Yesterday morning, my car engine hiccuping and pausing when I started it, I drove to the car repair place. The service fellow told me they could check it out at 4. So, I left to do some errands, the car running pretty good. I spent a few minutes at the computer repair place, then got back into the car. It wouldn't start, quiet as a doornail. The noonday sun was hot when a pop-a-lock guy arrived half an hour later. He started the engine with jumper cables, and agreed to follow me to the repair shop. Every light turned red as I approached, so it took a while. I frequently glanced up at the rearview mirror, comforted to see the little pop-a-lock vehicle behind me. About a mile from the destination, I noticed the needle of the gas gauge was WAY below EMPTY. For the first time, I felt a bit of panic. Had someone emptied my tank? It was over half full the day before. Then I saw NONE of the gauges were working, the speedometer on zero, the engine temperature gauge drooping down to colder than cold. The car was hot, the air conditioner silent as well. I was is a rush of traffic, and so pulled to the right lane to slow a bit.
Up ahead was the left turn into the service shop. The pop-a-lock guy beeped his horn and sped on his way. I changed lanes, rolled up into the driveway, started to shift into reverse to park when I realized the engine was now completely dead. Struggling with the frozen steering wheel, I pointed it forward to the nearest spot. We rolled almost all the way in before coming to a complete and silent stop.
I counted my blessings, checked in with the service guy, and walked home. They outfitted the car with a new alternator and a battery. I walked back to the shop, paid the bill, retrieved the doctored vehicle, drove home with a pizza, and all is good.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Monday, May 27, 2013
in praise of sticks -
Perhaps we don't think of sticks as living, but they can be.
Old sticks may be alive in the sense of what life forms their decomposing matter is supporting. There may be lichens on the bark, mites or insect eggs in the inner tissue. An old stick can be a small ecosystem of its own!
New sticks can be living in and of themselves, apart from the parent tree or shrub, with the capacity to reproduce. A twig laying on the earth among moist leaves and debris may shoot out roots to create a new plant.
Neither boring nor trashy, sticks are treasure!
Old sticks may be alive in the sense of what life forms their decomposing matter is supporting. There may be lichens on the bark, mites or insect eggs in the inner tissue. An old stick can be a small ecosystem of its own!
New sticks can be living in and of themselves, apart from the parent tree or shrub, with the capacity to reproduce. A twig laying on the earth among moist leaves and debris may shoot out roots to create a new plant.
Neither boring nor trashy, sticks are treasure!
Not necessarily true in real life, but oddly, in the game of chess, one could do worse than be a pawn. One could be king.
Image from Wikimedia Commons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess
Friday, May 24, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
The first sentence of the Wiki article for 'smoke signal' is this: The smoke signal is one of the oldest forms of long-distance communication.
( Image of a 1905 painting by Frederic Remington, via Wikimedia Commons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frederic_Remington_smoke_signal.jpg )
Native American Indians come to mind with the term 'smoke signal', but communicating this way has been used by other cultures, too. I like the thought of the Chinese on The Great Wall passing messages at night some 400 or so miles along the wall, station to station. You gotta wonder though, if, like with kids playing telephone, the message that reaches the end of the wall isn't a lot different from the one that was started at the beginning!
( Image of a 1905 painting by Frederic Remington, via Wikimedia Commons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frederic_Remington_smoke_signal.jpg )
Native American Indians come to mind with the term 'smoke signal', but communicating this way has been used by other cultures, too. I like the thought of the Chinese on The Great Wall passing messages at night some 400 or so miles along the wall, station to station. You gotta wonder though, if, like with kids playing telephone, the message that reaches the end of the wall isn't a lot different from the one that was started at the beginning!
This is an image of a nature print of a fern by Alois Auer, created in the mid-1800s, offered via Wikimedia Commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nature_print,_Alois_Auer_.jpg
This is an image of nature printed North American currency by Benjamin Franklin, offered via Wikimedia Commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benjamin_Franklin_nature_printed_currency_sheet_1779.jpg
The process of nature printing uses the desired subject itself (for example: leaves, flowers) to create a pressure imprint on a surface then used to make prints.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Mountain Pygmy Owl, image taken by Dominic Sherony, available for sharing via Wikimedia Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mountain_Pygmy_Owl_Glaucidium_gnoma_Arizona.jpg
love and owls
show up
at unexpected
times and places
when you hear an owl
no matter how
distant you may be
you know the owl
hears you too
When I was maybe 13 years old, I won a clock radio in a contest. Actually, I won a kitchen sink, and when they saw who showed up at the appliance store that sponsored the contest, they let me take home the radio instead of a sink.
It was a beauty. Not quite a foot and a half long, the shell was of sturdy off-white plastic. The clock was on the left, the speaker on the right. Every night when I went to bed around 10, I set a little timer knob on thirty minutes, and gradually fell asleep listening to 'moldy oldies' which to this particular disc jockey of the mid to late 60s meant songs from the 50s. He always started off with 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and often included some Elvis.
During the day, especially in the summer when school was out, I listened to the top hits and felt connected to every other teenager in the continental United States. And once a week there was the top 40 countdown (country wide) with lots of noise and fanfare.
In this way, I became acquainted with Mo-town's Supremes, Johnny Rivers, Otis Redding, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. The Beatles, The Association, The Cowsills, Procol Haram, the Beach Boys, The Jackson Five, and - was it Strawberry Alarm Clock? Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs? The Monkees.
Not everybody listened to this station - I mean it was really geared for teens, tweens, and young adults. There was a country station that was separate (though Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash and eventually Willie Nelson crossed the line into top 40), and there was an adult station that went with Dean Martin, Peggy Lee and the like. At noon it carried Paul Harvey, and read aloud all the stock exchange shifts of the day (This and That Consolidated, up by three quarters, Such and Such Incorporated, down by a half). Those were the FM stations. The truly local music, like Clifton Chenier and various Cajun bands and commentary in local French patois could be found on the AM stations of the little towns of central Louisiana.
The local high schools each week sent in a student to read off the news from their school. One week, the girl from our school who held this job was unable to make it, and I filled in. This was fun. The spiel was taped, and I got to hear my voice on my favorite station later that night.
The stations turned off around 11 PM or midnight. Sometimes, wide awake at 2 AM, my parents and sibs asleep in other rooms, I caught distant stations in places like Oklahoma, and wondered what were the people like who lived that far away.
By age 18, I moved on to an 8-track player. This had the advantage of letting me listen to what I wanted, whenever I wanted, however many times I wanted. The sound quality was better.
But it's the clock radio with the station with the contests, the 60s hits and local DJs, and the wistful call of 'Lion Sleeps Tonight' that are dear.
It was a beauty. Not quite a foot and a half long, the shell was of sturdy off-white plastic. The clock was on the left, the speaker on the right. Every night when I went to bed around 10, I set a little timer knob on thirty minutes, and gradually fell asleep listening to 'moldy oldies' which to this particular disc jockey of the mid to late 60s meant songs from the 50s. He always started off with 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and often included some Elvis.
During the day, especially in the summer when school was out, I listened to the top hits and felt connected to every other teenager in the continental United States. And once a week there was the top 40 countdown (country wide) with lots of noise and fanfare.
In this way, I became acquainted with Mo-town's Supremes, Johnny Rivers, Otis Redding, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. The Beatles, The Association, The Cowsills, Procol Haram, the Beach Boys, The Jackson Five, and - was it Strawberry Alarm Clock? Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs? The Monkees.
Not everybody listened to this station - I mean it was really geared for teens, tweens, and young adults. There was a country station that was separate (though Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash and eventually Willie Nelson crossed the line into top 40), and there was an adult station that went with Dean Martin, Peggy Lee and the like. At noon it carried Paul Harvey, and read aloud all the stock exchange shifts of the day (This and That Consolidated, up by three quarters, Such and Such Incorporated, down by a half). Those were the FM stations. The truly local music, like Clifton Chenier and various Cajun bands and commentary in local French patois could be found on the AM stations of the little towns of central Louisiana.
The local high schools each week sent in a student to read off the news from their school. One week, the girl from our school who held this job was unable to make it, and I filled in. This was fun. The spiel was taped, and I got to hear my voice on my favorite station later that night.
The stations turned off around 11 PM or midnight. Sometimes, wide awake at 2 AM, my parents and sibs asleep in other rooms, I caught distant stations in places like Oklahoma, and wondered what were the people like who lived that far away.
By age 18, I moved on to an 8-track player. This had the advantage of letting me listen to what I wanted, whenever I wanted, however many times I wanted. The sound quality was better.
But it's the clock radio with the station with the contests, the 60s hits and local DJs, and the wistful call of 'Lion Sleeps Tonight' that are dear.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
From a neuropsychological standpoint, an advantage to a written language such as the Korean mixed-script is that the brain is receiving information in varied formats. The information is processed and stored using a greater number of locations in the brain. You have the alphabet letters that are labels for the phonetics - the auditory sound of each word, and you have additional small pictograms to prompt the meaning of the word through visual recognition. Each mixed-script word gives the reader different ways to identify the meaning - from a previously memorized list of images, and from letters (as in English) to sound out how the word is pronounced.
In English, people use both word recognition and phonetics to read a word, but in the Korean mixed-script, the information comes in a way that's almost like having two separate types of written language, a phonetic word and a memorized image, sealed in each syllable block of the writing.
So, when information is processed and stored using a larger network of pathways into a greater number of locations, it's likely easier to hold on to the data in the event of distraction, stroke, dementia, or other interference to brain function. There is likely to be less memory loss. In the same way, research has noted that a person who can comprehend and communicate in more than one language, especially if additional languages are learned before the age of 7, is likely to suffer less damage to language memory and functions in the event of brain trauma or disease later in life.
In English, people use both word recognition and phonetics to read a word, but in the Korean mixed-script, the information comes in a way that's almost like having two separate types of written language, a phonetic word and a memorized image, sealed in each syllable block of the writing.
So, when information is processed and stored using a larger network of pathways into a greater number of locations, it's likely easier to hold on to the data in the event of distraction, stroke, dementia, or other interference to brain function. There is likely to be less memory loss. In the same way, research has noted that a person who can comprehend and communicate in more than one language, especially if additional languages are learned before the age of 7, is likely to suffer less damage to language memory and functions in the event of brain trauma or disease later in life.
Perhaps it was 1981 when I went to a dinner gathering and met a couple from South Korea who were at that time students at University of Texas. I've long remembered a conversation with them, where they helped me to understand how Korean writing worked. The writing process was both very logical, and beautiful to the eye. The young man demonstrated how their written language combined both phonetics (information about how the word sounds) and ideograms (pictures conveying meaning) within every box-shaped symbol.
I looked it up tonight, and realize that what he was demonstrating was Korean mixed script, combining the phonetic system devised in Korea in the 1440s (hangul), and the Chinese pictogram system (known in Korea as hanja).
The mixed script approach however has become relatively short-lived. North Korea used hangul by law since 1949. South Korea has slowly moved in that direction as well, dropping the mixed-script that was in usage at the time of the dinner party, although here and there adding a hanja for greater clarity.
Hangul has a phonetic alphabet of 24 letters, and each block of writing includes 2 to 5 letters to spell out a syllable. (If this were applied in English, for example, for the word 'contest', it would be spelled with two blocks, the first with the c-o-n sounds, the second with t-e-s-t.) Vowel letters are shaped differently than consonants, so they stand out. There has been speculation that hangul speeds up reading and comprehension because the brain can so quickly grasp the content.
The phonetic system of hangul brought reading and writing to the masses. For ancient Korea, writing prior to hangul was based on the Chinese origin hanja, the thousands of little ideograms, and ancient Korean historical documents are all written in hanja. Hanja was for the fortunate scholars, requiring great effort to learn and practise, requiring more memorization than the future systems of hangul and mixed-script. Hanja are still taught in high school and college in the current-day Koreas as a separate writing system. The hanja vary some from one country to the next.
This is the best I could glean from an hour or two of browsing and deciphering, and forgive me if there are some inaccuracies. Meanwhile, I remain fascinated by the Koreans' mixed-script written language as demonstrated at dinner some thirty years ago.
I looked it up tonight, and realize that what he was demonstrating was Korean mixed script, combining the phonetic system devised in Korea in the 1440s (hangul), and the Chinese pictogram system (known in Korea as hanja).
The mixed script approach however has become relatively short-lived. North Korea used hangul by law since 1949. South Korea has slowly moved in that direction as well, dropping the mixed-script that was in usage at the time of the dinner party, although here and there adding a hanja for greater clarity.
Hangul has a phonetic alphabet of 24 letters, and each block of writing includes 2 to 5 letters to spell out a syllable. (If this were applied in English, for example, for the word 'contest', it would be spelled with two blocks, the first with the c-o-n sounds, the second with t-e-s-t.) Vowel letters are shaped differently than consonants, so they stand out. There has been speculation that hangul speeds up reading and comprehension because the brain can so quickly grasp the content.
The phonetic system of hangul brought reading and writing to the masses. For ancient Korea, writing prior to hangul was based on the Chinese origin hanja, the thousands of little ideograms, and ancient Korean historical documents are all written in hanja. Hanja was for the fortunate scholars, requiring great effort to learn and practise, requiring more memorization than the future systems of hangul and mixed-script. Hanja are still taught in high school and college in the current-day Koreas as a separate writing system. The hanja vary some from one country to the next.
This is the best I could glean from an hour or two of browsing and deciphering, and forgive me if there are some inaccuracies. Meanwhile, I remain fascinated by the Koreans' mixed-script written language as demonstrated at dinner some thirty years ago.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
the mushrooms in the fridge had gone a little funky, so they happily went to the compost today. Each day, I carry a shovel and the steel bowl of food remnants to small boundaried areas of the yard. I dig a shallow depression, deposit the coffee grounds, egg shells, sour milk, and peels and stems of cucumbers, strawberries, bananas, onions, apples, collards and the like into the hole, cover with an inch of earth and leaves and twigs. I then add a cup or two of water and leave it alone. That's it; nature swiftly goes to work.
my first compost project ended a few weeks ago. The depleted soil responded to the kitchen debris and to the rain (and perhaps to some gentle encouragement); there are tomatoes on the vines.
my first compost project ended a few weeks ago. The depleted soil responded to the kitchen debris and to the rain (and perhaps to some gentle encouragement); there are tomatoes on the vines.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
The Society for Creative Anachronism consists of a group of people who congregate to live out their favorite aspects life in Medieval Europe before 1700. Some exist mainly to bash and clash with each other in public melees; others might embrace some aspect of medieval life as specific as the arts of illumination or medieval dance.
The Society first occurred as a backyard party of costumed participants in Berkeley, California, protesting 'against the 20th century'. It has grown into an international living history organization with chapters erupting sporadically. A Wikipedia article notes there has even been a group on the nuclear-powered Naval aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, which is a rather striking juxtaposition of past and modern existence.
The Society first occurred as a backyard party of costumed participants in Berkeley, California, protesting 'against the 20th century'. It has grown into an international living history organization with chapters erupting sporadically. A Wikipedia article notes there has even been a group on the nuclear-powered Naval aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, which is a rather striking juxtaposition of past and modern existence.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Here is a crazy puzzle I've pondered off and on these past several years. On the most tangible level, it involves point-of-focus. Point-of-focus for the eyes, and point-of focus for a camera. This is the first time I've mapped it out in writing, and it's hard to describe the variables clearly, but here goes.
Let's say in this puzzle, there is a flower precisely 8 inches away, and a tree precisely 80 yards away.
The healthy human eye automatically adjusts its focal point, the 8 inches away object is near, the 80 yards is far. Both are seen in sharp detail, neither is blurred because the eyes adjust to the different distances. If you manually focused your camera, the flower would require a near setting, the tree a more distant setting.
Now, let's say there is a painting hanging on a wall 3 feet away where the artist has produced a true-to-life reproduction of a flower 8 inches away and a tree 80 yards away. The healthy human eyes no longer focus at 8 inches or at 80 yards. They focus on the distance of the painting. They focus on the surface of the canvas. The tree and flower are paint on a flat surface, and the focal point is the distance of that flat surface, 3 feet, not the original distances of the flower and the tree. If you were to manually focus your camera lens, it would be at 3 feet, whether you aimed toward the tree or the flower part of the painting.
Now here's the puzzle: Let's say you are facing a mirror, the tree 80 yards away. You gaze at the reflection of the tree. Do your eyes adjust to 80 yards, or to the glass up close to you where you could touch the reflection of the distant tree with your fingertips? You and the flower are 8 inches away from the mirror. How far is the focal point when you gaze at the reflection of the flower?
Now you have your camera in hand. You face the mirror and take a photo of the reflection of the flower, and of the tree 80 yards back, visible on the glass surface of the mirror. At what focal setting is the flower clear? the tree? You turn around and face the tree. At what distance does the camera focus then? You take a picture.
Now you've made a poster of each of the images you took. You have them on a wall, again, 3 feet away. You look at the poster of the mirror reflection of the flower and tree. You look at the poster of the flower and tree. At what distance do the eyes focus? (and the camera?)
I've been thinking about this a long time, and probably have the answers to these questions. But my last questions would be Why? and How is this important?
Let's say in this puzzle, there is a flower precisely 8 inches away, and a tree precisely 80 yards away.
The healthy human eye automatically adjusts its focal point, the 8 inches away object is near, the 80 yards is far. Both are seen in sharp detail, neither is blurred because the eyes adjust to the different distances. If you manually focused your camera, the flower would require a near setting, the tree a more distant setting.
Now, let's say there is a painting hanging on a wall 3 feet away where the artist has produced a true-to-life reproduction of a flower 8 inches away and a tree 80 yards away. The healthy human eyes no longer focus at 8 inches or at 80 yards. They focus on the distance of the painting. They focus on the surface of the canvas. The tree and flower are paint on a flat surface, and the focal point is the distance of that flat surface, 3 feet, not the original distances of the flower and the tree. If you were to manually focus your camera lens, it would be at 3 feet, whether you aimed toward the tree or the flower part of the painting.
Now here's the puzzle: Let's say you are facing a mirror, the tree 80 yards away. You gaze at the reflection of the tree. Do your eyes adjust to 80 yards, or to the glass up close to you where you could touch the reflection of the distant tree with your fingertips? You and the flower are 8 inches away from the mirror. How far is the focal point when you gaze at the reflection of the flower?
Now you have your camera in hand. You face the mirror and take a photo of the reflection of the flower, and of the tree 80 yards back, visible on the glass surface of the mirror. At what focal setting is the flower clear? the tree? You turn around and face the tree. At what distance does the camera focus then? You take a picture.
Now you've made a poster of each of the images you took. You have them on a wall, again, 3 feet away. You look at the poster of the mirror reflection of the flower and tree. You look at the poster of the flower and tree. At what distance do the eyes focus? (and the camera?)
I've been thinking about this a long time, and probably have the answers to these questions. But my last questions would be Why? and How is this important?
Friday, May 10, 2013
There have been dogs and cats throughout my life, and they brought me and my family great joy and companionship, entertainment and comfort. Nearly all were spayed or neutered, most of which occurred before I knew the animals. There were a couple of pets, though, where we followed the message of the 80s and 90s that the world was overrun by cats and dogs, that thousands were exterminated in shelters because of lack of homes to care for them, and that the only responsible thing to do given these conditions was spay! neuter! And, on automatic pilot, that's what we did.
Then, with the last cat, a child cried to discover there would be no kittens. 'Not ever?'
This got through to me. I knew lots of the reasons to neuter and spay. Now I got to thinking about the other side of the course we were following. We'd denied some of our most loved pets the chance to experience the reproductive and parental aspects of life. My family lost an opportunity to see our pets as parents, to see how animals nurture and feed their young, to watch kittens grow from blind, helpless little creatures to playful juveniles. And we put an end to the gene pool of some of our best friends! We made life so neat and tidy, and could it be perhaps, most essentially, wrong?
How I'd love to know a descendent of one of my beautiful, quirky, long-ago companions - but there are none.
Then, with the last cat, a child cried to discover there would be no kittens. 'Not ever?'
This got through to me. I knew lots of the reasons to neuter and spay. Now I got to thinking about the other side of the course we were following. We'd denied some of our most loved pets the chance to experience the reproductive and parental aspects of life. My family lost an opportunity to see our pets as parents, to see how animals nurture and feed their young, to watch kittens grow from blind, helpless little creatures to playful juveniles. And we put an end to the gene pool of some of our best friends! We made life so neat and tidy, and could it be perhaps, most essentially, wrong?
How I'd love to know a descendent of one of my beautiful, quirky, long-ago companions - but there are none.
Ma, May, and Golden Spike Day
in looking up 'May', I ended up in 'Ma', and came upon this intriguing passage in Wikipedia:
'In his 2001 book The Art of Looking Sideways, Alan Fletcher discusses the importance of exemplifying "space" as a substance:
Space is substance. Cézanne painted and modelled space. Giacometti sculpted by "taking the fat off space". Mallarmé conceived poems with absences as well as words. Ralph Richardson asserted that acting lay in pauses... Isaac Stern described music as "that little bit between each note - silences which give the form"... The Japanese have a word (ma) for this interval which gives shape to the whole. In the West we have neither word nor term. A serious omission.'
I like the Isaac Stern quote, 'that little bit between each note - silences which give the form'.
When I finally got to 'May', I learned that today, May 10th, is Golden Spike Day celebrating the 1869 completion of the first transcontinental railroad.
Officials from the east and west took their respective trains to meet in Utah (Promontory Summit) where the link connecting the two sides occurred. The meeting was celebrated with the installation of ceremonial spikes, thus, Golden Spike Day.
(I assume this 'first' is for the entire continent of North America. I was unable to locate [brief search] the date the Canadian transcontinental railroad was completed. Mexico's railroads tend to run more north-south.)
This image is of a 1944 US postage stamp celebrating the 75th anniversary of Golden Spike Day, is a part of the public domain, and is provided by Wikimedia Commons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Spike
This image of a US 2007 Utah Quarter is in the public domain, provided by Wikimedia Commons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2007_UT_Proof_Rev.png
(1896 is the year that Utah became a state.)
'In his 2001 book The Art of Looking Sideways, Alan Fletcher discusses the importance of exemplifying "space" as a substance:
Space is substance. Cézanne painted and modelled space. Giacometti sculpted by "taking the fat off space". Mallarmé conceived poems with absences as well as words. Ralph Richardson asserted that acting lay in pauses... Isaac Stern described music as "that little bit between each note - silences which give the form"... The Japanese have a word (ma) for this interval which gives shape to the whole. In the West we have neither word nor term. A serious omission.'
I like the Isaac Stern quote, 'that little bit between each note - silences which give the form'.
When I finally got to 'May', I learned that today, May 10th, is Golden Spike Day celebrating the 1869 completion of the first transcontinental railroad.
Officials from the east and west took their respective trains to meet in Utah (Promontory Summit) where the link connecting the two sides occurred. The meeting was celebrated with the installation of ceremonial spikes, thus, Golden Spike Day.
(I assume this 'first' is for the entire continent of North America. I was unable to locate [brief search] the date the Canadian transcontinental railroad was completed. Mexico's railroads tend to run more north-south.)
This image is of a 1944 US postage stamp celebrating the 75th anniversary of Golden Spike Day, is a part of the public domain, and is provided by Wikimedia Commons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Spike
This image of a US 2007 Utah Quarter is in the public domain, provided by Wikimedia Commons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2007_UT_Proof_Rev.png
(1896 is the year that Utah became a state.)
Thursday, May 9, 2013
One early introduction to sewing was in a book I read over and over around the 3rd grade: The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney. Published in 1881, a family with a mom and five kids are barely but rather happily surviving in a rundown little house on the money the mother earns by sewing coats. Given the clothing situation these days, and the growing interest in the almost-lost art of sewing, the book I liked as a kid kept coming to mind.
So I tried looking it up tonight. In doing so, I discovered Project Gutenberg . Founded by college student Michael S. Hart in 1971, Project Gutenberg is the oldest digital library, staffed only by volunteers, storing thousands of books and documents that are in the public domain in a number of digital languages. Visit Gutenberg.org
Although working with the Gutenberg website was a little awkward, I did find the Pepper family tonight, and am thankful for those who have donated their time and unique offerings to the preservation of human culture and history via such a project.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
There are only a few things I remember from my first trip to central Florida. The year was 1966 or 1967, and there were six of us in the car - our Dad probably did all of the driving. The Florida turnpikes (I think that's what they were called) were newly opened, brand new, and there were entrance booths of some kind where you were expected to slow down and be welcomed. At each booth, we were given paper cups of fresh local orange juice. Florida and oranges. Like bacon and eggs or Laurel and Hardy, the words just went together. The roads must not have been crowded; there was never much of a wait onto the turnpike, and everyone was given free orange juice. We stayed at a town called Cocoa Beach which was not far from Cape Canaveral (I'm not sure if Cape Canaveral had been renamed Cape Kennedy at that point.) We spent the whole visit on the beach for the most part. One day, we were on the beach, a rocket was ignited, and we watched it spiral through the atmosphere and beyond. Above the ocean, a trail of white exhaust was left in the blue sky - a perfect question mark.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Thinking of the fishes at the other end, I don't like to run paint down the drain. When I paint, I have another piece of paper, or two or four, nearby, and if my brush has more red on it than the current picture can handle, I clean the brush of its excess paint onto the other papers - and those are the starting points for my next paintings. Every painting has a connection to previous paintings, and for some, perhaps it goes back for months.
When I knit, I often use two or more yarns at a time, but don't cut or change them all at once. When I let go of one color, the other(s) keep flowing, connecting the yarn left behind to the sections still to come.
When I cook, I often use something from the previous meals in the new menu. Yesterday's rice is a part of today's casserole. Today's green salad provides a bed for tomorrow's chilled peaches.
The ending of a story I write may be a beginning for a new chapter.
A massage therapist taught me that you never lose contact with the client's skin - you keep one hand on his or her back through the duration of the session so that there is no jolt of disconnecting and reconnecting.
The leaves and needles and sticks and crumbly bark and berries shed by the pines and oaks and pyracantha nourish the roots of the trees or the shrubs or tomatoes for the next season. They maintain the cycle - are part of the new leaves and cones in spring, next season's tomatoes, the azaleas next Mardi Gras. The earth replenishes itself.
Some old-timers never empty their coffee pots. Today's cup of coffee is connected to that day 12 years ago when sis was born and the day it snowed in May. When a visitor shows up for a morning cup, he tastes the history of the family, the community, and the beginnings of coffee on earth in that very first, hot sip.
When I knit, I often use two or more yarns at a time, but don't cut or change them all at once. When I let go of one color, the other(s) keep flowing, connecting the yarn left behind to the sections still to come.
When I cook, I often use something from the previous meals in the new menu. Yesterday's rice is a part of today's casserole. Today's green salad provides a bed for tomorrow's chilled peaches.
The ending of a story I write may be a beginning for a new chapter.
A massage therapist taught me that you never lose contact with the client's skin - you keep one hand on his or her back through the duration of the session so that there is no jolt of disconnecting and reconnecting.
The leaves and needles and sticks and crumbly bark and berries shed by the pines and oaks and pyracantha nourish the roots of the trees or the shrubs or tomatoes for the next season. They maintain the cycle - are part of the new leaves and cones in spring, next season's tomatoes, the azaleas next Mardi Gras. The earth replenishes itself.
Some old-timers never empty their coffee pots. Today's cup of coffee is connected to that day 12 years ago when sis was born and the day it snowed in May. When a visitor shows up for a morning cup, he tastes the history of the family, the community, and the beginnings of coffee on earth in that very first, hot sip.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
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Though maple trees didn't work in the yard in central Texas, pyracantha (also known as Scarlet Firethorn), large rambunctious shrubs, proved to be a real trooper. I'd first seen them in Albuquerque where the blazing orange berries were visually captivating. Back in Texas, the red-berried varieties were more available, and that's what we went for.
At the time I wasn't savvy enough to be thinking of birds and beasts - just wanted something attractive that would survive the extremes in the local climate. They thrived in weather cold or hot, wet or very dry. The blooms in spring, with their pungent, lightly noxious but apparently appealing smell, attracted hundreds of honeybees and bitty flies especially in the mornings. The blooms dropped, and tiny green berries grew until late in summer, then reddened into bright berries that lasted well into winter (and sometimes into spring when they glowed fiery red next to the new white blooms). Mockingbirds and cedar waxwings feasted, and we even had a tortoise who showed up to eat berries that fell to the ground. Careful of the thorns, we trimmed off slender boughs to ornament the house during the holidays. The occasional light snow dusted the red berries with white, in the quiet of winter, a heart touching sight.
(Above image from Wikimedia Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyracantha )
When I was a kid, no one in my family was a gardener. None of my roommates or house mates were gardeners, nor any of us when I grew up and had a family. So I never learned much in the way of 'the rules'. I learned the hard way it's best to get to know a new location before changing things. Planting a maple sapling in the dry dust of a limestone hill in the heat of central Texas didn't work well; the maple lasted about a month.
Friday, May 3, 2013
The word opossum comes to us from the now extinct Native American Powhatan language in eastern North America. Opossums - casually called possums - are marsupials. (Kangaroos are possibly the most famous of marsupials.) Possums are the only marsupials in the wild in North America. They give birth when their young are not fully developed, the babies living in a pouch on their mothers' bellies for months until maturity.
When frightened, possums may make scary hissing noises. Sometimes they faint into a rigid, motionless state, exuding stench from the anal glands. This fools predators into thinking they're dead (the source of the term 'playing possum'). Hissing and playing dead do not create any danger to humans. Possums' pale fur is soft and beautiful, but their long, hairless tails may be disturbing to human attitudes regarding what is attractive. From a more metaphysical perspective, the possum totem is strong and bonds comfortably with some humans' sense of identity. Possums are worthy of respect.
I haven't seen any possums for a couple of years. With the drought and other factors, their food and water sources may have been diminished. They've somewhat adapted to modern human habitat, feasting off cat food in people's garages for example. Possums tend to be nocturnal. Years ago, one was discovered feeding in our kitchen, entering and exiting through the cat door in the night.
When frightened, possums may make scary hissing noises. Sometimes they faint into a rigid, motionless state, exuding stench from the anal glands. This fools predators into thinking they're dead (the source of the term 'playing possum'). Hissing and playing dead do not create any danger to humans. Possums' pale fur is soft and beautiful, but their long, hairless tails may be disturbing to human attitudes regarding what is attractive. From a more metaphysical perspective, the possum totem is strong and bonds comfortably with some humans' sense of identity. Possums are worthy of respect.
I haven't seen any possums for a couple of years. With the drought and other factors, their food and water sources may have been diminished. They've somewhat adapted to modern human habitat, feasting off cat food in people's garages for example. Possums tend to be nocturnal. Years ago, one was discovered feeding in our kitchen, entering and exiting through the cat door in the night.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
you think you've got a handle on the changes on your home planet, earth,
till you look into the world of modern architecture
these are images of Museo Sumaya in Mexico City
The first two images may be found at this link: http://dzunyck.com/tag/soumaya/
(No photographer credit is given for the first. The second is credited to Adam Wiseman.)
The bottom or third image is offered by Wikimedia Commons and is also attributed to Adam Wiseman. The link is as follows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:08_MuseoSoumayaFREE_FernandoRomero_photo_by_Adam_Wiseman-1.jpg
I saw pictures of gardens in Singapore, that somehow reminded me of the cartoon show, The Jetsons (which, did you know, the original show only ran one season! 1962-3) Jane Jetson took me to Leonardo da Vinci, who took me to Michelangelo. Looking for images of Michelangelo's sculpture, La Pieta took me to the museum in Mexico City.
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