War of the Words (by sarah)

Last night I went and performed in my fourth ever poetry slam - this time it was War of the Words at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. As typified by the other slams I came last but I am happy as I performed my best yet in my opinion. I did my poem Shy about selective mutalism and had many people including the other poets commenting on how good it was. There is a very graining video which I want to edit into something at the end of the festival - but here is the recording I did of the poem using the hammond organ last year.

There were some absolutely amazing performers last night including Spoz, Peter Wyton and Ben Norris.

mlatu and Mother Lang (by sarah)

Last night Mary said her first full and clear Lojban word mlatu meaning cat, she has been saying contractions and muddled versions of words such as dui for ladiu (milk) and of course saying half English half Lojban words. But this was really clear - it came after a day of her pointing to the cats and asking me 'Cat?', to the kitten - 'cat?' yes, 'baby?' yes, 'itten?' yes, 'baby ca?' yes and so on. Then when Alaric had her and the kitten on his lap she said 'mlatu' to which he responded yes.

I'v been working on this concept of making a language primer starting with English and Lojban, it started with lojbani chicken and I have been constructing characters ever since. As part of teaching Mary lojban Al had drawn a face and written the lojban words on it so I thought you know I should get a move on with this and draw Mother Lang's face so we can make a proper version of this.

And so I have. Of course I had to completely finish designing her first which ment drawing all of her! That picture is still a pencil sketch! I'm happy with this one. The idea is that she is the Mother of Language, she has two daughters Coni and Nat who represent constructive languages and natural languages and they live on a farm with such creatures as Lojbani Chicken etc...

War of the Words (by sarah)

Saturday (20th April 2013) will see me taking part in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Slam! It takes place at Copa in Cheltenham and is £7 or £5 for concessions.

I am desperately trying to memorise some newer poems for this! If anybodies about came and see some fantastic poets (not me the other guys!).

Lojbani Chicken or jbojipci (by sarah)

Just before we moved to the new house I came up with the idea of Lojbani Chicken, a character who would help Jean or anybody else understand and learn Lojban but I wanted it to be more than that. I wanted some sort of all languages web-comic thing which is obviously very complex and so it never happened - there were some biro sketches in the back of a note book and that was that.

Then I saw this year is Lojban's 25th and so I sat down and revisited the idea of my chicken. The result was more biro sketches and Mother Lang and her two daughters Coni and Nat, they live on a farm where Lojbani chicken is one of the animals.

A full first story will hopefully be appearing on Wiggly Pets soon 🙂

Once the image above is digitally edited (this is just what I russeled up using my new birthday pens and colouring pencils.) there will be speech bubbles saying such things as fi'i - meaning welcome.

Other existing characters include Esperanto Cat and Toki Pona kitten. I haven't decided yet what creatures should represent any of the natural languages - mainly due to worrying about offending people :/ I might do something like have made up creatures for natural languages and real animals for the constructed languages - suggestions welcome 🙂

I am hoping to produce some more of the characters as part of the 100 birds in 100 days challenge I am currently doing over on Orange Monster.

A Snowy Spring (by sarah)

I went out and took more photos of snow - mainly as the sun was now shining.

I have always loved sun beams 🙂

The sun seemed to exist in a strip highlighting some lovely buildings in the distance - I liked the contrast as it makes some of the buildings appear to glow.

I found a ruin at the side of the road - I think I was in Leckhampton.

Earlier on in another area I found pig stys that look almost apocolyptic.

I photoed snowy crags using max zoom.

And the best bit was I found woolly pigs! If anyone knows the bred I would be greatful if you would let me know!