Especially for Halloween

The is absolutely the scariest movie scene ever. (The Haunting, 1963) Part of a team investigating pyschic phenomenon, Nel and Theo are sharing a room in a notriously haunted house. I don't usually link to video clips, but I just learned to do this so I'm delighted with myself. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYoP6dKxAjU

Halloween Windows Bloomsburg 2009

Every year Bloomsburg area students paint the windows of businesses along Main Street for Halloween. This weekend a fire destroyed three historic storefront buildings on Main Street, a terrible tragedy for those who operated businesses there or who lost everything in the apartments above. By comparison, the three painted Halloween windows that no longer exist are minor. They were designed to be emphemeral, and would have been washed off in a few weeks anyway. But they were some of my favorites, so it feels nice to know they live on here.

The demon baby, at top, made a strange and apt pairing with demon chipmunk. above, on the same storefront at Main and Jefferson. If the chipmunk didn't look so demented, it would probably be my selection for Cutest Window: as it is, it's in a category by iteself.

Halloween ala Sendak, below, was on the former Town Camera storefront.

Some of the images worked especially well in their settings. This coy little French Maid of a Witchlette (below left) hovered behind the bench in front of VanDyke Goldsmith and incorporated the store's logo and architectural elements behind the glass. It could've all been too much, but it works. And the embracing mummy and skeleton in the window of the Cloak and Dragon bookstore worked with the exisiting colors of the window frame in a challenging tall narrow space... a reminder to us all that no one loves you like your mummy.

For sheer mayhem, I like the splashy colors and Day-of-the-Dead energy of this graveyard scene, above.

And this geeky scene on the window of The Vision Center (I'm not making this up) has wild color and a 3-d effect on that dangling eyeball that just doesn't come across in the photo.

The pair below just seem made for each other: on the left, a skeletal figure stands beneath a tree with leaves like detached hands, and at right, a scruffy soothsayer with a crystal ball swirling with ghosts.

Ghouls in formal attire was a recurring theme this year. Here's one of my favorites on a Tim Burton theme. The imagie nicely incorporates the merchandise in The Costume Shop window behind it, too. (Note the butterfly shape paired with the bat-tie, and the red plastic pitchfork on the left...a perfect accessory for the corpse-groom out for a night on the town...)

Finally, I think this one (along with the demon baby that begins this page) is tied for my favorite. The seketal figure puttin' on the Ritz below is on the papered window of a vacant storefront on Main Street. Too many of those these days, but this makes the most of a bad situation...(It would be just about perfect if those were the Society pages behind him.)

FREE RICE AGAIN!

Those of you who frequent the Crow's Voice more than the Crow does may remember that about this time last year I was promoting Free Rice, a website vocabulary game that donated rice to the UN World Food Program. If you haven't been there in a while, now's a good time to visit again. The vocabulary game is still there, but there's now a grammar component, a geography option, and games for chemistry, math, French, German, Italian and Spanish AND (my personal favorite) Art History.

You only donate 10 grains of rice per correct answer now, due to global economic pressures, so it's important to play even more and promote the game to your freinds and family. Just click on the picture above to link to Free Rice.

While you're on the site take a look at the totals Free Rice has generated so far and see how your country ranks in its commitment to end world hunger. (The US is pretty pathetic so far. You can click on a link to print off a letter urging Obama to make it a goal.)

Unscrew America

This website for Unscrew America is one of the most animated sites I've seen since Aardman's homepage. It's full of wacky interactive creatures and drawings that guide you from the dark recesses of regular incandesant bulbs into the true light of LEDs and compact florescents. If only we could unscrew the rest of America as easily as we unscrew a lightbulb. Visit the link. http://unscrewamerica.org/It feels good. No kidding!

NIU Memorial

Anyone who attended NIU in the last thirty-some years knows the room where last week's shootings occurred. I took my GREs in that room. My husband took his advance placement tests there. The film club screened free foreign and classic movies there on a weekly basis throughout the 1980s.

I had several classes in Cole Hall, and for six years the hallway that ran through Cole was a convenient daily short cut to buildings where I had classes and offices in DuSable and Reavis.

I have dozens of friends who still work and teach there, some of whom now have children who attend NIU. The events of 2/14 did not touch them directly. They were not in Jamison auditorium when the gunman opened fire. But true community has no boundaries in time or distance. I remember the places where I thought and laughed, studied and daydreamed, and feel desperately sad.

The Art of Edward F. Scott

New at the Crow's Nest: Three pages featuring the glass and wire
sculptures of long-time Evanston resident, Edward F. Scott.

Here's just a sample of what you'll find...

Art in Airports: Chicago's Millennium Chandeliers

When you’re travelling with the Tao even long layovers at one of the nation’s busiest airports can yield sublime discoveries, thanks to After School Matters, a non-profit partnership with Chicago area schools, parks, libraries and organizations that gives Chicago area teens a chance to gain valuable hands-on experience that can lead to career opportunities. To see more pictures and read more about ASM's Gallery37 collaboration with Chihuly Studio, visit The Crow's Nest (link at right) the companion website for this blog.