Doug Skinner: An Archive on Your Gizmo

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Entries from June 2014

Index Cards (68)

June 30th, 2014 · 2 Comments

One of our more unusual vice presidents, Dick Cheney, has been in the news again.  I combined two photos of him for this portrait, done back when he was in office.

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Tags: *Index Cards

Acronym 1

June 23rd, 2014 · 4 Comments

I write musical acronyms by taking the first beat of every measure from a given piece.  For the first one, I chose Haydn’s sparkling piano sonata in C major, XVI/35.  The result keeps much of the character of Haydn, but is shorter and a bit more abrupt.  It’s still surprisingly coherent, though; Haydn’s clarity shines […]

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Tags: *Music · A

James

June 16th, 2014 · 1 Comment

I’ve always felt sorry for Jesus’s brother James, destined to be overshadowed.  But then, he wasn’t crucified, either.  Here are the first four verses of six.

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Tags: *Music · J

The Squeamish Ossifrage

June 13th, 2014 · 2 Comments

I found a musical cipher on a tearsheet from an old encyclopedia, so I wrote a quatrain to try it out. This is what it sounds like.

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Tags: *Music · S

Anecdote

June 8th, 2014 · 8 Comments

Translating verse is difficult enough; it’s harder to try to retain the rhyme and meter.  Some paraphrase is always required, but it often comes closer to the original poem than a more literal rendition.  It is, at any rate, a challenging writing exercise.  Here’s my version of a verse by Jean de la Fontaine, from his […]

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Tags: *Words · A

Bird Feeder

June 5th, 2014 · 1 Comment

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Tags: *Sketchbook · B