CLMOOC Collaborative Calendar 2024

CLMOOC Collaborative Calendar 2024

Another new year beckons — another CLMOOC collaboration happens.

A group of us from the Connected Learning network, connected as we have been over the years and living in different parts of the world, have come together once again to create a new year calendar of illustrations, photography, comics and puzzles.

And it’s free!

Head to the CLMOOC website to download your own copy for printing or viewing.

Peace (What The New Year Brings … please),
Kevin

Book Review: World Within A Song

World Within a Song by Jeff Tweedy

Reading how Jeff Tweedy listens is an interesting experience. Tweedy, of Wilco and other solo projects, is a thoughtful musician and music listener, and this book collection of small essays and observations, along with some reflections of his life as a musician, allows Tweedy’s mind to roam.

I appreciated learning about some bands I didn’t know about, and about Tweedy’s obsessiveness with music — sometimes, the more obscure, the better — as a kid who always felt a little out of place in his social circles because of that obsessiveness (which paid off as a musician leading bands like Wilco, and co-leading bands like Uncle Tupelo).

What comes through in a folksy but clearly authentic writing voice here in World Within A Song is Tweedy’s deep love and appreciation for the music of other artists, and how his own listening experiences shaped his life. I appreciated the stories, the observations, and even in places where I might have disagreed with him, I found myself, as a reader, almost in conversation with him.

And any book that celebrates all kinds of music, and provides some funny anecdotes about the world of a quirky rock band, is going to be OK with me.

Peace (and Sound),
Kevin

DS106: Remix Monday (on a Wednesday) Week 5

Oy. I completely missed the fifth and final remix for my Remix-it Monday that I started a month or so ago on a whim, to see if I could remix one single piece of art from the DS106 files every week, for five weeks. I was right on track for weeks one through four. Then, Christmas happened.

So this week’s Monday Remix comes on Wednesday (’cause I forgot about it completely Tuesday).

This final remix uses the Firefly AI Art generator, and then some photo filtering, in which the character is sort of looking to the future and wondering about where art and remix are going (same, here, by the way).

DS106RemixMondays5

Curious about the other remixes?

Peace (and art),
Kevin

PS — here is a remix that I didn’t end up using

DS106RemixMondaysEXTRA

A Calendar of 25 Poems: Advent Of Love

I used mentor poems from my friend, Deanna, and wrote 25 poems each day from December 2 (I wrote two that first day, to catch up, after realizing the first day had passed me by) through the 25th, and then designed this calendar of links to the mentor text poems, my poems, and the visual version (each used an AI-generated image based on the context or words of my poem).

The embedded version of my calendar is compact and might be too small to be useful, so here is the link to the published version of the calendar.

My process: I would read each poem shared by Deanna each morning, mull over the mentor text, find a line or phrase, then build a poem off that idea. Next, I would go into Firefly AI and work to get an image based on my poem, and then use Pablo to layer the text of the poem with the AI imagery. Finally, I would come to my own calendar and update the day.

Peace (and writing),
Kevin

Film Festival: Emerging Filmmakers of Western Massachusetts

Film Festival Northampton Dec2023

Last night, my eldest son – Colin — and his film-making friend, Lucas, hosted a free event at our city’s old and beautiful Academy of Music. The event — Emerging Filmmakers of Western Massachusetts — featured a series of short documentaries and movies from local people in our area. My son and his friend had two movies on the agenda — a music video and a documentary.

The theater with the big screen was packed with people, and it was a fun night but also a proud night for my wife and I as we watched our son showcase his talents and shine a light on other filmmakers, too. Plus, donations helped support the local food bank.

I was reminded, as we watched the movies, of how many short films my son and I did when he was young (and then his youngest brother, now in college, studying film, took up the baton years later — and in fact, his movie was shown in the same theater as part of kids’ film festival many years ago).

It was a lovely evening, with many old friends and families reconnecting.

Peace (and film),
Kevin

 

Gift Of Peace (Solstice 2023)

Each year, I try to do at least one or two different things with a song for the holidays that I wrote some years back with my friend, John Graiff. This year, I tried an acoustic version, with some slight musical and lyric changes, and last night, my friends Bob and Greg joined in playing and recording the song.

Here is the original version:

Peace (and light),
Kevin