugs. Then, there’s the business. For that you need a clean head.”

- We Are Alive: Bruce Springsteen at sixty-two. By David Remnick.

(The take away here is: “…all the rewards are in longevity.”)

Hello beautiful Lake Erie. I could sit here forever with you....

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 10:20:22 -0500

Hello beautiful Lake Erie. I could sit here forever with you. (Taken with Cinemagram)

Librarianship and Facilitating Community Knowledge

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:59:00 -0500

…librarians keep looking at the online environment as a place to provide information, not as a place to facilitate knowledge and conversation. We broadcast our catalogs and our physical presences, but when it actually comes to doing work and building a community, our services consist of asking one-on-one digital reference questions and putting things on hold.

Took roughly 60 pages before R. David Lankes really hit his groove in his book, The Atlas of New Librarianship.

There’s a lot of ship building exposition in those first 60 pages, an ambitious conceptual framework for how the book works (replete with numerous graphs helping out with the heavy theoretical lifting) but once we’re past the fundamentals of Conversation theory (round about page 63), Lankes really hits his stride and begins to unpack the mission statement he believes should guide modern librarianship. Which is:

The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities.

Obviously, this is a mission statement I find very appealing.

I’m particularly sympathetic to the strong thread of civic engagement running through The Atlas, the idea of librarianship (and my own bias means I’m thinking of public librarianship), is far more than simply providing our communities with access to quality information, but empowering our patrons to become civic change agents for the betterment of their communities and beyond. In other words, we don’t just passively guide folks to quality information, but help them to create new knowledge that improves their community and society as a whole.

I’m down with that.

theparisreview: “There are many skeptical, rebellious, or...

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:57:32 -0500

theparisreview:

“There are many skeptical, rebellious, or simply nervous writers all around us, who, having existed a full twenty or thirty years in this universe, denounce or reject life because it fails to meet their standards as philosophical intellectuals. It seems to me that they can’t know enough about it for confident denial. The mystery is too great. So when they knock at the door of mystery with the knuckles of cognition it is quite right that the door should open and some mysterious power should squirt them in the eye.”

—Saul Bellow, The Art of Fiction No. 37