Regular readers might remember a trip to Howell Farm last February, when the weather was cold enough for ice harvesting on the lake.

Yesterday’s visit was a muddy, soggy day and the lake was clear. But I think everyone had just as much fun. See more pics on our Flickr set:

Animated gifs have grown up. They make up half the posts on Tumblr. They are often derived from funny scenes in movies and come with humorous captions. The Planet Money piece uses them for storytelling: text is illustrated by six gifs showing different parts of the recycling process. The movement helps tell the story–indeed most of the shots would be visually uninteresting if they were static.

The short loops reminds me of Vine, the six-second video service from Twitter which I’ve used a lot for silly kid antics. They can also tell a simple story (they’re particularly well suited to repetitive kid antics: up the steps, down the slide, up the steps, down the slide, up…).

In my work with Friends Journal I’ve done some 7–12 minute video interviews with off-site authors using Google Hangouts, which essentially just records the video conversation. It’s fine for what we use it for, but the quality depends a lot on the equipment on the other end. If the bandwidth is low or the webcam poor quality, it will show, and there are few options for post-production editing. But honestly, this is why I use Hangouts: a short web-only interview won’t turn into a weeklong project.

Producing high-quality video requires controlling all of the equipment, shooting ten times more footage than you think you’ll need, and then hours of work condensing and editing it down to a story. And after all this it’s possible you’ll end up with something that doesn’t get many views. Few Youtube users actually watch videos all the way through to the end, drifting away to other internet distractions in the first few minutes.

I like the combination of the simple short video clips (whether Vine or animated gif) wedded to words. My last post here was the very light-weight story about a summer afternoon project. Yesterday, I tried again, shooting a short animated gif of Tibetan monks visiting a local meetinghouse. I don’t think it really worked. They’re constructing a sand mandala grain-by-grain. The small movements of their funnel sticks as sand drops is so small that a regular static photo would suffice. But I’ll keep experimenting with the form.

A few links to try to make sense of this. The first is the Sikhism page on my wife’s course website. She’s paid to teach world religions at the county community college, but in reality she teaches respect, understanding, and tolerance. She called up the Sikh coalition this morning to offer an apology. I’m proud of her work. Don’t miss the first embedded video, a humorous set of interviews with Sikhs about their turbans.My sympathies go out to all the Sikhs, both the immediate victims of yesterday’s violence and all those who will now worry when a white male wirh tattoos and a shaved head approaches.

The second is a dusted-off link to a 1997 essay that askswhy the U.S seems to train all of the terrorists?” While not every jihadist or homegrown mass-murdering nutjob has a U.S. military connection, it’s a lot more common than a random distribution would predict.

Finally, one could argue that modern America’s recipe of militarism and mass murder started sixty-seven years ago today. The world’s first (and so far only) nuclear war began when the U.S. dropped a single atomic bomb on a city, incinerating and lethally poisoning over 100,000 citizens. Many activists have argued (convincingly in my opinion) that the deaths were unneccessary and that the Truman administration knew the Japanese were near surrender. Whatever the stated or secret motives, the U.S. forever changed the calculus of it’s self image as simple, righteous nation (unearned after centuries of slavery and the genocide of America’s first inhabitants, but that’s another tale). Friends Journal has assembled recent archives on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. May we never forget.

Bonus: another Sikh video:

Reshared post from +C. Wess Daniels

Becky Thomas Ankeny’s message at George Fox Chapel yesterday is beautiful litany of God’s call to all people. It is especially meant for those who grew up in a religious culture/church who told you that you cannot minister.

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I do a lot of presenting and am spending to much time writing bullet points, creating slides, and practicing what I’m going to say. I think that this puts a stop to creating conversation in the room. I wanted to learn some conversational mechanics — so I could stop talking at people and begin talking with them.

Beth’s main link is to a Google Tech Talk “unpresentation” by Heather Gold. Might be good background listening today. I’m particularly interested in this for two reasons: first, obviously, is that presentations are often very boring and it’s nice to think about more interactive ways of engaging with an audience.

But second, many modern Friends have defaulted to a lecture style in their religious education. I’m not sure it works. I’ve met people who have participated in multiple Quakerism 101 classes and still don’t know basic facts. I myself have rebelled against power point presentations and pre-set curricula to be more engaging but I’m not convinced that this has made me a great presenter. It’s always worth finding new ways to present in a clear and direct and engages them with the issues they experience day to day.

I imagine this would be of interest not only to liberal Friends who give workshops, but pastoral Friends with a concern to stay open to immediate revelation during worship–Cherice B has a great post about this yesterday , a response to part four of Brent Bill’s Modest Proposal series.

Some interesting points from Heather Gold’s presentation on “tummling”

• The best way to tummle is to be a very big version of yourself. Tummle means to make noise.
• If you’re happy, i’m happy. The number one way to do that is to care and to notice them—especially the people who don’t seem that involved.
• I’m noticing [the disengaged person in the back]. if i can involve him a little bit i’m much more likely to involve more of you faster than if i pick the person in the front row with their arm up. a technique to pull everyone in is to go to the fringes. go to the people who seem on the end, who seem like they have lower status in whatever community you’re in (speak less, more nervious, know fewer people) and go up to them.
• Some people will be mad at you. Some people will be schmucks. Some people will want to talk a lot. You have to let all that be okay. Tools and rules will never ever do as good a job as your confidence that you can handle anything. It’s time consuming to run through fifty rules in your mind; it’s not so time consuming to just be there.

For those interested in repeating our journey, here’s a map showing our route up and back. I was mostly winging it, depending on these directions from NJPineslandsandDownJersey.com starting from nearby Chatsworth NJ, self-styled “Capital of the Pine Barrens.”

Other map views: View Larger Map | Satellite with Route Map