Earth Music Theater

“We hope humanity will see Earth with new eyes, and hear Music with new ears.” — Earth Music Theater website

My wife and I went to this free musical/visual event — Earth Music Theater — last night at our local library, where video footage of earth from the International Space Station was shown while a band played original compositions inspired by the footage.

This project unfolds in different places around the country, with different musicians, and it was such a lovely, evocative experience, and the video footage is amazing (as was the music).

I had actually interviewed the first astronaut in the video – Cady Coleman — years ago when I was a newspaper reporter and she was training to go into space (she lives near me). What a joy it was to see her on the ISS, and even playing her flute on the video in zero gravity.

Peace (from a distance),
Kevin

Internet Phone Book Explorations: Jenn Schiffer

(This is one of a series of periodic explorations of the Indie Web via the Internet Phone Book project. I am on a personal exploration but also hope to lift the profile of sites I have found.)

I type in the phone number and arrive at Jenn Schiffer’s website and I know this is going to be fun and quirky time, and it sure is. Soon, I am making art with some of her pixel-ish tools and going through her various creative experiments. Each one is rather unexpected, in a nice way, and the whole vibe of her website is, Come on in and play around.

I did.

GrafPaper Art

At one point, I looked at her meme generator, and notice that she calls it the first meme generator site on the Internet. Could that be true? I do a little digging and it seems like this is true. If her generator was not the very first, it is pretty close. Which is cool. I used it to make a meme, and it still works, albeit a little clunky. (NOTE: Jenn later informed that her “first” claim was a joke)

meme experiment

It’s clear that Jenn is very Glitch-adjacent (Ok, weird phrasing on my part — sorry, Jenn) but I know how much Glitch was focused on makers and creators, and sharing of ideas and projects within the community, and Jenn seems like she was very deep into that. It says she was Glitch’s director of community for a number of years.

Alas, Glitch is now dead — another nail in the coffin of the open interactive web.

Thank you, Jenn, for hosting a fun site and making a visitor feel welcome.

Peace (and pixels),
Kevin

Poetry: Stick Season

Stick Season

This morning’s prompt for Verselove — In poetry, we say … — had me thinking to time I spent picking up sticks in our yard (and putting them in the pile for the fire pit).

And of course, there is this song:

Peace (in the remains of winter),
Kevin

Daily Create: Constellation

We’ve done this prompt before for DS106 Daily Create, where you donate a word to an ongoing collaborative poem project via Google’s PoemPortrait project. I avoided the Selfie part, and just went with adding “constellation” as a word to the poem. And then got Giphy with it.

Peace (across the sky),
Kevin

VerseLove: Wild Dogs

Wild Dogs

The prompt at VerseLove this morning was pretty wide open, with the suggestion to use the National Geographic site (which was paywalled) and to end a poem with some alliteration. I saw a headline about how new evidence shows dogs were with humans even earlier than previously known, and I looked over at my own sleeping dog — Rayna — and took the idea from there.

Peace (and pooches),
Kevin

Convergence

Child of Vision - Baby eye in Black and White IMG_1115-002
Child of Vision – Baby eye in Black and White IMG_1115-002 flickr photo by iezalel7williams shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

Sometimes, the past converges with the present.

The name of a college professor came to my attention twice in a single week, and when I realized that I knew the name, that he was in fact one of my professors when I was going back to school to get my teaching certificate, I had to reach out to him and let him know I was thinking of him and remembering how inspirational he had been to me. I even dug out my old college transcripts and found an early CV/Resume, and realized that he had written me a two-page letter of recommendation and allowed me to use him as a reference.

Some teachers stick with you. Some fade. He was one of those whose energy and enthusiasm and teaching practice became part of my own teaching DNA, and I am grateful. I wrote him to tell him, and even though we have not communicated in more than 20 years, I wanted to thank him for the spark he lit in me in his science methods class.

Peace (in appreciation),
Kevin