The music and stories the girls come home with are usually pretty colorful. Campfire songs I've never heard of, 2-day adventures in the woods gathering forrest food for a stew, more plants discovered that contain strong enough fibers to fashion semipermanent necklaces, and days of journal entries that need to be written out before they lose the details.
A few trips ago, they call came back from camping howling the songs of Doug Elliot. Sharing now.
Doug's stories derive from his unique lifestyle as well as his deep interest in plants, animals and people. Since humanity's beginnings our connections with the natural world have defined us and made us who we are. Elliott's stories explore and celebrate the rich diversity of that special human connection to nature. His programs are textured by his use of traditional lore, regional dialects and accents, and enhanced by his soulful harmonica playing.
Storytelling and education go hand-in-hand. For millennia, storytelling has been an invaluable tool for passing information, values and wisdom from one generation to the next.
Example of a cross section of a (woody) stem. Used with permission from Hydroponics - Indoor Horticulture by Jeffrey Winterborne. http://www.hydroponicist.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Xylem is one of the two types of transport tissue in vascular plants (phloem is the other). Its basic function is to transport water, but it also transports some nutrients through the plant. If the xylem is the conduit for passing water and nutrients within plants, this and any blog are also xlyem. We are the roots drawing nutrients from the soil and our thoughts to transport them to you, the flower. I had the good fortune to take a class with a video professor in the early nineties that influenced me deeply. Paul Ryan taught an upper level Field Production class that went beyond the traditional scope of using video cameras and microphones properly. He introduced us to the use of Ta'i Chi to control our bodies while shooting 'hand-held' cameras. Professional cameras you see news photographers lugging on their shoulders are pretty heavy. This approach, lowering your center of gravity and shifting your weight consciously from leg to leg, allows one to walk with a smooth glide producing less camera shake. You get a freedom of movement that a tripod cannot emulate. Your shots gain a fluidity that you can only draw on a storyboard as a curve. The other major focus of Ryan's class was to bring in the concept of Earthscore to video production. He has several video examples at his site, earthscore.org.
While at the Sequatchie Vally Institute a few weeks ago, I thought of Paul while shooting this video. The camera was much smaller than the one we used back then. This video doesn't have a lot of camera movement in it, but is full of movement. What I'm doing here is describing the water.
This is a bit of a stretch, but conceptually, the stream bed, this medium and this conversation with each other is a fluid transfer of nutrients, ideas, stories, experiences.
This photo of ice was taken on a quiet morning after an event of lunar celebrations and other indie, crafty-like experiences called "Dreamtide" in Ashville, NC. We met up with travelling puppeteers and acrobats who flew Red1 and Red2 into the air with their feet and taught them how to soar with aerial silks. The girls love making functional items that they can trade with. Red2 walked around I.C.E. (see below) and traded out quite a bit of loot with the other vendors. The vendors prefer actual money, but Mrs. SF Daddy had some really cute "Sneaters" to trade that year.
I love this video showing us, I.C.E. There's a lot of plaid in it, but don't hold that against us.
I-C-E, the Indie Craft Experience, based in Atlanta is a lot of things. Our friend Shannon is part of the team that created and curates this experience for us the crafty consumer AND us as the crafty creators. I couldn't explain it better than they do, so here's a quote from their own site:
With a vision to provide indie crafters an opportunity to sell and promote their creations in Atlanta, ICE quickly caught on as a favorite event for participants and attendees alike. ICE is a grass-roots effort, organized by two Atlanta crafters – Christy Petterson of a bardis and Shannon Mulkey of Patina. Inspired by indie craft markets in Chicago and Austin, the Indie Craft Experience was founded in order to provide Atlanta with a major indie craft event. In addition to craft markets, ICE also organizes Wedding Day Hooray, Salvage and an annual Pop-Up Shop during the holiday season.
This is a long video, but at the ICE site, there's a long list of events they do all year round. I have quite a few friends who needed ICE to "pop-up" for them. I hope my crafty-pals finally take the hint and leap in, sign up, and get a table to sell their neat items.
Mrs. SF Daddy is totally a maker. She's a frequent participant of I.C.E., currently has some items at Naked Art in Birmingham, AL, and talks about her stuff, which for some reason we named SlothCraft, on her blog.
Lot's of links today, but, hey, you wanted to know all this stuff, right?
Yeah, for video. It's what I do for a living. I wonder how many people really do any video editing of their home movies at all. I'm an editor for a living and I find it completely over whelming to get in their and start cutting the video down.
I have hard drives now brimming full of ballet and interviews in front of statues of Walt Disney.
I don't share too many videos of my kids online, (silent thanks heard from around the room), I don't understand all the people who do. I wonder what we'll be doing with it all in 20 years.
S day is saved for Star Wars, of course. But not just another Wookieepedia link.
Have another look at the brilliance the artists at Lego have given us this year.
We've enjoyed these Lego Star Wars titles for a while now and this new one is 'wizard-cool'. It's another super quick post, but it's also Saturday. Go turn off the computer.
We interrupt(ed) this blog to have holidays and focus a bit on some big big family projects. Since this is exactly what the SF Daddy blog is about, it's a bit out of place to ignore it and not share but there you go. Sometimes, you just go with it.
This is the first project that interrupted our flow will my blogging pals. Perhaps we're back for a while. We'll just hope so and leave it there.
What did we do? Go back to November. While I was working on my novel for NaNoWriMo, we started an a school project for Red1 on Jim Henson.
It turns out that she wanted to write a paper and make a video. I'm a fultime video editor for a cable network, so this is right in my ballpark. I coached her in how to write up her script and make notes for when she's on camera. We did this very low tech of course, but the results were very fun. We started reviewing available clips from YouTube to make the selection process simple.
November was a funky month for me. I was making great strides with a novel for the NaNoWriMo, where you chunk out a 50,000 word novel in 30 days with a few thousand of your pals, but about half way through the month I became a little encumbered by some medical issues and couldn't finish.
I learned a lot though and my family loves the story. They helped me by inspiring the characters. It's a story about us in the future. It's what we'd like to see happen next year if we could just up and "Green Acres" ourselves to the country, but 60 years in the future. What would Eddie Albert or Ava Gabor do in 2076? It turns out that my story ends up reading like Forrest Gump meets Petticoat Junction. Dunno if anyone other than Red1 will think that's funny or remotely interesting.
This series of posts began as a hunt for peaks inside The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Harry's adventure ride through the books that opened this summer. We're all pretty big fans of the kid.
We've been waiting for the theme park to open up patiently at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure and began our searching through blogs for pictures of the construction.
We found slews of news stories to tease us of possible equipment to be included in the ride. Sounds like this roboarm or Strong Arm, actually did win out in the end.
As launch approached and the fanfare started, we tried to find clips of what the park looked like from the inside! The numbers grew really fast. Walk throughs of the shops and long loving looks at window displays, but we wanted to see the good stuff. We were looking for the big ride.
Even on opening day it took the bloggers a while to get the 'ride through' clips posted. We had already seen a few videos of the que. The line show where you walk the grounds of Hogwarts, explore the halls, chat with the paintings, get the ride story from visions of the characters themselves, but it took another day or so to see the videos from inside the ride itself.
We'd been enjoying video clips of rides at other parks. Sharing stories of the evolution of the Jaws ride at Universal Studios. (The first year it opened, the boat skipper blew the shark up into big bloody-looking pink floating chunks of shark meat. It was closed up pretty quickly.) There are so many good stories. The girls like hearing about the rides that have closed too.
The Back to the Future ride was the best. It was so revolutionary in its day. One of the first "flying car" rides inside an IMAX((?)) theater. When it opened up the parks were going through a great transformation of ride technology and LINE deception. As a perpetual patron, I really appreciated the "pre-show" line entertainment. Even the very simple solutions of TV sets running cartoons and the addition of actual fans to cool you off.
But I must get back to the thread... We were searching for the clips that showed the inside of the ride itself. After finally finding it I was terribly disappointed. NOT in the ride, but in the ability of the riders to be able to capture the ride on video. They couldn't! It was too dark. Too fast. Too much for the little cameras to capture it all. It was even almost too much for the microphones to handle.
This is the clip we finally saw that freaked everyone out a bit. It's a spoiler so don't click on it if you want to stay in the dark. (Which is kind of a joke, because half of it IS just blackness!)
What I learned was that perhaps the little ones need a little more time to age before we embark to Hogwarts. I'd hte to get them there and not feel comfortable letting them ride the Big Ride. What a let down that would be. But, man, I can't wait. And after a year or so, they'll have some of the bugs (not the good ones, they promise) worked out. Getting stuck on this one seems like it would be a blast too.
Looking forward to the day we get to go. This explains how we got ourselves distracted and started enjoying the D23 clips. The anticipation may be more fun than some of the rides and places themselves. The dreams of princesses and dragons will have to do. We have the books. And all the other books with no rides and theme parks.
I think we'll be fine as we wait.
To read all of the posts in this series, click on the keyword "wonder". I reserved that word for this series. Enjoy!
SO! Part 6. This is the last of the series. Whew. But did they save the best for last? Well, I don't know. It is Star Wars so at least they think they did. I have always been a little underwhelmed by Star Tours, but as one of the first cram you a little room that rocks you around ride, it wasn't bad. And no matter how many times you rode, it was always Pee Wee Herman's droid's first time out. Red1 loved it but Red2 was horrified at the thought of speeding into outerspace. We couldn't even tempt her with the promise of going all the way to Endor to meet the Ewoks.
The Star Wars weekends video clips are also something riotous to look up at YouTube if you dare. They had a very successfull kareoke competition that must be experienced.
One more surprise awaits.
I lied when I said this series was over. The last post will explain how we got here in the first place and show the results of that journey. Not in search of a mouse, princess or even Spock. (Lame.) We were in search of Harry if you remember...
Back to California now. Disney's California Adventure Park, to be exact. Looks like a new water and light show. The granddaughter to the water shows at Epcot and Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida. Red2 loved the princesses on boats and big scary witchy heads floating around.
Cars Land. How fun. Based on the Test Track technology he says. Test Track is one of the newer attractions at Epcot that I've actually been able to experience. Red1 wanted to go so we almost closed the park waiting to get in. Mrs. SFDaddy and Red2 watched the fireworks instead.
Oh, now for that last surprise... look under your seat! What did you win? I won 2 blank index cards, an American Girl Magazine subscription renewal request postcard and a green stretchy ponytail band!
There's an exciting tomorrow waiting for you at Hong Kong Disneyland. A North American pioneering theme permeates one of the new kiddie lands here. You are going to get wet from the geysers, but it's probably not going to be boiling hot water. A new twist on the Haunted Mansion. Bad Monkey!
I'm not all that into the cruises or the Disney Vacation Club, but the place they're planning for Hawaii looks beautiful. We should visit when it's done. :)
I do have to thoroughly recommend doing Disney with their one-stop shopping deals. A few years ago we bought the plane ticket, hotel, park tickets and food all at once. The packet came in the mail with special tags for our luggage and they picked us up at the airport and whisked us away. We ate so well. The chefs in all of the restaurants received notices that we were coming and came out to speak to us about our various food allergies. Even the counter service locations had gluten and dairy free selections.
Disney is very good at keeping you in the park. For that trip, we succumbed to the mouse, and allowed ourselves to be totally immersed. It was ver-nice.
Part 2 as promised. This is the ONE that makes the most impact at our house. Will Red2 be able to contain herself? The Princess expansion may actually get us out to California after all eventually. We have mixed feelings about the whole theme park experience, but we're warming up to idea of just 'letting go'. It's a small part of all the awesome things we're doing and probably the most normal thing our kids get to do.
Our journey continues with the D23 Expo. We started with clip 4 of 6 and just couldn't contain ourselves. Okay, I'm not going to pretend that the girls even saw these clips anymore. I'm just talking about me now, but we all knew that, right?
My oldest daughter loves the movies and the Clone Wars series. We're looking forward to the new live action series. The younger daughter expressly dislikes Star Wars, but that's okay, she's really into Legend of the Seeker, remember?
Q: So are the stormtroopers also clones?
Monday, June 07, 2010
Blind river dolphins, reclusive lemurs, a parrot as fearless as it is lovelorn ... Douglas Adams' close encounters with these rare and unusual animals reveal that evolution, ever ingenious, can be fickle too -- in a University of California talk that sparkles with his trademark satiric wit.
Mr. Adams caught me off guard with his first comments about the lemur. Mr. Lemur is an old friend of mine and one the old pals will remember from a video we did about 20 years ago. Not to worry, it's safely stored on some ancient videotape somewhere in a box. Soon to be a pile of brittle bits of plastic.
One amazing clip from TED. The most mysterious and cool things under that water. We had seen a lot about cuddle fish from the visit to the IMAX theater at MOSY in Tampa a few months ago.
Oh, dear. This next one was not a happy video. TED is full of great ideas. Not all of them will make you smile, but even these I'm glad to have shared and seen. The girls were most impressed with the size of the fish that we used to be able to catch. These pictures really hit home what's happening under the sea.
