Daily Archives: December 28, 2011

General

Get Ready

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Winter                                         First Moon of the New Year

A new year awaits us.  January 1st.  Between now and then there will be many bytes spilled over resolutions, revelations and revolutions.  Last year we had revolutions, the Arabic Spring, and revelations, what do all those Republican candidates really believe, and soon we will have resolutions for better this or that.

I’m skipping the resolutions business again this year.  Just checked back a year ago to see if I had skipped them last year.  Yep.

When I was young, I would have thought the notion of remaining the same from year to year the height of old-fogginess, stuck-in-the-mudness.  Come to think of it, I guess I still do.  Still, I’m less and less impressed with plans and resolutions since life as it comes tends to alter with amazing fluidity any intentions.

Or, maybe I just fold easily when it comes down to it, but I don’t think so.  I’ve hung on to the Latin, the politics, the art.  I’ve been up and down on the novel writing front, but I have written 5, so it’s not like I’ve done nothing in that regard.  I’ve stayed in this marriage 22 years this March.  I’ve got the same car I bought in 1994.

Anyhow, I want to write a bit tomorrow or Friday about how January 1st became New Year.  I mean, the Jews celebrate in September, the Celts in October, the Chinese in February, so how do we end up with new year in the middle of the winter?  I’ve found some interesting material about it.

Cinema and Television

Conviction

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Winter                              First Moon of the New Year

Kenny Waters
Kenny Waters Incident Date: 5/21/80

Jurisdiction: MA

Charge: Murder, Robbery

Conviction: Murder, Robbery

Sentence: Life

 Year of Conviction: 1983

Exoneration Date: 6/19/01

Sentence Served: 18 Years

Real perpetrator found? Not Yet

Contributing Causes:Informants

Compensation? Yes

Just watched Conviction, the Hilary Swank movie about Kenny Waters and his sister who went to law school to prove him innocent.  A moving story, well told.

Went on the web to check it out and discovered that Kenny Waters tripped and fell from a 15 foot retaining wall 6 months after being released from prison.  He died from head trauma associated with the fall.  They did not show this in the movie.

Movies.  I just love’em. Have done for a long time.  But, never got around to pursuing film with any seriousness.  Now, Kate and I are going to have a movie night every Friday.  I know, you probably do this already, but we’re just getting around to it now that she’s retired.  She picks 2 and I pick 2 each month.  My first two are Black Orpheus and The Third Man.

I really want to learn more about film criticism and how movies get made.  The Rough Guide to Cinema has a wonderful collection of films and directors, a sort of crash course in four people’s views of cinema classics.  Plus I have a book on the Grammar of Film and one on Film Studies. I’m all set.

Throw a little popcorn in the microwave.

 

Family, GeekWorld, Writing

Ancient of Trails

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Winter                                      First Moon of the New Year

Rock Hopper juvenile Falkland Islands

The Tumblr site is up, though it has very few postings right now.  That will change over the next few weeks and the initial postings may change, too, as I use the new theme more.  You can access the site through the link, Ancient of Trails, found at the top of the right hand column here.

Why another blog?  Tumblr allows for much easier posting of photos and emphasizes them over print.  We have a large number of photographs and I need the impetus to organize and fiddle with them.  In late January I’m taking a two session class on Adobe Photoshop, then another later in February.  In March and April I plan to learn two more Adobe programs.  I bought an Adobe Creative Suite last fall before the cruise but the programs are too complicated to use without some training upfront.

All of this, too, ancientrails and ancient of trails, will leave cyber footprints for children and grand-children, a way to look back at Grandpa and Grandma, see what they were up to back when computers actually sat on desktops, folks still had landlines and watched broadcast tv.  You know, the old days.

Starting in January I’m going to begin mining ancientrails for a 2012 writing project, one 5,000+ word essay a month, so there are additional uses for them, too.  Thanks for reading, time to start doing some Latin.