my son's most recent movie:
MightyDragonite's dragonite

i can mention two aspects of this movie-making bit: one, that although it requires an enormous amount of my time and guidance, he still learns faster, and knows more about it, than i do, partly because he's young but also because he wants to have a prominent channel in the pokemon-explanation business. he finds the people who do it well and he models himself after them; slowly he will become more polished, with a louder voice, clearer picture, and camera focused steadily on the action.

if you click on the channel you can see all the movies he's made; he gets "views", and "likes," and these are important to him, and i implore you to add your "view" and your "like" if you would be so kind. but this blog is not really about him; he has his own arc, and his own life which you will be able to see easily (if you "subscribe") only soon enough. really what i would like to say is that, on this grim and windy, cold (and soon rainy) holiday, there is one last day for me to start in on my project, and, it is slowly being eaten away by this process. i should not begrudge it, it's ok, it's just life as it is, and i'm not so much an expert on language as a self-organizing system anyway, that i really have that much to say, as i sit down and try to write.

but i have this pile of books, and they deal with language, what it is, and how to explain it, and natural systems, such as ant colonies, nerve structures, etc., and my challenge here is to somehow tie it all together, because i believe that language is what is known as a self-organizing system. and sometimes i get caught on the little stuff, like what is the difference between self-organized and self-organizing, and does that matter? or, how are humans with their perceptual structures different or similar to termites, or ants, or nerves? not sure about this stuff, but i plow forward anyway.

on the king holiday we are all implored to get out in the civic arena and listen to speeches about racial harmony, or about the dream, and collaborate with people from the other churches and various walks of life in this town which is quite diverse, contentious at times, and changing. i however struggle with the fact that i spend so much time just watching the little fellows, that i have very little left to do my own creative projects, and those are piling up and making it hard for me to move around in my own limited office space. i'll occasionally spend a few minutes sorting laundry, or moving papers around in that space, so that i have room for a couple of elbows, but it's a holiday, one part of me says, maybe i should have one more relax before the term crashes in again.

and let me explain about the quilt. i am now on my second quilt, and it is like the first; it has four-squares, with triangles sewn around the outside corners, so that when put together it will all be bow-ties of various colors in what is known as a bow-tie arrangement. the one i'm working on now is a saluki quilt; the last one was a hawkeye quilt, and the next two, for the twins, will be illini quilts. one theme is that the colors we call "our own" (in our case, saluki colors are black, white, silver and maroon-red) are often associated with sports teams and sports success, but should really be taken in, embraced, as folk colors, regional identification, free of the negative attitudes we often associate with sports and everything that goes with it. second, and i get this from the navajo, one thing that a person can do in this world is to take a vision of color and design, and pass it along to one's descendants, in some form or another, so that we have some of that color and design long after we are gone, and that is a better place marker, so to speak, than, say, a journal. my grandfather, yeah, he's the one who made this quilt, and it's ragged, dirty, frayed on the edges, but it's better to remember him by those colors, and the way they go together, than by something he wrote.

not sure if i believe that, but i'm acting on that principle.