• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Alison Wilder

Musician, technologist, storyteller

  • Journal
  • Library
  • Who Is This?
  • What Is This?
  • Get At Me

Blog

January 16, 2021

Joined the Arts Alive! Board!

I’m thrilled to have been asked to join the board of the formidable, cool, and formidably cool local arts service organization, Arts Alive!! (This sentence has two exclamation points because one belongs to the organization’s name, and one belongs to my enthusiasm for the organization.) I’ll be serving at least through 2022.

Arts Alive! is the major connector between artists, arts nonprofits, creative businesses, and the broader community in the Monadnock Region. It’s a major quality-of-life booster, and the locals are super lucky it’s here.

I didn’t know Keene or the Monadnock Region existed until I met Jess Gelter, the AA! ED, at an arts convening in Plymouth, NH in 2018 or so. After hearing her talk about what she and the organization were up to in Keene, I started looking into it, which eventually prompted a move here. So a huge thank you to Jess, because I’m loving my new home, pandemic notwithstanding.

I’m super honored and thrilled to be working with the group of dynamic, intelligent and interesting people that sit on the board, and am looking forward to lending a helping hand where I can!

If you’re reading this and you’re in the Monadnock Region, here are a few ways you can get involved:

  1. Head on over and take the quick and thought-provoking Arts & Loneliness study.
  2. Check out the Artist to Artist lineup.
  3. Sign up for the Discover Monadnock newsletter. (This is absolutely the best way to find out what fun things, both virtual and IRL, are happening in the area.)

November 7, 2020

Some recent favorite photos…

Pixel portrait mode rocks, and so do fungus

It’s been quite a year, quite a fall. Here are some of my favorite live screen captures of the last few months.

  • Fall view from my portside window
    Fall view from my portside window
  • Mom & Zorro in the woods
  • Pixel portrait mode rocks, and so do fungus
    Pixel portrait mode rocks, and so do fungi
  • I love this rock sculpture
    I love this rock sculpture
  • Canon collection is growing
    Canon collection is growing and yes, that is my lunchbox from 2nd grade.
  • Not what you want on your toothbrush
    Not what you want on your toothbrush
  • Am loving my new plant-enhanced living room
    I’m loving my new plant-enhanced living room
  • Tree work truck
    Tree work being done in the neighborhood. The truck was up about 6 feet off the ground!
  • Zorro w/ a particularly captivating wild columbine (I think)
  • Mushroom in pixel portrait mode
  • Greg is trying out my new piano. Zorro is helping.
  • So. Spooky.
  • Setup for upcoming True Hope mini-doc!

September 25, 2020

The word today is “cachinnate.”

cach·​in·​nate | \ ˈka-kə-ˌnāt \ cachinnated; cachinnating

intransitive verb : to laugh loudly or immoderately

September 10, 2020

The piano in its natural environment

Alison's Yamaha U3

New-to-me Yamaha U3 is in FULL EFFECT! Funny, it looks like it’s been there all its life. I’m absolutely thrilled with it so far. My main complaint: it sounds like it should play like a grand, and of course, it doesn’t. That said, I’m SO enjoying the feel of it, esp. for songwriting and classical music, e.g. Haydn sonatas. And a big thank you to Haydn for writing things that I can play. 😀

Here’s the move-in, w/ a  bonus photo of one of the piano mover’s incredible waterproof shoes:

  • Bring ‘er round
  • Putting the piano in place
  • Alison's Yamaha U3
    As if it’s always been there
  • Whoa space boots

September 8, 2020

Love o’ jesus

When you spend all day learning and perfecting a JavaScript charts library, only to realize at 3:00pm that a table is actually the best solution.

 

February 28, 2020

Quote from “Double Birthday” by Willa Cather

Willa Cather "Double Birthday" Opening

Even in American cities, which seem so much alike, where people seem all to be living the same lives, striving for the same things, thinking the same thoughts, there are still individuals a little out of tune with the times — there are still survivals of a past more loosely woven, there are disconcerting beginnings of a future yet unforeseen.

This is a beautiful, kinda sad but also sweet little story written in 1929, a time that seems to me to be similar in some key ways to 2020. Success was the word of the day, and it meant money, and if you weren’t with it, and especially if you rejected it, you were OUT, friend. (We’re much more evolved today. Success means experiences, you see, the perfect, frictionless life, full of meaning, and beautiful things, and…oh wait. That shit is expensive, right?)

I’m not sure if our main character, Albert (the artist stuck in a time and place that doesn’t value art), turned out to be “the disconcerting beginnings” of the future or not. If he was, I guess that future is already past.

October 7, 2019

Quote from “The Man Who Shouted Teresa” by Italo Calvino

My shadow took fright at the moon and huddled between my feet.

October 7, 2019

First Nine is One Demo

Just a quick teaser demo of a new song that’s coming from Greg’s and my new collaboration, Nine is One. Much more work to do here, but we’re really psyched about the sound that’s growing!

September 27, 2019

Ichor – for when you need your bodily fluids to be more god-like

This one is delicious.


Related Books

The Room in the Dragon Volant

by J. Sheridan LeFanu

In Shelves: Read Tagged With: Horror, Nighttime Read

Read October 2019

September 23, 2019

colloquy – for when you need to elevate your conversations

Definition of colloquy in the OED

from col– together + –loquium speaking, from loqui to speak

  1. A talking together; a conversation, dialogue. Also, a written dialogue.
  2. A meeting for conference.
  3. Church blah blah.

All the modern dictionaries mention that it’s specific to elevated speech/conversation. Interesting that “colloquial” is used to mean common speech.

Definition of colloquy in the OED


Related Books

The Room in the Dragon Volant

by J. Sheridan LeFanu

In Shelves: Read Tagged With: Horror, Nighttime Read

Read October 2019

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 7
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Post Categories

Post Tags

biking (1) camping (1) campton (2) character sketch (2) cooking (1) creative prompt (1) dogs (3) drafts (1) facebook posts (3) family (4) fletcher (2) great north woods (1) hiking (2) holiday (1) home (2) jeep (2) kayaking (1) literature (1) local flavor (2) lulz (2) mountain biking (1) music (3) new hampshire (5) NH (4) Nine is One (1) piano (1) primitive (1) quotes (14) religion (1) science (1) snow (2) snowshoeing (1) social media (1) texas (2) Vampyr (1) vocabulary (4) writing (5) XC skiing (4)

Bookshelves

Book Tags

Audiobook (3) Classics (2) Comedy (2) Detective (2) Didn't Finish (15) Escapist Novels (7) Essays (1) Fantasy (12) Favorite (10) Historical Fiction (6) Horror (9) Keen to Read (4) Literary Fiction (40) Meh (4) Music (2) Mystery (3) Nighttime Read (10) Nonfiction (11) On Writing (3) Owned - Physical (1) Poetry (1) Psychology (1) Relationships (1) Science Fiction (4) Series (16) Short Novels (9) Short Stories (6) Thriller (4) To Buy - Physical (3) Trash (3) True Crime (1) Try Again (3)

Recent Posts

  • Joined the Arts Alive! Board!
  • Some recent favorite photos…
  • The word today is “cachinnate.”
  • The piano in its natural environment
  • Love o’ jesus

Archives

  • January 2021
  • November 2020
  • September 2020
  • February 2020
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • April 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • March 2016
  • December 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • June 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • July 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • August 2009
  • July 2009

Copyright © 2021 Alison Wilder