Rumor Control/Spreading

Psst. Jesse. Law School? What's the scoop? I heard through the Twitter/Facebook grapevine.

Every Flavored Beans

[by Ian & Tina]

Tonight we've been sampling oddly flavored Jelly Bellys that Ian and Marie found in their hunt for gifts to take back to the old country. Flavors we've had so far include baby wipes, moldy cheese, rotten egg, toothpaste and black pepper. Vomit and ear wax are also on the menu, but we haven't had them yet.

Ian & Marie go back to France tomorrow and Ian will continue on to Zürich on Monday.

It's hard to believe that it was merely a month ago that we were all in Berkeley. Best wishes to everyone.

Authors

Hello, family readers,
Our authorship has doubled in the past few days. Dan's posted and Cille has also indicated her interest in posting as well. Fabulous. Wouldn't it be great if it caught on? What a nice way to stay in touch.

Today I start my big project with the 10th graders. It's really my first test as a faculty member at this new school. I have been fairly insistent about a re-design of their class trips program at the 10th grade level and was encouraged by a supportive team of colleagues to forge ahead. Today starts the first ever Out-of-Door Academy class trip/biography project. I had a visiting artist in my classes yesterday talking to kids about the role of story-telling through history. He ended by sharing a clip of a particularly poignant anecdote about an interview he did with a man who fled Pinochet in Chile to seek asylum in Vienna.

Today my students will be matched with an elderly person in a local, public nursing home. They will record two interviews over the next two days then work with artists (writers, story-tellers, and visual artists) to render one of the elder's stories into a creative medium. They had the choice of creating a podcast, painting a lifemap or story-board, creating a short documentary, using photography and captions, or creating a live performance/interpretation. It's a twist on the project that I am experimenting with. It incorporates all the basics of the biography projects I've done in the past with a great program from Rowland Hall in SLC called Artstart.

I'll let you know how it goes. Maybe I can even figure out how to post one of the projects on this blog.

Hope you are all well.
Camela

News from pops

Hi there!
I may now have been admitted to The Rothary!
Camela, it you get this, I think I am supposed to ask for administrator rights. Is that correct?
Love, Pops

Tracy Home Theater Progress

We have now watched Seventh Heaven and the first two episodes of The Wire, with Becky at the controls. I moved additional seating into the theater and rehung more pictures. I moved some additional accent lighting in so as not to rely on the washed-out overhead lighting. I revised the sketchy instructional notes into a handsome set of manualized scenarios, printed out and also stored on the household Mac.

Tomorrow I will install lighted exit signs, a dimmer switch for the house lighting, and a small snack counter in the upstairs hall. We also need some of those brimless usher hats and small flashlights. Dan, when you visit again, would you increase the pitch of the floor to accomodate a raised row of seats at the back? Thanks.

Hi, guys. Don't forget to sign up as a subscriber to our family blog here. You can subscribe to the RSS feed and get instant update notifications in your email. If possible, upload a picture of yourself, or of an appropriate (or inappropriate) icon that represents you. This blog could be pretty cool, you guys. Don't give up on the technology. Let's make it happen, man! Nice job with the first outside posting, Andy. To subscribe, scroll to the bottom of the blog page. You should see something that invites you to subscribe.

Good work and many thanks, Andy! Allah is good but not a patch on you, for example...
Some idle questions: what does it mean to manualize something? Was bedeutet all the work to add captions? Are they expecting to watch a lot of programs in Chechen or Turkish? Tina & I admire your courage in delving into the TV carton.

Yesterday I did some research on Blu-toothing my video system. This led to ordering a Blu-tooth player and a receiver with HDMI cable connectivity because that is the only type of cable compatible with the player. Good riddance to my Denon receiver, which belches excess current through the speakers and has a user interface that is as inscrutable as a sufi monk. But then, all user interfaces are inscrutable and eccentric, as you are being reminded.

In other news, I had the greatest difficulty getting the RAW images out of my camera, and that's as far as I got since Windows does not recognize such files and prevents Photoshop from opening them. For a good laugh, read the Wikipedia article on RAW picture files. Jesse is lucky to be working with a modern OS in his mac, and I think he copied all the photos in my camera so they are not lost forever. When things start up again at school I will see if the gurus here know about patches that will get me into business. Now I know why I hung back so long on taking photos in RAW.

More later, and love from both of us.

Dan

Contiued home theater progress from Derby Street

Becky, Bob and I watched an entire movie last night without mishap, engineered entirely by Becky. She used all three remotes without anxiety and without permanent damage to herself or those nearby. All the machinery worked flawlessly and the audience was distinctly pleased.

We watched Seventh Heaven, a 1927 silent film from the collection Dan and Tina gave me for my birthday. If you think it odd to watch a silent film on a high-end sound system, I should tell you that it had a carefully restored original musical score.