Archive for Feely
Making it look easy
I have a ukulele now. And I take piano lessons. Add in the drum set in the basement and the guitar in the closet and there are a lot of musical opportunities in the house these days. Right now, the uke is the winner…it sits out by my desk and I pick it up about every day. Can’t say I practice any of the rest of the instruments that much.
Of course, I am only playing the one song I know right now (I’m Yours by Jason Mraz) but the more I play it, the easier it gets. Practice makes perfect.
All of this leads up to something that I have been thinking about for a while but never got down to writing about it until now. We went to hear Steve Martin play his banjo this weekend at the lovely Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Yes, the home of the Grand Ole Opry! It was my first show there and I hope it won’t be my last as it was a great performance space. Wonderful acoustics, fun pews (not TOO hard) and a top-notch show to boot. Steve Martin was a pro with the banjo and his band was phenomenal.
Add in the fact that his opening act was the multi-talented John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and that he had guest vocals from Dan Tyminski and Rhonda Vincent as well as closed the show with Earle Scruggs playing Foggy Mountain Breakdown and you get the gist that it was a truly wonderful night of music.
But, what I have been thinking about was how easy they all made it look. McEuen went from guitar to banjo to fiddle without even taking a breath it seemed. If I put down the uke and sit at the piano, I have to fidget and think and get all set up to get going. It is amazing how at ease he seemed with all of the instruments and just being on stage. And, I know it comes from practice.
To take it from music to techy – I can sit down at a Mac and then move to a PC and then to an iPhone with the same ease. I have been told many times during training “you make it seem so easy”. And, that is my goal – to make it seem easy but to also really just make it easy. But, there does take some practice. Some time with the “instrument” whether it is an operating system or a software application or a new peripheral. You have to spend some time with it and learn how to work it, where things are and so on. Then, moving between all of these things gets to be much smoother. And, just like how a guitar player can probably pick up a uke and make some decent noises – the more tech you play with the easier it is to pick up something new just because of all of the practice you did before.
How we pay tribute others
I guess I am at that age where many of the famous people who were influential on my growing-up are starting to die. I noticed that several of my recent posts have been about recent deaths. Yesterday, we lost Mary Travers (the Mary of Peter, Paul and Mary). While Michael Jackson certainly was a huge part of my adolescence, the trio of PPM were also very much in the mix as I listened to a lot of their music when I was young and then continued the love affair with many hours sitting around a campfire singing their songs with other campers, then as a counselor and finally now, continuing the tradition each year with my annual campout with friends from those summer camp days.
All of this death has me thinking about how we pay tribute to these celebrities who are so influential for whatever reason: crushes, aspirations of similar stardom, talents that create art that speaks so deeply to us and so on. It is interesting to note how those tributes have changed over the years and with the technologies available to those who feel need to “tributize” someone.
After Michael Jackson died, it was almost immediately that the tributes started pouring in via blogs, YouTube, twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more. There were mashups, postings of clips from interviews, artwork and more.
Patrick Swayze’s death probably prompted the same reaction. I was not as affected by his death as others around me were but that is probably another blog post on another blog.
I did a quick search on Mary Travers this morning on blogs, YouTube and Twitter. While there were a few podcasts and audio tributes last night, I didn’t find as much as I would have thought. And that makes sense. Mary’s audience is older and her work is not so much in the digital realm. I have one CD and the rest of her music I have on LP album and cassette. That adds a hurdle to making an online tribute so it cannot happen so “immediately” as Michael Jackson or even John Hughes, as I posted earlier.
I only wonder how the technology will change how we memorialize people, both famous and not, in the future. I think the feely part of the equation will always be there…we have a human need to eulogize, share grief and express admiration for someone’s life and how it touched ours. But, how we do it is certainly changing. It is easier, faster and much more public.
Thinking about my own tribute rituals, I recalled when John Lennon was shot. I was a freshman at Virginia Tech. My roommate and I got all of our albums together and played them all night while other girls on our hall came by. Slowly, a little shrine developed with his photo, candles, a flower or two and just a bunch of folks sitting in the yellow candlelight listening to Lennon sing us to sleep. Last night, I played two Peter, Paul and Mary albums on my turntable and then put their jackets in my LP album frames as my tribute. I guess that will her shrine for now. For Michael Jackson, I blogged about his influence and found plenty of videos to embed. That also makes sense, because part of MJ’s art was so visual that you need the video to appreciate it, share it and pay tribute to this talents. I dont’ think you need video with Mary Travers as much.
But, just because I think this song is beautiful (a tribute to John Denver as he wrote it), here is one Mary Travers song to share.
This is my generation of movies
Feel like I have been saying goodbye to a good part of my childhood/young adulthood lately.
RIP – John Hughes.
RIP – Michael Jackson
I am so saddened to lose on of my truly major icons yesterday. I am not sure icon is the right word but hero is not right either. I didn’t want to be Michael Jackson but I did want to marry him at one point. When I was about 12. Then, after reading the biography of the Jackson 5 that I got in the Scholastic Book Club, I did the math on his birthdate and realized that he, being well over 3 years older than me, was WAY too old for me to marry and it would never work out. I recall being a big heartbroken over that fact at the time.
But, I stayed a fan through Jackson 5 and then well into his heyday of the 80s/90s. Thinking over definitive moments, it had to be this one. I still remember watching the Motown Special on live television with my siblings. When he broke out the moonwalk for the first time…on my.
First, we screamed: O no, he didn’t (or something like that)
Second, we all got up and started trying to do it ourselves. Badly. Really, really badly!
His dancing has always intrigued me. He floats in space rather than just dance on a stage. Magical. There are so many strong performances and videos, but I think the dancing in Smooth Criminal has always stuck with me.
As his legal battles went on and his musicality waned, I remained a fan but did wonder what the extremely hard life of being in show business since the age of 3 had done to his mind and body.
Rest in Peace Michael. You are the King of Pop and that will never change.
A Magic Number – Schoolhouse Rock
I was at an ed tech conference this past week. At lunch, they had “edutainment” speakers, which is a great idea since everybody is usually eating and so on so a “serious” speaker is often not the best idea.
The speakers were the producers and original composers of Schoolhouse Rock. When they took the stage, I was happy. When, they started singing some of the old tunes, well, I suddenly was shot back to Saturday morning sitting in my pajamas, eating Capt’n Crunch and watching some Sid and Marty Krofft show (probably Land of the Lost) as well as learning about multiplication tables, the parts of speech and how the government works.
I mean, I can totally still recite the Preamble to the United State Constitution but only if I can sing it to the Schoolhouse Rock tune!
I then returned to school and started sharing my excitement with other colleagues. They didn’t know the show!! Never heard of Schoolhouse Rock. That struck me as pretty odd but I guess there is just a small segment of the population who was at the “right” age for this to become as ingrained as it is for my and my siblings.
Oh well, I totally loved it. Enjoy the original song from that series.
Schoolhouse Rock – Three is a Magic Number
Meditating on a Powertool
I got to spend about two hours last night helping friends open their pool. Most of my time was spent with a power washer. As I moved slowly through cleaning chairs, tables, poolsides, diving board and more, it turned into a nice meditation.
I truly enjoyed being in the moment and it was easy to stay there because of the constant feedback of something actually happening! You can tell where you have been with the washer. You can see the dirt, leaves, moss and other debris instantly “disappear” as the water goes by. You can also tell where you missed so you can go back and take care of the situation. It was refreshing to have a project with a distinct positive direction and a pretty clear sense of ending. (I means you will always see things you missed or the surfaces may never be clean enough)
I started thinking about the various projects I have going at home, at work, on the computer, in the garage, and in my mind. So many unfinished states! I think I need to fine tune my GTD strategy some more. I do like my big picture and my project lists. Goodness knows, I have plenty of them!! But, I think I need to make some of my projects “smaller” or at least figure out some next actions that will allow me to see something done or at least in the process of being done. I think that will do my psyche some good. Glad I got that worked out while standing by a pool on a glorious May evening with good friends all sharing in some common labor and some really good fun!
Powerwashing for my soul as it were.
Image: ‘Powerwashing‘
www.flickr.com/photos/46764844@N00/2765876797
Do you hug your technology?
Driving home yesterday, I heard a story on NPR about the last mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. This mission is the last repair mission (and the first one in seven year, it seems) and the story told a bit about the repairs and how it will help the mighty instrument be even more “mightier”.
But what struck me the most was the part of the story about the astronauts also taking the feelings of the engineers and scientists with them on this last visit. The science team with Hubble have been working on it for decades. This last mission has to be a hard one to take – even though it was once cancelled completely.
The part of the story that stayed with me:
He notes that every astronaut who goes to Hubble leaves a mark on the observatory. “Even just putting your hand on the telescope affects the surface coating juts a little bit,” he says, “and so you can see handprints and things like that, and so it’s clear that people have been working on this telescope.”
Another astronaut who will do spacewalks and repair work on this mission, Mike Massimino, says he recently saw a good friend who has worked on the Hubble project for a long time. “He said, ‘Make sure, your last time on that telescope, you give it a pat for me,’ ” Massimino says.
So, he will give Hubble a special goodbye pat on behalf of all the people who have worked with it. “I hope that that’s going to be in my mind as I’m letting go of the telescope for the last time, my one last handshake with it,” Massimino says.
I do like having a connection with the techonlogy I use. The admins snickered at me but when I was finally allowed into the server room at school so I could see the electronic “box” where all of my online courses lived, it felt good to see it physically. Made it more real, I guess.
I recalled how I feel when I get or let go of a piece of technology. Especially something that I have used and loved for a long time (harder to do now, it seems, with the disposable nature of much of our tech)… Don’t have it yet with cell phones but I certainly loved my Mac SE (and my PowerMac 6100 and my PowerComputing clone and..well, you get the idea – don’t even get me started on my iMac!). I love my record player and my records. I have been digitizing cassettes for a year now and it is still so hard to put those cassettes into the trash or recycling bin..even though I have the music from them safely esconsced in electrons on two hard drives. Americans LOVE their cars..that qualifies. Chefs love their knives. I’m sure the list goes on.
What tech makes you feel?
Image: ‘I Love Tech Tshirt‘
www.flickr.com/photos/25528051@N06/3361211971
Ada Lovelace Day: Honoring my Tweeps!
Today is Ada Lovelace Day and bloggers all over are posting about their favorite women in technology. I pledged to do the same.
First, who is Ada Lovelace, you ask? She wrote the world’s first computer programs. How cool is that? If you want to know more, I won’t deny you!
So, we are charged with writing about tech heroines. I have been thinking about that for a while now as I planned this post. Growing up, the technology side of my techy-feely self definitely came from my father. In college, first as an engineering major and later as a science educator, I was most surrounded by men rather than women role models, especially in my preferred sciences of chemistry and physics.
So rather than focus on someone from my past, I decided that I would write about a more current group – who are heroines and sometimes sounding boards, livesavers, humorists, information sources, role models, sources of inspiration and much, much more. I wanted to give a shout out to the women who I follow on Twitter.
I am the first to admit that I was slow on the uptake with Twitter. But, I finally got it and now I have quite a group of my Tweeple – both men and women who I follow there who provide me with a great resource for learning, entertainment, feedback and more.
Today, I celebrate the female tweeps! Among them are:
Women I know and work with across the state like:
@maryn – who walks the walk and talks the walk living her live in the open social web
@andrea_s – who is not afraid to take chances and tread into this techno-world whether it feels comfortable or not
@mjmerrill – who is still getting started with this Twitter thing
@getdawn – who write Twitter haiku on the economy!
and@wrenbird28 – who is always ready to learn new stuff!
Women who I am getting to know through Twitter and with whom I feel connected already – even through one or two short tweetversations:
@soul4real – who I feel like I would really enjoy sitting down and having a beer with and talking about stuff
@allthingsnoisy – who I found through tweets at the Supercomputing 2008 conference
@cljennings – who seems like a fellow wanderer in this web world with an educator’s eye
@andrea_r – who has been SO helpful with some other blogging projects I have going on at my work
and @sherrymn – who I met at another conference. We have stayed in touch via Twitter.
And women I don’t know but admire like:
@ginatrapani - who I loved from Lifehacker and now is off on her own adventures at Smarterware
@intellagirl and @fleep – who promote Second Life in education and does so witih style and flair
There are others and I include theme in my admiration even if my memory cannot quite get them down here in my post’s electrons.
So – Thanks to Ada Lovelace for setting the stage for women in technology and thanks to my current Tweeps who help me continue in my learning about all of this stuff in the world around us!!
