more rain, yard work, rainbow at sunset, and other miscellania

The Mexican bird of paradise growing next to the shed over at my sister’s house.

We’ve been getting more rain. It rained Tuesday and again today but the rain today came in with some very high gusty wind and lots of lightning and thunder. Unfortunately, It started about 20 minutes after the guy who cuts and trims the shop yard had started so he retreated to his truck and will have to come back later in the week to finish.

I worked in the yard some Sunday and then did the lion’s share of cutting back all the dead and gone by purple coneflowers in the back and front yards on Monday after I doused myself and my clothes with mosquito repellant and came in after almost two hours hot and sweaty and peeled off my sweat soaked clothes.  Hauled it all over to the burn pile this morning.

Later in the day, I got an email and a phone call from a friend and early pate de verre mentor, Delores Taylor (link to her website), when we were just starting out trying to work out the technique and problem solve. She lives in the PNW and we ‘met’ via an early glass art related internet group. We’ve traded work and I was her teacher assistant for one of the classes she gave at a conference. She’s also the person who sent me all the professional watercolors I’m using now since she no longer uses them. Anyway, she’s writing a very comprehensive book on the subject and has asked me for some images to help illustrate some sections of the book as there are various techniques that fall under the pate de verre umbrella so I’ve been going through my images and sending them off to her with a document  with details for her to choose from.

Yesterday I went with my friend to her doctor’s appointment in Angleton an hour away. We haven’t had time to visit lately so it was a good opportunity to catch up. She’s had so much to deal with just fighting cancer and then her mother passed away so she’s had to handle all the affairs that go along with that. Then we stopped by the farmer’s market on the way home.

Tuesday night, my night to cook dinner, I fixed a one dish meal, blistered broccoli pasta with walnuts, pecorino, and mint only I used pecans instead of walnuts and parmigiana instead of pecorino. This is an easy and quick dish and it’s very good. I sliced up one of the tomatoes I got at the market earlier to go along with it.

And then last evening at sunset there was a double rainbow in the east. By the time I got my phone out the second fainter rainbow had already mostly faded but my daughter got this picture standing in the shop yard, a better view than the one I took standing in the street. 

This is what the sky looked like in the west from where I was standing.

I was listening to a segment on NPR coming home from yoga Monday evening on whether or not listening to a book is the same as reading a book and the conclusion reached was that it didn’t matter if you read a real book, read it on a kindle or phone, or listened to it, the result was pretty much the same though you don’t have to be able to read in order to listen to a book. But it turns out what they were referring to is a study that determined there was no difference in comprehension between reading or listening if, and it seemed to me a big if, the person already knows how to read. It also determined that not knowing how to read did affect comprehension when just listening especially if the material was complex but also that it was beneficial for auditory learners to listen to the material as well as read it. Being able to read has the advantage of going at your own pace, being to reread sections for better understanding, and developing attention span and focus while listening had the advantage of auditory clues like tone and emphasis. I prefer to read because I find it’s easier to concentrate on the story or content. If I’m listening my mind will tend to wander and I will have missed part of the story. My mind will wander sometimes when I read as well but then I just have to go back and reread a page or two. Pretty interesting really, the different ways people learn. 

 

a post just about art

At the risk of seeming like I am fishing for compliments (I’m not, however don't let that stop you if you feel so inclined) I'm going to post individual images of the art of the notecards and framed prints. I should have done that last post I guess but there was just too much other stuff weighing on my mind. But not just those. I’m posting all the colored pencil drawings in my sketchbook in the order in which they were done. I'm showing them on the page in my sketchbook so you get an idea of the size of each drawing. The pages in the sketchbook are 5 1/2" x 8 1/2".

First, I think I have finally admitted to myself that I am not going to be doing any more glass sculpture. While I have several unfinished models and ideas of what I might create I seem to have lost any desire to do that work. It is time consuming, it is labor intensive, and while I did enjoy the submersion in creating in 3 D form, of sculpting the models out of blocks and sheets of wax, I’m just not feeling compelled to get in there and do it because the rest…the mold making, filling the molds (tedious and also time consuming and a process that really needs to be done in one sitting taking an average of five hours to complete), the firing, the finish work with my very old worn out expensive to replace equipment…was just work. And to start again would involve having to go into the city and get fresh plaster and silica flour and moving the kiln over here to our garage from the shop since Mikey is using the bay with the appropriate plug. I look at my shelves of frit and wonder what the fuck am I going to do with all this.

I suppose I could post on the glass SM groups to sell it all, first come first serve, but I’m not quite ready to do that. As for the sculpting part, I could switch to ceramics but again no kiln, no glazes though there are a couple of people here in this town that I might possibly be able to get to fire my pieces for me. So, something to think about.

In the meantime I’ve turned to colored pencil drawings and watercolor paintings but I’m not very productive with the drawings or paintings. After 40+ years of making art every day I’m finding time for other things like gardening and yoga and reading and sewing (again, some).

So here are all my colored pencil drawings. The ones with two drawings on the page was just because there was space. 

Blue Jay Feather

White Orchid Tree Flower and Bean Sprout

Poppy Seed Head and Wren Skull

Morning Glory Bush Flower and Acorn

Green Pecans

Amaryllis Bud

Zucchini Flower and Zucchini

Iris Bud

American Lotus

Heavenly Blue Morning Glory

Yellow Trumpet Flower

Chinese Tallow Tree Leaves in their Fall Colors

Buckeye Butterfly

Honeybee (I don't have the original anymore and I seem to have deleted the picture of the whole page but the bee itself is 3" square)

I have even fewer watercolors so that can wait.

commando, art, despicable people

My across the street neighbor was working out in his yard mowing and trimming Sunday morning and he was going commando. The reason I know this is because when I went out with Minnie to have a look around I happened to look across the street and he was bending over fiddling with something on the ground and his pants had fallen so far down his rear that I could see his butthole. Ewww, dude, pull those pants up. Seriously. Nobody wants to see that. 

I got all the note cards packaged up and the larger 5" x 7" prints framed this week. Each package of notecards has a sheet showing which images are in that pack.

Then I delivered them to Hesed House after SHARE Thursday and they were delighted to receive them all. I still have the two little original watercolors to frame and take to them. Maybe next week.

An early morning conversation at SHARE yesterday put me in a foul mood for the day. It was pretty slow like it usually is on the first Thursday of the month because people have gotten their WIC funds we surmise, only one or two small food orders the first hour, so I was sitting in the back with the guys when one of the volunteers mentioned he had seen a chart of government expenditures. He expected the military the biggest but first was Medicare/Medicaid. The military budget was third. I remarked that if medical care wasn’t so expensive in this country people wouldn’t need help which set him off about how we’re paying for other people with our taxes and how people think socialized medicine is so great. I told him everyone I knew who lived in a country with socialized medicine liked it. Another guy chimed in that he had lived in Norway and you had to wait a long time to get a procedure. And I’m thinking, first, why would you not want to live in a country that had a healthy productive population and second, how is having to wait for a procedure worse than not being able to get it at all. Then he went off on people just wanting all this free stuff, illegals getting free medical care (they pay taxes I told him that they don’t receive any benefit from, well not if they're paid under the table he said completely ignoring the fact that they pay sales taxes just like everyone else), people applying for everything as if all you need to do is apply and not have to qualify. He went off on college, how he went through college, got his degree, and didn’t get in debt but now nobody wants to pay for it they just get all the loans they can and not pay them back. My comment that people are paying on their loans but after 20 years they still owe the same or more went over his head. The Norway guy spoke up that he didn’t get in debt either but then when he went to college tuition was $300 a semester for as few or as many hours as you wanted to take. Yeah, things are different now. First guy wasn’t through, complaining that colleges just teach useless stuff, people get degrees and can’t get a job. I’m thinking who is he to decide what courses colleges should or should not teach. Not interested in that course of study, don’t take the classes but why bitch about the fact that they are offered. Anyway, I’d had enough by then and we got a food order in so I went back to my station and stayed there whether I was busy or not the rest of the morning. Just about everybody that volunteers there votes republican which at this point voting for Trump makes you a MAGAt as far as I’m concerned. I just can’t reconcile the disconnect of these people that volunteer at a food bank that also offers clothing, housewares, diapers, linens, etc to people in need and then vote to reduce aid, whether it’s medical care or food and housing assistance to those same people, people that they have nothing but disdain and scorn for. Republicans have brought back the myth of the Welfare Queen only this time it's the able bodied man living in his mom's basement who chooses not to work. Do they think Medicaid just sends people checks instead of paying the doctors or hospitals for the medical care? 

When I went to college tuition at the University of Houston was $200 a semester. I don’t know how much room and board in a dorm cost then because I was living at home. Here’s what it costs today.

I wish I could turn that volunteer into a 20 year old and then see if he brags about getting his degree without getting into debt.

Last night during dinner I bit the inside of my cheek, not a nip, but a crunching bite. Then this morning I woke up from a long involved disturbing dream full of struggle and a bit of a headache, reached over and tapped my dream catcher, my talisman bag, and my guardian angel that hang on the wall beside my bed and told them they weren’t doing their jobs. And if that wasn’t bad enough when I went out to raise the garage door (have to do it by hand because the motor quit working after the flood) a wasp that was building a nest behind one of the metal struts on the door stung me right on my nose! Fucker. Because that still wasn’t a bad enough start to the day, during breakfast I bit the inside of my cheek again in the same place!

So today is the 4th of July. I won’t be putting out my flag, I won’t be celebrating what this country has become, a country where the President, a state Governor, and Cosplay Barbie of Homeland Security stand in front of their new concentration camp to incarcerate 3,000 people snatched up without warrants or due process and put in cages in tents surrounded by a chain link fence topped with razor wire that they built in 8 days in the middle of the mosquito, alligator, and snake infested Florida Everglades in the middle of summer yucking it up, big smiles, thumbs up while they imagine potential escapees getting eaten by alligators. The whole thing designed for maximum cruelty. 

The government won’t build housing for the homeless, doesn’t want to feed the hungry or provide medical care for the sick and injured but they can and did build a concentration camp in 8 fucking days to fill it with people who had jobs, families, contributed to their communities, paid taxes, were self sufficient that now the government must provide for however poorly they plan to do it. 

So, yeah, my day is just peachy.

 

weekend stuff

More rain yesterday. It’s been a very wet June. Reminds me of how Junes used to be. When we lived in the city we had a crepe myrtle tree in the front yard. It would start blooming in June and every June the ground underneath it would be covered in pink mush. And back when we were house hunting in June it rained every day it seemed like. Both times we came out here to look at this house it rained on us. I’m glad for the rain because I know what it’s like when it doesn’t rain but could we just have a small break please?

Saturday I went to Walmart and into Rosenberg to the Michaels store looking for frames for the watercolors and prints I intend to put in the Hesed House market. When I was paying I asked the clerk at Michaels if they were going to get fabric in now that they had made a deal with the Joannes stores that closed and he said yes but it would be several months before they had any. This makes me so happy because right now Walmart and Hobby Lobby are the only options for fabric. The Walmart here does not have a dedicated worker in the fabric and craft section which make it hard to find someone to cut yards off the bolts and I refuse to shop at Hobby Lobby.

Mikey brought Paisleigh over Sunday. She opened the door, can I stay here and play. Yes, of course. Mikey had both kids and was trying to work on a car over at the shop and it was just so hot. He noticed the truck full of downed branches that I was going to take over to the burn pile that he had torched on Saturday, told me to drive it over and he would empty it and he picked up the pieces of the dead limb that had fallen off the tallow by the driveway that I hadn’t got around to cutting up yet and tossed it in as well. Paisleigh and I drove it over and he and Eric, who he works with, emptied it for me. So nice having my grandson around all the time. Paisleigh and I filled the bird feeder (I’ll do it!), then she wanted to paint so I got out her watercolors and tore a big piece off the paper roll and we painted which she then adorned with blue paper tape, wanted to hang it on the wall so of course we hung it on the wall. 

Later we went back across the street to feed Momcat and her three boys and Ghost (I’ll do it!) and then to the shop so I could see Harrison and hold him for a little while. 

Also Sunday Sarah brought over the finished printed out note cards, envelopes, and cellophane bags. I’m in the process of packaging them up and determining price. I’ll have 16 packages of five cards. Since I have seven designs, each package will have a different assortment. I also cut the large prints from the last three sheets of color corrected images to fit in 5” x 7” frames and getting them in the frames. Then I’ll frame the two watercolors.

my life in 100 objects - #7

(These objects are not in any kind of order of importance, just as they occur to me or someone reminds me of one, like this object which Ms Moon reminded me of when she posted about some wood salad bowls she recently purchased and reminisced about older ones she still has.) 

These two wood bowls, 7” diameter, 1 1/2” deep.

I bought these in my early 20s during my first marriage. We were at an art/craft show though I can’t tell you where as I don’t remember but a young couple had a booth or tent or table, the specifics of which are also lost to the fog of memory, of hand turned bowls and other wood objects, again I can’t tell you what all else, and these two small shallow wood bowls caught my eye and I bought them. They were a splurge, not because they were all that expensive but because money was dear back then and it wasn't something I needed but something I wanted. When I divorced the rat bastard I made sure to take those little bowls with me. I still have them five decades later and we use them several times a week for salads. 

It just now occurred to me that these were the first of what has become a small collection of art objects in bowl form, and I do consider these an art object even though I use them, a form I used extensively in my own creative endeavors in pate de verre, an object post for later. 

more of the clown show and thought provoking reading

The crepe myrtles all over town are in full bloom. These are along the side of the barn.

I don’t know how many of you follow Jeff Tiedrich but if you want to laugh while crying and shaking your head in total dismay about the incompetence posing as the US government, really, read his Tuesday report of Trump and his not peace deal between Israel and Iran.  

I wrote the above yesterday. Today Trump gave a press conference at NATO. When asked why he hadn’t been able to end the war in Ukraine he responded that it is “more difficult than people would have any idea”. No Donny, it is more difficult than YOU had any idea. Everyone else with half a brain cell is well aware that peace in Ukraine isn’t possible because Putin has no intention of giving up until he absorbs all of Ukraine and Ukraine is just as determined to remain Ukraine. 

The ceasefire between Iran and Israel seems to be holding though, for now, but not because of Trump's all caps ’truths’ on his echo chamber but because Qatar negotiated. Despite Trump’s continued claim to the contrary of all evidence, Iran’s nuclear program was not destroyed and only set back by a few months or at most perhaps a couple of years, none of their nuclear material was lost, and it seems likely that the Iranians also moved whatever equipment they could. But Trump got to feel like a big bad ass and he will never admit that his strike was ever anything but a total success. If I was Iran I’d be lying my ass off claiming that the facilities were destroyed, because for Trump it’s not really about the result but the optics. Besides, he knows he's right because he said at the press conference that two Iranians went down there and took a look and then called him to say, yep, you did it, totally destroyed.

More rain Tuesday afternoon, another 2” on top of the almost 9” from the week before last and might get more today (we did). At least it’s giving us some respite from the heat since our highs for the next few days will only be in the 80s. Tuesday was also my semi-annual teeth cleaning and the practice has a new hygienist. My previous hygienist was a Trump supporter and while it didn’t leak out every time it did once in a while. She did a competent enough job even if she tended to rat me out to the dentist because I wouldn’t follow all her recommendations, like getting one of those water jet things, so I’m really glad she has moved to a different practice. This new young woman gave me good marks for keeping my teeth clean, said she didn’t have to do very much.

I might have mentioned I led the yoga class last Wednesday. Abby has been having some hip pain for about a year now and it finally got bad enough to go to the doctor. Turns out she has a tear in her hip and she will probably need surgery but before that the protocol is to do some kind of injection to deal with the pain. So she had the injection but it hadn’t kicked in yet and it turns out after she researched the diagnosis that some of the yoga asanas we do helped but others aggravated it so she’s going to have to modify what she can include in the class. Anyway, Monday she was still having significant pain so I led the class again. It’s possible I might be doing that more often depending on how the treatment for her hip goes.

I know I mentioned I get a daily newsletter from Nautilus that gives links to some fascinating reading on "thought provoking science stories" and while I’m not a paid subscriber which you have to be to get access to the all articles they do provide one free link in every newsletter. One recent newsletter was about the nature of consciousness and the free article was Is Matter Conscious? by Hedda Hassel Morch published March 31 2017, and yes, very thought provoking reading. It seems that consciousness is not the result of our brain activity but rather that the brain is the mechanism that our consciousness uses in the material world to navigate it and thereby not limited to humans as we like to think. It brings to mind the concept of cosmic consciousness and a small publication I read years ago published by the Theosophical Society titled The Consciousness Of The Atom which proposes that everything is conscious albeit in varying degrees and an excerpt from an article by Evan Thompson published on the psychology today blog that thinking isn’t generated by the brain, it just facilitates it, that Barbara Rogers posted on her blog Inner Workings.

The other free article in an issue devoted to intelligence is titled Another Path to Intelligence by James Bridle published August 17, 2022 focused on cephalopods whose brains and bodies are nothing like ours and yet are highly intelligent. Octopi particularly are fascinating. Their brains are not centralized like ours but extend through their bodies and into their limbs with their arms having the ability to act as independent minds. They demonstrate their intelligence whenever we humans try to keep them captive or study them as illustrated with anecdotes of their successful escape attempts, their ability to manipulate our environment, that they can recognize individual human faces. Their behavior in captivity and in the wild has shown that they learn, remember, know, think, consider, and act based on their intelligence. Clearly, “The tree of evolution bears many fruits and many flowers, and intelligence, rather than being found only in the highest branches, has in fact flowered everywhere.“.

here we go again

We knew Trump’s monumental humiliation on No Kings Day and his barely attended pathetic excuse for a military parade that was supposed to inspire fear and envy in the rest of the world coupled with the obvious lack of respect he received at the G7 summit in Canada would have repercussions because Trump never lets the least slight slide. His obsession with winning a Nobel Peace Prize and his bottomless need for respect and adulation apparently culminated in the conviction that if he bombed Iran into oblivion thereby saving the world from possible annihilation if Iran ever actually produced a nuclear weapon it would result in both. Either that or, and more likely, bombing Iran was a big fuck you, I’ll show you who’s powerful. Trump bombs Iran and then declares now is the time for peace, in all caps, or else. He thinks he’s shown them who’s boss, that he’s won. Iran’s nuclear ambitions destroyed by me! Praise me, I saved everyone, now give me my peace prize! Iran’s all, not even Bozo. This is not over. Wars are easy to start, hard to stop. Just ask George Bush the younger. 

In an interview Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when asked why would Iran agree to a peace deal when the US already pulled out of the treaty Iran had been abiding by that limited their nuclear ambitions and then launched surprise attacks against Iran, responded “The ones that shouldn’t be trusted are the Iranians.” Same interview or maybe a different one he said they weren’t looking for a war with Iran but if they retaliated it would be the worst mistake they ever made. Apparently to this administration bombing a sovereign nation to stop them from developing a nuclear bomb after withdrawing from a treaty that was preventing them from doing so isn’t a declaration of war, but that country retaliating is. Trump will claim that Iran started this particular conflict when it was Israel who started the escalation when they started bombing Iran directly. 

Iran supports militant groups in other countries fighting what they consider oppression and we call them terrorists but so do we, so do other nations. The only difference is we don't call the ones we support terrorists. Whatever the nomenclature the goal is the same, to support those who are likely to get us what we want through the use of violence. Israel calls Iran a terrorist nation, Iran calls Israel a terrorist nation. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, residential areas, and aid distribution sites in Gaza and nobody blinks an eye. Iran bombed one hospital in Israel and is accused of war crimes. Netanyahu ignored the intel that an attack by Hamas was imminent in response to the apartheid conditions and terrorist tactics used by the IDF in Gaza and the West Bank and is using it as an excuse to wipe Gaza off the map. Less than 2,000 Israelis have been killed in the current conflict compared to almost 60,000 Palestinians. Israel restricts how much aid is allowed into Gaza if any at all and the people are starving. The US is apparently fine with that because Trump wants to develop the Gaza coast. The line between defense and terrorism is very fuzzy and depends on which side of the line you're standing on. 

So now, here we are, embroiled in another possible war started by the ‘no new wars’ president, unless of course he feels humiliated and needs to whip someone’s ass to make himself feel better, a draft dodging man who calls those killed in action or held prisoner losers. We shouldn’t be surprised, you know, war is what we do. This country has been at war for almost every year of its existence and usually more than one military action at a time. In fact I don’t think there has been a single year during my lifetime, and I’m 75 years old, that the US has not been involved in some kind of military operation all over the world including four major wars…Korean War, VietNam War, war in Afghanistan, and war in Iraq…and we are the biggest exporter of military weaponry. 

What happens in Iran remains to be seen, just how long and deep this military action will go or if it sparks a wider conflict. It puts Trump at odds with his handler Putin since Iran and Russia are aligned and Putin is not about to abandon his stronghold in the Middle East considering he already lost Syria any more than he is going to give up Ukraine and his ambitions towards all of Eastern Europe. Destroying Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons doesn’t necessarily mean they will never have any if Russia wants them to.

So, yeah, war is what we do. War is what humans do. The entirety of human history is war and conflict and conquest creating one great empire after another. My theory is that being the apex predator we have nothing to keep us in check but ourselves, that we are our own predator. It doesn't seem to be working though. The planet is groaning with unrestrained population growth and competition for resources.