Rubberbands: A quickfiction piece

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It’s been some time since I have written any of my quickfiction, but I was inspired for this short piece by a magazine article I was reading about a child prodigy violinist who used to sit in his room, with rubber bands, making his clothes dresser into a musical instrument.

If you are interested is more of my quickfiction, you can see my site over at Hypertextopia. The collection of stories there is called Inside Kaleidoscope Dreams.


Rubberbands
(listen to the podcast)

You scan the floor for rubber bands. Underneath the rug. Inside the kitchen drawer. Behind the cushions of the couch. Anywhere you think they might be, you look. Of course, you have learned to be careful. Your mom will take them away, again, and shout at you, again. “Rubber bands? Rubber bands?” Her voice will echo through your head for the rest of the day, crowding out the melody. Someday, when you are older, you will have your own place and your own guitar and you won’t need rubber bands. You will sink into that freedom and know it to be paradise. For now, it is all about the rubber bands. You count them in your hand — onetwothreefourfive. Not quite enough, but enough for now. You close the door to your bedroom and push the chair against the door. The drawer of your clothes chest open reluctantly, as if it needing some oil, and one by one, you extend the rubber bands across the surface of the open spaces, fixing it so that you can adjust the length of the rubber bands as you need by moving the drawer in and out, out and in. One band becomes smaller, lower pitched, while another become longer, higher. It is a full eight minutes of adjustments, getting it all just right in your head until you can close your eyes and begin to play. The melody dances, first through your fingers, then along the vibrating hum of the rubber bands, and finally filling the room with light only you can see. You know it won’t last and it doesn’t. Either your mother will pound on the door, or your brother will shout some obscenity at you from the hallway or the dog will start barking at someone in the street and all will be broken. Today, you are shattered by a string, the snap of the rubber like a shot in the night, startling you with a surprising ferocity. The silence at first is odd and then, almost comforting, until you hear your mother yell: “All right, who took the damn rubber band from this deck of cards?”

Peace (in fictionalized worlds),
Kevin

Eponyms, Schneponyms

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In our study of the English Language and the origins of words, my students did some work on the concept of Eponyms, which are words that take on the name of a person (such as Ferris Wheel or Saxophone). Students then got some time to use Powerpoint to develop a slideshow that markets a product that has their name — an eponymous product. A few students (and myself) donated work for this video (I converted PP to video with some software that I have).
One of the side reasons for doing this work is that I want to bring them deeper into powerpoint so that when we do our Digital Book Project later in the year, the technology is in the background as much as possible and the writing and creativity work is in the forefront. They need multiple sessions to understand the platform and to think and imagine the possibilities of a book that is not “flat” but “multimedia.”

Peace (in Kevinland),
Kevin

Off to Japan

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My family and I are taking a vacation next week … to Japan. Not a virtual one, but a real one. We have family on a naval base outside of Tokyo (my brother-in-law commands a battleship), so the opportunity was too great to pass up. I showed my students the basic path we will be taking with Google Earth yesterday (which gave me a chance to talk about the features of the new version of Google Earth — we did some exploring of Mars yesterday before zooming through the galaxies).

In case you are wondering, the trip from here to there is about 6500 miles and it takes about 14 hours. And we have three kids with us. Now is the time I could use some new-fangled technology that beams you from one side of the planet to the next in less then a few seconds.

Has any of my readers been to Tokyo? Any suggestions?

Here is a map of our journey:

View Larger Map

Peace (in travel),
Kevin

The Red Sled

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This photo is from my backyard and it reminded me of the imagery from the William Carlos Williams’ poem, Red Wheelbarrow. (The photo is part of the Photofridays project, too)

Remember?

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

What about:

so much depends
upon

the red plastic
sled

covered with white
snow

beside the children’s
tracks.

Peace (in a poetic mood),
Kevin

Your Days on a Virtual Bulletin Board

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Hi

This week’s Day in a Sentence explores a new online application called Stixy, which is sort of like a wiki but looks and feels like a bulletin board. I am hoping it is easy to use. You just need to drag a text widget up into the white space, write your Day in a Sentence, add your name, and save.

Would you care to join us this week? You are invited.

Head on over to my Day in a Sentence site on Stixy and use another collaborative tool. I’m not sure of the applications for the classroom yet for Stixy but I would love to hear from you if you have ideas. You can do that by leaving me a comment here.

The way Day in a Sentence works is:

  • Reflect on your day or your week
  • Boil it down to a single sentence
  • Share it out

Meanwhile, I look forward to your words.

Peace (in collaboration),
Kevin

Working with Crazy Words

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crazywords wordle by you.

As part of our unit on the Origins of the English Language, my students work on creating their own words that they hope will someday become part of the English Language. We talk a lot about how words come and go through time, and how language is always alive and taking new shapes. In this vein, a few years ago, I started to use a Wiki to have students add to a dictionary of made-up words. It is now in its fifth year and the number of words exeeds 400 at this point. It’s quite a thing and my students love to add their words to it, knowing they are creating something unique.

We use a wiki (Wikispaces) because it is so darned easy to use and to archive. The simplicity of the platform is perfect and it occurs to me that our wiki is a collaboration over time, as this year’s crop of writers are really working with my young writers from each of the last five years, and with the future in mind, too. That is interesting (for a sci-fi nut like me anyway)

Here are some of the words from this year, and I am including the podcast, too, since they read their words and definitions so that their voice gets archived with their words.

If you want to see the full dictionary:

Peace (in collaboration over time),
Kevin

Now I know who to blame …

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Appetite for Self-Destruction

For years, my pet peeve was that darned packaging around CDs. First of all, it would tear at my fingers trying to get it open. Second, I was left with more plastic and cardboard than CD case, and so every purchase of music felt as if I were germinating the local landfill.

This week, I finally found the name of the guy credited with this entire packaging idea. It is Jerry Shulman, who was director of marketing at CBS at the time. In the book Appetite for Self-Destruction by Steve Knopper (an excellent look at how the music industry has again and again shot itself in the foot as the digital revolution took hold …. Napster, anyone? Or now bit torrent?), Shuman admits to the idea. “It was me,” Shulman is quoted saying by Knopper. “It cut everyone’s fingers to shreds when you cut it open.”

Yep. That’s probably why they were known as blister boxes in the industry.

Now, Shulman did not invent this contraption just to cause pain to music customers (although Knopper does an excellent job of showing how us music lovers are often farthest from the minds of the record company executives at so many turns in the road over the last 30 years). The tomb-like plastic and cardboard casing was invented so that record store owners would not have to build new shelves for CDs; they could just use the old LP shelves and fit two CDs in the spot where one LP used to go.

Now, who is the hero of this story of the old CD cases? Raffi. That’s right. Raffi — the children’s singer who has always earned my respect for refusing to license any of his recordings for marketing that might influence a child to buy a product. He just wants kids to love music.

According to Knopper, Raffi refused to put out CDs in the so-called longbox. Good for you, Raffi.

Meanwhile, the industry realized they could save a bundle of money by eliminating all of that packaging, and appease other artists like U2, Peter Gabriel and others who were worried about the environmental impact of the packaging. It is nice to see that CDs (if you still buy them) are mostly without the plastic sleeves.

Of course, the digital versions require no packaging at all.

Peace (in laying the blame),
Kevin

The New Google Earth (and Mars and Oceans)

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Google released the new version of Google Earth and it looks like another winner, allowing you to move through time in certain locations, head down under the oceans and up into the stars and planets. Amazing stuff and a wealth of possibilities for the classroom, don’t you think?

Here is the link to download Google Earth 5.0.

And here is a neat teaser video:

Peace (in the worlds above and below us),
Kevin