Home » Squidoo Community » About Me

More different than is absolutely necessary.

Ranked #3,378 in Squidoo Community, #248,905 overall | Donates to Squidoo Charity Fund

It's not my fault, I was drawn this way.

This is a collection of the lenses I've built, and it reflects my lifelong attraction to things which are obscure or forgotten, or difficult, or unpopular. I was a queen of the "long tail" before it was ever invented.

In 1984, when I was a part-time typesetter in Durham, NC, my boss at "Universal Printing and Publishing Company" - where I was working with my new-born daughter in a car-seat on my desk - gave me a cash bonus along with a card that had a clown sort of like this one on the cover and the printed comment, "You're more different than is absolutely necessary," printed inside.

Ah, the story of my life. No wonder I now live alone with a donkey and 10 chickens. UPDATE: for at least a while now my son has moved back home - and takes care of the donkey - and a friend going through a divorce that's leaving her strapped is living with me too - so it's a full house, and a happy one!

Image from "Roosters Metacreations," see below.

My newest lenses

I found it impossible to keep this lensography up to date. I may try from time to time, but at least here you'll see the newest ones as they're published.

Loading

Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart - the real wagon itself, and the art on it...

Loading

I'm a musician by trade, so naturally I have more lenses about music - my cds, songbooks, performing groups, and wedding music - than anything else. I've offloaded all my music lenses to a separate lensography (see below).

Skylark Productions: folk and traditional music

CDs, songbooks, and performers

I originally joined Squidoo hoping to get more work playing for weddings and get more customers for my cds and songbooks. Is it working? Hard to tell. But in the mean time, I had fun writing these lenses and now, collecting them all into one place - the Skylark Productions lens.
Loading

DIY

Loading

What Stumbleupon.com teaches about building an effective website.

In order to succeed with visitors in a hurry, a website needs to be as succinct as, well, explaining the Torah while standing on one foot. StumbleUpon makes it all the more critical. Lessons learned about web design while stumbling.
Loading

Building stuff

Loading

All my Jewish lenses - and you can add yours to the plexo

Loading

Kids and Mentoring

Also ideas for home-schooling!
Loading

My thanksgiving meditations

For when I need mantras on happiness...

Loading

All my songbooks available on Amazon's Createspace - and their lenses.

Createspace ships VERY quickly!


The TJC Hanukah Songbook More information


The Triangle Jewish Chorale Songbook More information


The Three Log Night Songbook: uncommon music for the holiday season (Christmas and Hanukkah) More information


Let Memory Keep Us All (the Solstice Assembly songbook) More information


The Laduvane Songbook (women's slavic a cappella (Balkan) music More information


Songs Anyone Can Sing More information

Food lenses

Loading

The Best Purple Star Lenses

Well, my favorites on two particular late night rambles down the list.

I am very pleased to have received three purple stars. I only just "found" the place where you can see all the almost 700 (as of November 2009) purple star lenses, and went through the list from the bottom up to find some I really loved.
Loading

A queen of the "Long Tail."

This term, coined by Chris Anderson, is a marketing concept. From Wikipedia: The group that purchases a large number of "non-hit" items is the demographic called the Long Tail.

The idea is that whereas, for instance, maybe 85% of the cd-buying public is looking for the most popular recordings, by Britney Spears or the Beatles or whoever (recordings made by 5% of musicians), 15% of the cd-buying public (at best), the "Long Tail," is buying the rest - anything from old Bob and Ray comedy albums to music of the Inuit - in other words, recordings made by the less popular 95% of musicians.

That's me - I both create and purchase cds of virtually no interest to most of the world. And proud of it.

Wikipedia continues: Long Tail also has implications for the producers of content, especially those whose products could not - for economic reasons - find a place in pre-Internet information distribution channels controlled by book publishers, record companies, movie studios, and television networks.

Looked at from the producers' side, the Long Tail has made possible a flowering of creativity across all fields of human endeavour. One example of this is YouTube, where thousands of diverse videos - whose content, production value or lack of popularity make them inappropriate for traditional television - are easily accessible to a wide range of viewers.

I would add that Squidoo is a sterling example of a "Home of the Long Tail." Thank you, Squidoo, for making it possible for us to showcase our weird interests!

Some of the websites where I would sell stuff if anybody wanted to buy it.

Music and art for the "Long Tail."

Skylark Productions - books and cds
You can find all my cds for sale at Skylark Productions, and the books of sheet music I've written.
My Zazzle store: Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart
I'm gradually getting my artwork scanned and put up at the Zazzle store.
Wedding Music in North Carolina
It's like pushing concrete blocks uphill to try and get work as a musician during a recession. People can do without live music. An awful lot of brides these days were brought up on 90% canned music and think it's just fine to bring their iPods to their receptions instead of having real human musicians. Sigh, sigh, sigh. It's just not the same, if only the realized it!

Lenses about animals

Loading

"World Music Our Way."

My band Mappamundi's cd

From "Djulber Nedo," a Bulgarian song about a beautiful girl on a swing who's dumping the lad her parents prefer in favor of the boy who brings the groceries, to "William Glenn," a moral story warning you not to go sailing with a murderer. I'm very proud of this recording!

This widget is fabulous. Just click on the image and songs will start to play! Miracle!

Make your own giant puppets, masks, and Punch and Judy dolls

I've off-loaded all mylenses on making street puppets, making plaster casts for Punch and Judy heads, using paper mache to make puppets and masks, etc. into a separate list - the one below.
Loading

Art

Loading

Lenses about Paris

Loading

Long Tail Motto

I love telenovelas!

Loading

"Other"

Loading

Four lenses about deer fences and deer repellant

Oh I used to get so so mad at the deer eating everything around my property. Then I built a deer fence. It was a huge job but I enjoy it every day, watching the deer walking around the outside of the fence eating stuff on my ex-husband's side (he lives next door). Bliss!
Loading

Hanukah lenses

Or Hanukkah. Or Hannukah. Or Chanukah. Or...

Loading

Pratie Place: "I Can't Keep Up"

My personal blog, since January 2005

Loading Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

Roosters-metacreations

The image in my intro came from this artist

Based in Scotland, Roosters metacreations makes sculpture out of recycled metal. Go over and have a look!

Salada Tea Wisdom

Any thoughts?

submit
Show All

This module only appears with actual data when viewed on a live lens. The favorite and lensroll options will appear on a live lens if the viewer is a member of Squidoo and logged in.

Add this to your lens »

by

ChapelHillFiddler

Musician in Chapel Hill with two bands: Mappamundi, a world music - klezmer - swing band, and the Pratie Heads, a Celtic - British Isles - early music... more »

Feeling creative? Create a Lens!

Related Tags