Archive - 2016
August 8th
Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Recap, Part 1
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 08/08/2016 - 06:37I am home where Falcon Ridge meets the confluence of other rivers in my life. My notebook and mind full of thoughts to organize and post in my blog. Snippets of songs play in my head. Patty Larkin sings, “I read the Bible everyday, Trying to keep the demons at bay”. Brother Sun sings “St. Christopher protect us from the cold and stormy sea”. All of this is followed by “St. Anthony Lost and Found” sung by Gina Forsyth.
Soon, I will post more; poems that I wrote, reflections on various performances, and whatever else comes to mind, but first, I need to get back to my day job. I need to fit all of this into the greater journey; poetry group on Tuesday, an important meeting on Wednesday.
As I prepare for my daily get ready for work shower, different from that wonderful first, home from Falcon Ridge shower, I think, twenty-four hours ago, I was sitting on a hill talking with my neighbors and best friends for the weekend, preparing to put out the tarp I would sit upon for the rest of the day. I think of the song we all stand on the hill together and sing, as we head back home, “never turning back”.
Ticket sales for next year’s Falcon Ridge go on sale in February.
August 1st
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, Raclette.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 08/01/2016 - 06:02Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, Raclette. A new month starts. The last one didn’t see as much writing as I would have liked and this month doesn’t look that much more promising. It is Swiss National Day. I remember working for a Swiss bank where they would serve raclette every year on the first of August. The pungent smell of ripe melted cheese would fill the building. I like strong cheeses, but raclette was always a bit much for me.
It is also the Feast of Joseph of Arimathaea and I read lessons about tombs. I read the news, and try to focus. There are a lot of things going on for August and a lot on my mind. Again, I hope to find time to write more later.
July 30th
#WhatIMake Connections #CLMOOC Continuous Connected Learning
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 07/30/2016 - 21:45Normally, when asked what I make, I would say blog posts, in addition to other poems like poems, or hard cider. Yet this is only my fourth blog post of the week, behind my average of a post a day, and it does little to catch up with a full week with no blog posts while I was out on Cape Cod, and an expected dearth of blog posts while I am at Falcon Ridge.
On our way out to Cape Cod, we stopped at the 2nd BIG Tiny House Festival in Concord, MA, that my middle daughter helped organize with her friends from Miranda’s Hearth. At one of the tables there were #WhatIMake cards and colored pencils. Take a blank card, draw what you make. Leave it in the box of completed cards and take a different card. Connect with other makers.
This week has been #BreakWeek in the #CLMOOC I’m somewhat participating in. Being offline at the Cape left me less connected or involved that I would have liked to have been and I was hoping to use #BreakWeek to catch up. There’s been a lot of talk about postcards in #CLMOOC, very much like the #WhatIMake cards from Miranda’s Hearth. At some point, when I feel like things are better under control, I hope to join the postcard project. I hope some of my friends at Miranda’s Hearth will too.
Some of the stuff in #CLMOOC has been about ‘Animator’ and various other tools for creating animated GIFs. People have talked about Paper by Fiftythree. Unfortunately that is iPhone only. Someone else mentioned Sketch on Android. I looked briefly at Sketch and similar sketching and animation tools for Android and for laptops. Sketch has the ability to collaboratively sketch, and I think it may have timelines as well. Seems like a nice digital parallel to the postcard and #WhatIMake projects.
Another project that has caught my eye is #CLMOOC #DAILYCONNECT: THE CONNECTED POEM. I would love to spend some time in the connected poem, or perhaps set up a few connected poems myself. It uses Titanpad which appears to be based on Etherpad. Both are worth exploring.
I typically leave pages I’ve been browsing up to come back to them later and perhaps write about them a little. Often I try to connect them to different themes. I’ve been trying to avoid getting too drawn into the political fray, but I have been wondering if “You have sacrificed nothing and no one” will be the “Have you no sense of decency left” line from the 2016 election. Various people have been writing about it. Ezra Klein wrote, Donald Trump’s slander of Captain Humayun Khan’s family is horrifying, even for Trump. The Washington Post had Backlash for Trump after he lashes out at the Muslim parents of a dead U.S. soldier.
I’ve been getting into some discussions about Trump and religion. On Facebook I shared Opinion: Denying the Imago Dei: The triumph of Donald Trump. It was written by Ian Markham, Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary.
We should always recognize that when we talk about human lives we are talking about men and women who are made in the image of God. People are of infinite value. This debased and coarse language is totally inappropriate; in fact, it is wrong; it is sinful; indeed it is evil.
I often also point people to 7 conservative Christians who are not supporting Trump. There are lots of good comments there. Another window I had open was TRUMP ANNOUNCES HIS DEBATE ESCAPE PLAN. Not a lot of content there but it voices something people are talking about. Also, If Politicians Had Man Buns has some funny pictures.
It is getting late, and I won’t make it through all the open windows, but I thought I’d highlight two last articles I have up. I was talking with my eldest daughter whose classmates are now hearing “weird dad” stories. I pointed her to Impression Formation in Cyberspace: Online Expectations and Offline Experiences in Text-based Virtual Communities in which I am a case study. There is also an article which I believe I originally found from my middle daughter, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett And Oprah All Use The 5-Hour Rule :
Top business leaders often spend five hours per week doing deliberate learning.
While I’m not keen on the business focus, I think it has an interesting point which expands upon nicely.
More continuous connected learning later…
July 28th
Facebook Politics, Bobolinks, and Grace
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 07/28/2016 - 06:08I pause from my studies
of the Dark Night of the Soul
and find a friend
has posted,
“Sorry I’m not on Facebook
much right now,
I need to do things
that don’t fill me
with anger and despair.”
So I shared with her
a picture of a bobolink
and a poem
of how the prairie smells
after a summer rain
and thought about
this week’s lesson.
“One's life does not consist
in the abundance of possessions”
despite what the commercials say.
The politicians’ promise
leads to
“anger, wrath, malice, slander,
and abusive language“
For them, there are still
“slave and free”,
those who help them gain riches
and others who obstruct them.
My friend writes,
“Sorry I’m not on Facebook
much right now,
I need to do things
that don’t fill me
with anger and despair.”
“But you are needed”,
I tell her
to remind all of us
“The Moon Cannot be Stolen”.
July 25th
Camino de Pokemon Go
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 07/25/2016 - 06:15It is the Feast of St. James. I am back from vacation. Through a minor mishap, I was even more disconnected over the past week than I intended to be. Give all the bad news of last week, perhaps that isn’t so bad, but now I have so much to catch up on.
Yesterday, before heading home, I went to The Chapel of St. James the Fisherman in Wellfleet. Today, I read a little more about the Camino de Sanitago. In A Medieval Pilgrimage in Modern Times, Rick Steves writes about the pilgrims,
They seem very centered, content with the experience, and tuned in to the important things in life...like taking time to talk with others.
It made me think of people playing Pokemon Go. There is so much more I want to write about St. James, about Pokemon Go, about #CLMooc. There is so much more time I want to take talking to others. There is so much more that I need to get done to dig out from this vacation. Yet I need time to get it all processed and written.
Another quote about the Camino comes to mind. Liza Gere wrote on Google Plus,
The camino provides. This is a theme I learned on my first journey on the Camino de Santiago. You find very quickly that your needs are covered and most times in miraculous and unexpected ways. So as I have been gearing up to leave there has been one…
Buen Camino
