Epic Frost Northfield woke up yesterday to a magical coating of hoarfrost. Even the icicles were wearing thick, feathery blankets of tiny ice crystals. Along with everyone else in town who owns a camera, I took some photos.

  ¶ 8:59 AM 0 comments

  Piano for Pyros Last night a piano was burned in the center of the Carleton College campus. It was a beautiful thing: a roaring wind-fed blaze lighting up a circle of maybe three hundred students (along with a few scattered codgers like myself). As the fire consumed the piano (really just a big, wooden box) more of the internal structure was revealed. About an hour into the event, as the keyboard fell into the ashes, the vertical strings and metal frame resembled a pair of harps leaning against each other.

The spectacle was a performance of a 1968 "composition for piano" by artist Annea Lockwood, who spoke beforehand to perhaps half the crowd, which is all that could fit in the packed lecture room where she answered questions and provided a context for the piece.

I wouldn't have expected it, but it turned out to be a big media event (with much more coverage than Scarlett Johanssen's visit last year). My photos and videos of the performance are most easily accessible from this post on Northfield.org.  ¶ 5:03 PM 0 comments

  'Stachetastic My boy and I stopped into a bagel shop the other morning for some fresh salt bagels (a.k.a. "Food of the Gods"). The enthusiastic young man working behind the counter greeted me thusly: "I really like your moustache! ...When I saw you come through the door, I thought: 'I wanna make bagels for that guy!' "  ¶ 10:43 AM 0 comments

  Not Blogging Wow...nine months since my last post. I was going to just delete this experiment in personal blogging, but now that I'm no longer on the board of Northfield.org, I might actually want my own public place to share things that are longer than 140 characters.

But don't expect much.  ¶ 4:10 PM 0 comments

  Tassavatar A few weeks ago my colleage, the renowned über-blogger Christopher Tassava, saw my little pixel avatar and asked if I could make one of him. I was excited by the challenge, but it was a lot harder than making a self-portrait (with a beard and glasses, I don't need many other details to compose my face). Last week Christopher posted the results of my labors on his blog.

Unlike the other members of his family, there aren't really any good photos of him online, so I had him send me some shots to work from. Here are the comparisons of the photo and pixel versions, side-by-side.  ¶ 4:13 PM 0 comments

  "Disconnected at Carleton College"
A student brought a movie camera into last week's premiere of the new student documentary Disconnected and blogged about it the other day. I was less than thrilled to see that his 76-second video begins with ten seconds of me looking for a place to sit.  ¶ 2:49 PM 0 comments

  Quidditch at Carleton Reason #137 why I love Carleton: This weekend the students held the first-ever muggle quidditch tournament. I shot a few pictures and a short video clip of the action.

  ¶ 10:55 AM 0 comments