Well, I’m back from UMW’s Faculty Academy. This was my second year participating/helping out/laughing at Jim Groom, and the best yet. After two inspiring days with some of my favorite people in the world, I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. Highlights included one of the most incredible keynotes I’ve ever seen, courtesy of James Boyle, great discussions on the twitter backchannel, and Jim getting his ass kicked by John St. Clair in a mock debate.

I could go on for days about the fantastic presentations, creative faculty, and stimulating atmosphere at Faculty Academy, but instead I’m going to give a little love to my DTLT family, who put in an enormous amount of work and effort to make this event as spectacular as it was.

So I finished writing the short story for my individual study last week, and decided to draw some accompanying illustrations.

I’m not in the habit of writing “this is what’s going on in my life” kind of posts, but this week has big news: I caved and bought an accordion. I’ve been wanting to learn accordion for a while now, but could never find any instruments to try out, let alone buy. I’m discovering all kinds of neat things and challenges. Still very excited.

Welcome to the first installation of Really Cool People Who Aren’t Me. Today’s post features James Kuhn: artist, drag queen, former nudist, born-again Christian, and–most spectacularly–face painting genius. James says, “I love to paint on anything, including flesh!”

Sick of me writing about books you don’t have access to? Well, this week’s reading, “Sixty Folk-tales from Exclusively Slavonic Sources”, is online and free! You lucky dog. There were many things that struck me about the selections I read from this book, but one of the most immediate was the complexity of the stories. Not only is there a quest, but the quest has three parts. And then there’s a secondary quest, and that one is usually even more challenging. I’m not sure why it is that the fairy tales we’re used to aren’t set up this way. Perhaps they’ve been simplified, or there may be a basic difference between the oral traditions of Eastern and Western Europe that affected the development of their folktales.