October 31, 2010

Another video

I'm continuing my exploration of video as a medium of escape for my Nova Scotia Faces collections, this time with a short narrative linking together photos from a photo album rescued from a junk store in the 1970s. I'm not completely satisfied with this presentation, but it's useful to try out different approaches. I don't know what I think until I see what I say...

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links for 2010-10-31

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October 30, 2010

Now THAT's Entertainment

via The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong, and you oughta go there to hear Louis's variations on the theme.

Posted by oook at 07:49 PM | Comments (0)

Don't miss this one

via Bruce Sterling's Beyond the Beyond, this gem of urban wit:

panoptICONS Utrecht 2010 from Helden on Vimeo.

Posted by oook at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2010

Videos from Nova Scotia Faces

It's getting on for 40 years since I first started working on Nova Scotia, and I've finally found a productive outlet for the thousands of photographs I collected in junk stores, mostly in the 1970s before others saw the possibilities in vernacular photography. Here are two videos, produced in the last couple of days:




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links for 2010-10-29

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October 24, 2010

Sixth Grade Class Photo

I suppose there are millions in this genre, but this is the only one I'm in:

Shawsheen School 1955
This picture has been on my mind for years, and it recently resurfaced with its metadata intact (names written on the back). What, I wonder, happened in the lives of those people I more-or-less knew pretty well at the time? How could the tales be collected? I left Andover MA myself about a year later, after 7th grade, and most of what I remember so vividly about the Shawsheen district of Andover has been effaced by decades of progress: the American Woolen Company mill (closed in the early 1950s) became a Raytheon factory and then transmuted into condos, the Brothers of the Sacred Heart school also condofied, and I doubt that commuter trains stop at Shawsheen.

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October 23, 2010

links for 2010-10-23

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October 22, 2010

links for 2010-10-22

  • One despairs: "...They both feel cut out, distrust their leaders, want things to change, and don't want anything to change. Above all they want to speak, and what comes to their lips is drawn straight from the national Id. Don't tread on me! and On va gagner! turn out to mean exactly the same thing: we will be heard. Whether they have anything to say is another matter." (by Mark Lilla, at New York Review of Books Blog)
    (tags: argybargy)
Posted by oook at 07:01 AM

October 15, 2010

links for 2010-10-15

  • "...will make a greater number and variety of useful resources, both published and unpublished, available for the field of folklore studies and the communities with which folklore scholars partner..." from American Folklore Society and the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries
Posted by oook at 07:01 AM

October 14, 2010

links for 2010-10-14

Posted by oook at 07:01 AM

October 09, 2010

Thanks, Doc

Doc Searls, bless him, does a considerable service in his recent post after seeing The Social Network, suggesting to me that I ignore the phenomenon (of Facebook, and its broader significance) at my peril. Putting aside for a moment my squirmier feelings about Facebook itself, I focus on his comments on business, and specifically on a sentence he quotes from James Surowiecki's New Yorker piece ("The Business-Movie Business"):

The film represents a rare attempt to take business seriously, and to interrogate the blend of insight, ruthlessness, creativity, and hubris required to start a successful company.
Yup, right there on a silken pillow is all my discomfort with 'business': ruthlessness and hubris I deplore, insight and creativity I applaud. Perhaps this is my problem... Anyway, thanks to Doc's take, I'm much more likely to see the Facebook movie, to try to think more creatively about the Facebook phenomenon, and maybe even to think more insightfully about my long-term bugaboo take on 'business'.

Posted by oook at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2010

links for 2010-10-05

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October 04, 2010

One might aspire to such cleverness and craftsmanship

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October 03, 2010

links for 2010-10-03

Posted by oook at 07:01 AM