Archive for June, 2010
Honey, it really works
When I first moved away from Alaska nearly 5 years ago, there was one thing I wasn’t anticipating having to deal with: allergies. For years I was allergy-free living in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. That all changed quickly upon making my new home in the Middle West.
I tried over-the-counter remedies, which left me feeling speedy and just “off” until one of my pals told me about the solution: locally made honey.
Honey has anti-microbial properties and has for centuries been used for medicinal purposes of all sorts, including as a dressing for serious wounds. It’s also high in antioxidants and tastes real good on cereals, in sauces, lemonade and all kinds of stuff. Still, the most interesting use I’ve ever heard of for honey is as a natural remedy for seasonal allergies. According to various natural health practitioners, pollen found in locally-grown raw honey works over time to desensitize the body to allergens much like traditional allergy shots work.
It’s working for me. The season so far has been allergy-free, even amidst rumblings from pals that it is unseasonably allergy-ish, and I would like to thank the East Side Co-op for selling multiple varieties of the stuff – it’s saved my sanity and made my summer completely enjoyable again. Thanks, bees and beekeepers out there : )
The Man’s Guide to Love
All over the country, these folks have been asking men:
“If you had one piece of advice that you’d give another man about love, what would it be?â€
Click the photo to see and listen to their answers:
the steelpan gets a new coat of paint
Steelpans may be the friendliest instrument of all – unless you can think of one that’s any friendlier…?
This particular steelpan is not full-sized but still has an incredible sound. It’s tuned diatonically and is a magnet to even the slightly curious. Something about it makes it less intimidating than it is friendly.
It’s not an instrument to be used in every song or arrangement but anytime it’s played it injects the space with its festive mode. It has an easy feel to it, played with small, wooden mallets with rubber tubing on the ends for tips. An old pal showed me how to swirl various sized metal balls around the inside to make a hypnotic sound.
From Wikipedia:
The first instruments developed in the evolution of steelpan were Tamboo-Bamboos, tunable sticks made of bamboo wood. These were hit onto the ground and with other sticks in order to produce sound.
pixelier: antes y dispues
Bergey made some things that inspired me to start tinkering with stills digitally and call it pixeliering, which is a meager attempt at adding an element of painting to digital images:
Click on that first image right there to see before and after examples larger and more in charger:
This is cool and I like the way the digital mixes together with the analog. These are very time consuming to make so I only have a few of them to show but this is one of my favorites, so far:
fate and the wall
A wall is accidentally knocked over leading to a discussion about the roles of choice and fate across cultures.
1:20 over Southeast
I was only a little let down when the pilot played Enya over the comm as we lifted off for this chopper pass of Juneau because, after all, i was in the cockpit of an AStar-B2 and we were batting the air over Southeastern Alaska. I was riding shotgun. Z was in the back with Lou, who was shooting.
If i’d had my druthers, i’d have chosen this section of live audio of Jerry and the boys from MSG in September of 1991 so i threw this together quick-like in QTPro as a meager, self-indulgent attempt at redemption – special thanks to
http://vimeo.com/tweeprise
Maria Montessori
In 1896, Maria Montessori gave a lecture at the Educational Congress in Torino about the training of the disabled. The Italian Minister of Education was in attendance, and was impressed by her arguments sufficiently to appoint her the same year as director of the Scuola Ortofrenica, an institution devoted to the care and education of the mentally retarded. She accepted, in order to put her theories to proof. Her first notable success was to have several of her 8 year old students apply to take the State examinations for reading and writing. The “defective” children not only passed, but had above-average scores, an achievement described as “the first Montessori miracle.” Montessori’s response to their success was “if mentally disabled children could be brought to the level of normal children then (she) wanted to study the potential of ‘normal’ children”.
She believed:
Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society.
Montessori’s method emphasizes learning through all five senses, not just through listening, watching, or reading. Children learn at their own, individual pace and according to their own choice of activities. Learning is a process of discovery, leading to concentration, motivation, self-discipline, and a love of learning. Montessori classes typically place children in three-year age groups (3-6, 6-9, 9-12, and so on), forming communities in which the older children spontaneously share their knowledge with the younger ones.
Today’s Solar Wind Forecast
While living in Alaska, I had a heavy habit of checking this every day: a groovily-nerdy resource provided by the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute:
