Met this pug at a listing appointment yesterday. Sweetest pug you’ll ever meet.
She’s Really Redding.
Of clouds, and clouds of birds
Such beautiful skies yesterday. I found myself just looking up.
Looking up you notice birds.
Along about 5 pm, groups of birds flying in from the east gathered into a swirling circle. A tornado of birds.
Round and round they flew, making a cloud of their own, somewhere over the North Market Street Bridge.
And then individuals gradually peeled off from the group, and flew off to the southwest. Just a bit of bird fun, perhaps. Bird performance art. It’s Really Redding.
Redding musician Craig Padilla interviewed on Dutch music website
Craig Padilla and his music was featured recently at the Sonic Immersion webzine from the Netherlands authored by our friend Bert Strolenberg. Whenever I read interviews with musicians, I am reminded of the old saying “talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” For musicians, music is the form of expression. When you try to put things into words, something gets lost in translation. Be that as it may, it’s always interesting to see that appreciation for our local music crosses the Atlantic, and across all languages. Music is sort of a universal language in that regard. But if you care to witness this dance about architecture interview, click on the image below. Thanks Bert!
Another viral music video
One viral video leads to another, apparently. In case you haven’t seen it.
I’m old enough to remember cartoons by Rube Goldberg. He drew illustrations of kinetic stuff like this, except you the reader had to use your imagination as to how it would all actually play out. This commercial video makes no reference to Rube, but perhaps for good reason. Turns out he is protected by copyright, despite being dead for 40 years. There’s even a Rube Goldberg merchandise website. I wonder if after these artists are long dead, somebody will be merchandising viral videos with their OK-Go trademark?
1/2 price day at Turtle Bay
Flash mob Bolero
Rainy day in Redding is no Nor'Easter blizzard
Watched New Englanders digging out of record snow again on TV. Since much of national news is East Coast based, it seems to be big news everywhere you look. And in fact it looks rough out there. Are you growing tired of dirty snow? Consider Redding. It’s raining today, but that’s just lovely. Fills up our many lakes and rivers. You can see the rain on the CalTrans Traffic Cameras in our area. Nice.
Here’s a view not far from my house. Anyway, if you want to relocate here from your eskimo igloo on the east coast, just click to my Real Estate Services website. I can help with that. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the rain immensely…
Listen and play new music free, courtesy of the Earth Mantra netlabel
You can listen to ambient and space music free at the Earth Mantra website. Here’s a link to the latest collaborative release of a few friends of ours, and longtime fellow travellers, Jim Combs, Jez Creek, and Kevin Haller. It’s interesting and evocative music. Good for late evening reading and such, where the music finds focus in some other region of the brain. There is much other free music to be found at Earth Mantra. All worth exploring.
The Earth Mantra label was started by our friend Darrell Burghan a few years back, mainly to offer an outlet for space-ambient works that would probably not find a home elsewhere. We remember Darrell as the artist Palancar, from the old MP3.com days. A thoroughly decent chap, whom we hold in high regard. We applaud his work to keep this small but interesting genre of music vigorous and growing. The music is free, and can be used non-commercially under the Creative Commons license, which on a website looks like this:
So you can listen to this music, and share it, but not, oh say, use it for background music for your cool online photo slideshow, which you then post on a commercial, revenue generating website. Well, maybe you could use it that way, but you really should ask the artist for permission first. It’s just common courtesy, even if they work cheap, or even free. If you are interested in licensing the work of local starving ambient artists, or any of these unpaid Earth Mantra artists I’ve mentioned here for your local new media project, I can help put you in touch with them. It’s Really Redding.
PS Don’t miss listening to Silvercord – Symphony of Sighs. Perfect for writing.
A new window on the Earth and more.
Actually 7 new windows, courtesy of STS-130, the 130th Shuttle mission ending (hopefully) today. If you’ve been keeping track over the last 13 days, you know our brave astronauts have finished installing an observation module on the International Space Station with 7 new windows, called the Cuppola. The view should be amazing and useful. Why even have a Space Station if you can’t look out the window?
Of all the things we do as US citizens, this is one of the coolest. We fly people into space, and look at stuff. The Space Shuttle program is winding down. This is one of the few remaining flights. It’s been an epic period in human history, of which we as citizens can all be proud.
We wish the citizen astronauts of STS-130 well on their safe return to the planet. In terms of media attention, we sometimes focus on the idiotic and trivial, while wonderous and heroic things happening all around us seemingly go unnoticed. Not unnoticed here. It’s Really Redding.
February Voter published
Erin worked hard on getting out the February issue of The Voter, the newsletter of the League of Women Voters. Events around Women’s History Month are coming up so there is lots associated with that celebration. Be sure and join their LWV group on Facebook, and help us grow the number of local people who appreciate non-partisan voter education.
