Technological Problem???

You may or may not have noticed my recent absence from the blogosphere, but I have been offline for several days.  My computer could not connect to the internet; it advised me that "A network cable is disconnected."  I did everything I could think of, including unplugging and re-plugging all the cables more than once, but ultimately had to call the internet provider, who informed me that they could send someone out on Monday.  Well, what could I do but wait (very impatiently) until Monday, which has now arrived.  So a little while ago, the Zoomtown guy came in and messed with some things, trying to determine the cause of the malfunction.  I thought for sure it was the fault of my computer, likely requiring some time-consuming and costly repair.

 visualization of a portion of the routes on the internet (Wikipedia)

 

an assortment of computer cards

But, no.  A screw had come out, causing the little card that allows my computer to cozy up with Zoomtown  to come loose.  A SCREW?!!!  I couldn't believe it- me, a woman who has actually built log houses, foiled by something so incredibly low-tech!

Of course, strictly speaking, a screw is technology.  In fact, it's physics.  I swear, I'm not kidding!  It's one of the six simple machines of basic physics.  According to Wikipedia:

A screw is one of the six simple machines. All screws are helical inclined planes. A screw can convert a rotational force (torque) to a linear force and vice versa. The ratio of threading determines the mechanical advantage of the machine. More threading increases the mechanical advantage.

The etymology of the word is also kind of interesting:

Middle French escroue (“‘nut, socket’”) (Modern French ecroue, from Latin scrofa (“‘sow’”), referring to the screw-like tip of a boar's penis.  (Wiktionary)

Couldn't have lived without knowing that, huh?

93.314% finished

I'm happy to say that I'm almost finished with the 3rd "The Traveler's Tale" piece!  Thanks to all of you, my dear friends, who were kind enough to share your suggestions and opinions.   Here's the "nearly finished" version of The Traveler's Tale: Once Upon a Time.

As you can see, I have added a few more details; most importantly the figure now has a face!  I still need to work more on the sky, and do some little touch-ups, such as coloring in all the white edges.  Also, there will be red stitching forming the dragons' reins; she'll be holding the ends in her hands.

I had tried making the darker value of the figure red, and didn't like it.  But many of you seemed to like the red hair in the last update, which was not intended to be permanent.

So, I reconsidered and came to a "compromise" of sorts, by putting some red into the purple hair.  (That really sounds weird if you think about it.)  I think it works, don't you?    If not, please let me know- seriously!

And, last but not least, I still have to get those blasted snakes out of the sky!  (Wow, talk about sounding weird...)

Suggestions, anyone?

Have Yourself a...

Merry Little Christmas!

I want to wish all my wonderful friends a very merry holiday!  Your support and encouragement means more to me than you could possibly know.  It has been a true adventure getting to know each and every one of you.  Welcome to my Merry Little Christmas...

I didn't think I'd get to decorate for Christmas this year.  We're having our basement carpeted, so everything was crammed into the storage room; chances of digging the decorations out seemed pretty slim.

But- hooray!- we were able to find a few of them.  Here I am, very focused on putting lights on the mantle.

It doesn't look too bad; at least we found my little trees, which look pretty with the Buddha and the lights, I think.  Kind of an eclectic, ecumenical, inclusive Christmas- why not, right?

Arlo likes to wear silly hats...




































Or maybe not.

But Colin does enjoy putting them on him, and he's the only one out of the three dogs that will tolerate it.

Sunny and Scout really don't care, but  naps are always good...

My Norfolk Island pine served as our Christmas tree.  I had to go to four or five stores to find lights.  All that were left were a set of multi-colored and a set of blue LED lights, so I got them.


The electric blue is very trippy; reminds me of the sixties...

Caitlin making a goofy face at the camera while opening gifts.

Don't you like my warm and fuzzy Christmas socks?




Enjoy your holidays!

Still Working On It

Remember this?  In previous posts I shared my compositional woes and color conundrums as I tried to work my way through the third in my "Traveler's Tale" series.  I thought this would be the easiest one, but I guess I still haven't gotten past that learning curve, if you know what I mean.  

I was really hoping to finish this before Christmas; there are other ideas I want to start working on before my break is over.  Also, this is what my drafting table looks like right now, and there's no sense in putting anything away when I'm going to need it again in five minutes. What a mess, huh? I decided I didn't like the map I'd chosen for the traveler figure, and I thought she was too small as well.

So, I enlarged her, and decided to cut her out of a blue map, using red for the shadow value.  I thought these colors would look more like the ones you see in fairy tale books or medieval paintings.  However, I tried several different reds, and they all looked pretty icky.  I didn't take pictures of these incarnations; believe me, you're not missing anything.

So, this is where I am now.  (Sorry, this picture is pretty wonky.)  Her hair is still one of the horrible reds I tried; I haven't changed that yet.  I couldn't think of anything else to do except to make the shadow value purple.  Green was the only other possibility, but I was afraid it would not contrast enough with the background, or with the blue.  I've also added some more fairy tale-ish elements to the piece, such as the dragons, the book with evil queen inside, the mirror, apples, flowers, and a story-book border...

What do you think?  If you have any ideas, please let me know.  Maybe, with your help, I'll finish it by Christmas!

Winter Solstice

Even now, 

in the sterile age of technology,

beneath the banging, crashing, clashing street noise,

the deafening roar of airplanes,

beneath the sounds of shrieking missiles, exploding bombs,

beneath the humming and ticking of artificial intelligence

(or none at all),

beneath the ceaseless rushing, pushing, struggling... 

still,

the quiet heartbeat of the earth,

turning in her silent cycles,

as she whirls around the sun,

the ancient dervish dance of sun, moon, earth, planets,

ceaseless motion unchanging,

drawing a spiral pattern across the eons...

as it began,

so it remains.

 

and now once again

she retraces the infinite pattern,

reaches 

the apex of her wandering arc,

and turns her face once again

to the brilliance,

toward the one,

the light.

as it was in the beginning,

as it ever shall be,

so it remains. 

Rocks??!

 A while back, I joined a group on facebook called "The Weekly Wildlife, Nature and Conservation Photography Challenge".  They do a photo contest each week focused on a different subject, such as "birds" or "two species in one picture", or whatever.  I usually don't participate,  because the subject is one that I don't have access to, like "tropical rainforests" (pretty scarce in Kentucky) or something, but mainly because I just don't have the time.  (Uh-oh, not that again!)

 But his week, it's "Rocks and Stones".  They seemed to think this would be a tough one, even giving helpful hints /suggestions about where people might look to find rocks to photograph. 

Rocks??!  Seriously??!  Rocks, we've got plenty of in Kentucky.   Many farmers for countless generations have wished we could have some soil instead, but- no.  It's rocks.  On most farms you will find somewhere a huge pile or piles of rocks, which had to be cleared out of the fields before they could be plowed.  I cannot fathom how long it must have taken to do this using just your hands, a mule and a wagon.

Another thing about rocks: I love them.  I am what some would call a "rock hound."  (Some might even postulate that my head is full of rocks.")  I've been collecting rocks and fossils since the first time I walked down a creek bed and picked up a bit of fossilized crinoid stem.  I've been known to wrestle an entire backpack full of geodes out of a deep creek bed- I think they might have weighed more than I did!  A day of digging around on the side of a cliff looking for fossils is a good day in my book.

So here are a few of my rock pictures.  I wonder how many photos you're allowed to enter- 100?  200?

 

* Disclaimer: Not all rocks pictured here are in Kentucky.   Rocks may be found in other places as well.

Time and Time Again

In my last post, I kind of ranted and raved about my arch-nemesis, TIME.  I'm sure most artists, especially those who, like me, work a full time day job, can relate.  At this time of year, it's easy to start freaking out about not having enough time to get things done.  I've gotten lots of empathy, which I truly do appreciate, and even an idea or two.  The most intriguing one was to "command time", requiring "just a tiny change in thought."  (Thanks, Cat!)  Apparently, Cat has been reading up on her General Theory of Relativity, a la Einstein, who happens to be one of my personal heroes.  Here's how he sums it up:

"People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between the past, the present, and the future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."  -Albert Einstein  

Here are a few other thought on time that I thought I'd share with you.  This one's pretty funny:

The line between science and mysticism sometimes grows thin. Today physicists would agree that time is one of the strangest properties of our universe.  In fact, there is a story circulating among scientists of an immigrant to America who has lost his watch. He walks up to a man on a New York street and asks, "Please, Sir, what is time?" The scientist replies, "I'm sorry, you'll have to ask a philosopher. I'm just a physicist."  Clifford Pickover, Nova Online

 So, I thought I'd check out what philosophy has to say.  Here's a bit about the Tibetan Buddhist perspective:

Kalachakra Mandala: The Wheel of Time

The word kalachakra means cycles of time, and the Kalachakra system presents three such cycles – external, internal and alternative. The external and internal cycles deal with time as we normally know it, while the alternative cycles are practices for gaining liberation from these two. 

Berzin, Alexander. Taking the Kalachakra Initiation

According to Buddhist thought, we humans discriminate between past, present and future, and we give them substance by attaching name and meaning to them. This everyday notion of time is not reality and is based on fundamental ignorance (or avidya). Unlike the Christian concept of time, time in Buddhism has no beginning and no end.  In order to awaken to true reality, one must do as Hesse's Siddhartha did - i.e. eliminate the concept of time by realizing that it has no substance. This is how [one] attain[s] wisdom and enlightenment.  -The Conscious Universe  

 

The question is, how do we make these ideas work for us?  eHow has some suggestions on How to Transcend Time and Space: 

     

*  Meditation is one of the best-known ways to transcend time and space.

 

In the Moment  by Laurel Julian
 

* Try attending a trance dance, ecstatic dance or another movement class where there is no talking allowed in the space. Allow the music and movements of your body to take you outside space and time.  

 

 

* Make a commitment to spiritual growth. The more you practice living in the present moment and loving yourself, the more you will experience pure moments of superconsciousness.

 

Spirit in Flight, by Laurel Julian  
 

*  Busy yourself doing something you love. Crafting, reading, painting, singing: Do anything artistic that you enjoy. If you are truly focused and love what you are doing, time and space with dissolve. You can even transcend time and space while doing household chores!Turn your creative outlets into a ritual. Set intentions for what you want while you are creating.

 

Wait a minute, wasn't that what this whole TIME thing was about in the first place-  not having the TIME to do what I love?  Is that ironic, or what?  I guess I've come full circle here; it has been pretty cathartic in the end.  I guess it's TIME to stop whining and get back to making art!

By the way, I'm pretty sure the part about household chores is a lie! ;)