👓 Scots Word of the Season: ‘Leerie’ | The Bottle Imp

Read Scots Word of the Season: ‘Leerie’ (The Bottle Imp)
Leerie n. a lamplighter, who lit gas lamps in towns and cities (before electric light)
The word leerie is perhaps best known nowadays from the nostalgic poem ‘The Lamplighter’ by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). The character, ‘Leerie’, is depicted as a romantic wanderer who charms th...
I have to wonder if traffic on the site has picked up for this word based on the recent opening of the film Mary Poppins Returns?

It seems that leeries are just as pictuesque and poetic in other incarnations as they are depicted in Mary Poppins Returns. Why the romanticism for such a menial and dirty seeming profession?

👓 Impact of Rose Parade Float Fire, Chaotic Ending Still Being Felt | Pasadena Now

Read Impact of Rose Parade Float Fire, Chaotic Ending Still Being Felt (Pasadena Now)

The fire which disabled the Chinese American Heritage Foundation’s “Harmony Through Union” Rose Parade float Tuesday is still under investigation by the Pasadena Fire Department. The fallout from the parade’s chaotic ending caused by the float’s blaze and breakdown may continue for a while, however.

The incident left tens of thousands of parade-goers along the length of the parade route bewildered as it caused delays and the premature appearance of the closing act as the parade stretched over thirty minutes past its television timeslot.

They spend such a large chunk of the article on the unseen South Pasadena float and didn’t bother to throw in a photo of it?! Such a missed opportunity.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


From Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem (1923)

I’ve been thinking lately about writing some poetry and putting it here on my site. Since the muses aren’t visiting today, I thought I would republish Frost’s poem today to to celebrate its entering the public domain. Perhaps I’ll think of a way to remix it too…

Featured photo credit: P1020911 flickr photo by pekka.jarvelainen shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

A cursory look at my website for 2018

I just added it up quickly and realized that I posted publicly to my website/blog/commonplace book a total of 4,694 times in 2018! Holy cow!

I don’t have quite the crazy analysis that Jeremy Keith has done of his posts, and I initially thought that there was no way I’d posted as much as he had. Perhaps it might be worth delving deeper into the numbers to see exactly what is going on?

Possibly worse(?!), that total posting number is up from 1,762 public posts in 2017. I can only attribute the increase in quantity to the ability to increasingly easily post to my site via micropub clients and some simple bookmarklets I use in conjunction with David Shanske’s brilliant Post Kinds plugin. G-d bless the IndieWeb and its tremendously helpful community for helping me take back ownership of my digital online life. I can only imagine how much higher that number goes this coming year if I can manage to build a Microsub set up and indie reader into my website and make the entire processes even more friction-less.

I unwittingly spent a few minutes last night on cleaning up some plumbing on my back end that will make it easier to follow up (when necessary) on likes, reads, and bookmarks that I collect.

I can’t bear to go through and count the number of private posts for the year, but I will say that having my own online searchable database of things  I’ve written, replied to, bookmarked, read, listened to, watched, annotated, etc. has been incredibly useful over the past few years.

🔖 The Art of the Benshi | UCLA Film & Television Archive

Bookmarked The Art of the Benshi (UCLA Film & Television Archive)

March 1, 2019-March 3, 2019 at Billy Wilder Theater

During the silent film era in Japan, which extended into the early 1930s, film screenings were accompanied by live narrators, called benshi. In the industry’s early years, benshi functioned much in the way scientific lecturers did in early American and European cinema, providing simple explanations about the new medium and the moving images on screen. Soon, however, benshi developed into full-fledged performers in their own right, enlivening the cinema experience with expressive word, gesture and music. Each with their own highly refined personal style, they deftly narrated action and dialogue to illuminate—and often to invent—emotions and themes that heightened the audience’s connection to the screen. Loosely related to the style of kabuki theater in which vocal intonation and rhythm carries significant meaning and feeling, benshi evolved in its golden age, between 1926-1931, as an art form unto itself. Well-established benshi such as Tokugawa Musei, Ikukoma Raiyfi, and Nakamura Koenami were treated as stars, reviewed by critics, featured in profiles (in 1909, the first issue of one of Japan’s earliest film journals featured a benshi on its cover) and commanded high salaries from exhibitors. The prominence and significant cultural influence of benshi prompted the government to try to regulate their practice, instituting a licensing system in 1917 and attempts were made to enhance their role as “educators” through training programs overseen by the Ministry of Education. The benshi were not without controversy, however. While some contemporary critics argued that the benshi were essential to differentiating Japanese film culture from the rest of the world’s output, others argued that the benshi, along with other theatrical elements, impeded the artistic and technical evolution of Japanese cinema into a fully modern art form. Benshi did vigorously resist the coming of sound to Japanese cinema and the practice continued, though with increasing rarity, into the sound era. The art, today, is carried on by a small group of specialized performers who have been apprenticed by the preceding generations of benshi, creating a continuous lineage back to the original performers.

The Archive and the Tadashi Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities are pleased to present this major benshi event in Los Angeles which will afford audiences a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience this unique art form in all its rich textures. Pairing rare prints of Japanese classics and new restorations of American masterworks, this weekend-long series features performances by three of Japan’s most renowned contemporary benshi, Kataoka Ichirō, Sakamoto Raikō, and Ōmori Kumiko. Trained by benshi masters of the previous generation, they will each perform their unique art live on stage in Japanese (with English subtitles) to multiple films over the course of the weekend. Every performance and screening will be accompanied by a musical ensemble with traditional Japanese instrumentation, featuring Yuasa Jōichi (conductor, shamisen), Tanbara Kaname (piano), Furuhashi Yuki (violin), Suzuki Makiko (flute), Katada Kisayo (drums).

Special thanks to the Tadashi Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum at Waseda University and the Top Global University Project, Global Japanese Studies Model Unit, Waseda University (MEXT Grant), National Film Archive of Japan.

I’ve always loved old school screenings of silent films, but I’ve never experienced benshi. This sounds like it could be pretty cool and definitely unique as its own artform.

👓 Watched: “Future of the open web and open source” by @webdevlaw and others | Amanda Rush

Read Comments on Watched: “Future of the open web and open source” by @webdevlaw and others by Amanda Rush (Customer Servant Consultancy)
I suspect that, as a general rule, open source treats the open web the same way that corporate software companies like Apple or Microsoft treat open source: It’s existence and that there are people to take care of it for you while you do the flashy stuff...

📺 “Chopped Junior” Why So Blue? | Food Network

Watched "Chopped Junior" Why So Blue? from Food Network
Directed by Michael Pearlman. With Ted Allen, Chris Santos, Ruben Studdard. A fun twist on a classic comfort food and pricey truffles in the appetizer round; large blue squash in the entrée round; out-of-this-world lollipops and green fruit in the dessert round; journalist Michelle Park, chef Chris Santos and Ruben Studdard are the judges.
They keep saying broccoli rabe and I’m hung up on thinking about The Office. It took me a minute, but then I remembered they did have a tangential character named Broccoli Rob.

❤️ Bridgy stats update | snarfed.org

Liked Bridgy stats update by Ryan BarrettRyan Barrett (snarfed.org)
It’s that time of year again! No, not awards season…Bridgy stats time!
Looking at the graphs, the elephant in the room is clearly the Facebook shutdown. It was Bridgy’s second largest silo, numbering 1477 users when we wer...

🔖 Khirbet Qeiyafa Archaeological Project

Bookmarked Khirbet Qeiyafa Archaeological Project (qeiyafa.huji.ac.il)
Excavation directors:   Prof. Yosef Garfinkel (Hebrew University)
Mr. Saar Ganor (Israel Antiquities Authority)
Institution   The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Location:   Israel, 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem
Periods:   Iron Age, early 10th century BC; Hellenistic
Nearest village:   Kibbutz Netiv Ha-Lamed Hei

The fieldwork lasted from 2007 to 2013. Now the expedition concentrates on the analysis of the finds and writing the final excavation reports. A new field project is starting at Tel Lachish, cooperation between the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Institute of Archaeology of Southern Adventist University.

👓 Silicon Valley pledged to break up the boys’ club of investing in 2018. How did it do? | Recode

Read Silicon Valley pledged to break up the boys’ club of investing in 2018. How did it do? (Recode)
Venture capitalists spent 2018 welcoming women to the fold, but the welcome has been fitful, uneven and, scariest of all, tentative.
Lack of diversity is going to be like the cigarette problem of the early 70’s. We know that it’s bad for us, but in the present it doesn’t seem as significant on a marginal individual basis. But worked on over decades it will make us and our society much healthier and richer for having solved for it.
Replied to a tweet by Michael LevinMichael Levin (Twitter)
I wish I had known that before I started working on slime molds...”
Kandel’s corollary to “People eventually start to look like their pets.”

Gives me hope in old age that I have a German Shepherd and not a Chihuahua (or slime mold)…

👓 The story behind the gas lamps and leeries in ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ | Business Insider

Read The real story behind the gas lamps and lamplighters in 'Mary Poppins Returns' (Business Insider)
In 'Mary Poppins Returns', Lin-Manuel Miranda plays a lamplighter. Here's the history behind the lamps and the profession.

The Victorian periodical The Westminster Review wrote that the introduction of gas lamps would do more to eliminate immorality and criminality on the streets than any number of church sermons.  

👓 Mary Poppins Returns: How accurate was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s accent, rhyming slang, leeries? | Slate

Read How Bad Was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Accent in Mary Poppins Returns, Really? (Slate Magazine)
“If he'd gone to some proper cockney, like me, we'd have got a bit more background.”

👓 Collaborative resource curation | Hypothesis

Read Collaborative resource curation by Jon Udell (Hypothesis)
Recently we decided to keep better track of tweets, blog posts, and other web resources that mention and discuss our product. There are two common ways to do that: send links to a list maintainer, or co-edit a shared list of links. Here’s a third way, less common but arguably more powerful and flexible: tag the web resources in situ.

📺 Washington vs. Ohio State – January 1, 2019 | ESPN

Watched Washington vs. Ohio State - January 1, 2019 from ESPN

Ohio State tops Washington 28-23 in Meyer's Rose Bowl finale

PASADENA, Calif. -- Urban Meyer says he decided to end his remarkable coaching career at Ohio State partly because of the stress inherent in this high-intensity job.

After his Buckeyes blew most of a 25-point lead in the fourth quarter and had to recover a last-minute onside kick to win the Rose Bowl, anybody could understand why this 54-year-old coach can't wait to retire.

But the stress is over. Meyer is going out at the top of his profession. And for the first time, he is a Rose Bowl champion.

What a great attempt at a comeback by Washington. Without the interception in the last minute things may have been quite different.