vtiff at first night 2017

every year at first night the VT international Film Foundation screens a set of animated short films. they are like my favorite thing to go to.

many of them are available on the interwebs, so i have found the ones from this year and put them together for you, more or less in the order of how well i liked them.

a couple of them are not available (apparently) but are worth knowing about, so i've given you what links i can.

it's worth your time to watch them on vimeo or youtube, where you can see better than if i make little embed windows, so hold onto your hats because here come some LINKS.

Cravings is mildly cute, and nutritionally themed. while the vimeo version is labeled as the trailer, it appears to be the whole thing, or at least it's what they showed at first night.

Kahānikār is both cute and sad, a story about a little girl living with a grandfather who has dementia, and the telling of stories. only the trailer is available.

The Bubbleologist is a live-action mini documentary about a man who loves bubbles and holds bubble-making world records. i had seen it before, but did not mind seeing it again. if you haven't seen it already, you can see it now.

if you like tapirs (and who doesn't?), you should not miss this animated documentary, Pinchaque. plus it's fun to say "pinchaque".

Little Matryoshka is a charming little film about -what else?- a set of little matryoshka and some other wooden toys. it has a very satisfying soundtrack.

i was completely unable to find an online version, even a trailer, of the delightful little film Pautinka, which is a tale of friendship between an old woman and a spider. the animations of the spider are particularly amusing.

so now we're getting to the ones i especially liked.

A Girl Named Elastika is worth watching just for the animation, which is stop action with OFFICE SUPPLIES. watch all the way to the credits, because the "outtakes" are worth as much as the rest of the movie.

then we have two dog tales, The Present and My Happy End. both awesome.

and if you only decide to watch one, make it Chinti. the animation is stop action made of TEA LEAVES. and because i'm sure you want to know, "chinti" is hindi for "ant". you're welcome.

no hurry to leave paradise

so i was leaving paradise.

and while i left, i started making a song. it goes like this:




and here's the sheet music.

librarian lottery, game 2

in case you only just walked in, i'll tell you how the game is played. when i was getting ready to move to site 13 i went to the library and asked the librarians to play a round.

i went with three books: one i had gotten on purpose, because MB was reading it, and also because i like birds and sciencey things.

i enjoyed this one very much, but it was a bit of a slow read for me because while written accessibly, there's a lot of information in there and i had to keep putting it down to let my brain catch up.

and if the idea of research on live animals bothers you, maybe you want to stay away from this one, because it does talk about live research.

the more we understand the intelligence of other species, though, i think the more likely we are to  appreciate them and maybe care more about their habitats.

enter librarian lottery book 1:

this was a lovely and gentle romance, understated and funny.

also, refreshing treatment of contemporary racism.

BIG WINNER.

this here is pride and prejudice told from the perspective of the household staff. or rather, it's the story of the household staff while pride and prejudice takes place in the background, largely unnoticed.

it works as a stand-alone novel, but for full enjoyment you should at least have a passing familiarity with pride and prejudice.

and then, if you are like me and somehow made it into adulthood never having read that, you may wish to pick it up.

i did.


BIG WINNER.

windmill

last year my brother in law got me a windmill generator. it's supposed to be a kids' project, but it's a cool little project and it should be fun to play with.

my work table was still pretty cluttered with bits of other projects, but i managed to clear off enough space to work.

it's got good directions and doesn't need much in the way of tools.

here it is assembled.














so i took it for a spin!

christmas at my moms'

here are my festively wrapped gifts all packed and ready to go. if you look carefully, you will notice that they are not just wrapped in black, but hand decorated IN black. it's kind of a family tradition.

and here are the fabulous presents under the tree. yes, we call them "fabulous presents". it's also a family tradition.

here are my moms in their new matching shirts.

one of these things is not like the others.

labyrinth

while i was staying on site 7,  i broke down and old fireplace that the ranger wanted gone and i built a classical 3x3 labyrinth on the flat surface on that part of the site.

this is the design:

it's smallish as labyrinths go, but given the width of the path for walking, it was all that would fit into the space. i used a compass to align it to the cardinal directions, with the entrance / exit opening to true north.

here's what it looks like laid out in stones on the ground:

and this is the center:

life skills

a long time ago i used to be a classroom music teacher. and one day every year we had a lesson on HOW TO TIE A TIE.

i taught them how to tie a tie on themselves and on someone else.

i did this because i had a sixth grade language arts teacher who did the same for us.

and when we asked "mrs. ferguson, why do we have to learn this?", she told us that it was an important life skill. even for girls. because, she explained, most of us girls would one day have brothers or boyfriends or husbands or sons or cousins who would not know how to tie a tie because nobody had taught them and we were going to have to do it for them or teach them how.

she was right, you know.

lights for the new year

here's my hat, ready to go out.

and here's my scarf against the floor at Burlington City Arts. they have a really cool interactive light up floor.

and my stepmother gave me an awesome pair of light up gloves.





and here's three of us wearing our gloves at the top of church street.

shirt!

here is an awesome thing my stepmother gave me. i had no idea such a thing even existed.

it's a tshirt in a handsome color and the GRAPHIC!!



so i was all like "whut? how? where did you EVEN?"

and it turns out there's a store in waterbury center called VT 100 that sells all things related to vermont route 100.

how awesome is that?

prepared remarks

i am preparing my remarks for when i go out for new year's eve, because i am always interviewed by reporters. my interview doesn't always make print or broadcast, but they always interview me.

it's not because i'm unusually wise or famous, but because i have a hat and scarf that are kind of a fixture and have a level of celebrity that i myself do not possess. because it is not possible to interview the hat and scarf, reporters interview the next best thing: me.

i just find it goes a lot better if i have something brief and meaningful to say.

i am toying with "2016 was a hard year for a lot of us for a lot of reasons, but babies keep getting born. we still sing and dance and the sun still comes up. let's all try to be kind to each other in 2017 and make it a better year."

august views from the res

ok, kids. let's hop in the wayback machine because apparently i have no respect for linear storytelling.

i'm going to show you some pretty views from august, when i was staying on site 7.

little river state park seen from site 7

little river state park, camel's hump in background

waterbury dam and camel's hump

little liver state park

spider web

moonset

librarian lottery, game 1

while i was doing my gig at the state park and living on site 7,  i brought with me three books (besides field guides).

i brought with me mary roach's stiff, which is a book i checked out on purpose, and while i was browsing the stacks for that, i saw a copy of bradford angier's how to stay alive in the woods, which has a rubberized durable cover and i thought would make for very funny reading from my hammock.

in addition, i asked my librarian to pick something for me, which is a thing sometimes they will do if they're not too busy and you aren't going to be fussy about what you get.

stiff is a really cool book, but not so much for the squeamish. mary roach is an awesome science writer. i also went on to read bonk, which is also worth a read.

for some reason i think it's funny to read this book hanging in a hammock on a sunny say.

it's a fairly complete collection of survival information (although you'd want a better plant guide), and moderately entertaining, but mr. angier never uses two words where five would suffice.

and here's the first entry in the librarian lottery.

i said i wanted something light and maybe quirky. the librarian asked me if i minded romance. i do not.

so she handed me this.

BIG WINNER

charming and sweet.

there's a sequel too, but i do not like it as well. the characters are the same and it's nice to visit with them, but they do not seem to have learned very much from the WHOLE FIRST BOOK, and that bothers me a little. i still thought it was worth reading.

tabs

i just need to close some tabs so i can function.

down the video hole we go!


a man allows his phone to be stolen and tracks the thief







this guys talks in his sleep.







you need this.






and here's a documentary on co-living that's interesting. it takes about ten minutes. starts with autoplay, but it has a mute button.


and OMG it you like radio, or eavesdropping, or are learning a language, or just like cool stuff, there's radio garden!



and last up, this:

how to eat breakfast

yeah, BABY. you've waited hours for this. load up that plate with all the food that will fit. hot it up in the microwave.

when you take it out, find a comfortable place to sit because you're not getting up real soon.

start with the vegetables. you like those. eat the cabbage, the broccoli, the onion, the mashed sweet potato.

then you will have more room to really mix the turkey and stuffing in with the gravy.

oh, god, the gravy.

when you have shoveled all of that in your mouth, wipe up any remaining gravy with your biscuit.

yeah, breakfast.

(please adjust menu for dietary needs)

the third spoon

this one is eating size.

i did not know if that's what my brother in law wanted for christmas, but it's what i made him.

do yourself a favor

this maybe gets old for you, because this is not the first time i've posted this.

but you should listen to willem lange tell his story favor johnson.

it's a vermont christmas tradition, and worth your time.

if you just want to read the story (not as good. really.) hop on over to the VPR webpage. you can listen to it there too, as well as download it.

and if you're inclined, while you're at willem lange's website, you can buy the illustrated book. it is a lovely gift and if you order from him, they come signed.

i gotta go.

white christmas

i do not really need this map to tell me whether or not i am likely to have a white christmas.

interactive white christmas probability map

i pretty much look out the window.

if it gets very warm today in some freak meteorological event, i suppose all my snow will melt.

it's funny how i just have no instinct for that whole "will there be a white christmas?" thing, since here it's fairly likely that we will have a white halloween and a white thanksgiving and a white easter.

anyway, ion television has a NEW holiday movie airing tonight called "a christmas in vermont", which i cannot imagine is actually filmed here. i may have to watch it just to see.



well.

as we say in my family, happy midwinter gift exchange light festival of your choice.

tale of two sofas

awright, so MB bought me one o' these newfangled inflatable sofas, which is awesome and all the cool kids have them.

i took it out to the campsite to test it with barb one day, but the one MB bought was a cheap knockoff PRETENDING to be the name brand jobber, so she turned around and bought me the real one and i've since returned the knockoff.

this is me on the cheap one the week before the campings.




and some video comparing the two.

october views from the res

view of little river state park

view looking east toward remote site 9

elephant rock

the shortest day

today is the shortest day of the year. the solstice itself happened in the five o'clock hour this morning.

i was awake to notice it, but a dark sky is a dark sky and there wasn't much to notice. and yet, imperceptibly, my days move back toward the light.

here is first light and my house, and sunrise at my house.

tomorrow's length of day will be three seconds longer. a whole three second! but they add up, and they gain speed. by early january we will gain a minute of light each day. you'll hardly notice for another month, but it's there.

and may the light grow within you as well.