Think Not of Bombings, but of a Red Balloon

Questlove of The Roots tweeted something very thoughtful last night regarding the Boston Marathon bombing tragedy. He wrote:

Parents please monitor your kids' TV activity. Watching and rewatching [the] explosions is way too traumatic for young minds to process.

Of course he's right, but I'm sure many parents were way too caught up in the emotion and shock of the whole devastation to remember this. I heeded Questlove's advice and steered Gigi away from the news coverage of the bombings. But my inquisitive child was.....well .....curious, and so she googled the event and read about it on the internet. A few minutes later she came to me crying because it was all so sad and depressing.

To get her mind off the doom and gloom I turned to Hulu Plus and we looked for an uplifting family movie to watch. She saw a photo of a little boy holding a balloon and requested that we watch that film. It turned out to be The Red Balloon, a fantasy short film by French filmmaker, Albert Lamorisse, that features his son Pascal as a boy in Paris who finds a red balloon that follows and befriends him. It's a sheer pleasure to watch the joy that this inanimate object brings to the boy. I won't tell the ending, but the message to me was: When somebody takes something that you love away from you, God showers you with way more than you initially had.

And to my delight, the film is available for viewing for free, so I've placed it here for you to see. Enjoy! (...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.) -- Philippians 4:8


The Red Balloon won the following awards after its release: Louis Delluc Prize, Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Short Film Palme d'Or, BAFTA Special Award (Film)

The Art of Visual Storytelling

I took the plunge and took a three week course called The Art of Visual Storytelling recently and I'm so glad that I did. Since the price was right ($15), I couldn't imagine passing up the opportunity.

Although I don't have a background in drawing or animation, I figured the class would get the juices flowing and inspire me with other projects -- and that's exactly what it did! I also figured the teacher, Daniel Gonzales, an Animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios, would be able to pass on some valuable knowledge that I'd be able to take with me anywhere. And I was right. He turned out to be a really good teacher with patience and an ability to present the basic principles of the craft for people like me who have no background in it.

Here are a couple of the images that I came up with for the class:

 

Now I'm looking forward to continuing the creativity in my writing and video production.

Thanks Daniel!

Loving Yourself and Going Natural

"Loving your hair is loving yourself," says Dr. Jackie Copeland-Carson, one of the subjects in the documentary Hair Stories, directed by master hair braider and filmmaker Yvette Smalls.

I believe she's right. That's why I was so happy to hear that my dear friend and sister Celestine (a.k.a. Celeste) decided to let her hair exist in its natural state.

Here she is celebrating 16 months of "going natural" -- Isn't she lovely? Congratulations sister and may you continue to keep on loving yourself.

Pressing Toward the Goal

A little inspiration at work: 

Philipians 3:12-13 (New Living Translation):

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.

And here's the Gullah version that makes me cry it's so beautiful:

A ain say A done do all wa God wahn me fa do, an A ain say A done come fa be all wa A oughta be een God eye. Bot A da try wid all me haat fa mek dat prize me own, cause Jedus Christ done mek me e own. Me Christian bredren, fa sho, A ain yet win dat prize. A ain all wa A oughta be een God eye. Bot one ting A da do. A da do all dat A able fa do fa git ta wa dey head ob me. A ain pay no mind ta nottin dat done pass.

Us in the Capital (Part 2)

More pictures from our Washington, D.C. visit:

Us in the Capital (Part 1)

Here are a few pictures of our recent visit to Washington, D.C.:

Changing America: Smithsonian Exhibit

If you plan to go to Washington, D.C. before September 15 this year, go see the exhibit called "Changing America" at the Smithsonian  which gives a good summary and some fine details (including artifacts and video) about the Emancipation Proclamation and a bit about the March on Washington in 1963. Artifacts include shards of stained glass from the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where four young black girls were killed in an explosion on September 15, 1963; Harriet Tubman’s shawl; and shackles used on children who were forced into slavery.