WaterGirl nudged me this weekend to see if I was still posting…which I am…but right now I’m on my last chapter of the latest book and traveling for the week. So I won’t be around much to do the overnight thing for a bit. But here are a few videos I had set aside…
And if you can – the full moon is pretty spectacular – so check it out.
Feb 28, 2023 • #EarthRestoration #GlobalMovement #JohnDLiuJohn D. Liu, the filmmaker, journalist, and ecologist, has created a global movement to restore the Earth. His objective has spread to six continents and has brought together people from different social and cultural contexts. It’s about creating harmony with nature and minimizing poverty, hunger, and social disruptions. Together, we can restore the Earth and create a better future.
This is in my Netflix queue when it drops.
And a little music:
A deep cut of Prince…
I saw Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre perform Revelations (among other amazing dances) when I was in college. I cannot remember a live performance that changed my life like this night did. My world opened up in ways I couldn’t even understand (and I was a theatre major, so I had seen and participated in some spectacular performances).
This was transformational. Still is…
That’s it for me until I’m back in town and hopefully with a completed book off to my editor. Which should give me a break until the revisions hit.
If you need critter updates (including Reggie’s new backyard friend – we are not counting the garter snake he dropped – unharmed – in my kitchen) you can find them here.
This is a totally open thread
The Odd Couple
Jay
cbc.ca/documentaries/the-nature-of-things/how-disaster-prompted-this-australian-sheep-farmer-to-swit…
TaMara
@Jay: Thanks for that.
When I get back I want to share the videos from an amazing woman in CA who is friends with my friends – one of her innovations is to add sheep to their vineyards – and it eliminated the need for pesticides and fertilizers. Makes great wine grapes, too.
sab
@TaMara: Don’t geese do the same? Efficient weeders?
JoyceH
Ha! Over on Facebook someone posted a picture of Pope Leo in suit and red tie, seated at the Resolute Desk.
TaMara
@sab: A lot of AMP farmers add chickens and waterfowl to share space with the ruminants. Usually, the more variety of grazers, the better the results.
With the vineyards, sheep are the most practical because of the way they graze.
NotMax
Which one is the holdout?
NotMax
Alvin Ailey troupe appeared on stage in the auditorium of my high school in the 1960s.
Different occasion, also too a pre-Woodstock Jimi Hendrix.
prostratedragon
Song of a goper?
“when you’re an ant …,” Andre 3000
Jay
@NotMax:
Antarctica.
NotMax
@Jay
A showtune
“Seven overrated wonders
Seven underwhelming seas
Six excrutiating continents
Antarctica?
Oh please”
;)
Jay
@NotMax:
I guess it’s a “Merkin thing to diss penguins.
Even though they wear suits.//
Baud
@Jay:
Backward hicks.
Gloria DryGarden
Alvin Ailey.
saw them in 1977-79, in college in Fort Collins. Did a piece to music by Phillip glass, Einstein on the beach, dancers, 4 at a time, coming in diagonally across the stage in canon. That is @ musical term, but they did it in dance. I’d been studying choreography, I understood part of why it was so powerful was the diagonal. It was spellbinding, moving. I still hear the music in my head, the numeric chants, counting in strange sequences, but sung.
that dance has stayed with me, still in the top 10, top 5 dance performances I’ve ever seen. Right up there with seeing the Bolshoi ballet in Chicago, back when they toured their top dancers.
if I could have worked out the money, or how to make it happen to go to New York fir a summer to take master classes at the dance companies, Alvin Aileys was one of the ones I’d have gone for. Their stuff is so moving.
Rusty
I had a similar experience to that of when TaMara saw Alvin Ailey, when I saw Garth Fagan for the first time. It was such a different form of dance, emphasizing a physicality that classical ballet more masks (classical ballet is very physicality demanding, but seeks to hide it in the elegance of movement). My sister was a serious dancer and majored in it college, so i had seen a lot of ballet and modern dance, but Fagan was different in a way that was bolting in its beauty.
The other experience of seeing dance in a new way was encountering the step dancing that our of the sorority and fraternity culture of HBCUs. Our daughter, a voice major who has gone into arts management has a job with a professional step dance troupe. A performance is an incredibly energetic explosion of rhythm and dance. It still thrills, even though we have gotten to see them perform several times.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: I thought I was the only one up in the middle of the night a lot, besides jay, and not max out west of west, and the eastern hemisphere folks.
its 330 pm in wuhan where YY is…
do you speak French? There’s so much geography stuff on blue sky, really cool stuff, and one of the main posters does it in French. Cool international stuff that affects everybody, climate change, etc..
Gloria DryGarden
@Rusty: it’s my understanding that ballet is the hardest sport there is. Athletes come to ballet class for strength and coordination training, body awareness, positioning control.
thank you for your stories about your sister and your daughter. Did your sister perform professionally a long time?
I’ll look up your recommendation Garth f. Someone else with unusual but fascinating, powerful dance, is Pilobolus. That art series ticket at college was an incredible introduction to some great artists and companies. Twyla Tharp is interesting- she does modern dance choreography, but her dancers appear to all be ballet trained, and it shows, in little things, in their technique and the strength certain things take.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
I used to speak a little French. Now I barely speak English well.
NotMax
Dance party.
;)
Baud
Like many people in the reddit thread, first I’ve heard of this.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: no te creo. You have an amazing sense of nuance, how to be almost poetic, and use sarcasm kindly. It’s late, no one will see I paid you a compliment.
the geography feed on blue sky is full of great stuff. News of the world, without being just about the politics. You might be able to grope your way through the French postings, because of all the cognates that match up w English or French, if you know a little bit. I know I’m grasping at it, sometimes with a modicum of comprehension.
Rusty
@Gloria DryGarden: Thank you for the Twyla Tharp recommendation, I’ll search out performances in the morning. I agree, the best modern dancers start with being classically trained. Garth Fagan is most famous for choreographing the Lion King, but his work is so much more than that.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
I’ve been too busy to visit Blue sky recently. Next month should be better.
eclare
Thanks so much for that Netflix clip about the quilters, I’ve added it to the list. Looks amazing!
Ramalama
Didn’t Alvin Aileys troupe make a dance involving disabled people? AIDS was still untreatable and I think disability was the theme. Or different abilities. And the dance critic at the New Yorker I think it was wrote a protest review, never having seen it because it was not art.
I myself am mad dog crazy for Mark Morris dances.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I saw Pilobolus when I was in college. I’m not really into dance but they came to campus and my girlfriend wanted to go. It was pretty cool and unlike any other dancing I’d ever seen.
Betty Cracker
It’s a Murdoch paper and therefore suspect, but the WSJ has been pretty good about calling out Trump’s tariff nonsense for the bullshit on stilts that it is. An excerpt from an editorial from yesterday evening:
I’m glad the editors threw that “golden age” crap back in Trump’s stupid orange face. If Trump wasn’t on a grift tour of the Middle East, his tiny thumbs would be furiously tapping out a rebuttal and insulting “Rupert” on the janky Twitter knockoff.
Debbie(Aussie)
I read this in the Guardian this morning, and was wondering how you guys feel about another prospect for en-shitification of a once great nation.
I read BJ every day, as I have for 20 years. During this time I have come to know some wonderful people. As with Ukraine, I feel informed, but at a total loss as to how to help. What is happening matters. Please know that there is an obscure Aussie lady who admires and cares for you all. Because that’s all I know to do.
Best wishes with love
Debbie
Mathguy
@Debbie(Aussie): It is the Project 2025 plan for everything, e.g., the National Weather Service, air traffic control, and the biggest target, Social Security.
frosty
@Debbie(Aussie): I saw that headline yesterday and couldn’t bear to read it. My retirement plan, well one of them*, was to visit as many National Parks as I could. I’ve gone from 18 to 53 in the last four years.
*Wasting four hours a day reading every comment in Balloon Juice was of course at the top of the list!
Ruckus
@Jay:
I believe it is too cold to grow anything on Antarctica. At least it was when I stood on it. Also a lot of digging to get down to land, the ice was just a tad thick.