WriteOut Cadences: Remixing The Sounds of the Rainforest

With the themes of ‘Palettes, Storyboard and Cadences’ for Write Out still resonating with me, I found an interesting high-definition audio file of the Hoh Rainforest in Olympia National Park and I decided to do a remix, adding a musical composition which I created, inspired by the sounds of the rain forest.

I worked to make the music non-intrusive to the sounds of the rain forest, tempering the beats and tracks to be as complimentary as possible. In particular, the frog and bird sounds seemed to be the guide of where the beat would be, even if not a traditional counting off.

I found some Creative Commons images of Hoh and I found that the combination of image, sound, and music was fascinating to pull together, creating another soundscape from afar of a most interesting place.

Peace (sounds like),
Kevin

Slice of Life: Noise In The Sky

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

Our young rescue dog is still baffled by the geese. In the yard or on a walk, when the flock of geese are overhead — noisy as heck, to be sure — Rayna (our dog) pulls to a stop, takes a seat and stares up at the sky. This is her second Autumn with us, so it’s not as if she hasn’t seen the migrating birds, but I suspect it’s the combination of the noise and the formation and the slow-moving flock across the skyline that captures her attention.

Or maybe she thinks they’re a toy to be chased, just out of reach.

The thing is, her stopping and looking makes me stop and look, too, and, in that paying closer attention, I notice the patterns in the flocks, and track the way things are always in motion, as different leaders take the front and different stragglers rush to catch up. I hear their song start, gather volume, and fade. The sound of migrating geese is part of the soundtrack of Fall in New England, but is something I all too often take for granted.

It’s not beautiful music that the birds make but it is the soundtrack of seasonal transition, and if you listen carefully, the collective calls of the geese in each flock does have its own cadence and its own beat, a slow rhythm just off-kilter from the flapping of the wings.

Even as we keep walking, Rayna will often turn her head back to the horizon, to glimpse back to where the geese have gone over the treeline or horizon, as if trying to discover the magic of the skies. It’s the only time I really notice her noticing what’s above her, so attuned is she to the world at her feet, and noticing the world through another’s eyes — even a dog — is refreshing.

My morning’s small poem is inspired by the geese:

Flock (1)

Birds, in flight,
above us

below us,
our boots
trample decay

We hesitate:
a season’s songs,
a long pause;

the flying
echo calls
of voices, chaos;
then calm,

draw a line
from cloud to star;
we gawk, before
it’s gone

Peace (flying),
Kevin

Write Out: Exploring the Cadence of Nature

NPR Joy Generator
One of the themes of this year’s Write Out is “cadences” and in a workshop with Michigan educators this weekend, my Write Out facilitator partner, Bethany S, and I asked participants explore the soundscapes of nature and National Parks with the wonderful “Call of the Wild” site from NPR’s Joy Generator.

You begin at at the site with some high-def recordings of various National Park sites and end with a mixing board of sounds, to make your own composition of soundscape music (although, you can’t download and share the track you make).

In our workshop, we all reflected on some interesting observations after spending time with the mixing board, chatting about how the levels of each of the sounds impacted the “seeing” of the entire landscape; how our own memories of place and time played a role in the kinds of mixes we made; of the emotional impact some of the sounds generated, from the sound itself (wind, for example evoked forests in a storm, while frogs evoked the start of summer) and from the sound levels (water overwhelming all else).

I am curious about using this site this week with my sixth grade writers, and I may begin with having them make a list of all of the sounds they hear as they move through the entire soundscape pages (connecting nicely to our work on National Parks). I might end with them making a mix with those last sounds and then drawing a “scene” of what they see as they are listening to their mix.

Peace (sounds like love),
Kevin

We Wrote Out for #Writeout

WroteOut for WriteoutI’ve been using Daily Sparks (video writing prompts from National Park Rangers) from Write Out each day with my students to write our way into our day.

They have enjoyed the videos that share the view of the Grand Canyon and time’s impact on our planet; the exploration of engineering at the Springfield Armory with the Blanchard Lathe (with a video in English and a video in Haitan Creole, which fascinated my sixth graders); and yesterday, they learned about George Washington Carver (most of my students didn’t know a thing about him, so it provided me an opportunity for a mini-lesson on this amazing Black scientist and innovator) before we headed outside to write.

It was a beautiful day, perfect for finding a place to write and make art. My variation of the prompt from the ranger about making an art journal was to choose one of the trees on our school lawn, and use it for inspiration for a story, or poem, or letter, or comic, or art.

I wrote, too.

Tree poem sketches

It took a few minutes for them to find the quiet they needed for the activity, but once we were settled in, they enjoyed the change of location for our writing activities, and were able to be mask-free writers for a bit of time (always a bonus).

After some sharing, we moved on to our other lessons, but this slight reprieve in the outdoors air with our writing notebooks was just the break that we needed on a Friday to remind ourselves that writing out can be as simple as stepping outside the school or home, and finding a place to sit and observe and become inspired.

Peace (sharing it).,
Kevin

Book Review: Slow Down (50 Mindful Moments in Nature)

Slow Down, by author Rachel Williams and illustrator Freya Hartas, is a lovely book that uses single moments in nature to remind us to pay attention to the small moments of the world around us.

From the moment a bee pollinates a flower, to a Kingfisher diving to get a fish, to a squirrel burying an acorn, to a fox reaching for berries on a bush, to a spidering spinning a web –  each page in this oversized picture book is a glorious ode to animals and insects and plants and life. Hartas’ drawing are just beautiful in their muted coloring and Williams text brings you into the moment, first with some background and then step by step.

Slow Down: 50 Mindful Moments in Nature written by Rachel ...

The subtitle of the book (50 Mindful Moments in Nature) shows the intent here — of slowing down to notice things — and the audience is both adults and children, and I can see Slow Down being used as read-aloud in younger grade classrooms. I spent quiet reading time perusing it, and appreciated that whatever page I landed on, I not only learned something but also paid attention.

Peace (from the outside in),
Kevin

WriteOut: Cadence in a Field of Outside Art

One of the themes of this year’s Write Out project is “cadences” and on a tour of an outdoor sculpture art show at a local apple orchard the other day, my attention was drawn to an art piece that made sound. It is constructed of heavy recycled industrial piping, and looks like an oversized percussion piece that had gone awry.

When you push any of the pieces, the entire sculpture sets sound into a slow motion, creating a metal-banging rhythm of unexpected noise. It’s pretty mesmerizing, and I found myself there for a long time, just gently pushing the pipes and listening to the gonging filtering through the fields of outdoor art.

The tone of the pipes seemed a perfect cadence for the kind of outdoor art gallery it was, and watching the movement was like watching a pendulum swing, as the energy from one pipe transferred to another, making a kind of unexpected music.

I had this plans of creating a video, with sound, being embedded inside a collage of images from the art show sprawled out over the fields of the apple orchard/farm. I remembered a site I had used long ago – Kapwing — and sure enough, it allowed me to create a multi-media collage.

Peace (listening to the sound),
Kevin

PS: Write Out is underway, with tons of daily resources on place-based writing and inspirations. Come join us.

Slice of Life: On The Ropes – Up In The Trees

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

I almost didn’t do it. Now I am glad I joined my teenage son and niece on an aerial adventure with a high ropes and zip-lining course this weekend as we had a family weekend of apple picking, viewing an outdoor art gallery and then the ropes course.

Which was challenging as the difficulty levels got increasing more .. difficult.

But we were outside, in the woods, at the start of the WriteOut project, and being up in the trees for a challenge seemed quite appropriate for the Write Out experience. And while my back and shoulders still feel the strain of twisting and turning and balancing and muscling my way through, the sense of accomplishment is strong.

Ropes Course Collage

Peace (outside and on the wires),
Kevin

PS: Write Out 2021 kicked off this weekend and runs for two weeks (through Sunday, October 24). It’s a free, place-based, online activity for teachers, students and the public. Write Out is a partnership between the National Writing Project and the National Park Service. More info: https://writeout.nwp.org/

Write Out Begins: Writing Prompts, Teaching Resources, Live Events and More

The Write Out project kicked off yesterday with a release of many free, wonderful resources for classroom teachers and families and community groups — from National Park Rangers presenting writing prompts through videos; to teachers and others connected to the National Writing Project providing a range of possible writing ideas connected to nature, public spaces and other places of interest for our students; to a series of live events throughout the two weeks of Write Out (October 10-24), including the National Day on Writing on October 20th.

Check it all out — then go on and Write Out, and please share wherever you connect with others. You can follow and share using the #writeout hashtag on social media and tap into conversations happening at @writeoutconnect, the Write Out Facebook Group, and the new NWP Write Now Teacher Studio.
Here’s an example:
Peace (and connections),
Kevin

 

Book Review: Subpar Parks

Store - Subpar Parks - Amber Share Design

Amber Share was looking for some artistic direction as an illustrator and designer when she began to notice some one-star negative reviews left on sites for our National Parks. It intrigued her that anyone would leave a negative review for such national treasures and this inquiry began her work on Subpar Parks, first as an Instagram feed and then as a book.

The new book features Share’s lovely illustrations of different parks with the terrible reviews featured (with reviewer names and identifications left off), and then her snarky response to the observations of those who bothered to write a review. She clearly loves our National Parks and can’t fathom a negative experience, but then turns that into art.

Subpar Parks — Amber Share | Letterer Illustrator Designer ...

Some favorites of mine from the book:

  • “It looks nothing like the license plate.”  (Arches National Park)
  • “A hole. A very, very large hole.” (Grand Canyon National Park)
  • “A green statue and that’s it.” (Statue of Liberty National Monument)
  • “Mountains not nearly tall enough.” (Gates of the Arctic National Park)
  • “Don’t even get to touch lava.” (Hawaii Volcanoes National Park)

But the book is not all snark and pushback.

Share has done her time in National Parks as a visitor and she has done her research, too. Each chapter on a park (the book is divided into regions of the United States) comes with interesting information and anecdotes, as well as connections to the native heritages of the land, and she adds helpful advice from park rangers on when best to visit and where, and what to remember about a given site.

Subpar Parks: National Parks and Their One-Star Reviews ...

I thoroughly enjoyed her illustrations — muted colored hues as her palette and soft, evocative artwork that captures the essence of the places as a contrast to the words of the negative reviewers. She has a real cohesive style that connects the pieces together in an engaging way. You see our National Parks from a new view.

Subpar Parks 6 - The RV Atlas

I’m tempted to give this a subpar review, just to keep with the theme of Share’s work, but I won’t, since Subpar Parks is a fun and interesting and informative read all around. Five stars.

ALSO: Did you know Write Out 2021 is kicking off tomorrow (Sunday, October 10)? It’s a free, place-based, online activity for teachers, students and the public. Write Out is a partnership between the National Writing Project and the National Park Service. More info: https://writeout.nwp.org/

Peace (reviewed and refuted),
Kevin