Stories & Soliloquies

Stories & Soliloquies
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    • In My Pensieve: A Link Round Up

      Posted at 2:00 pm by Michelle Joelle, on July 18, 2016

      As I browse the internet, I collect up interesting videos, articles, and things to think about. Some of them become blog posts of their own, but mostly my thoughts are too brief for that, so once in a while I round up the excess and remove it to my pensieve. Here’s a little look at what’s been swirling around my mind over the past few weeks. There’s a loose theme here around art, expression, joy, authenticity, and nostalgia.

      1) This inspiring celebration of slow art and authenticity:

       

      2) This send up of that very celebration that made me laugh forever:

      3) This next video is over a year old, but recently I’ve been relistening to J. Walker McSpadden’s Robin Hood on Librivox on walks and it has inspired me to revisit Lars Anderson’s incredible archery techniques, learned from studying the past:

      4) Speaking of the past, Nintendo is releasing a miniature version of its classic console, preloaded with its most popular games – Super Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, and the like. I probably shouldn’t be sharing this because it’ll just make it harder for me to buy one before it completely sells out, but it is too awesome to keep to myself. Even though these aren’t the first video games, they’re definitely nostalgic classics.

      5) One of the greatest joys in my life is social dancing. This Vimeo mini-documentary captures perfectly the quality of wordless expression and joy found in Lindy Hop (my particular favorite), and likely all social dance:

       

      6) And speaking of Swing, if that previous video captured you at all, check out this tribute to Frankie Manning, the creator and legendary ambassador of Lindy Hop:

      7) Speaking of Swing, part two, check out this effort to honor the legendary Chick Webb by transcribing a large portion of his catalog for modern big band live performance. You should always do your own due diligence before contributing money, of course – though it looks like they’ve reached their goal (and then some!) already. To hear Frankie Manning and Norma Miller talk about the brilliance and prowess of Chick Webb, look no further than this short video:

      I wish I had something poignant and interesting to say about authenticity, origin, nostalgia, and joy, but for now these thoughts will have to remain unformed. There’s nothing I can’t say that isn’t already said much better in the videos and links above.

      Posted in The Waste Book | 5 Comments | Tagged archery, authenticity, Chick Webb, Frankie Manning, jazz, Lindy Hop, links, list, Nintendo, nostalgia, pensieve, photography
    • In My Pensieve

      Posted at 12:30 pm by Michelle Joelle, on May 17, 2016

      Here are a few things I’ve encountered online recently that I’ve enjoyed.

      1. 3D Renderings of bicycles based on people’s attempts to draw them from memory. It’s a bit random, but it’s surprisingly delightful.

      2. This video made me cry, it is so beautiful. As written on the Adafruit Blog, “This music video for Jane Bordeaux’s ‘Ma’agalim’ beautifully imagines the journey of a wooden doll inside an old penny arcade machine, including some of the mechanisms that make the arcade spin and operate.”

      3. Also found on the Adafruit Blog, this Rube-Goldberg machine made of marbles and magnets. It’s mesmerizing.

      4. Do you have some random ingredients you want to use up, but don’t know a recipe that incorporates all of them? Never fear, Chef Watson is here! IBM has partnered with Bon Appetite to give us cognitive cooking, and I am pretty much obsessed with it. It’s pretty intuitive, so go and try it out. Today, I made a Freekeh pilaf that was delightful.

      5. And finally, MENACE 2, an artificial intelligence machine made of wooden drawers and coloured beads. It took me a while to wrap my mind around how exactly this worked, but it’s extremely cool. Based on the 1961 design by Donald Mitchie, British WWII codebreaker and friend of Alan Turing, this model was recreated just a few years ago by artist Julian Previeux. It’s an extremely cool way to make artificial intelligence more accessible.

      Posted in The Waste Book | 6 Comments | Tagged links, list, pensieve
    • Happy Tolkien Reading Day

      Posted at 12:30 pm by Michelle Joelle, on March 25, 2015

      Happy Tolkien Reading Day! Organized by the Tolkien Society in 2003, Tolkien Reading Day comes around every March 25th to celebrate the fall of Sauron and the destruction of Barad-dûr.

      FullSizeRender

      To celebrate, I’m posting a list of my favorite posts on Tolkien.

      First, from the wonderful blog Wisdom from the Lord of the Rings: “Frodo Carries Sam to Mordor” and “On Hearing the Music of the Ainur“.

      A Pilgrim in Narnia has compiled a full list of his best posts on Tolkien. My favorite from this is list is “The Hobbit as a Living Text“.

      Third, I’d love to draw your attention to A Tolkienist’s Perspective‘s five part series “Riddle, Rhymes and Lilies: The Mystery of Tom Bombadil”: parts one, two, three, four, and five.

      Next, I’d just like to recommend the blog The Flame Imperishable, generally speaking. It’s full of rich analysis and wonderful insights. I especially love this short piece on “Tolkien’s Use of Parataxis“.

      The excellent blog Letters From the Edge of Elfland is filled with lovely missives on Tolkien and his works, but two of my favorite posts are “The Sacramental Imagination of Smith of Wooton Major” and “Faeriean Metaphysics: The Necessity of Poetry, Fantasy, and Faerie in Theology“.

      My penultimate recommendation is Evan Palmer’s graphic representation of Tolkien’s Ainulindale. Suggested in the comments by Whitefrozen, author of the blog Theologians, Inc., this a truly gorgeous rendition.

      Finally, I can’t recommend enough the Tolkien Professor’s lecture “How to Read Tolkien and Why”. You can download it here. His lectures on The Hobbit are also spectacular.

      And there you have it. I’ve tried to keep this list brief, so there are a lot of great posts out there that I’ve overlooked. If you have a favorite piece of your own or that you’ve found in your internet travels, feel free to post links in the comments. Make sure you describe the contents of the link, though, or else your comment will probably be filed by WordPress as spam.

      Happy Tolkien Reading Day!

      Posted in The Waste Book | 12 Comments | Tagged blogs, books, links, list, posts, reading, tolkien, Tolkien Reading Day
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