Monthly Archives: May 2016

Slice of Life: Another Firefly Fanboy (A Dad’s Role, Done)

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“I’m going to show you Firefly,” I told my youngest son the other day. He is 11 1/2 and has been completely taken over by the recent Star Trek movies, which we finally let him watch this year, and so I knew he would be ready for Firefly.

“Ooooh,” his older brothers teased, as they are apt to do. “Firefly. Now you get to watch a real show.”

Which isn’t a fair statement at all. We’ve been watching The Flash together, my youngest and me, and I think that show is fine entertainment. And he has watched some of the older Star Trek: Next Generation series with me, too. And he is and remains a massive Star Wars fanboy.

Still, the older ones can’t resist a chance to poke fun at the younger one. You know how it is.

And Firefly IS sort of a rite of passage, at least in our house. Not only is it Joss Whedon’s great remix of space and westerns, it is legendary as the television show that launched a protests when it was cancelled after only one season (but later, those growing fan protests led to the creation of the movie, Serenity, which I had to see in theaters alone when it came out because my wife is not a fan of sci-fi and my kids were too young.)

He knows Whedon’s name now from those loud (and I think, overwrought) Avenger movies. (Joss Whedon and JJ Abrams are household names here, as my sons are all deep into movies and moviemaking).

One of the pleasures (there are many) about having kids to show things like this to is that you get to sit with them and experience it all over again, too. It has been some years since I last watched Firefly (now streaming on Netflix, thankfully), but I still enjoyed the set-up of the pilot, the introductions of characters, and the strands of the story that Whedon spins. A few scenes were a little adultish for the 11 year old, but nothing too bad. (Cover your eyes, I said during one scene, and he did.)

We watched the pilot show (and the older boys stayed, too) and I could tell he was hooked. I sort of feel bad about it, because when the season ends … that’s pretty much it (except for the movie). But, I can say, I did my job as a dad here. I’ve got another fanboy in the house.

Now, if I can just get them interested in Lost …

Peace (in space),
Kevin

Writing 30 Poems (maybe more) in 30 Days

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It’s not the first time I have tried to write a poem every day for an entire month, but I always start and think: I am never going to do this. I am never going to find enough things to write about. I am going to bore myself and everyone else with my feeble verse. This is what I think before I write and then forget about while I write.

Luckily, I had some friends along the way. Mary Lee, Carol and Carol, and Steve, and Margaret, and assorted others who were also writing poems, if not every day than most days. Actually, Mary Lee’s project to write poems about her family tree inspired by an old photo album got many of us writing poems in her blog’s comments, too. Writing is a different experience — more connected — when you write with others.

I started off the month in a sort of free-style mode, not choosing a particular style/genre nor topic, and I used a variety of technology tools to construct the writing into something more design-friendly. As always, when writing in bursts, some of the poems came out better than others. But overall, I was happy with many of them.

Day nine poem

After reading Mary Lee’s family poems, and Steve’s poems inspired by the digital archives at the New York Public Library, I decided to revisit the Flickr archives of the US Library of Congress. There are treasure troves of available images by the Library of Congress, and many are evocative for storytelling. I tried to vary the subjects of the images so that my poems might take shape in different ways. There are a few gems in this mix, I think.

Jazz in the Air

I then ventured into Blackout Poems, where you remove words to leave words that make up verse. I always feel a little hamstrung with Blackout Poems, struggling with trying to suss out a poem from existing text. But when it works, it is very cool.

Blackout Poetry1

I ended the month with haikus, but my twist was I went back into my recent image files, seeking out pictures that might inspire three lines of poetry. For the most part, I liked how they came out, and worked hard to ensure that the image was partner to the words. Finding that balance with these kinds of poems are critical.

Image Haiku: The Swallows of the Swamp

Beyond my daily poems, I also left scattered poems as comments at people’s blog sites. I don’t even know where they are anymore. But I hope they were well-received. I did do a poem for a late April DS106 Daily Create that I liked. The prompt was to put a poem on a door of a refrigerator and take a picture. I sort of cheated — no real fridge — but the poem was real, and I like how the poem is about the poem being a poem.

TheForgottenPoem

and

forgotten poem on fridge

Peace (it’s poetry),

Kevin