Mr. B-G's Blog

Last Sunday marked one more year that I've been around to partake in the earth's celestial voyage around the sun. As Lenny Kravitz once sang, "I'm old enough to see behind me / But young enough to feel my soul." After a full and bustling school year, I'm ready for the summer downshift that shortly awaits.

Aside from a hike on Vermont's Long Trail and some quality R & R at one of my favorite beaches, I plan to do a lot of reading, including summer reading books for school like A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, books for pleasure like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and a revisiting of literature for the two Accelerated English 12 courses I'll be teaching next year like Brave New World and 1984.

Three pedagogical texts I want to peruse are Ravitch's The Death of the Great American School System, Pope's Doing School and Jim Burke's latest, What's the Big Idea?

I'm also planning to jog regularly and make it a priority to carry over a fitness regimen to the new school year. And I'm going to get to the links a few times to try and improve what could graciously be considered an "emerging" golf game.

Summer will fly by as it always does. I hope to return to school renewed, refreshed, and ready for the commencement of another year.

Image from http://www.newzonfire.com/2009/05/19/26-outstanding-photos-earth-space/

I stumbled across this guy on YouTube. His renditions of some of my favorite Beatles tunes are the best covers I've ever heard. He's worth a watch and a listen.

Thanks for the music and the memories Michael. Those sweet soul tunes and deep funky grooves will stay with me forever.

At the beginning of the month, my fiancee and I drove to Northampton, MA to catch Livingston Taylor at The Iron Horse. If the name sounds familiar, well, yeah, he's James's brother, and his live performances always rise the spirits.

Liv's a good musician. He has a number of fun, quirky, folksy tunes, and also reaches deep for nostalgia-evoking ballads. He strums guitar and plays piano and an occasional banjo. Liv introduces most songs with an autobiographical story. He's honest, sincere, and projects a sense of love for his audience.

I've been going to the Iron Horse to see Liv perform each January since my undergraduate days at UMass Amherst in the 90's. The tradition started with a handful of friends. As my buddies moved away, I began checking out the annual show with whomever I was dating at the time. For the past two years, the lucky gal has been my fiancee Mary Kate, but truth be told, I'm really the lucky one.

I think traditions are important, be they Sunday rituals in the fall and winter involving a certain undefeated football team, daily routines of exercising, listening to music, or playing a game, or yearly events like catching a musician or getting away to a favorite spot.

For the past three years, Mary Kate and I have trekked north to Vermont's Inn at Long Trail for a weekend getaway inside one of the inn's fireplace suites. This past September, my friends and I ventured to Burlington, VT for a weekend of camping, cliff jumping, and revelry in the city's pedestrian-friendly downtown.

We even managed to catch a show at Nectar's, the venue where PHISH first performed before they made it big. We've already talked about going back this year.

I find that as I get older and time becomes scarce, I need to schedule almost all my activities in advance. Once it's on the calendar, it becomes "real," and demands to be taken seriously.

This isn't to say I can't roll on the spur-of-the-moment, it's just that as I've aged I've come to rely on schedules to bring order to my life.

I don't remember where I first learned of Animoto, a web-based program that allows you to upload photos and music to create a video animation, but I am excited about its potential for use in the classroom - as well as for fun with friends and family. I hope you enjoy the above images and tune.

The Africa pictures were taken in 1998 during a safari to Tanzania and Kenya. The shot of the boys playing catch in the ocean was snapped in St. John four years ago. I took the picture of the graveyard in my hometown back in the 90's, and developed it in my high school's darkroom. I would imagine that today, with the advent of digital developing, the darkroom no longer exists.

Despite the efficiency and affordability of computer-assisted photo processing, there's something I miss about using an enlarger to burn images onto slick white sheets of contact paper.

A few of the Africa shots in the animation were stylized using Adobe Photoshop. The tune is a jazz-inspired version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Click here for a soulful rendition by the late Eva Cassidy on YouTube.