My Happy Place

This morning I subbed for a high school intermediate drawing class.

The students are drawing a small part of their faces. Here are the teacher’s examples.

I drew along with the class.

It is the first time I have picked up a pencil since Covid shut down life drawing classes in March 2019.

My eyes are too close together, and it was fun to spend 20 minutes drawing.

These are what some of the student artists created.

Hold Me Accountable

Whenever I am afraid to start one of digital storytelling homework projects I ask myself:

1. What exactly am I afraid of about this project?

2. What are the components of this project?

3. What else do I need to build this project?

4. How long will it take me to build this project?

Then I get started. My biggest problem is FINISHING. I get stuck before the finishing mode. My biggest hurdle is PERFECTION.

I found this bark during a walk in Natick, Massachusetts on September 9, 2021. Photo by Robin Sallie

I have started each project each week that I was enrolled in Dr. Stacey Patton’s Sunday night class — plus 4 more since class ended — and have only completed and published 3.

I need an accountability partner. Anyone interested in meeting once a week on zoom to learn Digital Storytelling?

My goals are

1. Finishing the 6 projects I have started

2. Go through the class again using the recordings doing each project again

3. Start and complete some sort of quick, freestyle project each week

4. Take the class again in the winter

5. Teach someone else how to do all the projects.

Yesterday I took a few photos to start freestyle project. Today I will finish the project.

Frame of Reference

As a photojournalist I often read the “other” paper in town after an event that I covered to see how that other photojournalist captured the news.

This poetry project reminded me of how differently we saw the event.

Students analyzed “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” by Walt Whitman and created digital stories based on their own frame of reference.

A Natural Renewal

Jobs often provide benefits of which the folks in human resources office are unaware.

I work at the Rivers School, a coed private day school that serves grades 6-12 on 23 acre campus, located 15 miles from Boston with 900 feet of frontage on picturesque Nonesuch Pond in Weston, Massachusetts.

During the school year, I coach basketball, substitute teach and manage the rentals of the numerous fields, buildings and the 30 acre camp grounds across the pound. 

Summers are quiet, lazy and full of nature. Often I see deer, bobcats, foxes, herons, skunks, owls, hawks and golden eagles.

A Bridge Between Reality and a Dream

One of my earliest memories is of my Grandpa reading me the story of Three Billy Goats Gruff. They needed to cross a river to get to the green grass on the other side. Of course, the mean troll played a small part in the story, but what about the bridge? If there hadn’t been a bridge, there would have been no story. And, those poor little goats would have gone hungry.

Photo by Robin Tinay Sallie. The Tappan Zee Bridge, officially named the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, is a twin cable-stayed bridge spanning the Hudson River between Tarrytown and Nyack in the U.S. state of New York. It was built to replace the original Tappan Zee Bridge, which was located just to the south.

A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. I always asked Pap what kind of bridge did the goats cross? Was it a beam, arch, truss, or suspension bridge? 

A beam bridge is the weakest of all bridges and might not be strong enough to hold three goats. A truss bridge is the strongest. A suspension bridge is the most expensive to build. An arch bridge can hold the most weight.

I have always had a thing for bridges. The word bridge means so much. The bridge itself, can be actual or abstract. Bridges are a way to overcome obstacles. Bridges represent transitions.

Photo by Robin Tinay Sallie

To cross a bridge, a river or a border is to leave behind the familiar, personal and comfortable and enter the unknown, a different and strange world where, faced with another reality, we may well find ourselves bereft of home and identity. —Jean-Pierre Vernant

This video of the bridge was taken on November 27, 2021.