Today WeatherGrrrl and I walked from the house up to UMM for our radio show (about 1.5 miles each way). When we left at about 11:15am it was a little cold and blowy, but nothing spectacular. When the show ended at 2pm, however, the forecast blizzard had rolled in with all of its pointy teeth sharpened and ready for business.

We actually considered punting the walk back and tried calling Morris transit, but they didn’t answer (turns out they shut up shop at 12:30pm on Sundays), so we bundled up and trekked out in our best imitation of Shackleton. At about the half-way point we ducked into the Morris (movie) Theatre to warm up a bit and re-arrange our scarves, and then we cut through the “mall” for a another bit of respite. The last few blocks were arguably going to be the worst, because (a) we’d cross the railroad tracks, where there’s nothing blocking the north wind for farther than modern telescopes can reach, and (b) we’d ve heading several blocks due north, straight into the teeth of the wind. (Much of the walk up to that point had been west, so sideways to the wind.)

Just after crossing the tracks, Timna drove past, pulled around, and offered us a ride. A TOTAL LIFESAVER! Normally, I’d be all “Oh, I’m just a few blocks from the house, blah, blah, thanks a ton, etc.”, but in this case neither Sue nor I hesitated one teeny bit :-)

The video is basically the walk from the corner of our block, after we were dropped of, up to the front door, and in the lonely little minute documented here my fingers became painfully cold outside of their gloves.

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure we moved here voluntarily. 22.5 years ago. And are extremely happy. But right now a warm, sandy beach wouldn’t go awry.

Not even a little bit.

And thanks again to Timna for the lift. That’s part of why living in Morris is so nice!

We’d played this song a ton on Unhindered by Talent when it was new, and I had no idea there was ever a video for it. A friend of Tom’s just pointed him to it over on Facebook (thanks Devin!) and I had way too much fun watching this several times. So many wonderful images, but I must say the drummer in pearls and the three dudes in lederhosen crack me up every time.

The album this is from was initially released in Australia in 2000, but it’s UK and US releases were delayed as the band worked to sort out sampling clearances, ultimately replacing several of the samples they couldn’t get cleared.

It might also be useful to read the lyrics since Aesop Rock’s verses (which are crucial to our exchange) are tricky to follow and understand. (I totally missed the “Vin Van” reference to Vincent Van Gogh until I read these, for example.)

Now to the exchange:

Tom: Thank you for paying for that [something minor]… For paying for college and so many other things… I feel like I owe you guys more than I could ever pay back…

Nic: DON’T SEND ME AN EAR!

Tom: That was the single best response you could’ve sent :-)

A nice example of why art and music matter. They give us a short-hand language for describing important and difficult concepts. Tom and I had discussed the lyrics to this song at some length when the video came out a few weeks ago, and Tom’s initial text really resembles some of the ideas Aesop is presenting in the song. Because of that conversation, I could respond with could appear as a bit of a non sequitur that would instead carry with it tons of information, and manage to raise a smile at the same time.

I’ll wrap by definitely recommending The Uncluded album. I think “Delicate Cycle” (video above) is a really wonderful song; I listened to it about a zillion times when the video came out. While some of the songs seem to have Kimya and Aesop’s parts kind of pasted together, Perhaps the two most “unified” sounding songs in my opinion are “TV at 10” and “Organs”, both of which are just killer. Tom really likes “Bats” as well. So check it out, and share your thoughts.

This is great stuff, and reminds me of some of the high points of the early days of Open Mic Night at UMM. I love how she uses the looping electronics in a way that comes across as very organic and acoustic.

You try to live your life like you used to, and the “used to” isn’t there.

It’s gone.

Gulp.

This is an incredible five minute piece combining beautiful still photography, video, and audio, that in a few short minutes captures the depth of love and the tragedy of loss in the life of Tom Rose, who is struggling to cope with the loss of his wife of 63 years. It is a form of multi-media poetry, powerfully distilling decades of life and experience into a frame or a sob.

Be warned – it’s not an easy watch. It is, in the end, a scary dark patch in all of our lives, and the lives of those we love and care for; a price we pay for the joy of being together is the pain of being apart.

Big props to Maisie Crow for such a fine piece of work. Every part of it is quite something, and together the pieces pack an enormous emotional wallop. And thanks to FlakPhoto for bringing it to my attention.

The sad thing for us is that we don’t get to see most of this because it’s a wee bit too far to zip over for an evening’s theatre. Happily, however, we can see him act in at least one play via YouTube!

This is a production of the short play “Words, Words, Words” by David Ives, directed by Mike Lion, a fellow Hampshire student. Tom was in a longer play directed by Mike last fall (“Force play”), which was Tom’s first theatre experience at Hampshire. This production of “Words, Words, Words” was for an advanced directing course Mike’s taking at Amherst College, and the play is actually set in a Physics lab on the Amherst campus.

I really like having it in a lab instead of on a stage (compare to numerous other versions on YouTube), and the use of actual typewriters and paper definitely adds significant depth. The stage versions I found on-line all tended to look significantly more “fake” (a weird thing to say about a play featuring three talking chimps) than setting it in the lab. I also think the understated costumes are a win here; some of the other productions on-line have some really weird costuming (tuxes, marionette-doll-style-dresses) that I found quite distracting. (Tom tells me that the playwright actually suggests such customs – weird.)

As WeatherGrrrl says, “Kidlet is way cool!!!!! Great monkey body posture. Very effective location. Definitely earned the requisite number of laughs to be considered successful.”

• UMM/KUMM alums
• Bored kids & teenagers looking to chat
• Young adults (mostly male) presumably looking for e-sex

A few folks from the second category stuck around for quite a while; they were presumably really bored. The folks from the third category mostly left quite promptly, which was nice.

I’m not sure how we’ll manage this in the future, but it certainly was odd and fun. Next week we may set things up so that the video is archived on YouTube, which would allow me to watch later through the eyes of guests, which might be interesting (or boring).

Thanks to everyone who listened and/or watched! See you next week :-)

The overwhelming flood of content that we are now drowning in clearly puts paid to those assumptions. The content is out there, free, waiting for us to find it and stuff it in our heads, with more on the way. “Free on-line class shakes up photo education” from Wired is a nice example of how the content space is changing dramatically, as well as implying that traditional face-to-face education is perhaps a doomed beast:

“I think we’re heading towards a place where we’ll no longer be able to charge for content,” says Worth. “And that scares the shit out of academic institutions.”

This does indeed scare academics and administrators, and excites lots of entrepreneurs who (often rightly) feel that they compete with traditional institutions in the content space. Those, both in and out of the academy, who worry are ultimately missing the point. Content was never what we should have been charging for, and if that’s all we were doing we were frankly doing it wrong. Our real value is in the life changing experiences. When I talk to our alumni, they rarely reminisce about specific courses, and even less often about particular content. What they remember are the things they built and the experiences they shared. They remember the love Margaret Edson talks about so eloquently in this 2008 graduation speech at Smith College:

2008 Smith College Commencement Margaret Edson from Smith College on Vimeo.

So those of us in the Academy need to get over our fascination with content and focus on the business of trying to make a difference in the lives of our students. And students and parents need to become smarter shoppers and look for schools that will give them the experiences that will make a difference in their lives. Any school can give you names and dates, facts and figures, drills and exercises. And so can the Internet. A good school challenges you to discuss, write, build, experience, and understand, which is something that people are a hell of a lot better at than books or web pages.

P.S. The Academy isn’t the only place where we’re struggling to figure out The Point. This excellent post by Vaguery on what coworking is and isn’t is extremely relevant and comes to many of the same conclusions: Experience and community matter. Hop on and stoke the engines, peeps; we’ve got places to go and things to do.

In short, we’re being played, peeps. A small number of very wealthy folks have rigged the system in their favor and trashed the economy in the process. The amazing thing is how thoroughly they’ve convinced the middle class to support them as they’ve smashed up the family china. They have only a few votes, and their power rests ultimately in their ability to buy and bully ours.

Sadly, a culture that values sound bites more than data and rational discussion is ripe for this kind of abuse. It’s probably no accident that these people are so intent of gutting our schools, as it just serves their short term goals. Ultimately, though, they need a solid middle class to buy their toys, so this can’t be a good long-term strategy for anyone.

The Incident at Tower 37 from bitfilms.com.

Hampshire College was one of the schools Tom and I visited on our big tour of New England colleges last month, and we saw a bit of student animation as we passed through one of the buildings. While we were visiting with Lee Spector (a friend of mine who teaches at Hampshire), the film came up and he told us we could find it online at bitfilms.com. One of the things that most impressed us both about Hampshire was the incredible quality of the student work there, and the videos at bitfilms are wonderful examples. These animated shorts are directed by professor Chris Perry, who came to Hampshire from Pixar. You can definitely see his Pixar background, as the animation (which is truly splendid) is always in service of an interesting story, and the characters have wonderful depth despite the brevity of the films.

As well as “The incident at Tower 37”, I also definitely recommend their other two bitfilms shorts (“Catch” and “Displacement”), as well as the 2010 Hampshire student animation demo reel and independent Hampshire student films such as “Nick the Shoes” by William Colón. All really impressive stuff that sets the bar awfully high for everyone in academia.