May 2, 2026

The full moon sets over the prairie as the sun rises over the lake.

Video by Meade. I appear briefly, as the lone figure in a red hat. The music soundtrack is the delightful "Regular Rabbit," with lyrics by a 3-year old. See below, after the jump.

While Meade was doing video, I was doing stills. Here's one:

IMG_7028

Here's "Regular Rabbit":

Here's a New Yorker article about Spencer: "Meet the Dad Making Music from Toddler Twaddle/Stephen Spencer is a college music lecturer, but his side gig is producing songs written by his three-year-old. 'Apple The Stoola,' Record of the Year?" Excerpt:
“I’m interested in the musicality of the world,” he said.... 
Spencer is thirty-five and barrel-chested, with three-day scruff on his smiling face. He does not, at a glance, appear to be a man to sing in falsetto. After grad school at McGill, he received a Ph.D. in music theory and composition from the City University of New York. His dissertation was titled “A Multilevel Approach to the Analysis and Visualization of Timbral Brightness in Post-Tonal Music.” (Obviously.) He’s now a lecturer at Hunter College.... 
In his lectures at Hunter, Spencer said, he encourages his students to develop a creative innocence. “You’re in the sandbox playing,” he said. “Let’s postpone the judgment or appraisal and feel free to make music joyfully and in an unfiltered way. My students make fun of me, because they’ll say something like ‘How do I practice this?’ And I’ll be, like, ‘You have to love yourself.’ ”

6 comments:

RCOCEAN II said...

That's great. If he can do that at three, he'll be another Dylan at 10.

RCOCEAN II said...

I'm suprised how open the area is. I thought from previous pictures the whole thing was trees.

Dave Begley said...

Looks like the lone figure has been set loose.

Ann Althouse said...

"I'm suprised how open the area is. I thought from previous pictures the whole thing was trees."

There is a large area called the "Biocore" that is a prairie restoration. Read about it here: https://lakeshorepreserve.wisc.edu/visit/places/biocore-prairie/

"The field occupies approximately 11 acres; we started with a small portion and have gradually taken on more. The first experiments compared three procedures for controlling the weeds and non-native grasses that covered the site when we began: mulching, repeated rototilling, and repeated mowing plus herbicide. We carried out the treatments from spring through fall 1998 on a series of plots in the northeast corner of the site.Then, in November, students planted each plot with a seed mixture containing 61 prairie species. The experiment was repeated on another series of plots over 2 growing seasons and planted in November 2000. We were very disappointed to find that none of the procedures was successful in controlling the weeds. This area is particularly challenging because decades of growing weeds has resulted in a large bank of weed seeds in the soil. Nevertheless, we continue to work on it, removing weeds and adding prairie plants each summer."

There was a controlled burn recently. That's why everything looks short. If you saw it in daytime a lot of it is quite charred. But new stuff, presumably the good stuff, is growing up. Maybe you can catch a look in some of Meade's video.

The video looks out from the prairie into the more wooded areas and out onto the lake. Because the sun is so far to the north now, we can see the sunrise from the vantage point of the biocore prairie.

Aggie said...

Mr prediction is that the controlled burn will favor the native prairie species. I've done some before and was astounded at how the grasses came back, completely different and very lush.

Aggie said...

Pretty remarkable Tour de Force on the SPLC legal matter. Long read, but I think it's worth it. Don't lie to the banks, kids.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/nonprofit-indicted-bank-fraud/

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