Happy B-Day

Happy Bryian Day,

UNDER a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

Happy Birthday Bryian.

Light 'n Fluffy

The forecast for today's weather was that we would have "light and fluffly" snow with little to no accumulation. This has not, however, stopped 23 of my students to email me to say that they will not be in class this morning.

The picture you see here is what I saw as I walked onto campus this morning around 9 a.m. The ground isn't really covered and there's only a bare dusting of anything out there. However, it must be enough to drive people back into their homes and huddle for their own health because other professors have already gotten the same notification.

Snow (flurries to blizzard) + 10 o'clock class = no students.

It's supposed to warm up today and all melt off by this evening, with a high of 33, but it's then going to drop into the 9-11 degree range some time tonight. Brr.

Even now, I can see the big ball of pain in the sky trying to burn its way through the snow clouds and it's only barely slowing their assault. The hills of Kentucky are all but obscured by the flurry of 'light 'n fluffiness'.

PROJECT UPDATE:

I have the second episode of "Prometheus" on my laptop. I need to get some more footage (that I am downloading) and then I'll be able to post it. Go me.

-T

Project

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was working on a project. Well, I've just posted the project to my 101 Untold Tales site.

The project is a remix of some video footage to create a 'story board' of an idea I had.

Have a look and let me know what you think.
-Tom

Winter Break

With the return to campus for the start of Spring Term, I figured that I would recap what I've gained over the break.

1. A Laptop
2. A Roommate
3. 10 Pounds (ugh, damn cookies!!!)
4. Stress Fracture of the right foot and 3 sprained toes
5. A realization that I might have some philosophical similarities with Buddhism. (Does the Book have a Buddha Nature?)
6. An honest drive to post to my blog more often
7. Four more Correspondo-philes (pen palls sounds like something you'd have with guys in prison or people in another country - like Conneticut)
8. One less best friend (Nevermind? Nevermind?!? Blah.)
9. A growing interest in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft (Say it with me now: E-pis-to-lary)
10. Less of a twitch about saying the word "Vista".
11. A bigger grocery bill
12. A project to make a video storyboard for a space-colony movie. (I'll post it to 101 Tales if I can get the first part done)
13. A lot of facts and figures about Criminology crawling through my head.
14. More confused and somewhat jaded about the U.S. Criminal Justice System
15. Sore muscles from not working out in three weeks.

I could keep going but I need to post some things to Blackboard for tomorrow's classes.

The flurries have all but completely obscured the view from my office window of the hills of Kentucky. I believe that we're supposed to have 30% chance of real snow between today and tomorrow.

AtQ

-T

Robot Army

Ok,

So someone has finally decided to write a book about how I intend to switch things up in 2012.

After flipping through Amazon.com I found this and have been wondering if I should get it or not.

-Tom

Newly Published Holocaust Journal

From: The Associated Press

The secret diary of a young Jewish woman recounting two years under the Nazi occupation portrays the slow shattering of her life, ending with her deportation on her 24th birthday and death in a concentration camp.

Helene Berr's account of life under occupation was destined for her fiance, Jean Morawiecki, who had left Paris to join the Resistance. She secreted the loose pages with the family cook. The diary was turned over to Morawiecki after her death in April 1945.

Once more a Holocaust journal has been found and published to tell their story. My friend, June, told me about this today while I was on campus and I looked it up once I got home.

One of the questions that struck me as I was looking this up was: "Where are the journals of the Japanese Americans who were held in the camps in California? Is there story not just as interesting?"

I wonder if the people who wrote these journals ever thought or wanted them to be found by someone else? What bit of ephemera (pictures or keepsakes) were stashed in the back of the journal for some purpose unknown.

I ask some interesting questions sometimes.

-Tom

People of the Book

From "People of the Book"

"My work has to do with objects, not people. I like matter, fiber, the nature of the varied stuffs that go to make a book. I know the flesh and fabrics of pages, the bright earths and lethal toxins of ancient pigments. Wheat paste -- I can bore the pants off anyone about wheat paste. . . . Of course, a book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand. The gold beaters, the stone grinders, the scribes, the binders, those are the people I feel most comfortable with. Sometimes, in the quiet, these people speak to me. They let me see what their intentions were, and it helps me do my work."

I received a link about this book from a friend who had seen a review on the Washington Post.

As the article mentioned:

Why is it, in this day of rampant technological change, that readers continue to be fascinated by stories of dusty manuscripts moldering on rickety shelves? Think of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, in which a monk investigates charges of heresy by prowling through documents in a medieval library. Or The Rule of Four, by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, in which four Princeton students find puzzles aplenty in a 15th-century manuscript. Or even those big blockbuster bestsellers -- Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (ancient arcana of numerous varieties) and James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy (ancient Peruvian manuscript).

Why? Why he asks? Well, the answer is quite simple.

It's a Book Thang.

-T

Ankle, pt 2

Ibuprofen: Several dozen
Toes: Black and blue

Ok, so it wasn't my ankle. It feels like I actually hurt something on the top of my foot rather than my ankle. My ankle doesn't hurt and my foot on feels stiff, like I slept on it wrong or something. So I'm trying to keep the swelling down and let it heal on itself. The bruises between my toes look like it's a step in the healing process. I just have to sit on the couch and do nothing for a while to try and let it finish healing.

Working on lecture notes on the couch with a tv in front of me with my laptop - I can think of a worse way to spend a day.

More later.

-T

Ankle

Stupid Balance Tricks: 1,
# of steps from Cinema to my house (with a sprained ankle): 10,302 (thank gods for a pedometer).

So Sunday night I was down by the Cinema in Portsmouth and walking around on the train tracks. The tracks haven’t been used in forever and I had hoped to find a shot (to amuse my photography urge) while waiting on a movie.

I balanced on the track and I nimbly plucked my way down the rail for a while and basically demonstrating how well-balanced my steps were. Things were fine until I stopped. As soon as I stepped off the rail, I hit a loose rock and with a twist and a flick, my ankle decided to collapse.

Oh yes, I heard the sounds of wet celery being crushed and I figured that I had messed it up. After a few steps, however, the pain was gone and I could walk on it without a serious limp. I went to the movies and kept flexing my ankle so it wouldn’t swell too badly. Well, once we were out of the movie (I am Legend, btw) the walk home reminded me how messed up my ankles can get. The first thousand or so steps were damn painful. My ankle didn’t want to flex at all so I hobbled my way home.

By Monday morning, my ankle had swelled a little but not by too much. Walking around on it, however, was still a bit painful. This cut into my plan to head back to the gym a week before classes started. It’s near impossible to walk without a limp –and- try and get on a treadmill or bike. So I puttered around the house.

Yeah, I love to putter.

I have one week left of my break and I’m trying to do a few dozen projects at once; all of the things that I had promised myself that I would do ‘once on break’. Tons of stuff to write and make and now I’m working on my lectures. Bleh.

One of the projects that I’m working on is making some basil bread from scratch. Last night I started some dough and put to rise in the fridge over night. The cookbook that Barb gave me for Winterfest said to let the dough warm up for about two hours before working it. It’ll give me time to wake up some and post this blog.

Later.

-T.

Happy ...

...Four Years Left Until Armageddon!

Four years left until my army invades.

Be ready.

-Me