Green Here Too
Be missin’ y’all this weekend. But ain’t going to be lonely.
The Lost Art of Reading Aloud
How often do you practice rolling words off your tongue?
Reading aloud recaptures the physicality of words. To read with your lungs and diaphragm, with your tongue and lips, is very different than reading with your eyes alone. The language becomes a part of the body, which is why there is always a curious tenderness, almost an erotic quality, in those 18th- and 19th-century literary scenes where a book is being read aloud in mixed company. The words are not mere words. They are the breath and mind, perhaps even the soul, of the person who is reading.
I remember an old roommate asking me if I was okay on the second of April after a particularly vigorous reading of the Wasteland in my room the night before. I got into the habit of periodically reading aloud to myself while taking homiletics classes to hone my articulation and sense of rhythm. I highly recommend it for folks who want to practice public speaking.
Look. A happy story!
All 12 of Amelia’s eggs hatched on the second-story ledge of Sterling Savings Bank over the weekend.
It’s the second time Amelia Duckheart nested at the bank.
via an old roommate, who said, “look a happy story”
45 million years in the making: Ida
Continuing the expansion of Clusterflock as a safe space for the exploration of your feelings about evolution…Ida!
Harvesting the wind
Design proposal to use existing infrastructure to create clean energy — wind turbines inside electrical pylons.
Beautiful Dollar Bills
Michael Tyznik has come up with some beautiful re-imagining of the US Bills, check them out. Part of the Dollar Design Project.
“Get that danged camera
out of the drawing.”
Facebook is for old people.
This became obvious to me when I was friended by my father:
In Atlanta, I met a shy quiet 14-year-old girl that I’ll call Kaitlyn. She wasn’t particularly interested in talking to me, but she answered my questions diligently. She said that she was on both MySpace and Facebook, but quickly started talking about MySpace as the place where she gathered with her friends. At some point, I asked her if her friends also gathered on Facebook and her face took on a combination of puzzlement and horror before she exclaimed, “Facebook is for old people!” Of course, Kaitlyn still uses Facebook to communicate with her mother, aunt, cousins in Kentucky, and other family members.
Wait a minte. I am on Facebook and don’t use Myspace anymore. Shit.
I was going to be you for Halloween but my dick’s not big enough
George Baselitz, The Big Night Down The Drain
private bird beach
A species of birds able to fly immediately after hatching from eggs buried beneath the tropical sand has just been given its own private beach in eastern Indonesia, a conservation group said Friday.
Maleos — chicken-sized birds with black helmet-like foreheads — number from 5,000 to 10,000 in the wild and can only be found on Sulawesi island. They rely on sun-baked sands or volcanically heated soil to incubate their eggs.
watering the geyser
Two seasonal Yellowstone National Park concession workers have been fired after a live webcam caught them urinating into the Old Faithful geyser.
…
Fishing on the Niger Near Timbuktu
hillside
Another wooded hillside in Pittsburgh. This happens to be in the Bloomfield neighborhood.
Weekly Picture 151
Open Sky, Austin, TX, 2.5.2009, 6:47:00, Installation Shot in Broken Gold
More install images.
I couldn’t figure out how to post this here correctly, last week’s picture was a video, available here:
Weekly Picture 150:Bounce House, Austin, TX, 5.3.2009
Advanced Cat Yodeling
via Buzzfeed
Last Day Dream
via Post Position
That’s what she said
Look Familiar?
Oh, don’t be like that about it.
–Like what.
You know…that way you get.
–What what what?
Like that.
–Hold on. I’m like this now because of this “like that” thing you always bring up.
There you go.
–Jesus. Can you just explain one thing to me?
Now you’re getting all that other way.
–Okay. Okay. Jesus. Okay–and what way might that be?
I’m not going to respond to talk like that.
My posting
may be sporadic this week. Feel free to fill in the gaps.
Millennials and Generation Y
We are still told that we are special, just as we are told that our individualism and self-actualization is the key to our national prosperity and, on top of that, that anything we want is to be ours. It is our entitlement, passed down from the shores of Iwo Jima and the buses of Birmingham. Yet the causes and subsequent responsibilities of generations past are no longer on the table. Hitler was defeated, communism fell, conscription was retired, and radical inequality acknowledged. This is not to say that there isn’t still great work to be done, but rather that our generation’s causes have become niched. We don’t have a war for everyone to fight, a draft to dodge, or a pervasive Jim Crow to oppose: our responsibility has become a matter of personal preference and choice.
Perhaps this is why I find The Myth of Sisyphus so compelling.
Wolf
Mia had to have three baby teeth pulled last Monday. It went fine–not fun, but routine. On Tuesday I got a call from the school that Mia was complaining that her mouth hurt, so I went up to get her. She seemed fine, maybe a little sore, so we went home and snuggled. Then on Thursday I got a call that she was crying and saying that her teeth hurt, and I got very worried–after that many days, it could mean infection–so I rushed to the school.
When we got to the car, her mood brightened considerably. I reminded her that I always know when she is not telling the truth, that she can’t fool me.
“I know,” she said. “But it’s really easy to fool the teachers!”
Sunny Sunday Evening
bald currency
via Cynical-C. All of them here
implosion cycle
We saw and recorded the first half of this 1-minute video this morning, a few blocks from home. The second half is just there because it makes me happy.
