Wednesday, February 21
READING
Meet the Cormorants of the Second Narrows Bridge by Christopher Cheung, The Tyee
They’re not everyone’s favourite bird.
I love cormorants! But I've just always loved seabirds, in general. You always see cormorants in small groups out on the pilings while walking the Seawall (especially in Coal Harbour) or on Granville Island (under the bridge, natch). This article profiles the biggest colony in BC, making their home under the Second Narrows.
My friend dropped this in the group chat with the addition "This is REPORTING."
[EDIT: Kate Sloan can help you find something better.]
IndieWeb Carnival: Digital Relationships
Now that I'm blogging again, I've been actively searching for more blogs to read. And with everyone scattered to the winds, once again, I redownloaded NetNewsWire to help me keep track. Because blogging isn't only about reading and writing—it's also about responding, connecting, linking.
IndieWeb is a community for people who make personal websites, and the carnival is a monthly topic to prompt people to write on those websites. If you also decided to start blogging again this year, here's your sign. Write about your digital relationships, about travelling to visit friends from Livejournal, about following people from platform to platform, about going to a new space and finding an old blogger you had lost track of. And then go read the list of posts Manuel has rounded up and add a few more blogs to your RSS reader.
WATCHING
Jenna Stoeber's defense of idle games had me keeping a dark room open in another tab all weekend.
Rivers and Tides: so many photos of Andy Goldsworthy's environmental art cross my Tumblr dashboard that I finally went looking for this documentary from 2001. I first watched this in a creative writing class in university with a teacher who was a poet. (He also showed us Smoke, directed by Wayne Wang, and the Richard Manuel parts of Festival Express.)
Pride: the historical film from 2014 about the formation of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, set during the 1984-5 British miners strike. This was a rewatch for me, but I was scrolling Tumblr, and someone posted "who's up late watching Pride (2014) and crying," and then I was, too.
Scientific American Frontiers, S07E5: Robots Alive: this episode first aired April 9, 1997. That's what I love about watching this show. 27 years later, so much of the technology he introduces us to is now out in the real world (for better or for worse, lol).
LISTENING
"Running Up That Hill" by Lara Somogyi
I usually put on a lofi beats YouTube mix when I want to write (I cannot write with lyrics, only instrumental), but I've switched to Chill Classical playlists. This track caught my ear, and then I saw the title and realised why. Then I listened to the whole album, !
"Turn the Lights Back On" by Billy Joel
(I know this came out a while ago, but I looked at my Music history to see what I've been listening to—I've been doing a lot more watching this week—and I had to write about this one.)
OMG new Billy Joel! I really thought I'd never see the day. I really believed he was done, and I think he did, too. His 70s singles were staples of my parents's party mix tapes, and River of Dreams was among the first CDs we bought to go with our first living room CD player (5 disc changer!). He was such a part of my childhood that this new song makes me feel like a kid again.
And the new Beyoncé, of course. I liked Renaissance, but I think I'm gonna love this album.
btw, if you need a new lofi beats mix, here's an adorable channel I discovered.