Independence Day photo 2

Independence Day photo 1

A picture for the previous post

Mark your calendars; 2017

I was reading about the total solar eclips in Asia yesterday...or today...I'm not sure which...but, anyway, it made me wonder when I'd get a chance to see one myself.   I recall, years ago, looking at an eclipse map and schedule and thinking, "Well, I suppose I'll be able to see one, but it's decades away..."   I looked up such a map again, thinking it would still be decades away. Iti's really just a bit over eight years, although it's amazing to me that the year 2017 can seem so close.   The total eclipse won't be visible in Louisville, but it will be just a little road trip away.   See you in Paducah or Nashville in August 2017!

There's just two songs in me, and I just wrote the third

Why am I so tired? It's because of the songs I must make up each night. I sing to my daughters when I put them in bed. They request the music. It used to be easy: Mary Had a Little Lamb was in tight rotation, but there were frequent requests for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, that sort of thing.   Lately, however, they've been asking for number songs. "I want a song about three," or "I want songs about zero and ten."  And now it's getting even harder, as exemplified by last night's request: "Umm…I want a song about… one-hundred seventy-two one-hundred zero."   They're wearing me out.

loving work

While visiting with friends a couple of nights ago, our conversation touched on careers and work.  We talked about work in which a person is so interested that he feels gladly immersed, derives satisfaction from it.   I was asked whether I had this feeling while painting--did I feel absorbed to the point that I could lose track of time? Are there any other forms of work I feel that way about?   With art, definitely.  Producing images can be a frustrating ordeal, and it can often be hard to focus.  I can be tense and even angry.  But mostly I want to keep working and I wish I didn't have to look at the clock.   I also thought about coin collecting.  It goes beyond simply looking at and trying to acquire coins. Reading about their history and trying to understand their cultural context is engrossing for me. I can be quite consumed by performing "detective work" on a mystery coin. However, it still feels more like a hobby, and I feel a lot of my motivation derives not from joy in the work but from a primal desire to possess, and to compete with rivals who want to possess, and to cooperate with others in honing my skills at acquiring. It's no wonder that my favorite coins have animals on them; it's hunting. What would the world of numismatics be like if a large percentage of coins featured scantily-clad women?   Later, after our conversation had moved on (I would have mentioned it, but it would have been too much of a digression), I realized that gardening was probably closer to art in terms of feeling like deeply satisfying, engrossing work.  It's harder to do, logistically speaking: much of the time it's too cold, or too muddy, or to mosquito-y.  However, there is always, always more work to do, and I want to do it. Much of the time I am inside the house, I can feel the plants outside pulling me.  I want to tie and stake, trim, and mulch.  I want to flip and stir the compost.  I want to look for harmful pests and disease.  I want to dig more space and plant new things and eat what's growing. I don't know why it feels so satisfying, but I only stop when I really feel like I have to meet other obligations or when I realize that I am harming myself physically (through sunburn, bug bites, and dehydration.)

MDing first

On my lunch break I went to the doctor to get my allergy shots.  I was in and out pretty quickly, and it left me with about 20 minutes for metal detecting.  I went to the edge of a school ball field to hunt, and had another first: my first dollar coin.  It's a Sacagawea coin, but I haven't cleaned it off enough to see the date.   With things getting hot for the summer, I only feel like I can dig while detecting if I'm in mulch, an already not-so-nice area, or if conditions are wet. Today I made sure my digging was in out-of-the-way spots, and only made little holes.   I've found a fair amount of change there in the past, and it's an old school, so I'll go back again sooner or later.

Happy birthday...

...to the Dalai Lama!  And to Kevin!

Distant cousin?

Norbert Dobler runs a restaurant, Dobler's, in Mannheim. That's in my ancestral homeland of southern Germany.   http://www.doblers.de/

Blackberries

I asked the girls to pose with the blackberries, some of which we ate last night. My youngest really takes after her father. We may not get another photo of her making a "normal" face until she's twenty years old.

Sunflowers

Here is one of my patches of sunflowers.

first tomato

This'un here is the first little tomato I seen growin'. And it aint even on a plant I planted! This darn thing is a tomato that come up in my old compost pile. Go figure.

Misc.

Here's a photo of some recent stuff I've worked on. Top right: a small watercolor, with pen-and-ink, of a tree at Hounz Lane Park.  I did the watercolor portion on lunch break, and the pen portion that evening.   Bottom right is a sumi ink drawing I started on lunch break a last week. It is also a creek-side tree at Hounz Lane Park. After I got home, I used a couple of ink pens to add some detail and shading.  I don't much care for this drawing, in part because the tree resembles a giant hairy wrist or ankle, with the roots a foot or hand sinking into the bank – although this strange appearance has something to do with what attracted me to it in the first place. The roots were weird and elegant.   The giraffe is a proof-print of the linoleum block I am carving. It will end up being a three-color reduction print. There will be more photos of that later.  I am going to hunt around for something nicer to print on than regular printer paper, at least for some of the prints.

Illuminated footprints

Here is another example of something that I have experienced, and which would probably provoke headshakes and mutters of "I think you're making this stuff up" from friends.  This is taken from the following site:   http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/~biolum/answers.html#q26   "My husband told me there are places you can go (although he could not remember where any of these places are located) where some sort of phosphorescence actually creates a "luminescence" in beach sand -- not just the ocean water itself. He said you could walk along the beach at night and leave glowing footprints. I would love to know where such conditions exist.    [ Top ]  -- Andrea C. "Your husband is right -- the sand will light up sometimes because tiny organisms have been washed ashore by the waves. When I have seen this phenomenon, it is mainly in your footprints, but it can also happen in a ring around where you step. I believe the footprint-glow is from the organisms (most commonly dinoflagellates, but also copepods and small jellies), which had been resting peacefully in the damp sand, getting squished. The ring of light, though, seems to happen as you compress the sand, and the disturbance stimulates them. In my experience a footprint in the sand raises the sand around it and "dries it out" a little bit. "Even though this isn't really happening *in* the water, the organisms originated there, so you are more likely to see it in the damp sand near the ocean's edge, or following a receding tide. It would also be enhanced when bioluminescent organisms are abundant in the ocean itself. "Enjoy the show! "     I don't remember when it was I saw this, but it was as an adult. Perhaps it was the last time I was at the ocean, in South Carolina, or it might have been an earlier trip to Florida. I think it was the South Carolina trip.   The beach was dark. I noticed that the sand around where I stepped grew distinctly lighter, and when my foot was removed it darkened again.  I spent some time trying to figure out if the effect was caused by my foot compressing the sand and pushing moisture out of it, affecting how well it reflected light from distant sources (both ambient light from the sky and distant lights from streetlights and hotels.)  After messing with it for a while, I tentatively concluded that it was some form of bioluminescence.   It is a strange and beautiful world.

New house drawing

This is my newest walnut ink drawing; it was commissioned by a co-worker. I'm very pleased with how it came out, although my photographs of it are somewhat lacking. The top two are close-ups for detail. The guy who requested it asked that the little jockey be visible, as the house's owners were very fond of him.

First sumi ink drawing, part 2

…and here is Jill's, which she described as, "that's a house that can walk and it's a robot, and that's all the stuff that you need to wear, and that's a house for the steam, and that's all the steam popping. There's more smoke, and more smoke, and more smoke, and more smoke, and more smoke, and more smoke, and more smoke."   I am a rather proud father of these artists.

First sumi ink drawings, part 1

Here are my daughters' first sumi ink drawings, done last week with ink and brush. They were coloring at the dining room table, and I had out my sketchbook and ink. They expressed curiosity about what I was doing, and I asked them if they wanted to try it.   This one is Erin's: it's a scarecrow on a post inside his house, with big gray storm clouds coming.

Last night I had a dream that my friend Aaron won the Daytona 500. It was very exciting and we were all very proud of him.   Congratulations, Aaron!

refurbished ink

Yesterday I decided to clean up my jars of walnut ink. After I made the ink a year-and-a-half ago, I never added any preservative.  They have since molded, and the mold formed blobs of gunk inside the ink.  Yes, disgusting, I know.  The ink has still been usable, but as the supply of ink within the jar has dwindled, the gunk has become more and more in-the-way.  So yesterday I gathered the jars of ink I could find (I was surprised by how few I had; I think I've used up more of the ink than I realized. A lot of it gets wasted.)  I re-strained it into a new jar, and added a couple of tablespoons of denatured alcohol.   I haven't used it since. I hope the alcohol has no effect on the ink's application.   I still have walnuts in the garage.  Sometime soon, when I have an opportunity to make a mess without bothering my family with it, I'll have to make some more ink.   Kim has been complaining about a strange smell in the garage, one that I don't notice (the garage, to me, smells like gasoline, paint solvents, and grass clippings).  I wonder if she's smelling my rotten walnuts?

More time

While discussing time with Brooke and David over the weekend, I realize I have another time-quasi-picture in my head for the decades of the last hundred years or so.   When I think of the years of the past decade and the 20th Century, I vaguely see them in my head as a series of stepping-stone-like tiles, sloping downward and backward from the present. They are grouped in tens, by decade. The 60s have President Johnson hanging over them spectrally. The 40s are warmer-hued and darker.