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Experience Hongshan Culture in Chifeng
2014-08-26 Ada Tours Chifeng 1737
Chifeng is a regular city in southeastern Inner Mongolia, however, considering its precious travel resources, it's also a valued city. Besides stunning natural scenery, Chifeng was also the political, economic and cultural center of the Liao Dynasty, therefore, the amount of ruins and relics of the Liao Dynasty in Chifeng is ranked the most important in China.
Hongshan Culture is credited with remarkable achievements in architecture, pottery-making, jade-carving and pottery sculptures which are at higher levels than those of Xinglongwa Culture and Zhaobaogou Culture. The duet of square pottery molds unearthed at the relics of a house of Hongshan Culture at Xitai, Aohan Banner,whichis the earliest mold for metal casting, shows that the early people of Hongshan Culture had mastered the technology of bronze casting.
According to archeology studies, human existence in the Chifeng area can be traced back almost ten thousand years, and the cultural history can be traced back nearly eight thousand years. The representative ruins and relics of Hongshan Culture, Grassland Bronze Culture, Qindan Nationality-Liao Culture and Mongolian-Yuan Culture have been discovered in Chifeng.
The ruins of an ancient village, named Xinglonggou, are regarded as "the first village of China" by historians. The biggest jade dragon unearthed in the area is known as "the first dragon of China". The discovery of ruins and relics of ancient cultures have come from more than 6,800 sites.
Gongger Grassland is a place where the fascinating Mongolian nomadic culture can be seen against a backdrop of beautiful natural landscapes. It is also the nearest Mongolian grassland to Beijing, which integrates the beautiful natural landscape and the fascinating Mongolian folkway very well. The grassland is located in Keshiketeng Banner, boasting one of the world's two remaining stands of Korean spruce wood, which is reputed as a 'living fossil'. The Gongger grassland is a perfect place to watch the beautiful sunrise.
On the grassland, the weather is good and the natural landscape is fascinating. With thriving grass and abundant water, the green of the grassland reaches out as far as your eyes can see. Colorful wild flowers and flocks of sheep that look just like masses of cloud make the scene absolutely beautiful.
Arshihaty Stone Forest is a UNESCO Global Geopark in Hexigten Banner. The stone forest is classified as a geo-park, where quaternary glacial relics have been carved by the wind and sand over millions of years. It lies at the convergence of several geographic regions: the Greater Khingan Mountains to the east, the Yan Mountains to the south, and the Hunshandake Sandland to the southwest.
The collision belt of the North China Platform and the Xingmeng Geosyncline also runs through Hexigten. The eight park areas are scattered throughout the area, sampling glacial, volcanic, desert, and hydrological land forms of scenic beauty and geological significance. Altogether, the park covers 1,750 km2 out of Hexigten Banner's total area of 20,673 km2. Like an ancient castle, the stone forest is set in the vast grassland backing onto spacious a birch forest.
What's more, other scenic spots like Bokelong Desert Tourist Zone, Dari Lake, Longquan Temple are also open to the public. If you are interested in the city, feel it by traveling.
Keshiketeng World Geopark Chifeng Travel Guide


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Forschungsergebnisse, Wissenschaftliche Publikationen
How the Venus Flytrap Counts
Hinweis zur Verwendung von Bildmaterial: Die Verwendung des Bildmaterials zur Pressemitteilung ist bei Nennung der Quelle vergütungsfrei gestattet. Das Bildmaterial darf nur in Zusammenhang mit dem Inhalt dieser Pressemitteilung verwendet werden. Falls Sie das Bild in höherer Auflösung benötigen oder Rückfragen zur Weiterverwendung haben, wenden Sie sich bitte direkt an die Pressestelle, die es veröffentlicht hat.
If a prey touches a sensory hair on the inside of the Dionaea trap - an action potential is triggered. This electrical information is then translated into a chemical calcium wave. - S
The carnivorous Venus flytrap snaps shut when a prey touches it twice within 30 seconds. In the journal Nature Plants researchers report on how this plant's short-term memory and counting system works.
The carnivorous Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) can count to five: A team led by biophysicist Rainer Hedrich, professor at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, proved this in 2016. This finding received worldwide attention in science and the media.
In 2019, the JMU plant scientist was awarded the Koselleck Research Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG) worth 1.5 million euros – and with it the opportunity to find out how the carnivorous plant counts. This is now shown by a Japanese research team, led by the developmental biologist Professor Mitsuyasu Hasebe from the University of Okazaki, and Rainer Hedrich's team in the journal Nature Plants.
If a prey touches one of the sensory hairs on the inner trap side of Dionaea, the mechanical stimulus is converted into an electrical signal. This so-called action potential spreads over the entire trap. As a reaction to this, nothing happens at first. But when within 30 seconds a second action potential electrically excites the trap, it snaps shut. If, on the other hand, the second stimulus takes longer, the first action potential is erased from the short-term memory of the Venus flytrap.
Flytrap gets calcium sensor implanted
The molecular memory of the flytrap could be based on a cellular calcium clock – this possibility was discussed by Rainer Hedrich and the Göttingen Nobel Prize winner and neurobiophysicist Erwin Neher as early as 2018 in a review article.
But how can we prove that the flytrap's memory for electric waves has something to do with the generation and storage of calcium? "By installing a calcium sensor in the plant," says Hedrich. This genetically engineered protein lights up when the cellular calcium concentration exceeds a critical level.
Such calcium sensors have already been successfully used in animals and plants to study calcium signals. This has now also worked for Dionaea. Hasebe and Hedrich had decoded the genome of the Venus flytrap and two close relatives in June 2020 and succeeded in introducing the calcium sensor GCAMP into flytrap tissue culture. Functional Venus flytraps could be regenerated from cultured cells – "this was the decisive step towards testing our hypothesis of the calcium clock," explains Hedrich.
Each action potential is accompanied by a calcium wave
Experiments with the sensor-equipped plants showed: When a sensory hair is touched, the calcium level in the cells in the foot of the sensory hair increases in a flash and spreads as a wave over the entire trap. This happens on each individual stimulus. As with every wave, however, it is a temporary phenomenon: within a few seconds after the touch, the calcium wave reaches its peak. After one minute it has largely died away.
What happens when a sensory hair is stimulated twice in a row? Then two action potentials are sent on their journey separately. The first one brings – as expected – an increase in the cellular calcium level. If the second occurs before the calcium level has fallen to its resting value, the two signals overlap. As a result, a threshold is exceeded, triggering calcium-dependent processes that in turn close the trap, Hedrich says.
"The electrical excitation of the trap cells is thus translated into an increase in the concentration of calcium. Thus the passing action potential is quasi stored in the electrically excited trap cells. If a further action potential comes, its calcium value is added to the first signal. Using this calcium clock the Venus flytrap can count the number of the touch stimulation-conditioned action potentials", explains the JMU professor.
The decisive factor is the crossing of the calcium threshold
However, if the second action potential arrives after the first calcium wave has died down, the flytrap will not close. Is it the number of action potentials that is responsible for the trap closing or the exceeding of the calcium threshold?
In the Würzburg laboratory it could be shown that after 30 seconds a second action potential does not close the trap, but a shortly following electrical excitation does. This procedure was used in the Hasebe laboratory to study the behavior of the calcium level. The result was clear: With the delayed second stimulus, the calcium level increased but remained subliminal. With the third stimulus, the threshold for triggering the trap was exceeded.
How does the Venus flytrap continue to count?
"Our findings show that short-term memory and the ability to count to two are based on the calcium clock," Hedrich concludes. But the Venus flytrap can continue to count past two. In response to subsequent action potentials, the biosynthesis of the plant hormone jasmonate is increased. From the fifth electrical excitation on, the Venus flytrap produces digestive enzymes to decompose the prey and transport proteins to aid in the assimilation of the nutrients from the meal.
In this context, the next question that the research groups will address is, whether and how the calcium clock counts to five. An important question will be to understand whether the cells that react to the first and second action potentials are different to those that respond to the action potentials three and four.
"Furthermore, we want to know how the different calcium-dependent processes are triggered after the respective calcium threshold is exceeded," says the Würzburg professor. "Our primary interest is in the calcium channels that are opened by the action potential and the process in which the calcium signal is translated into the touch hormone jasmonate.
Wissenschaftlicher Ansprechpartner:
Prof. Dr. Rainer Hedrich, Chair of Botany I (Plant Physiology and Biophysics), University of Würzburg, T +49 931 31-86100, hedrich@botanik.uni-wuerzburg.de
Calcium dynamics during trap closure visualized in transgenic Venus flytrap, Nature Plants, 05 October 2020, DOI: 10.1038/s41477-020-00773-1
Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
Robert Emmerich
Tel: 0931/31-82750
Mail: presse@zv.uni-wuerzburg.de

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Loving your pet means making some sacrifices. The days of coming home to a clean, pee-free rug are gone, 75% of the bed and sofa now belong to them, and you'll find yourself sweeping up enough dog hair to knit sweaters to clothe all the hairless cats in the tri-state area.
This customized collapsible bowl is available in all colors that are sure to provide a perfect backdrop for your company's name or logo. Speaking of your logo, you have a large circle to work with to make your message attract all the attention you know it deserves. Give them out at your pet shop as a "free gift with purchase" or give them to new clients at your veterinary office.
The bowls are small enough to easily store in in your backpack, pocket, purse or dog's leash. and with the included carabiner, you can attach a water bottle to it and then everything you need to water your pet can be clipped to your gear bag for hands free transport.
Simple pop-up and collapsible dog bowl.
The bowls are silicone, BPA Free and collapsible, but very sturdy when expanded, durable, reusable and eco-friendly.
The bowls are extremely compact. They collapse down to less than half an inch. It makes the bowl attached to your waist, backpack or dog's leash. Fully opened, the bowls hold 1.5 cups of dry dog food.


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Clearlake Capital and TA Associates-Backed Ivanti Closes Acquisition of Cherwell to Deliver Personalized Employee Experiences in the Everywhere Workplace
The combination will further unlock the potential of the Ivanti Neurons hyperautomation platform to provide end-to-end service from IT to lines-of-business and from every endpoint to the IoT edge, resulting in personalized, contextual employee experiences and outcomes
SALT LAKE CITY, UT and COLORADO SPRINGS, CO — March 25, 2021 —
Ivanti, Inc., the automation platform that makes every IT connection smarter and more secure, backed by Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. (together with its affiliates, "Clearlake") and TA Associates, today announced it has closed the acquisition of Cherwell Software, a global leader in enterprise service management solutions. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
This business combination cements Ivanti's position as the only enterprise service management vendor to offer end-to-end service and asset management from IT to lines of business and from every endpoint to the IoT edge. It also accelerates Ivanti's innovation at the intersection of unified endpoint management, zero trust security, and enterprise service management.
"We are excited to welcome the Cherwell team into the Ivanti family," said Jim Schaper, Ivanti Chairman and CEO. "Together, we will build a deeper and more vertically oriented enterprise service management solution that delivers excellent experiences for every employee wherever they work, while enabling IT teams to improve operational speed, cost, and accuracy of service. We look forward to integrating the best functionalities of our complimentary technologies, expanding the reach of our Ivanti Neurons platform, and enabling customers to further maximize their business outcomes."
"I firmly believe the combination of Ivanti and Cherwell will be greater than the sum of its parts," said Chris Chagnon, ITSM Architect in Higher Education. "With this acquisition, all customers will benefit from a more powerful and flexible platform that will deliver even better user experiences and business outcomes. As a long-time Cherwell customer, I'm most excited about the integration of Cherwell Service Management (CSM) with Ivanti Neurons, and accelerated product innovation to come."
Ivanti is committed to maintaining and investing in both Cherwell and Ivanti service management solutions while working to converge the best aspects of each. For example, Ivanti plans to integrate Cherwell's market-leading no-code and low-code applications. The Ivanti Neurons platform will connect the best-of-both enterprise service management portfolio with the company's unified endpoint management and zero trust security solutions, providing a single pane of glass for enterprises to proactively, predictably and autonomously self-heal and self-secure devices, and self-service end users.
"This transaction will strengthen Ivanti's capabilities beyond the core of ITSM and into other lines of business, in addition to enhancing its low/no-code offerings," said Adam Holtby, Principal Analyst at Omdia. "Extending service management practices and principles beyond just the IT department has become a key digital transformation enabler, supporting organizations in delivering the best support and employee experiences possible. The combined capabilities will enable Ivanti customers to automate and improve end-to-end service delivery across all endpoints, from cloud to the IoT edge. This is critical as employees today expect a personal and immediate resolution for issues impacting their ability to remain productive, regardless of where they are working from or what devices they are using."
About Ivanti
Ivanti makes the Everywhere Workplace possible. In the Everywhere Workplace, employees use myriad devices to access IT applications and data over various networks to stay productive as they work from anywhere. The Ivanti Neurons automation platform connects the company's industry-leading unified endpoint management, zero trust security and enterprise service management solutions, providing a unified IT platform that enables devices to self-heal and self-secure and empowers users to self-service. Over 40,000 customers, including 78 of the Fortune 100, have chosen Ivanti to discover, manage, secure, and service their IT assets from cloud to edge, and deliver excellent end user experiences for employees, wherever and however they work. For more information, visit www.ivanti.com and follow @GoIvanti.
About Cherwell
Cherwell (@Cherwell) empowers organizations to transform their business through the rapid adoption and easy management of digital services. Cherwell's adaptable platform has enabled thousands of organizations to modernize their business operations with customizable service management, automation, and reporting across the enterprise. For more information, visit: https://www.cherwell.com.
About Clearlake
Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. is an investment firm founded in 2006 operating integrated businesses across private equity, credit and other related strategies. With a sector-focused approach, the firm seeks to partner with experienced management teams by providing patient, long-term capital to dynamic businesses that can benefit from Clearlake's operational improvement approach, O.P.S.® The firm's core target sectors are technology, industrials and consumer. Clearlake currently has approximately $30 billion of assets under management and its senior investment principals have led or co-led over 300 investments. The firm has offices in Santa Monica and Dallas. More information is available at www.clearlake.com and on Twitter @ClearlakeCap.
About TA Associates
TA is a leading global growth private equity firm. Focused on targeted sectors within five industries – technology, healthcare, financial services, consumer and business services – the firm invests in profitable, growing companies with opportunities for sustained growth, and has invested in more than 500 companies around the world. Investing as either a majority or minority investor, TA employs a long-term approach, utilizing its strategic resources to help management teams build lasting value in high quality growth companies. TA has raised $33.5 billion in capital since its founding in 1968 and is committing to new investments at the pace of over $3 billion per year. The firm's more than 100 investment professionals are based in Boston, Menlo Park, London, Mumbai and Hong Kong. More information about TA can be found at www.ta.com.
Jenny Pfleiderer
Jennifer Hurson
Lambert & Co.
Representing Clearlake
Marcia O'Carroll
TA Associates


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ABC Music News
By AZ 93.3 | August 13, 2021
Green Day chronicles the Hella Mega tour with new "Pollyanna" video
If you haven't checked out the Hella Mega tour yet, Green Day wants you to know what you're missing.
Footage from the ongoing run, which also features Fall Out Boy and Weezer, is featured in the new video for "Pollyanna," Green Day's latest single.
"It's the BEST feeling being out on the road [with] the Hella Mega Tour!!" Green Day says. "So great, in fact, that we made a vid for 'Pollyanna' [featuring] some of the best times we've had so far."
You can watch the "Pollyanna" video streaming now on YouTube.
Green Day debuted "Pollyanna" in May. It follows the trio's 2020 album, Father of All…
The Hella Mega tour, meanwhile, is set to continue Friday in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Fall Out Boy, which had missed three stops on the outing after a member of the band's team tested positive for COVID-19, has since returned to the bill.
Red Hot Chili Peppers among 'Rolling Stone's' 10-highest paid musicians of 2021
Bastille releases new song, "Shut Off the Lights"; announces US tour dates
GAYLE celebrates topping the UK charts: "So freaking grateful"
Incubus' Brandon Boyd releases new solo song, "Dime in My Dryer"
The Lumineers premiere video for 'Brightside' track "Where We Are"
Coheed and Cambria announces new album, 'Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind'
Hear Avril Lavigne duet with blackbear on new single "Love It When You Hate Me"
Listen to new Jack White song, "Love Is Selfish"
Eddie Vedder releases new solo single, "Brother the Cloud"; reveals 'Earthling' album guests
Of Monsters and Men plans to be "recording and writing a lot" this year


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Lorna M Campbell
CMALT Portfolio
Contextual Statement
Core Area 1: Operational Issues
a) Constraints and Benefits of Different Technologies
b) Technical Knowledge and Ability
c) Supporting Deployment of Learning Technologies
Core Area 2: Teaching, learning and assessment processes
a) An understanding of teaching, learning or assessment processes
b) An understanding of your target learners
Core Area 3: The Wider Context
a) Understanding and engaging with legislation, policy and standards
b) Policy
Core Area 4: Communication and working with others
Specialist Option: Open Education & OER
Lorna's Cetis Blog
Storify Archive
Open Scotland
Presentations & Events
Senior CMALT
1a) Constraints and benefits of different technologies
1b) Technical knowledge and ability in the use of learning technology
1c) Supporting the deployment of learning technologies
Core Area 2: Learning, Teaching and Assessment Processes
2a) An understanding of teaching, learning and/or assessment processes
2b) An understanding of your target learners
3a) Understanding and engaging with legislation
3b) Understanding and engaging with policies and standards
Specialist Area 1: Open Education
Specialist Area 2: The femedtech Open Space – Feminist approaches to open practice
Advanced Area: Knowledge Equity and Digital Labour
Tag Archives: open textbooks
OER22 In Person & Online
Last week I was at the OER22 Conference, and I was actually at the conference because for the first time in two years the OER Conference was in person and online. OER22 was a hybrid conference in every sense of the word; the first day took place in London, the second day featured recorded online presentations, and the final day was live sessions online. The event was organised seamlessly by ALT and chaired by the GO-GN Network. The opening day of the conference in London was the first opportunity many of the OER community had to get together in person since the OER19 Conference in Galway, so it was understandably an emotional experience and a little overwhelming. ALT handled the logistics of bringing people back together with real sensitivity and empathy, with plenty of space at the venue so that people never felt crowded, and plenty of time in the programme for people to network and socialise.
Bryan Mathers opened the conference with a thoughtful and humorous illustrated talk that gave us all a much needed opportunity to ease our way back into in-person conferencing. It culminated with everyone drawing their own version of the GO-GN penguin and sharing them in the fabulous Visual Thinkery ReMixer. Bryan set the tone for the conference perfectly and I think the little drawing exercise helped everyone overcome any residual anxiety they may have had about participating in an in person event. Everyone said my penguin looked scary, but honestly he's just a bit shy.
The themes of the conference were; Pedagogy in a time of crisis – what does an 'open' response look like? Open textbooks: making the most of their potential; Open in Action: open teaching, educational practices and resources; and Open research around any aspect of open education.
I took part in two panels, the first with Jane Secker, Catherine Cronin, Leo Havemann and Julie Voce focused on the approaches adopted by our various institutions and projects to support and develop open educational practices. These include teaching a module on open practices as part of a Masters in Academic Practice, creating open education and copyright literacy policies that signify institutional commitment to open practices, modelling open approaches in sharing our own teaching and learning resources, and advocacy work with organisations at a local, national and international level, to promote better understanding of open practice and copyright literacy. I spoke about how the University of Edinburgh's OER Policy, supported by the OER Service, enabled and encouraged open practice across the institution, and the importance of supporting digital skills development around copyright literacy. Slides from the panel are available here: Open in Action.
Image by Jane Secker on Twitter.
I was also invited to take part in a plenary panel discussion on open textbooks along with Gary Elliot-Cirigottis (Open University), Dhara Snowden (UCL Press), and Jane Secker (City University London), chaired by Beck Pitt (Open University) who was previously involved in the UK Open Textbooks project. Our institutions all had very different experiences of supporting and engaging with the use and creation of open textbooks so it made for an interesting and wide ranging discussion, covering how open resources enabled institutions to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of the pandemic on the cost of resources, the role of open textbooks and our vision for OER in UK HEIs. A recording of the plenary panel will be available shortly.
Image by Josie Fraser on Twitter.
I also attended a couple of other interesting sessions on open textbooks including Catrina Hey talking about the University of Sussex's Open Press which is based on Pressbooks and informed by NUI Galway's Open Press and the Jisc's New University Press Toolkit. I also really enjoyed hearing about the Open Pedagogy Project Roadmap: A Resource for Planning and Sustaining Open Educational Practices at Penn State University from Bryan McGeary and Christina Riehman-Murphy. Their examples of student co-created open textbooks (e.g. Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature.) were really inspiring and gave me some ideas for initiatives we could explore at the University of Edinburgh.
Other highlights for me included Javiera Atenas talking about the importance of professional conversation as a fundamental aspect of open practice during her presentation about creative project design for open education practitioners. Slides from this session are available here: Creative Project Design. There was also some really lively and thought provoking discussion around what open technology platforms do with your data during Javiera and Leo's session on Co-creating a framework for platform governance in open education – policy, data ethics and data protection. Leo and Javiera made the point that it isn't enough for platforms, technologies and textbooks to be free, they must also resist surveillance and other forms of intrusion. Josie Fraser raised a pertinent counter point that this has to be balanced against benefit, noting that some school children had no contact with their teachers at all during the pandemic as some schools adopted an overly cautious approach to online conferencing platforms due to fears over how they store and use data.
On the last day of the conference, I gave an online presentation on our Open eTextbooks for Access to Music Education project. Along with our student interns, we gave a talk about the early stages of this project last year at OER21, so this year I was back to reflect on the project outputs and what we learned along the way. Unusually, we had all kinds of technical gremlins during the session, which Maren dealt with in her own calm and professional manner. We got there in the end and I was really touched with the positive comments on this student co-creation project. Slides and transcript of this talk are available on our project blog.
Sadly I had to miss a lot of day 2 and 3 of the conference due to juggling meetings and other work commitments, but I did enjoy catching up with discussions and resources on the conference Discord, and I'm looking forward to dipping in to the recorded sessions.
One final reflection more generally…Given that one of themes of OER22 was open textbooks, it was perhaps understandable that over the course of the conference the term OER was often used to refer specifically to open textbooks. I still had to do a bit of mental adjustment as I tend to think of OER as being a much wider class of thing, with open textbooks being just one form of open educational resources among many. While I'm really exited about the possibility of open textbooks taking off in the UK, particularly if they are co-created and founded on open practice, I am a little concerned that we might lose sight of the broader understanding of OER. Over the last few months I've seen a few think pieces and comments about the crisis in etextbook costs, which suggest that there has been little adoption of OER in the UK. While it's true that there has been less adoption of open textbooks by academic libraries in the UK than in the US, (though this is changing rapidly), there has of course been considerable engagement with open education resources and practices supported by learning technologists across the sector. With more and more institutions launching open presses and libraries exploring the affordances of open textbooks, I hope they'll work together with learning technologists, open education practitioners, and academic colleagues who have a wealth of experience of supporting and engaging with open education resources and practices of all kinds. Otherwise we may run the risk of recreating OER repositories the wheel.
Being among the OER community again, among good friends and colleagues, was a much needed breath of fresh air. It really made me appreciate the hope that co-chairs Catherine Cronin and Laura Czerniewicz left us with at the end of OER19 in Galway, and how much it sustained us through the last two years.
Posted in alt, higher education, oer, university of edinburgh | Tagged altc, EDE, oer, oer22, open textbooks, OpenEdFeed | Leave a comment
2021 – Finding a way
At the end of each year, I used to write a round up of significant work and life events over the previous 12 months. That didn't happen last year. Just getting to the end of the year felt like an achievement. That was enough. I've kept this blog ticking over for the last year, though I've written fewer posts here than in previous years. It's partly that I've been blogging elsewhere, on the OpenEd, Teaching Matters, and Open Textbooks blogs. But it's also a question of bandwidth; surviving in the midst of a global pandemic, and taking care of those around you, be they family, friends, or work colleagues, takes up a lot of emotional energy, so there often wasn't much energy left over to reflect on what I was actually doing. I'm still committed to using this blog to share my practice though, so I want to end the year on a hopeful note with a blog post about all the things I've done that I didn't manage to write about at the time, or that I only touched on in passing.
Open eTextbooks for Access to Music Education
At the start of the year I was awarded a University of Edinburgh Student Experience Grant, and together with Dr Nikki Moran and three brilliant student interns from the Reid School of Music, we undertook an experimental project to repurpose open resources from an existing MOOC and on-campus course to create a prototype open textbook, Fundamentals of Music Theory. Working with Nikki and the students was a delight and we learned a lot about different publishing platforms and the process of editing and creating ebooks in different formats. My InDesign skills are basic at best, but my old HTML skills came in very handy! We gave a talk about the project at the OERxDomains Conference, The Scale of Open: Repurposing Open Resources for Music Education, and it was great to receive such positive feedback on the importance of working together with students on projects like this. In his final reflection on the project our intern Ifeanyichukwu Ezinmadu wrote;
"This project has got me inspired towards creating an independent OER project in music theory based on the ABRSM theory syllabus. To achieve this new goal of mine, I look forward to deploying skills developed on this project such as collaboration, research, design thinking, and other technical skills. I will dearly miss the entire team that has made this Project a possibility – Lorna, Charlie, Nikki, Kari, and Ana – and I look forward to engaging with other opportunities within and beyond the University of Edinburgh to learn and contribute meaningfully towards music education projects."
You can read more about the project on our blog here: Open eTextbooks for Access to Music Education, and download our open textbook here: Fundamentals of Music Theory.
Learn Ultra Base Navigation Upgrade
Another project I was involved in earlier this year was the Learn Ultra Base Navigation Upgrade project, which investigated the implications and feasibility of upgrading to UBN in advance of a full upgrade to Learn Ultra. I'm not usually directly involved in supporting and delivering our Learn VLE service, but we were short handed so I was drafted in to do some of the project management. Although it was a bit of a steep learning curve for me, it was a really good opportunity to connect with colleagues who maintain and support the Learn Service and the Learn Foundations project, and it was interesting to have a preview of UBN and the functionality it provides.
OER Policy update
On more familiar territory, I enjoyed working with our Education Technology Policy officer Neil McCormick to review and revise the University of Edinburgh's OER Policy. The University's original policy was approved in 2015 and five years later, in September this year, our new policy was approved by Education Committee. This new policy, which has adopted UNESCO's definition of OER, strengthens the University's commitment to open knowledge and achieving the aims of the Agenda for Sustainable Development. You can read about the new OER Policy on Teaching Matters here: A new OER Policy for the University, and access the policy itself here: University of Edinburgh OER Policy.
Open Education Global Awards
The OER Policy is just one of a sweet of open policies for teaching and learning that the University shares under Creative Commons licence, and we were delighted when these policies were awarded Open Education Global's Open Policy Award as part of their 2021 Awards for Excellence. Edinburgh rather swept the boards at the awards, also winning the Open Curation Award for our collection of OERs on TES Resources, co-created by GeoScience Outreach undergraduates and our fabulous Open Content Curation interns. Melissa Highton won the Open Leadership Award, and Wikimedia intern Hannah Rothman won the Open Student Award. We didn't win the Open Resilience Award, but Charlie and I made a very cool video for our entry so I'm sharing it here anyway 🙂
ALT, Wikimedia UK, Creative Commons
I've continued serving as a trustee for ALT and Wikimedia UK and it's always an honour to give something back to both these organisations, given their ongoing commitment to openness, equity, community engagement and knowledge activism. This year I was privileged to sit on the ALT Learning Technologist of the Year Awards panel, which is always an inspiring experience, and the recruitment panel for the new ALT CIO. I also stepped briefly into the role of interim Chair of Board for Wikimedia UK, when Nick Poole's term came to an end and before our new chair Monisha Shah took up the role. With my Wikimedia UK hat on, I contributed to the Creative Commons working group on the ethics of open sharing, chaired by Josie Fraser. You can read the outputs and recommendations of this working group here: Beyond Copyright: the Ethics of Open Sharing.
Knowledge Activism
I made my own small contribution to knowledge activism at the beginning of the year, when the University's Disabled Staff Network and Staff Pride Network decided to run an editathon for LGBT History Month, I suggested HIV and AIDS activism in Scotland as a topic. As a result of the HIV Scotland Editathon, six new articles were created and several others improved, making a significant contribution to representing the history of HIV and AIDS activism in Scotland on Wikipedia. I created a new article about Scottish AIDS Monitor and I also wrote and article about Jill Nalder, the Welsh actress who inspired the character of Jill in Russel T. Davis' drama Its a Sin. Later in the year, Gary Needham invited me to present a webinar on Knowledge Activism: Representing the History of HIV and AIDS activism on Wikipedia for the University of Liverpool's School of the Arts. Gary and I have a formative shared queer history that goes back many years, so it really meant a lot to me to be able to speak to him and his colleagues about the challenges of representing queer lives and experiences in this way.
A different kind of knowledge activism was provoked by the BBC drama series Vigil, which opened with distressing scenes of a fishing trawler being sunk by a nuclear submarine off the West Coast of Scotland. I certainly wasn't the only one who noted similarities to the sinking of the fishing vessel Antares by hunter killer submarine HMS Trenchant off Arran in 1990, despite the BBC denying that the incident was based on any specific real life event. At the time, there was no Wikipedia entry about the sinking of the Antares and HMS Trenchant's entry made only a veiled reference to the incident, so I fixed that. It's important that we remember tragedies like this and equally important that we remember who was responsible.
And while we're on the subject of activism and loss of life at sea, please consider supporting the Royal National Lifeboat Institution if you can. Their volunteers risk their own lives to save those who find themselves in peril at sea, and they are facing increasing hostility and abuse for their selfless courage and humanity.
Activism of a different kind was going on all over Glasgow in November to coincide with COP26. I can't say I'm hugely optimistic about the outcomes of the conference or the will of global leaders and developed nations to enact meaningful change to halt the climate crisis, however it was hugely inspiring to hear the voices of so many young indigenous community activists. These are the radical voices we need to listen to and make space for. Also kudos to my daughter for snapping what surely has to be the most accurate photograph of the conference and the crisis we face, when we joined the climate march through Glasgow on 7 November.
COP26 Climate Crisis March, Glasgow, CC BY NC SA, Rhuna McCartney
Another area where we've made less progress than I would have hoped is with Open Scotland. As a purely voluntary initiative Open Scotland hasn't been particularly active for a number of years now, but many of those involved are still supporting open education, open practice and OER through other initiatives and activities. We remain committed to the aims of the Scottish Open Education Declaration and we haven't given up hope that one day, the Scottish Government will wake up to the benefits and affordances of sharing publicly funded educational resources under open licence. In March this year, with support from Creative Commons, we made another attempt at engaging the Cabinet Secretary for Education with the the UNESCO Recommendation on OER and the Scottish Open Education Declaration, but again we were disappointed to receive a generic response from a civil servant. At a time when inclusive and equitable access to quality education and lifelong learning opportunities has never been more important, Scottish Government's continued failure to engage with open education and OER is disappointing to say the least.
Hello Helo
On a more positive note, we got a new kitten this year. This is Helo and he behaves more like a puppy than a cat. He's very cute, but he's also an absolute menace. My two long suffering adult cats are getting no peace.
Helo, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell
I got home to the Hebrides in the summer for the first time in two years. It was a joy to see family again and when I finally got to the beach (yes, that beach) I felt like I could breath again for the first time in months.
Traigh na Berie, Isle of Lewis, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell
In what has been a difficult and challenging year on many levels, I've been privileged to continue working with so many kind, compassionate, fierce and committed open education practitioners and open knowledge advocates. You give me hope.
It seems fitting to end with a quote from the late, great bell hooks, whose courage and clarity touched so many and whose words provide hope for us all.
"My hope emerges from those places of struggle where I witness individuals positively transforming their lives and the world around them. Educating is a vocation rooted in hopefulness. As teachers we believe that learning is possible, that nothing can keep an open mind from seeking after knowledge and finding a way to know."
~ bell hooks (1952 – 2021)
Posted in higher education, history, openscot, pictures, policy, university of edinburgh, Wikimedia UK | Tagged alt, climate crisis, creative commons, knowledge activism, oer, open knowledge, open textbooks, openscot | Leave a comment
Fundamentals of Music Theory – Adventures in open textbooks
Last week I was delighted to see a project that I've been working on since the beginning of the year come to fruition with the publication of the Fundamentals of Music Theory open textbook on the University of Edinburgh Library's new ebook platform Edinburgh Diamond. The open textbook was created by the the Open e-Textbooks for Access to Music Education project, which was funded by a University of Edinburgh Student Experience Grant. Led by Dr Nikki Moran and I, the project was a collaboration between the University's OER Service, and staff and student interns, Kari Ding, Ifeanyichukwu Ezinmadu and Ana Reina Garcia, from the Reid School of Music.
The aim of the project was to explore the creation of an open etextbook using existing content from the Reid School of Music's Fundamentals of Music Theory course. This course covers the fundamentals of Western music theory, from absolute basics to more advanced concepts, and provides learners with the skills needed to read and write Western music notation, and to understand, analyse, and listen informedly. The course uses content originally created for a successful Coursera MOOC, in addition to new materials developed more recently for an on campus blended learning course, addressing global decolonisation issues around music theory and music education. These high-quality resources were ideally suited to further repurposing to create an open textbook, increasing the use of this tried-and-tested content, and making it available to teachers and learners in an accessible format ideally suited to hybrid and online learning.
The project provided us with an opportunity to evaluate a range of open textbook platforms and to gain valuable hands-on experience of the process and practicalities of creating an open textbook. This experience is particularly valuable at a time when universities are increasingly moving from print to digital textbooks and are facing rapidly rising textbook licensing costs. Open textbooks have the potential to benefit the University by reducing textbook costs, benefit staff by providing access to easily customisable open textbooks, and benefit students by providing free, high quality digital learning materials.
The project also enabled our student interns to develop valuable digital and copyright literacy skills including an understanding of open educational resources, open licenses and open etextbooks, familiarity with current etextbook applications, and experience of working with existing digital content and educational resources across a range of platforms.
One of the first tasks undertaken by the project was to evaluate a range of different hosting options for our ebook; Manifold, PressBooks, GitHub and the University Library's new ebook platform, Edinburgh Diamond, based on Open Monograph Press. Balancing the pros and cons of each platform and considering the constraints of time and funding, we decided to publish our open textbook on Edinburgh Diamond. Open Access Publishing Officer Rebecca Wojturska, provided us with invaluable support in getting our textbook onto the platform and providing ISBN and DOIs.
The project wasn't without it's challenges; the whole project had to be undertaken online due to COVID-19 restrictions, some of our student interns were working in different time zones, and I had no prior experience of producing the ePub formats required by the ebook platform, so it was a steep learning curve on my part! I also had to dust off my rusty html and css skills which I haven't used for years. Despite the challenges, the project successfully demonstrated that it is possible to take existing MOOC and on-campus course content and repurpose it into an open textbook.
All in all, this was a hugely rewarding project, not least because of the enthusiasm and dedication of the team at the Reid School of Music. It was a real joy to work with Nikki, Ana, Ifeanyichukwu and Kari. One of the high points of the project was listening to our student interns presenting about their work at the OERxDomains Conference – The Scale of Open: Re-purposing open resources for music education. Our talk was really well received, with lots of delegates commenting on how important it was to hear students' voices. We learned a great deal from this small project and I hope that Fundamentals of Music Theory will be the first of many open textbooks published by staff and students across the University.
Fundamentals of Music Theory is shared under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence and can be downloaded from Edinburgh Diamond in the following formats: Word, PDF, EPub (reflowable), ePub (fixed layout). An HTML version will be available shortly. In order to make the open textbook as accessible and reusable as possible, users can download the book in its entirety, or topic by topic.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2218/ED.9781912669226
Header and cover image adapted from a free to use image by Geralt on Pixabay.
Posted in higher education, MOOCs, oer, university of edinburgh | Tagged EDE, oerxdomains21, open textbooks | Leave a comment
Stepping Down: Reflecting on six years as an ALT and Wikimedia UK Trustee
OEG Voices Podcast
ALTC 2022 – Reconnecting
The FemEdTech Quilt of Care and Justice in Open Education
Senior CMALT – Credit where credit's due
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The hockey supremacy is about to get underway once again, as the 2018-19 NHL regular-season kicks off on Wednesday, October 3, 2018.
Washington will defend its 2018 championship over the Vegas Golden Knights and aim to repeat as Stanley Cup winners, but 30 other teams want the same prize.
Who will come out on top? Will we see a few 100+ point players this season? Is someone going to hit 60 goals? Which team will crumble under the pressure?


Obama's national security policy has continued some of the most controversial moves of the Bush administration. Silence from much of the left.
This post has been corrected to remove phrasing that was copied from The Hill.
Obama had promised to end Bush's hawkish foreign policy and the "war on terror's" detention and interrogation regime.
But in the beginning of his fifth year as president, Obama's record has been surprisingly similar to his predecessor's in those areas.
3. President Obama's drones and special operators are working down "kill lists" of suspected terrorists.
Al-Awlaki was killed under secret authorization from the justice department in 2011.
In 2011, a teenage American citizen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was taken out in a drone strike without a trial.
5. In Pakistan alone, the administration has launched more than 300 drone strikes.
Pakistani civilian casualties due to these strikes are as high as 800 according to international estimates.
But last year, three U.N. reports described the torture occurring in Afghan facilities under Obama's security watch.
"We may not be so different, you and I."
Courtesy of the Bush Center, Houston Texas.


text:
A Colony in Crisis: The Saint-Domingue Grain Shortage of 1789
Translated and curated primary sources from an episode in the history of Saint-Domingue
The Translations
Background Notes
Revealing La Révolution Team
Judgment of the Northern Provincial Assembly of Saint-Domingue Session in Le Cap Against Barbé de Marbois, his Council, Accomplices and followers September 21, 1789
September 21, 1789 · by Kelsey Corlett-Rivera	· in Issue 2.0, Translations.	·
This succinct document presents the charges brought against Barbé de Marbois by the Colonial Deputies of Saint-Domingue that ultimately caused Marbois to leave his current appointment and escape back to Metropolitan France.[1] Marbois was accused of trying to profit from illegal legislation, deregulation, and the centralizing of power to his office. One of the claims even implicates his father-in-law, a retired governor and merchant in Pennsylvania, who was thought to possess large stores of grain destined to be illegally imported to Saint-Domingue to the immense profit of his son-in-law. While César-Henri de la Luzerne, French Naval Minister, as well as Marbois had previously disputed many of these claims, the Colonial Deputies had taken control of the Provincial Assembly and saw great economic benefit in ridding the colony of its current Intendant. Evidently, having seen the writing on the wall, Barbé de Marbois left his post in Saint-Domingue early for Paris rather than being hung, burned, and having his ashes cast into the high winds of the Antilles.
In short, this document provides a brief view into the elaborate web of social institutions – including courts, clergy, local government, and shifting trade regulations for human and material cargo – which shaped daily life in Colonial Saint-Domingue after the French Revolution and prior to the start of the Haitian Revolution.
[1] James, CLR. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1963. Page 61-63.
(Arrêt de l'Assemblée provinciale de la Partie du Nord de Saint-Domingue séant au cap, contre Barbé de Marbois, ses conseils, complices & adhérens. En date du 21 Septembre 1789)
Want to get involved? Help clean up the French text.
This case came to be heard by the Northern Provincial Assembly on this day the 21st of September 1789, which was made and argued by the Court's Magistrate on the denunciation and petition against Barbé de Marbois – the Intendant of Saint-Domingue, his council, accomplices, and followers. M. Marbois has been accused of abusing the authority entrusted to him by S.M.[2] on numerous occasions, most notably: for having carried out the Council meeting even though he had no such orders to do so if it excluded the North of Saint-Domingue, for being opposed to admitting the Deputies from Saint-Domingue into the Estates-General, for having taken over the handling of the parish taxes[3], for having directed to France more than two million silver pieces belonging to the colony in order to pay his loans, for having participated in an illicit commerce relating to the regrouping and granting of parcels of land, for having been formally opposed to the introduction of English grains at time when the Colony suffered its worst shortage and because of the speculation he created through proposed grain trade with his father-in-law in New England that would have gone directly through M. Marbois in such large quantities that he would have seen a considerable financial gain, [and] for having wanted to take over the Royal Officer's inspection duties in the harbor of Port-au-Prince. All of these, among other infractions, are recorded in the current case, etc., etc., etc.
The Magistrate's ruling:
Having heard the report of one of the Sirs, seen, and considered all the evidence, the Provincial Assembly finds the aforementioned Barbé de Marbois guilty and convicted of the crimes brought forth in the present case. In compensation, the Assembly condemns him to death by public hanging, strangled until death overtakes his body, at the hands of the Executor of High-Justice in the Place de Cluny [sic] of this town. Afterwards, his body will be burned, his ashes cast into the wind, his property confiscated and distributed to the Colony's impoverished citizens. As far as his Councils, Accomplices and Followers are concerned, the said Provincial Assembly declares that it shall be more amply informed in one year's time, everything remains under [legal] consideration.
Presented in Le Cap, in the Chambers of the Provincial Assembly, August 21st, 1789.
Emanuel, President and Scribe
Verified by Doctorus, Clerk.
[2] S.M. refers to Saint-Marc, a major city in colonial Saint-Domingue and the site of the provincial government of the Northern portion of the colony.
[3] The church in Saint-Domingue, parishes and clergy stipends, were funded by taxes levied on imported slaves. See Michel René Hilliard d'Auberteuil's Considérations sur l'état de la colonie de Saint-Domingue: Ouvrage politique et législatif, tome second. Page 206-207. See also Moreau de Saint-Méry's Loix et constitutions des colonies françaises de l'Amérique sous le vent
← Repons Depite Pwodiksyon ak Komès Lafrans yo Bay Kosènan: Mosyon MM. de Cocherel & de Reynaud, de Depite nan Zile Sendomeng, a Asanble Nasyonal la
Repons kout depite Sendomeng yo konsènan lèt komèsan waf yo, repons sa te distribiye nan biwo asanble nasyonal la, nan 9 oktob 1789 →
Historical Background Notes
France — États généraux
France — Politics and government
Haiti — Politics and government
Click on a document title (in blue) to view the French original, a brief historical introduction, and the translation.
Code Noir Colonies Commerce France Grain Trade Haiti History North America Political science Politics and Government Race relations Revolution Slavery Slaves Slave Trade Société des amis des noirs


Equipment Infection Control - Chicago | Benjamin S. Fiss, D.D.S.
I have always been proud of the fact that my staff and I have excelled in many areas. Whether it means continuing education to learn new techniques or materials, having the nicest environment possible, or hiring the best staff, we always strive to be better. The main reason for this is because we feel that our patients deserve the best.
Now, with the growing concern about AIDS and other infectious diseases, many new regulations are being proposed by OSHA, the CDC, and other agencies. In accordance with our commitment to excellence, I have chosen not to wait for regulations that require compliance. I am committed to incorporate new techniques and materials related to infection control as they become available. I am sure you have already noticed the many changes implemented over the years. I plan to make others in the future.
This peace of mind for you (and my entire office) does not come easily or without considerable expense. More labor time is spent in cleaning rooms and equipment. More behind the scenes equipment, such as chemical-heat sterilizers and autoclaves for instruments are needed. More disposable materials are used (my office is the first in Chicago to use hospital-type sterile packs). Each one of our clinical staff members has been vaccinated for hepatitis and has gone through hazardous material management training.
Dentists care about their patients' peace of mind when it comes to cleanliness during an office visit.
Recently, several area dentists have introduced individualized sterile packs that contain common disposable items like treatment gloves, protective patient towels, gauze, cotton balls and suction devices.
Using sterile packs eliminates that risk. Dr. Fiss observes that patients are reassured when a new pack of supplies is opened in front of them prior to treatment.
As health care professionals, we continually fight to maintain the cleanest environment for infection control and patient safety. Dr. Fiss has been using water purification in his practice since early 2000. Currently, Dr. Fiss uses the DentaPure® microbiological dental unit waterline purification cartridge to meet and exceed the water quality recommendations set forth by the EPA. To learn more about the importance of water purification and the technology used in Dr. Fiss' office, check out our blog, Clean Waterlines With Quality Purification Technology for Dentistry.


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The other day, I was having some angry feelings. They were there a little bit when I woke up in the morning, but not overwhelmingly so. I made coffee, which usually helps with all my morning feelings, and I took some chicken out of the freezer. Once you thaw that chicken, take it out of the freezer like that, you've made a commitment. You're basically saying, at 8:00 in the morning, that you're going to do something to that chicken 10 hours from now. You haven't even had your morning toast yet, but you've got chicken on the brain. And I resented the chicken. A lot. I felt a flush, a surge, of irrational anger toward….dinner. I drank my coffee. That took my mind off the chicken for a while. Because, coffee.
As the day went on I could see the chicken there, thawing on the counter, taunting me. "You wrote Chicken Cordon Bleu on the menu, it's your son's favorite. He's been looking forward to it all week. He's been talking about since 10 am. Bet you can't wait to stuff me with some ham and cheese and roll me in breadcrumbs! By the way, you're going to need to start that process in approximately 3 hours in order to get me into the oven on time." Shut up, chicken. I would like to read this book here and take a nap. The anger burned brighter.
Around 4 pm I realized I had some serious issues that I maybe needed to work through. So I texted my friend, Keri.
Me: I just need to tell someone–I feel so unreasonably angry at dinner right now.
Keri: I'm sorry. Vent away! Tell me all about it.
Me: Dinner is so selfish. It always wants me to make it. It never makes itself.
Me: I used to like to cook. True story. It was even on my bio on the website at the first pediatric office I worked in. So was gardening–LOL!
Keri: Haha! What would your bio say now? I know….at home, Tracy enjoys running, making sarcastic comments, and avoiding her children. At work, she misses her children, enjoys making (mostly HIPPA compliant) sarcastic comments, and fighting against "the man".
Me: YES. You know me so well.
Keri: I get you, Tracy. I really do.
I felt really validated after that. And I started thinking about this complicated web of emotions that I have around dinner, trying to put my finger on where it all went wrong.
It really is true, that I used to like to cook. I used to watch Food Network, try new recipes every week, make all this stuff from scratch. I was not a "foodie" by any means, but I was a solid home cook there for a while. Then I had kids.
Let me tell you. Nothing is worse for your self-esteem as a home cook than a couple of kids. There is nothing quite like spending an hour plus in the kitchen preparing a meal for your family, only to have everybody weeping at the table within minutes. And no, I don't make my kids a separate meal, in case you're wondering. You would think that they would get used to the fact that they either eat what we serve, or they don't eat at all. But it has been 9.5 years now, and almost every night at least one of them will leave the table without eating anything at all. They would rather go to bed hungry than risk certain death from teriyaki salmon, jasmine rice, and steamed broccoli. If they don't refuse to eat altogether it's almost worse, because then I get sucked into the "dessert negotiation". This is usually my daughter's M.O.
So at this point in my life, I just feel really worn down, and extraordinarily tired of dinner, and all the baggage that comes with making it, serving it, and cleaning up from it. AND, I am lucky enough to have a husband who works from home, so I only really have to endure dinner duty twice a week. You would think that a little distance would help with my dysfunctional relationship with dinner, but it really hasn't. It is really dinner's fault, for this tension between us. I think dinner needs to take responsibility for some things.
Dinner is inconsiderate. It always comes between 5-7 pm. This is the same time that my children lose their minds every night. I have not been successful in rescheduling my children's meltdowns to any other consistent time of day. That is the time. So you would think that dinner could take a hint and give a girl a break, while her kids are having their breakdowns. But noooo, dinner can't do that.
Dinner is time-consuming. All the planning, grocery shopping, prepping, cooking, and cleaning up is a real schedule-buster, especially if you want to eat healthy. Don't even get me started on how long it takes a 7 year-old to eat 1/4 cup of pasta and 2 lettuce leaves.
Dinner is never-ending. You have to make it every day. And the more you make it, the more the people who live with you expect it. And they say things like, "I'm hungry, when is dinner?", or "what's for dinner?", so you can't even pretend like you were just going to serve snacks and hope they don't notice that you didn't feel like making dinner today.
Dinner is one of the most stressful, noisy, chaotic, emotional times of the day for a parent. It is filled with whining, complaining, endless questions, messes of epic proportions, interruptions, and a ridiculous amount of potty humor.
I just need some time away from you, dinner. I can't go on this way. You take more than you give. It's unhealthy for me. I think a few weeks of Cheerios and toast in front of the TV would help me a lot. I just need some space.
I told my husband about all of my messy feelings toward dinner. He suggested I focus on the good things that come out of dinnertime. Who's side is he on anyway?
I don't know, dinner. Maybe you and I can make peace someday. Pretty sure it won't be anytime this decade.
This entry was posted in Humor and tagged cooking, dinner, parenting. Bookmark the permalink.


text:
Revisions and submissions
Curtin, Jeremiah
Murphy, Maureen
Curtin, Jeremiah (1835–1906), folklorist, writer, translator, and linguist, was born 6 September 1835 in Detroit, Michigan, USA, eldest among seven children of David Curtin, an Irish-speaker who emigrated from Bruree, Co. Limerick, and his wife Ellen (née Furlong) who came from Buttevant, Co. Cork. In 1837 the Curtins settled on a farm in the Irish immigrant community of Greenfield, Milwaukee county, Wisconsin.
David Curtin planned to educate his son, but he died of pneumonia in 1856. Curtin farmed to support his family, but he yearned for a college degree. He later described in the manuscript of the Memoirs (creatively edited by his wife) that one night he lay in a haywagon looking up at the stars and vowed he would have the best of all of the knowledge that there was. He decided that night to go to Harvard University. To prepare himself in classics, Curtin studied at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin, between February and June 1858. Through the spring and summer of 1858 he worked on the Curtin farm and studied.
According to his Memoirs, Curtin arrived late to Harvard for the fall 1858 term. He brought a 'remarkably fine Indian skull' found on the Curtin farm and a letter of introduction to Louis Agassiz, the professor of natural history. In fact, Curtin went first to Phillips Exeter Academy, where the register lists him as attending the Academy during the 1859–60 academic year.
Curtin enrolled at Harvard in 1862. He was awarded his BA in 1863. He studied modern languages with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell, and he learned other languages including Finnish, Icelandic, and Gaelic on his own. The English and Scottish ballad scholar Francis James Child shared his folklore interests with Curtin. Eager to take advantage of all that life in Cambridge offered, Curtin walked to Concord to spend an afternoon with Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Though Curtin was pro-union, he did not consider enlisting in the union army during the civil war. Instead, he went to New York after Harvard to study law; however, he soon returned to his study of languages. The visit of the Russian fleet to New York gave him the opportunity to perfect his Russian. He applied unsuccessfully for the position of 'consular pupil' in Russia, but, undaunted, went to St Petersburg in 1864 and from there petitioned President Lincoln successfully for appointment as secretary to the American legation.
Curtin's immediate supervisor was the American minister to Russia, Cassius Clay of Kentucky. Curtin claimed that Clay grew to resent his popularity in the Russian court, a popularity based on his fluent Russian and personal charm. Clay, believing Curtin was conspiring with William Henry Seward, the secretary of state, to destroy him, attacked Curtin's character. Having left the American legation because of this discord, Curtin travelled in eastern Europe and involved himself in business interests, including an unsuccessful timber venture. He returned to Milwaukee in 1868 and from then on devoted himself to learning languages, to collecting the folklore of primitive and peasant cultures, and to translating their texts and transcribing their oral tradition. (According to the Memoirs, Curtin always began his study of a new language by reading the Bible in the new language.) His work took him to some of the most remote places in the world.
Curtin worked for the bureau of ethnology in Washington, D.C. between 1883 and 1891. He worked with Native American peoples: from the Senecas of New York, who gave him the name Hiwesas ('seeker of knowledge'), to the Hoopas of California. He claimed to have mastered Seneca, Creek, Yuchi, Choctaw, Modoc, Sac and Fox, Wyandoll, Maidu, Yana, Norel-Putis, Wintu, Wascos, Klamaths, and the language of the Pitt River people.
Curtin left the bureau to make the first of his three collecting trips to Ireland: Kerry, Galway, and Donegal (4 June–21 September 1887). While he was eager to visit the country of his immigrant parents, the Curtin Memoirs indicates that he had a hypothesis to test. 'I hope that there might still remain in the minds of the people of the remote districts of Ireland many idioms useful in explaining the language of the manuscripts preserved in the Irish Academy, and myths that would supplement and strengthen recorded mythology' (Memoirs, 385). Curtin found his connection between the Irish language and folklore, but he also realised the urgent need to collect from Irish-speakers. His concern for the Irish language anticipated the founding of the Gaelic League in 1893. He also theorised about cross-cultural relationships between oral narratives of the different peoples from whom he collected. Curtin published his theories and his texts in Myths and folk-lore of Ireland (1889), a book he dedicated to a fellow Celt, Maj. J. W. Powell, director of the bureau of ethnology.
When Charles Dana, editor of the New York Sun, read Myths and folk-lore of Ireland, he offered Curtin expenses for a second field trip to Ireland and $500 for every ten myths that Curtin could collect from Irish-speakers. Curtin returned to Ireland on 16 December 1891 and stayed till 30 September 1893. With the help of translators, he collected tales for Hero-tales of Ireland (1894) primarily in Dingle, Co. Kerry, but there are also texts from Connemara, Donegal, and west Limerick. His introduction draws parallels between Irish and the languages of North American native peoples. Since Curtin named his informants in Hero-tales, twentieth-century folklorists such as Séamus Ó Duilearga (qv) and Pádraig Ó Siochfhradha (qv) ('An Seabhac') were able to collect the rest of the narratives of Curtin's gifted storytellers. Curtin's final trip (12 July 1899–early September 1899) produced Tales of the fairies and of the ghost world collected from oral tradition in south-west Munster (1895), a volume of Kerry legends, many of which were collected in Maurice Fitzgerald's house in Ventry. (A plaque unveiled at Arda Bhóthair in 1988 marks Fitzgerald's house.)
Irish folk-tales (1943), a fourth collection of Curtin's texts from the narratives that had appeared in the Sunday supplement of the New York Sun in 1892 and 1893, was edited with an introduction and notes by Séamus Ó Duilearga. Here again, Curtin's habit of recording texts verbatim from informants, a method W. B. Yeats (qv) praised in his essay 'Irish national literature II' (1895), influenced the following generation of Irish folklorists. Curtin's most financially successful translation project was prompted by a chance meeting on a Washington streetcar in 1887 with a man reading an instalment of a serialised novel by Henry Sienkiewicz published in a Polish magazine. Curtin's best-selling translation of Quo vadis? (first published 1895) is still in print. The Phillips Exeter Academy archives has a holograph letter from Sienkiewicz designating Curtin as his English translator.
The Curtins returned to Ireland once more in 1899 to visit their old informants. They returned to Russia for a last visit in 1900, where they met Count Leo Tolstoy and gathered material for his last two books, which were published posthumously: The Mongols in Russia (1908) and A journey in southern Siberia: the Mongols, their religion and their myths (1909). Curtin's Russian experience proved to be valuable to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 during the preparations for the Portsmouth peace conference at the conclusion of the Russo–Japanese war. Roosevelt provided the foreword to The Mongols in Russia.
Curtin became ill in the summer of 1906. He died on 14 December 1906 at the age of 71 in Bristol, Vermont. His death was reported on the front page of the New York Times the next day. President Theodore Roosevelt said of him: 'He travelled over the whole world calling all men his brothers and learning to speak to them in seventy languages.' The National union catalogue lists forty-two publications: translations, studies of folklore, travel accounts, and even the manuscript of a Choctaw dictionary.
The Curtin farmstead, a stone house built in the 1840s, was acquired by the Milwaukee County Historical Society in 1952. It has been restored and is a Wisconsin state landmark. There is a collection of the Curtins' papers in the Milwaukee County Historical Society. It includes his early drafts of his Memoirs, and a photograph of Curtin appears as frontispiece of The Mongols in Russia (1908).
Curtin married (1872) Alma Cardell of Bristol, Vermont, who worked with him as secretary and collaborator. Her role had its risks. According to the Memoirs, Alma Curtin nearly fell from a precipice in the Caucasus; in 1876, at Sukhum, she lost her balance stepping between the tender and the steamer and almost drowned, and she contracted malaria en route to Odessa. In all of their married years they travelled constantly with regular long holidays in Vermont with Alma's family.
Séamus Ó Duilearga, introduction, Jeremiah Curtin, Irish folk-tales (n.d.); Joseph Schafer (ed.), Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin (1940); DAB, iv, 608; Frederick I. Olson, 'The story of Jeremiah Curtin', Historical Messenger of the Milwaukee County Historical Society (1953); id., 'Jeremiah Curtin's letter to his publishers', Historical Messenger (1954); id., 'Jeremiah Curtin and Congressman Banks', Historical Messenger (1958); W. B. Yeats, 'Irish national literature, II', Bookman (Aug. 1895), in J. P. Frayne (ed.), Uncollected prose by W. B. Yeats (1970); Harry H. Anderson, 'Jeremiah Curtin's boyhood in Milwaukee county', Historical Messenger, xxvii (1971), 30–50; Maureen Murphy, 'Jeremiah Curtin: American pioneer in Irish folklore', Eire-Ireland, xiii (1978), 93–103; Janet E. and Gareth W. Dunleavy, 'Jeremiah Curtin's working methods: the evidence from the manuscripts', Éigse, xviii, no. 1 (1980), 67–86; Pádraig Ó Fiannachta (ed.), Thaitin Sé Peig (1989); Michael J. Mikos, 'Alma Cardell Curtin, the woman behind Jeremiah Curtin', Milwaukee History, xiii (1990)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.002329.v1
Originally published October 2009 as part of the Dictionary of Irish Biography
Last revised October 2009
Original XML (12.38 KB)
This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license.
Forename: Jeremiah
Surname: Curtin
Career: Classics and Languages, Folklore
Born 6 September 1835 in USA
Died 14 December 1906 in USA


The Mexican Shock, Its Meaning for the U.S.
New York: The New Press, 1995. Hardcover. 257p., hardbound first edition in clothbacked boards and glossy dust jacket. Entirely clean and sound, a fine copy.	More about The Mexican Shock, Its Meaning for the U.S.
Semillero: information and analysis; #3/Octubre-Noviembre 1994; 'Stop Attacks Against Immigrants"


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President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker (L) and Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte attend a joint press conference in Rome | Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images
Juncker calls on Rome to do more to save Italian economy
Commission chief says he's 'quite worried about the Italian economy's slowdown.'
By	Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli
Updated 4/2/19, 3:09 PM CET
ROME — Italy must step up measures to spur growth, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in remarks, putting him at odds with the country's League-5Star government.
Juncker said he's "quite worried about the Italian economy's slowdown."
Speaking at a joint press appearance with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Juncker said, "Considering the level of Italy's public debt it's very important the government focuses on growth measures."
Conte called on other EU countries to boost public spending and stimulate the economy.
"We spoke about the slowdown of the global economy due to the U.S.-China trade war, and I told Juncker that countries that have more fiscal space should use it to support the eurozone's economy," said Conte.
"I also explained that since the Italian government had forecasted an economic slowdown we implemented expansive fiscal policies ... which will not change in the upcoming [spring budget document]," he said.
Conte said there is full understanding between Rome and Brussels that the slowdown is considered a transitional factor by the EU.
Juncker and Conte took a cordial tone in the appearance. Still, the EU executive's comments add to pressure on the government from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. On Monday, the OECD slammed Italy's citizen's income and pensions reform, the coalition's flagship economic measures.
The Paris group of developed economies also slashed the growth figure for this year to 0.2 percent. The Italian government's fiscal expansion agreed with Brussels in December is based on a 1 percent growth.
Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli
Brussels' green cash credentials questioned
Commission faces skepticism over whether its climate funding adds up.


Back on Market. Financing fell through. Beautiful spacious well constructed and well loved home with expansive views of Mt Thorodin and the surrounding valley. 1984 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, vaulted ceilings, open floor plan. 5 piece master bath. Southern exposure. Tons of sun. Aspen grove and pine trees, fenced in portion of lot. Slab for RV parking. Easy access to Golden, Black Hawk and Nederland. Close to skiing and hiking and I-70. Low Gilpin taxes. Whole house backup generator.
Entered For Comparable Purposes Only. House Was In Good Condition With An Updated Kitchen. Large Level Lot Fully Fenced With An Over-sized Shed For Storage. Voluntary Hoa To Join Snowline Lake - A Private Stccked Fishing Lake.


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The Ripple Effect of Physical Trauma as Seen in Lucky
It is not uncommon for the pain of physical trauma to transcend into mental trauma as well. This can be seen in Alice Sebold's memoir Lucky, in which she describes the aftermath of a brutal rape. Although she was physically hurt by the man that attacked her, she still dealt with the mental turmoil of the event years after her wounds healed. The physical act of rape resulted in a complete shift in her worldview, as exemplified by her changing relationships, her speech, and her definition of virginity.
The physical trauma that Sebold experienced as a result of the rape is undeniable, as she was violently attacked by Gregory Madison. In the first few pages of the memoir, she describes the attack in exact detail, writing how "he reached out and grabbed the end of [her] long brown hair" and she felt it "coming out painfully from [her] skull" (Sebold 5). Whenever she thought she had escaped, he retaliated with even more aggression than before. For example, after he dropped his knife, he "sat on [her] back" and "pounded [her] skull into the brick" (Sebold 6). She even "lost consciousness" for a moment when "he wrapped his hands around [her] neck and began to squeeze" (Sebold 6). It is clear that before the rape even began, her body was already under immense stress. The physical pain was only amplified after he began sexually assaulting her, as she describes how "something tore" inside of her and she "began to bleed there" (Sebold 9). The physical nature of the trauma can be further seen when she is being attended to by medical professionals, and the doctor tells the nurse that "there is so much blood" (Sebold 18). Furthermore, the doctor must take stitches inside of her and tells her she will "be sore down here for a few days, maybe a week" (Sebold 18). Her mental stress in this moment is clear as she is unable to think about the temporary physical pain she will be facing. Upon hearing the doctor's words, she explains that she "couldn't think in terms of days or weeks" and "could only focus on the next minute and believe that with each minute it would get better" (Sebold 18-19). Her perception of time is altered and she cannot think about the future since her only priority is survival.
Once Sebold's physical wounds are attended to by doctors, she begins to consider how she will return her life to normalcy. First and foremost, she is focused on her relationships with her friends and family. Since she has always taken care of her mother, she attempts to protect her as she "told the police not to call" (Sebold 19) her, going against her own best interests. Sebold wishes to "hide the rape from her and from my family" because her "mother had panic attacks in heavy traffic," and Sebold "was certain [her] rape would destroy" (Sebold 19) her. However, it is inevitable that Sebold's relationship with her mother is affected by the rape, as she must eventually call her and ask her for help. The shift in their relationship's dynamic is seen when Sebold asks, "can you come get me, Mommy?" (Sebold 26), reverting back to an almost childlike state. Uncharacteristically, her mother is calm in a moment of crisis and tells her daughter "it would be twenty minutes or so" because "she had to pack up and check out, but she would be there" (Sebold 26). Furthermore, upon her arrival, Sebold notes that, "within seconds, [she] saw that [her] mother, who [she] had expected would collapse, had the kind of fresh energy that was needed to get [her] through the rest of that day" (Sebold 30). Sebold juxtaposes this chapter about returning home with one entirely about her childhood and upbringing, which effectively conveys the contrast between her relationships before and after the rape. Specifically, she discusses her relationship with her mother by referencing a disastrous trip to New York they took together. While Sebold's mother had a panic attack in the backseat of a taxi, Sebold soothes her, saying "We'll come another time, Mom… it's okay" (Sebold 47). After her rape, their roles must be reversed, and Sebold reluctantly abandons her position as the caretaker. Similarly, Alice's father adjusts his behavior in order to comfort her. Despite his typically distant attitude towards his family, he hugs her when she enters their house, which Sebold describes as being "awkward" and "ill-fitting" (Sebold 50). Sebold writes that she does not "remember him saying anything" (Sebold 50) to her. She explains:
If he did say, 'Oh, honey, it's good to have you home,' or 'Alice, I love you,' it would
have been so uncharacteristic that I think I would have remembered it, but perhaps I don't
remember it for that very reason. I did not want new experience. I wanted what I knew,
the house I had left that fall for the first time in my life, and the father I recognized.
(Sebold 50)
This interaction conveys Sebold's desire to continue on as if nothing has happened, and her father's inability to do so. It is likely that her father did speak to her more tenderly than usual, but she refused to accept his personality shift. Her state of denial regarding the changes in her life speaks to the mental trauma that she is facing as a result of her rape.
Another way in which she tries to manage her mental and emotional trauma is through her speech, especially when speaking about the rape with others. Typically, trauma is associated with one's complete inability to speak following an event. However, Sebold takes the opposite approach and talks candidly about her rape, even when it makes others uncomfortable. For example, in her first interaction with her father following her rape, she makes a crude and inappropriate joke about the event. She justifies it by saying, "To the outsider this might sound awful; to my father… and to my mother… it both shocked them and meant only one thing: The kid they knew was still there" (Sebold 51). This can also be seen in her conversation with Myra, when she abruptly interrupts the woman to say, "I was raped" (Sebold 68). When Myra responds with, "I know," Sebold continues, "I needed to say the word… It's not 'that thing that happened to me,' or 'the assault,' or 'the beating,' or 'that.' I think it's important to call it what it is" (Sebold 68). Sebold is direct and unapologetic, which shows her healing process. She also uses her writing as a coping mechanism. This can be seen in the poem she writes for her workshop class, which gave her the opportunity to "address the rapist directly" (Sebold 100) for the first time. In addition, Sebold uses her fiction novel The Lovely Bones, which deals with similar subject matter, and her memoir to further explore her feelings regarding her own rape.
One of Sebold's biggest mental battles following the rape is based on her status as a virgin. Her initial loss of innocence is seen in her likening undressing to "shedding feathers," (Sebold 8) as her rapist sees her naked body for the first time. She attempts to defend herself against him by repeating the fact that she is a virgin, but this does not affect him until after he is finished and he says, "it's not right what I did. You're a good girl. You weren't lying to me. I'm sorry for what I did," (Sebold 13). Although his apology is ingenuine and out of place, it shows the importance of virginity in their society. Sebold's loss of virginity results in feelings of alienation because her "sister was still a virgin at twenty-two," and Sebold "spent time wishing she were less pristine… so that [she] wouldn't be alone" (Sebold 150). Purity and virginity were important topics of discussion in her household, and Sebold comments on how both she and her sister "lived unhappily on either side of the word" (Sebold 150). In an effort to deal with the mental toll of being alienated from her family, Sebold searched definitions of the terms "virgin, virginity, virginal, chaste, chastity" and "manipulated the language and redefined the words" (Sebold 150). This resulted in her ability to claim herself "still a virgin"; in her mind, she "had not lost [her] virginity" because "it was taken" (Sebold 150) from her. Her conclusion is that she "would decide when and what virginity was"‒a theory that is not as "airtight" (Sebold 150) as she had initially believed. Furthermore, she "also created a painful reasoning for why it was better to have been raped as a virgin," telling people that she "doesn't have any sexual associations with it like other women do. It was pure violence" (Sebold 151). It is clear that she is attempting to reconcile with the emotional trauma of the loss of identity that came with her loss of virginity, which shows how lasting the effects of her rape are.
Throughout the memoir, Sebold believes she has moved past the trauma many times, like in her various relationships with men or her handling of Lila's rape. However, to the reader, it is evident that the mental trauma stemming from the rape continues to affect her until adulthood. Even after years, she is still tortured by the aftershocks of surviving a rape. She views the entire world in a different way, dividing everything into two categories: "the safe and the not safe" (Sebold 90). It is only in the chapter she entitles 'Aftermath' that she experiences closure, as a man tells her their intercourse " as almost virginal… like you were having sex for the first time" (Sebold 243). Her realization that she can still live a successful life despite the fact that she will never be able to completely erase her past is clear in the last line of the book as she writes "both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand" (Sebold 243).
Lulu in Hollywood
M Butterfly
Mac Flecknoe
Machine Man
MaddAddam


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The 2004 Formula 3 Sudamericana season was the 15th Formula 3 Sudamericana season. It began on 24 April 2004, at  Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet in Brasília and ended on 19 December at Autódromo José Carlos Pace in São Paulo. Brazilian driver Alexandre Sarnes Negrão won the title.

Drivers and teams
 All drivers competed in Pirelli-shod. All teams were Brazilian registered

References

External links
 Official website

Formula 3 Sudamericana
Sudamericana
Formula 3 Sudamericana seasons
Sudamericana F3

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Top Tip!
The 61st First
Day of Deceit
The Great Nash Split
Sean & Shelby
Our Amazing Graze
New Will & Grace Premiere
Roosters Perch
Homemade Hollywood. You make the movies. We make them fabulous!
"Setting the Scene"
While the movie samples above provide illustration of our work and creativity, sometimes it helps to know the full story behind what you're watching.
Or we might point out specific edits, or examples where our suggestions were put to use.
Pick a ticket for Info, Details or Fun Facts about that movie.
"Will & Grace Return!"
Two volunteer videographers captured these images and clips with their cell phones at the HRC Atlanta premiere of the new Will & Grace. To be used as a Souvenir to attendees, we worked our magic with amateur media and added some fun themed elements throughout.
What earrings? Dancing alone? Just Jack? Tee-hee! Have a look!
Homemade Hollywood. There's a story in there somewhere!
"Bridges Crossed"
This is one of our earliest works, but you hear (well, not hear) our expert audio splicing. The song is actually much longer, as it played on the car radio during a drive across the 7 mile bridge. We "beefed up" the bass and cut it to fit a 2 minute time span of video. This clip was a small part of a much longer Vacation Video.
It also demonstrates how we took 7 minutes of "nothing exciting" and turned it into 2 minutes of fun. Since the passengers were en route to check off a Bucket List item, we captured the essence of the crossing, the journey, and the destination - while leading into the next chapter of the Vacation Video.
"Randy & Friends at the Rooster's Perch"
Randy & Friends helps young adults with disabilities practice skills, learn a trade, find jobs and become productive members of society. One place they show off their skills is The Rooster's Perch coffee shop. We were honored to be asked to provide a Slideshow For an upcoming banquet.
All the pictures were taken with an older model cell phone. We take you on a visual tour of their shop and workrooms, and showcase their talents, skills and personalities.
But Creating a Slideshow wasn't enough. We wanted to participate. So we now provide equipment, training and oversight to utilize their services for Scanning Pictures and Slides, and we're developing a class about making Slideshows. So order from us and help them, too!
Drop by THE ROOSTER'S PERCH in downtown Gainesville, GA., U.S. of A!
Homemade Hollywood. Because a picture is worth a thousand words.
instructional: Wedding Videos
Homemade Hollywood offers you suggestions for capturing shots you might not otherwise think about. Here, the occasion is a Wedding. The Director will be asked to view this video as part of our process.
Whatever the Event, we provide similar instruction to help you provide us with material that enriches the story.
Homemade Hollywood.
Capturing small details from the start, to make a big difference in the end.
"Sean & Shelby"
Hear we tell the story of a Wedding Day. From arrival of the Bridal Party, to views of the beautiful, country grounds, we capture the essence of the day, and of the service where cameras and phones were asked to be turned off. Their service was interrupted by a train, thus some of our creative sound effects (SFX). Then we mixed down the entertainment and dance party before saying goodnight. The story is told through 15 vignettes.
Homemade Hollywood. Lasting impressions of your memories.
"The Great Nash Split"
Junior High School students were split between two High Schools. All pictures supplied to us were cell phone "pictures of pictures" taken from a yearbook. We removed autographs, corrected contrast, reduced glare and improved each photo to help them celebrate their 50th Reunion. The story takes place in Smyrna, GA., known as the Jonquil City, so we added some "floral decor" along with lots of fun and meaningful displays of the student pictures.
local singer/songwriter Pat Terry performs "Where Dreams and Jonquils Grow" (licensed and used by permission). Homemade Hollywood sends Best Wishes to the Campbell and Wills Classes of '69 !
Homemade Hollywood. When there is a story worth telling.
"Day of Deceit!"
Here's an adventurous tale using Dash-Cam videos as the backbone of the story.
The first half is fun and entertaining while it discloses items used to deceive the surprisee, and the concert video clips are flawlessly seamed together creating its own Music Video, but there's also a tender moment in the middle that, without the Dash-Cam, would only be a memory.
We hope you enjoy Homemade Hollywood's production, Day of Deceit!
Homemade Hollywood. Marvelous Movies of Your Memories,
"The 61st First"
Setting the Scene: The Birthday Girl turned 61 and had never ridden a train. She was given tickets to ride the "Blue Ridge Scenic Railway". Note the picture of the Conductor with ticket in hand.
The train ridge begins by using a Still Shot of Cheri, and inserting video within the window next to where she sits.
Appropriate music blends with the sounds of the train, some reactions from Cheri, and Historic Information being provided in the First Class Car,
Guests arrive at the state line between Georgia and Tennessee where everyone takes a photo at the mid-town marker. We added some fun music and elements to the lunch-time stopver, then share a compeltely different journey for the ride back.
For fun, we added a figure of the "Big Foot" mentioned by the train's narrator, though the guests did not actually see it. and with great footage from the open air car as the train rounds huge curves, we spiced it up with some cinematic music.
At a restaurant that evening, salt seemed to be the main ingredient for the soup. having several pictures of the food, plates, and the salt shaker, we had a little fun making sure Cheri remembers every detail about her special day on the train.
Homemade Hollywood. There's a Movie in there somewhere!
"Our Amazing Grace"
Because of three special presentations, the family hoped to have their Mother's Funeral Service recorded. In the end, there was only this recorded audio, and very few, barely usable fragments of video. The family compiled some favorite pictures and Homemade Hollywood blended them to create this loving remembrance. Stephen Pyle photography provided the background photos.
For Mom.
"The First Year, The Last Ornament"
We provide this personal video to demonstrate a Voice-over.
This is a Narrated, personal Christmas story about Mom, who died earlier in the year. It was created to share with immediate family on the occasion of the First Christmas without her.
Little explanation is neccessary, as most visualizations are taken directly from the narration. But it shows our balance of voice and music. Music that embelishes the story and helps our emotions flow, without distracting from the narration and Story being told.
one "visual" note: She loved Redbirds and kept a feeder next to her window where she spent the vast majority of her time, thus the Redbirds in the snow during the ending sequences.