One of the reasons I blog is take what’s bubbling at the top of my mind and put it out into the world. Sometimes it’s just to free my mind of its clutter, and sometimes it’s so I can take a more objective look at an idea by putting it into words I can examine. Always, it’s to externalize my thoughts so I can see them in a more concrete way, talk about them in comments, and share them with others. In other words, this blog is my pensieve.
Every once in a while, it gets a little clogged up in here, and I end up with thoughts that aren’t ready to be turned into anything just yet. That’s when it’s time to skim off the top.
Here are a few things floating around on the surface, asking me to look a little more closely at them:
1) The Birth of a Tool:
I love watching blacksmiths, woodworkers, glassblowers, whittlers, and other makers and craftspeople as they work, and this video combines that with my dream cabin-space. I want to write a story about this person, or this setting. I also want to learn how to make things, and not just paint them or write them.
2) All of the Christmas music, especially:
–> The Lower Lights Christmas Albums. If you like country and folk music, and you like hymns, Sing Noel and Come Let Us Adore Him are your perfect Christmas folk hymnals.
–> And in a very different mood, there’s a Bessie Smith Holiday channel on Pandora. It’s amazing, and it’s full of songs like this:
3) Innovations that use kids’ iPad obsessions for good are also on my mind, as children seem to be given devices as often as books and toys these days. While it seems strange to those of us who grew up without even cell phones (and my only gameboy was an incredibly rudimentary Paper Boy game that I still play – even though I’ve never changed the battery), I think kids who have smart phones and tablets from birth see them no differently than any other kind of media. While I’ll wax rhapsodic about the sensory pleasures of holding a physical book and turning the pages, kids growing up now might eventually romanticize the iPad when some new technology replaces the screen. Perhaps the hologram just won’t feel right or seem as legitimate.
