Inside View

Paging Back Through October Bank Holidays

Photo by @topgold in South Tipperary Arts Centre.

IT IS A QUIET (and frosty) October Bank Holiday in Ireland and we're getting ready for the Clonmel Zombie Walk by painting a few props, carving a few pumpkins, and double-checking the batteries in Mia's fat suit costume.

During this quiet time, I noticed a few people landing on my blog and then reading pieces I wrote more than a decade ago when we lived in Kilkenny. [1] I wondered what other sorts of things I might have written during the same quiet periods throughout the past decade.

Welcome Mia

It’s time for Mia (10) to earn part ownership of a mobile phone so we’re looking at making the handset an in-hand creation tool.

I’m starting by teaching Mia how to use a very small iPhone 5C with the Bear Writer app, Voice Record Pro, iTypepad, Spreaker, YouTube, OneDrive, and Flickr. This should be exciting.

[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business in the Limerick Institute of Technology.]

AMPing up practical skills @LimerickIT

I WORK WITH a wide range of creative students on three campuses of the Limerick Institute of Technology. This year, I'm taking a page out of my 1998 notebooks as we share techniques about making rich media content that shows up in less than two seconds on mobile phone screens.

Journaling at LIT

WHILE PAGING THROUGH several dozen creative media journals at the end of the autumn semester, I discovered several unfamiliar logos woven into some very memorable content. And I recorded a half hour of ideas that were sparked by student work.

Journaling

 

Graveside thinking about writing in the future tense #journaling

Photo of Evelyn Goldbach nine years before her death.

EVERY JANUARY, my thoughts turn to my mother's death and I recall things that might have remained buried in memories. This year, I realised mom often said things that fit in the future tense.

My Final Pasture Petrol Cut

I'VE PUT A TWO-CYCLE audio clip on my timeline because we have walked away from the pastures of Knocklofty to rent a smaller home eight miles away in town. Even though I would spend up to three hours behind the mower (and burn through seven euro of petrol with its leaky tank), I miss the vigorous therapy that came with push mowing.

Rumbling B-17 Above Sand Cottage #kilkeel

WHEN MY IRISH in-laws were toddlers, the rumbling sound of Boeing B-17 bombers roared overhead Sand Cottage, a very quiet self-catering bungalow just outside Kilkeel in Northern Ireland.

Pilgrimage to @OMahonysBooks

WITH OUR SCHOOL BOOK LIST in hand, we're headed on a cross-country journey to O'Mahony's of Limerick to begin stocking our shelves for the upcoming school year. It's always a memorable journey.

This year, we're taking a cab to town then a bus across county lines. Mia has tapped a school book list into the communal iPhone. I'm blogging this short piece to remind me about a title on O'Mahony's shelves that I plan to use in the Media Writing module for the autumn semester.

We planned this little 50 mile journey a few days ago, rehearsing the departure times with four year old Dylan and eight year old Mia. Both of them got up an hour earlier than normal and counted down the minutes for the taxi's arrival. I wish there was a way to ensure the same sort of time-keeping rolled over into the normal school year.

+++ Bernie Goldbach has watched the school year unfold in the States, in Germany and in Ireland.

The One Question My Father Often Asked

IT'S HALLMARK TIME again because Father's Day is here and as I watch our lovely 8yo create a unique Father's Day card, I can hear a question my dad often asked his five sons. "What are you going to do with that?"

Dad (pictured at age 22 a few months before he met my mom for the first time) rarely challenged what his offspring did. But he did want to encourage us to consider our actions. He was more observer than judge and I will never forget his style. I'm trying to emulate his considerate approach in my own life now, stepping back from an often critical perspective that I apply to everyday interactions.

1300 Days Remaining Before Pivot

Photo of @miarosegold by @topgold.

MY COUNTDOWN+ CALENDAR tells me I have 1300 days until my last day of work as a full-time lecturer in Ireland's third level system. Because of that very real event horizon, I have started a transition checklist that I consult every hundred days of this countdown sequence and this blog post automatically published to remind me to check my progress.

The lovely thing about embargo publishing systems is I don't have to worry about publishing any long form content today since I wrote this material two months ago while watching 8yo Mia create a blog post. My hope is that she will continue exploring ways to create and share stories of what it's like growing up in Ireland. I wish I had stored those social experiences so I could compare my pre-teen years to hers.