Category: Music

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5 Musical Movies for Fourteen Going on Forty

Hey, Red1. You’re fourteen now.

When you’re a young adult, you start putting things together. You start making your own sense of the world. As a dad, I want to give you a few head starts. Hand you a few nuggets of wisdom and wonder. We’ve been trading films and TV shows to fill in some blanks.

You’re already a They Might Be Giants, Star Wars, Tim Burton, Queen and David Bowie fan–very cool.

We’ve had conversations about jokes in TV shows and movies that you didn’t get, so I thought it was up to me to ‘buy you a clue’. We’ve been calling it a guide to modern cultural references. It’s more than just a course in pop culture, but a course in understanding how modern culture is shaped and what the core pieces are.

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Yodeling Storytellers in the Woods

Remember This. Tennessee 2013.

The music and stories the girls come home with are usually pretty colorful. Campfire songs I’ve never heard of, 2-day adventures in the woods gathering forest food for a stew, more plants discovered that contain strong enough fibers to fashion semi-permanent necklaces, and days of journal entries that need to be written out before they lose the details.

A few trips ago, they call came back from camping howling the songs of Doug Elliot. Sharing now.

Doug’s stories derive from his unique lifestyle as well as his deep interest in plants, animals and people. Since humanity’s beginnings our connections with the natural world have defined us and made us who we are. Elliott’s stories explore and celebrate the rich diversity of that special human connection to nature. His programs are textured by his use of traditional lore, regional dialects and accents, and enhanced by his soulful harmonica playing.

Storytelling and education go hand-in-hand. For millennia, storytelling has been an invaluable tool for passing information, values and wisdom from one generation to the next.

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I’m your Venus–of Willendorf

Deutsch: Venus von Willendorf
Deutsch: Venus von Willendorf (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the most iconic sculptures from our art education, the Venus of Willendorf, is also one of our favorites. She’s so happy for someone who was born roughly between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE.

The wiki page says, she’s now referred to as the Woman of Willendorf. I don’t like alliteration much and she’ll always be my Venus.

Mrs. SFDaddy makes soap with her image and we wanted to share.

Then there’s the Bananarama bit, that I’m referring to in the post. I have found that I need to explain a lot of my references to the kids. Here’s the song. Kids, don’t be too influenced by this video. Do you notice how they mostly just wave their arms in the air like muppets?