Wheels of Wonderland
So the afternoon began at the Pecan Street Fair – Central Texas’ largest arts + crafts fair. Amazing how much inspiration and ideas can be found at an event like this:
Reminded me of a hybrid of the Eugene Celebration, the Street Fair at UO, Portland’s First Thursday and Portland’s Last Thursday.
Hell yes there was a Greek food stand (and p.s. did I mention I am taking Greek classes now? Getting pretty good at speaking Greenglish…)
Just around the corner was Wheels of Wonderland, put on by Austin Bike Zoo. Austin Bike Zoo is self-described as this: “The Austin Bike Zoo Human Powered Puppetry began with the collaborative efforts of artists, bicycle builders, teachers and like minded folks.”
Yup. And they came together to put on a production of Alice in Wonderland. Brilliant:
Here’s a bit of footage from the production:
So as we were heading back to the car, we saw a building with a ton of people, some togas and architecture looking things, so we went inside to see what it was. Turns out it was a public performance and installation of The 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction. Crazy. Awesome. Crazy awesome:
And then the Capitol building, looking quite beautiful. Perhaps it’s because I’m from a capitol city and spent alot of time at the capitol building giving holiday performances with orchestra + choir, as well as the annual mock youth legislative session (oh, memories!)…but there’s just something about capitol buildings that I sure do love:
Yup. A good day indeed.
to mourn the loss of Reading Rainbow…
As I’m sure we all know by know, Reading Rainbow in done and done. What a shame. And another beautiful example of how off kilter our view of education is. And by our, I mean those in charge of the education system…so perhaps the Dept. of Education…the Government?
I heard a piece on NPR about Reading Rainbow – the most interesting point to me was this: ‘ . . . decision ot end “Reading Rainbow” can also be traced back to a philosophical change about TV and reading. He says the change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on things like phonics and spelling, the basic tools of reading.”
So, pause right there.
Yes, the basics are obviously important, but engagement is the first step. I was hooked on Reading Rainbow because it taught me WHY to read first…then I was taught HOW. Apparently this system of thought is backwards now – teaching kids HOW to read first, skipping what I think is arguably the most important step in the process, why they should love to read. Ugh.
So to mourn the loss of Reading Rainbow, I went to the public library here in Austin and spent some time in the children’s section, reading through books I had read because of Reading Rainbow. It was a fantastic experience, I can’t tell you how much inspiration and ideas can be found in children’s book. Inspiration and ideas about design, thinking outside the box, storytelling, typography, imagination…
So what’s children’s programming going to look for our next generation?
Nurturing Creativity
Well, I read Eat, Pray, Love a few years back and really enjoyed it – just watched Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk – makes me feel a little better and certainly reminds me alot of the great minds in the j. school:
Well, this is embarassing. Keep failing, Firefox!
So my Firefox just shut down and this message appeared. Normally this would be extremely annoying, but honestly, this error message made me laugh. Conversational, spoke my language, yadda yadda.
So, good job Firefox – you have owned failing well. Actually, wouldn’t it be great if there was a series of campaign fail messages. (does Twitter already do this with the fail whale?) I don’t know but either way, I’m a fan. Keep failing, Firefox.
