FontCast #12

(based on the novel Push by Sapphire)


FontCast #12 — Damon Styer from FontShop on Vimeo.
Oh, how I cringe at the sound of my voice, coming from outside my head. Many thanks to Stephen and Chris, and their editing help, for distilling a mostly intelligible five minutes out of an hour-plus of blather!

In other sign movie news, the folks, Faythe, Sam and Travis, filming a doc about sign painters around the country, stopped by to film the shop last week. We don't anticipate they'll have quite as speedy a turn-around as the FontShoppers.

Hyperbole and a Half

(based on the novel Push by Sapphire)

Sometimes I get an idea, like, to subtitle everything with "based on the novel Push by Sapphire", and I think I'm funny, then I read someone like this and I'm gutted by how sorely I fail at funny.I mean, it's not that she's the be-all and end-all of funny, or anything... Ah, screw this! I don't know when to shut up. (Did I say it all? I don't think I said it all. What all is there to say? Let it rest already! What kind of funny do you think you're trying to be anyway? "Funny-uncomfortable"? "Funny-annoying"? "Funny-you-hope-everyone-recognizes-but-you"? No--I just wish it was as easy for me as that chick makes it seem)

Shabbos recipes

So, last night, our Integral Awakening Group celebrated (as mentioned in a previous post), a Shabbos (or Shabbat, or Sabbath) dinner, practicing our mindfulness and presence with the deliciousness and abundance of pot luck dining with friends. We ate a lot of good food, drank plenty good wine, and were encouraged to share recipes with one another. So, I'ma strike while th'iron's hot, while the processes are still fresh in head, and also because this is how I traditionally celebrate my Shabbos--by spending much of the day on the couch writing wordy emails and occasional blog posts. I don't know quite how true to the Shabbos spirit my practice is, but it feels more than a bit like I'm getting things done, without actually working... I guess I'm straining to exert mastery over words, so in that sense, I'm 'failing'...

Whatever. Here, enjoy some good food:

Ye Olde Tea Party

(tote bag available thru gemmabear, on Etsy)

I never expect to learn much out of the Chronicle, but here's an item they pulled off something called the History News Service, that gave a little bit of context I hadn't heard before, about the Boston Tea Party:

The original Boston Tea Party was also partly a reaction to a government corporate bailout. Britain's huge East India Company was in big financial trouble, and English policymakers feared the impact failure would have on the economy. So in May 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly to American colonists. The additional business would help the company stay afloat, the empire would get its taxes, and, because middlemen would no longer be taking a cut, colonists would be paying less for their tea.
Bostonians had no stake in the London-based East India Company, just as most Americans today see little benefit from the large Wall Street financial firms. Bostonians resented the tax, even though they paid much less in taxes than British people did, just as many contemporary Americans resent today's federal taxes, notwithstanding that Americans have a lower overall tax burden than any other developed nation...

Purposecast

I'm awful keen on things lining up, on serendipity, coincidence, or whenever it is that what's floating about over here, pops up over there, too. I know Tim Kelley encourages us to recognize these instances as indicative of "flow", of our somehow working in concert with the universe, and thereby, more purposefully; or, at least, to heed their call to "pay attention to this".

Bearing that in mind, since joining the Integral Awakening Group, I'm frequently delighted to find how the themes we're discussing in a given week resonate through other conversations in other corners of my life; and also, how often the assorted mass media I absorb expands on those themes. To wit, a few months back, when we were first reading, in Soulcraft, pp. 167-172, about "talking across the species boundary", I spent a long day of painting, listening to some podcasts I'd cued into a playlist, that went from a Radio Lab episode called Animal Minds, to a Fresh Air profile of Temple Grandin, to a Radio Lab short, The Shy Baboon. I was just catching up on shows I hadn't listened to, but it turned out all the shows were exploring different aspects of how we communicate with the animal world.