Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 170

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!

My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

The other day, my pal and I made it back to the Lauter spring which I mentioned several times before. Given the temperature at my own place, it was just incredible there. Peaceful and quiet, wonderful and cool air.
We always park at the church and for the first time the gates of the small cemetery stood open. Now I regret that we didn't have a look around.

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Coffee and Cocktails at the Casa.

Amy from Coffee and Cocktails at the Casa says: "Where I chat over coffee and cocktails about fashion, food, and fun!"

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Barbara shares pictures of her Moomin mugs with us.

Marsha tells us about a day when she works at the museum as a docent - and about Jack.

I love brownies, and Esme has a recipe tested by Preshana for us.

Lisa talks about AI detection.

Nancy's and Shelbee's Good Buy/Good Bye Book was about maxi dresses this time.


Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - Danse Macabre

Another week, another short (sorry, but it's still too hot, and while it's fine to shut your eyes for a bit during a TV show, but weirdly that doesn't work while watching a silent movie ...).
It's an experimental one today, oooh.
Get ready for "Danse Macabre" from 1922.

"Midnight in plague-ridden Spain - - Youth and Love flee from Death who follows their path -
Love feels his uncanny breath and swoons - - - Youth despairs and prays, - when lo! - the cock of dawn crows and Death fades away into the shadow of his tomb."

The skeletons move until they form the title words.

Youth and Love enter a room. Youth lights a candle and the lovers embrace.

If they had thought to be safe here, they are wrong as Death is already following them.

Youth gives Love a shawl and a fan and they dance together.

Love begins to sense Death being close. She feels weak and asks Youth to open the windows.

They keep dancing, but Death keeps haunting them until Love faints and Youth lays her down on a sofa.
Death creeps closer ...

Just in time, the sun rises to a cock's crow ...

... and Death shrinks back from the light and fades while Love recovers in Youth's arms.

The lovers rejoice, they embrace and kiss, they are safe ...
 

... but are they really?

The "Danse Macabre" or "Dance of Death" is an allegory from the late Middle Ages reminding people of the fragility of life - everyone's life, king or peasant, pope or child.
In 1874, the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns wrote a symphonic poem with this title.
The independent director Dudley Murphy and his associate Claude MacGowan had planned a series of Visual Symphonies with the films interpreting classical music starting with this piece.
Big theaters used to put on live shows with music and dance as introductions for the movies, but synchronizing film and music perfectly was more difficult at the time, and while experienced musicians could have coped, the practice wouldn't have worked as well for small theaters.
So although the film got attention, it obviously wasn't enough to keep the series going. 

That's a pity because if "Danse Macabre" was an example of their vision, it would have been great to see what else they could have come up with.
The performers are the ballet dancers and choreographers Adolph Bolm (Youth) and Ruth Page (Love, she was Bolm's student), Death is played by character actor Olin Howland.
As you can see from the pictures, the short is a mix of animation and real film, and honestly, it's really very cool. I had picked it randomly from a playlist of shorts and I'm so glad I did as I loved Saint-Saëns's "Danse Macabre" before this and love the interpretation.


Sources and further reading:

1. Rob Johnson: Danse Macabre 1922. On: The Devil's Manor, July 2012
2. Fritzi Kramer: Danse Macabre (1922) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, July 18, 2022

Kites and cubes - The tiny ones

K was a kite
Which flew out of sight,
Above houses so high,
Quite into the sky.

(From the Nonsense Alphabet
by Edward Lear)

I love tiny cube beads, so when I was able a few years ago to get a surprise assortment at a sale price from one of the bead shops I order from, I jumped right on it.
Then I remembered that as cute as they are, I always struggled a bit what to do with them. I loomed with them (the result is stiffer than with seed or cylinder beads) ...

... I wire knitted with them (so slinky) ...

... I did peyote with them, in the round and folded ...

... and I still had a box full of cube tubes (this wasn't even everything I made).
So when I came upon a quick tutorial for a beaded diamond kite shape, I thought I'd give that a try (this isn't the only tut for it, it was just the first popping up in my recommendation, but it works well) with cubes instead of cylinder beads.
I first made a test piece in Delicas and immediately decided that instead of the original design I wanted to make some variations, ripping up the test piece again.
These are the results so far.

The kite shape made me think of Art Deco patterns and inspired this design. Simple but with a bold color combination.

One theory is that kites have their name from the hovering birds of prey. In German, however, we call the bird "Milan" and the tethered flying object "Drachen" after dragons.
Inspired by the name, I beaded a smaller version of the design and added dragon charms. Readers who have been around for a while know I can't resist a nice dangle and I love these 3D dragons!

I also tried a pair of earrings using just the open V shape in a combination of clear, pearly white, and matte black cubes.
While I liked the color combination, I wasn't completely happy with the overall look and will be playing with that some more.

Delicas as used in the tutorial are very uniform beads, the cubes not so much although I cull the ones that are way too big or crooked. So it was a nice surprise how well it worked after all.

Cubes also stiffen the design a bit which isn't a bad thing for earrings.
These beads come in different sizes, so expect another post with some "big ones" (3 mm instead of 1.8).

Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 169

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

Can you spot the little visitor on my friend's balcony? 

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Handmade in Israel.

Lisa from Handmade in Israel says: "I am a graphic designer by profession who has gone 'back to basics' and I love anything handmade. I enjoy working with paper and other materials, and am always excited to try new projects."

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Jeanne's third mosaic garden stepping stone might be my favorite, I love the colors!

Have you ever tried watermelon with salt? Melynda shows you a recipe.

Gina tells us about her 5 thing Friday.

Mireille has been inspired by the dress over pants trend.

Look at this cute pencil case that Soma made. 



Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - Namakura Gatana

Not the first anime, but one of the earliest surviving Japanese animation films is the short I have brought along today. It's "Namakura Gatana" ("The Dull Sword")  from 1917.
 

The plot is told really quickly as the film only runs 4 minutes in the longest available version (there is a 5 minute version now).

A samurai is testing his sword for sharpness.

He goes to the swordsmith called "Dull Sword" where he even struggles to get his katana into the sheath. Not a very smart samurai.
 

On the way back, he decides to try it out on random people he meets (luckily he can't hurt them and gets his butt kicked instead) - first a blind man playing the flute (attacking a blind man from behind, shame on him) ...
 

... then a traveller who walks right over him after defeating him.

When he tries to get up leaning on the sword, it gets all bent which makes him so mad that he throws it away.

To an audience of today this looks like a very weird little film. Not just the idea of a samurai ready to use his sword on unsuspecting people is rather preposterous, but there's also a lot of comical eye rolling and the eyebrows go up and down.

Now, I said it more than once. This film is almost 110 years old.
According to a Reuters story about the find of this short and another one, US and European animation films were first shown in Japan around 1914.
I just don't get why there are always people trying to measure work from that time by modern standards.
Actually, I was surprised how smooth the animation is.
There were also people complaining that there isn't sound ...
Something I didn't know until now is that a standard practice in Japanese silent cinema was to have a "benshi" or film narrator which could be the reason that there are so few title cards. Who knows, maybe we're missing a hilarious exchange between the samurai and the swordsmith.

The film was thought to be lost, but in 2007 it was being sold at an antique market in Osaka together with another film. What a find!
You know how excited I can get about stories like this!


Sources and further reading:

1. Catherine Munroe Hotes: The Dull Sword (なまくら刀, 1917). On: Nishikata Film Review, March 13, 2017
2. National Film Archive of Japan: The Dull Sword. On: Japanese Animated Film Classics

Tell Us About ... A Day in the Life

Mom has been asked if she'd like to participate in the Global Writing Challenge on the second Thursday of the month. Yes, you are seeing that right, Mom has been asked, but I'm writing this post, Gundel the black panther lady and boss of this place.
It will go live a little early (to avoid collision with Mom's silent films), so if the posts of the others are not live yet, please check back later.
The current membership consists of Deb’s World, Suzy Turner, Within a World of My Own, Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After, Marsha in the Middle, Coffee and Cocktails at the Casa, and Mom. It's fun to learn how differently everyone interprets a topic.

You can play along and link up with them!
If that's too short notice for you, maybe next time?
Here are the prompts for the next months.
September - Poetry
October - Birthday
November - Superstition
December - Why do you blog?

The prompt for today was "A Day in the Life", chosen by Leslie, and Mom asked me to help her out.
Honestly, I may be named after a witch, but there's only so much magic even I can do. Making Mom sound more interesting than she is isn't necessarily among that.
Wait a second, though ... it says "A Day in the Life". That doesn't have to be a description of a "normal" day in her life. I can just pick any day I want, right? Let me think ...

How about the day two detectives turned up at her door asking for her then-husband? She got so nervous that she made a dumb joke asking if he was a bigamist (it was about having unknowingly bought a stolen computer off eBay some years before and as they were just one name on a very long list, police only wanted a picture of the serial number).
Or the night she got the call about her transplantation and confused the caller by telling them she still needed a moment to think - you have to process something like that first after just two hours of sleep - and the day after?
The day she picked up a prairie dog from the local zoo for bottle feeding (and the time after when she always took him to work with her)?

Fips as a baby

Wow, now I understand why she asked me to help out.
It really isn't as if Mom didn't have interesting days, but many people would probably just call the ones now boring.
Things began to change with Covid, self-isolating and working from home.
After decades of commuting and being surrounded by people all day - at work and on the train - Mom suddenly noticed how much she enjoyed being at home. Of course she would, after all I was there, and I too appreciated her being available for me more or less around the clock to be served in the way I deserved, only when I wanted it of course.
It was a good thing to learn as her health issues made it more and more difficult for her to be out and about.

So now her days are mostly like uniform beads in a string - she spends her time working, reading, watching movies, TV shows or documentaries, going down rabbit holes and blogging, crafting, doing chores, talking on the phone (landline, have I mentioned she can be very old-fashioned in some ways?), playing games online (her favorite are puzzle games), occasional errands, but most important of all, trying to find out what it is I want when cawing at her like a little crow. There have to be priorities after all.

Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom ... Moooom?

Usually, she's fine with that, though. Living with chronic disease has taught her early to be quite happy about the things she was able to do - and there were times when she got around quite a bit - or can still do and try not to give in to sadness over not being able to do some things anymore.
Of course, there are moments when she wishes she could just jump up (just kidding, I've never seen Mom jump) and do something spontaneously again, but there are always books instead, right? And me!

Now let's see what the others have to tell us.

Amy shares her still fairly new routine as a stay at home dog mom/retired high school Spanish teacher living in Louisville, Kentucky.

Suzy writes about the little moments that make up her everyday life, from puppy chaos and yoga to coffee, creativity and cosy evenings at home.

Deb tells us about a long day of travel. It might have been longer than 24 hours, but who's counting?

Sally discusses how the rhythms of her daily life have changed 1 year on from leaving her job.

Marsha writes about a day when she’s going to the museum.  You probably won’t be surprised at what goes on!

When she was still working, Leslie's favorite day of the week was Thursday with the weekend finally in sight.  Nowadays, at long last comfortably settled into retirement, Leslie's favorite day has switched to Monday.  Here's a look at a 'typical' Monday in her life. Sure to be a riveting read!!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

10 on the 10th - Would you rather ...

It's time for Marsha in the Middle's 10 on the 10th again.
Today she has another round of "Would you rather ..." for us.

Would you rather vacation in Alaska or Bali?

I'll take Alaska, but not in winter. Too much snow for me.

Would you rather learn to play a musical instrument or learn to paint?

I had violin lessons when I was (a lot) younger, but my one attempt at learning how to draw failed (not through my fault) and somehow I never managed to try again, so I'll take the painting, please.

Public domain via pxhere

Would you rather wear flip flops or sneakers?

Sneakers. I hate flip flops.

Would you rather ride the highest roller coaster or bump along on the Lazy River ride?

If I really have to pick one, it will be the Lazy River ride. I have been on a roller coaster - no huge one - and it's not for me. I never tried a Lazy River ride or even got the chance to, so I don't know if I would like it.

Would you rather go on a road trip or take a flight to a faraway destination?

Definitely a road trip!

Public domain via pxhere

Would you rather have a summer birthday or a winter birthday?

I have a summer birthday, but I don't celebrate, so I would be fine with any day of the year.

Would you rather go to a flea market or a craft fair?

A craft fair is really nice of course, but I'd always pick the flea market because of the surprise factor if I had to choose.

Public domain via pxhere

Would you rather go tubing down a river or zip-lining through the trees?

Neither. I'm really not that kind of person and never have been.

Would you rather go on a safari or a whale watching tour?

That's a difficult one. I'm never sure what to think about either of those. I find all animals fascinating, though.

Would you rather be able to control the weather or talk to animals?

Turning the current heat off or being able to control the weather's impact on the planet for the better sounds tempting of course, but I wouldn't trust any human with an ability like that, no matter if they would abuse the power or messing things up inadvertently despite wanting to do something good.
Talking to animals - sorry, as much as I would like to know right now what Gundel wants from me (probably to control the weather for the better), I don't think humans are ready to hear what they would tell us.