L. Banks illustrated a publication about an ancient bowl found at the Burnt City, in what is now Iran.
It’s a nice rendering of . . . gee, what is that?
If you remember correctly, it’s a goat. It’s a goat.
More specifically, it’s the goat depicted on “the world’s oldest animation,” a bowl more than 5,000 years old that some researchers think may have been the earliest attempt to depict animals in motion.
I wrote about the bowl back in 2008. I learned of it from Kris Hirst at About.com, and I thought it was interesting. “Animation” in the headline, at spring break, and tens of thousands of kids took a look at the little .gif animation from photos of the bowl. The post took about ten minutes to compose, and it remains the single most popular post ever at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub (even more popular than the posts about the imaginary Texas chainsaw massacre).
So I stumbled on Banks’s drawing. Illustration is often high art — the image above is identified as an educational image. Children’s book? Don’t know.
Banks has some other very nice illustrations on display, on completely different subjects. You should go see.
What was that bowl maker trying to show with the goat and tree on that bowl? Did s/he dream that people would be making images inspired by the bowl, 52 centuries later?
An animated .gif made from photographic images of a bowl found at the Burnt City, and dated at 5,200 years.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Pete Seeger was born on May 3, 1919. He turns 94 today.
Pete is an alumnus of the Louis August Jonas Foundation‘s Camp Rising Sun, a little nugget that appealed to me when I signed up as a counselor at the Rhinebeck campus in 19#&. Pete and Arlo Guthrie teamed up for a series of concerts at East Coast venues that summer, including Wolftrap, Saratoga, Tanglewood and others. Pete lives just down the river from Rhinebeck, near Beacon — but driving home from one of those venues was just a bit too far. Pete stopped off at his childhood haunts and spent a day with us.
I hoped to invite him to Salt Lake City. Pete said he might make such a trip, but it was unlikely — and impressed me with his reasoning and dedication to principle. He explained that he was sticking closer to home as he approached 65, because there was work to do there. He said he’d attended a local school board or PTA meeting to voice an opinion on some issue in Beacon. One of the local newspapers complained he was “an outside agitator.” That stung, he said — he’d been a resident in the town for more than 30 years.
Instead of complaining, though, he started thinking. He said he’s traveled the world and worked for causes for other people in other towns; and he said he realized that one’s life’s work might be dedicated to making life better where one lives. So he’d decided to campaign to clean up his local river, the Hudson . . . you’ve heard of the Sloop Clearwater?
Pete’s dedication to making things better, with local action where one may make a huge difference, stuck with me, and it should stick with all of us.
He’s an encouragement to all of us. He boasts that there is no group he has ever refused to sing for, and in his typical humility, he claims that he can get any group to join, so they do all the heavy lifting. During the pre-inaugural festivities for President Obama’s first inauguration I was happy to see Bruce Springsteen singing some of Pete’s work — highly appropriate for any president’s inauguration — and I thought it would be more fitting only if Pete was singing himself. Then Springsteen brought Pete out on stage to close out.
Pete keeps up a schedule of concerts, most for causes. He sails with the Clearwater, campaigning for clean water on the Hudson River (much accomplished) and community efforts to change things for the better. As you will see below, he pulls his own when raising the sails. He cuts his own wood to heat the house he built.
Considering his age, 94, we might wonder why he keeps going, doing so much all the time.
Why does he keep on going? He might be telling us, from this 2012 recording.
More:
Cover of Pete Seeger’s single release (same photo on an album). The banjo features Pete’s traditional “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender,” a twist on a sticker famously seen on his old friend Woody Guthrie’s guitar. Wikipedia image
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
Error: Please make sure the Twitter account is public.
Dead Link?
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
