| Today is July 29, 2010 |
The place I like best is my hometown of Marysville, MT. I was born and grew up there till I was 17 years old with my brother Ben, my step-brother Sembe, my half-sister Susan, and my sister Melany, and my dad and my step-mother Valerie. Read more
The comments on this site are now interconnected with Facebook. That means you can use your Facebook profile to log in to the Consortium’s comment system, and — as long as you are thus logged in — any comments you leave here will be posted to your Facebook profile as well. Neat, huh?
You can, of course, log right back out of Facebook Connect if you want and leave an old-fashioned comment just on this site. That’s a choice I leave to you.
Food was a big deal for me growing up, whether it was the home-cooked fare that my grandmother provided when I visited her house on the weekends or the mostly box dinners that my working mom prepared. Read more
Let me just start this post by saying that Twitter is an amazing tool for networking with like-minded folks.
One of my new Twitter friends, Camden Hardy, has some fantastic photography online. I’m particularly fond of his daily Polaroid project. In mourning of the passing of the instant Polariod Hardy has set out to use the film while he can, taking one snapshot a day. The resulting photos have the gauzy, nostalgic feel of an aging family photo and bring to mind the vast archive of similar images lining my grandmother’s shelves.
Some of his Polaroids are strikingly beautiful and “artsy” with what seems to be great attention paid to their composition. Others seem simply to be a random snapshot taken on a whim–just shapes and things. These photos, that give you just enough to capture your attention, are the ones that spark my imagination the most. I immediately begin searching for the humanity in the image, after all, the Polaroid snapshot has always been a deeply personal and human thing. Why was the picture taken? What did the photographer see? What did the photographer want to record? What personal meaning does it have/could it have? What is happening outside of the frame?
I begin inventing my own stories for the photos. I begin filling in the blanks– using the details of the image to create a story around the picture. These photos very swiftly move me and become a part of me as only art created by a talented artist can do.
Camden Hardy’s Polariod project can be seen at www.thedailypolaroid.com and his blog-where he offers a monthly print club-can be found at blog.camdenhardy.com. I highly recommend taking a peek!
Bozeman writer Ray Sikorski, the current organizer of the venerable Foolish Words writing event, has given his permission to repost the 2009 story here on the Consortium of the Creative Nudge.
For those of you who don’t know, Foolish Words is a chain writing event. One person starts the story, writes 200 to 400 words, and then passes it on to the next writer. These writers are affectionately known as the Fools, and this year there are more than 30 of them. The event culminates on April 1 when the Fools gather at the Leaf & Bean in downtown Bozeman to read the story aloud.
You can read more at the official Foolish Words site, run by Ray, and you can read the finished product both there and at the consortium’s newest project site: http://foolish.creativenudge.org.
In honor of Foolish Words 2009, a silly, add-on story written by many Bozeman area authors– sort of a written game of telephone, I’m asking nudgers to finish the story I’ve started here. Foolish Words will culminate on April 1st with a reading of the story with the real, live authors. Please stay tuned for more info!
Once upon a time, a lovely princess… no, wait… we can’t start it that way.…
The princess leapt out of the(fortunately) first floor window, kicked off her heels and ran to the garden shed.
What had she done?!? Her dad wasn’t going to like this! I mean, who not only refuses the advances of Prince Charming, but kicks him and runs away. It was agreed: that girl had some serious commitment issues.
Okay, finish that…