Joan's Squidoo Blog

I’ve made a new lens that is a catalog of the music featured on the weekly radio show “Le Show” starring Harry Shearer.  It’s going to take some work to maintain it, adding the songs from each week’s broadcast and also adding past weeks (I want to get all the way back to the beginning of the year, at least).

This is the first lens I’ve ever had that demanded regularly scheduled maintenance.  Wish me luck!

I don’t do a lot of sales lenses, but this is one that I feel passionate about.  I’m absolutely in love with the product and want to share it far and wide.  It’s a hymnal that covers the music of the black American church in a way that I have never seen any other hymnbook do.  Here’s my lens about the African-American Heritage Hymnal.

As a part of the Purple Star Weekend, a purple star was given to my SquidWho lens on Merkin Muffley.  Yay!

I really like my movie review lens for Dr. Strangelove, and I’d like to drive more traffic to it.  So I’ve started a set of SquidWho lenses for the major characters in the film (none of them had SquidWho pages yet).

I published the first one yesterday.  It’s about Merkin Muffley, who is President of the U. S. in the movie.  I’ve included a poll and a duel where visitors can express their opinions about his presidency.

You’ve probably been hearing the buzz about Worldwide Squidoo Meetup Day.  I volunteered to host the Los Angeles meetup and made a lens about it.  If you’re in Los Angeles, you’re invited to the Los Angeles Suidoo Meetup.

I haven’t blogged here in a while, but I am still Squidooing.  So here’s what’s been going on since you last heard from me.

I’ve gotten a couple more purple stars — one for the lens about my father, and one for my clover lens.
I’ve made 15 lenses since the last time I posted here.  They are:

• A few lenses for the “Get Cracking” challenges — A personal “first” (my first Bible verse), a local festival or celebration (the annual USC vs. UCLA football game), a health-related lens (the best things about breastfeeding), and one about “children’s programming” (our experiences using the SiMPLE programming language).
• An addition to my edible weeds series, this one is about Chenopodium murale, a variety of goosefoot.
• Three lensographies — a new & improved choir music lensography with a really good URL, a homeschooling lensography, and a pop music lensography.
• Four new choir lenses — a Linchpin lens about my favorite type of choir members, an addition to my “greatest gospel choir songs” series (this one is about “Total Praise” by Richard Smallwood), a Duel lens about whether or not choir members who miss rehearsal should be allowed to sing anyway, a lens on the best gospel choir songs for Easter (that one did BIG traffic during the Easter season).
• One pop music lens, a Monkeybrain debate on whether it was a good move for The Pointer Sisters to switch from jazz to pop.  I included lots of music on that lens, so if you like The Pointer Sisters you should definitely drop by.
• A lens about my experience of breaking a toe again (I broke it on April 27th.  It’s gotten a lot better now, hardly hurts at all).  This was my first time using the SquidVids co-brand, its a video showcase of people talking about their toe fractures.
• And a Ten Newest Lenses lens.

Whew!

I hope that everyone will drop by and look at the Black History Month lens I made.  It shares the life story of a truly inspiring man, my father.

Thomas Alexander – A Black History Month tribute

This one goes into more depth than my overall choir directing lens.  It’s aimed at entry-level directors and provides a step-by-step guide to the best practices for teaching songs to a gospel choir.

How to teach a choir song: The basics.

The-Java-Gal has only written three lenses, but they are fantastic.  So far she’s writing about music and food with intelligence and insight.  Check her out and welcome her to the family!

My newest lens, My favorite non-hits by James Taylor, is featured today on the Squidoo Music blog!

By the way, if you’re not following Squidoo Music, you need to start.  Really.  They’ve got some fantastic stuff.

Here’s a direct link to the blog post: This is what a music lens should be like: James Taylors’ non-hits

Chapel Hill Fiddler says some awfully nice things about the lens in her post.  Thank you, Jane!