The text is the first part of a Halloween rhyme: "5 little pumpkins sitting on the gate/ the first one said, 'Oh, my, it's getting late!'"
I quite like this for a number of reasons. One of them is that it reminds me of the peripheral legend on an ancient coin—encircling the picture and difficult to translate. In that regard, I love the dots that separate the words.
I went out to look for comet Hartley 2 this morning and thought I was barely able to make it out (by not looking directly at it).
However, now that I've looked more at some star charts, I think was I was seeing was the stars Nu Aurige and Tau Aurigae. The comet was riiiiggght theeeerre close to them, but was probably just a little too faint to register.
The moon was full and up, so viewing wasn't great. Perhaps if I'd been further out from the city I could have seen it.
I did see three shooting stars inside of a minute, though, and I saw another one as I was driving to work. The radiant for these is very near Auriga, the constellation that the comet is currently passing through, so I was staring straight at the first three meteors when I was them. Very nice!
These meteors are the Orionids, which are the remains of Halley's Comet.
Here's another coin show purchase. It is Indo-Sasanian drachm, and I have tentatively identified this as a Chaulukya Dynasty era coin from Saurashtra, Gujarat, or Malwa in western
The obverse shows the stylized head of a Sasanian king, and the reverse shows a fire altar with two attendants.
...What, you can't see it? I'll outline the pertinent features in red to make them more obvious.
The design is hard to see because this is an example of something one sees from time to time in ancient coins: A very popular design that outlives its cultural context but keeps getting repeated. Over time, the people making and using the coins lose consideration of, or just forget, the original meaning of the symbols on the coin, and just keep using them because that's what money is supposed to look like. This means that the imagery becomes stylized and warped as it is repeated over the decades and centuries, sort of like a message being passed from person to person in that telephone game.
This coin was probably minted centuries after the deaths of the Sasanian king or kings that were depicted on the original coins. I don't know whether or not the die maker knew what he was depicting. Did he know this was the bust of a long-dead king, an altar with two sets of arms tending to the ritual? Did he ever see an example of the older coins?
Work in progress: this is a drawing I'm working on of kids swimming at Big Rock. It's been a bit of a struggle, and I'm not sure it will turn out. It's pretty busy, and I'm having to really work to make it "read" right spacially and to give a good sense of values. Also, there have been a few minor drawing screw-ups that have been demoralizing. However, it's still coming along (slowly), and I'm optimistic that I'll be happy with the finished piece.
A little over a week ago I attended the Louisville Coin Club's annual Fall Coin Show. I was only able to spend about an hour-and-a-half there. There were about fifty dealers, I guess, and I visited three of them. The one I spent the most time at was the last. He had many boxes of inexpensive world coins, and I found some fines ones to fill some holes in my collection.
The coin from
The other coin is from
The scans of the coins aren't very good. I might have to see if there is a better setting for the scanner.
I bought four other coins, of which I will post pictures later.
This is yet another recently found and touched-up drawing. I drew this in late 2000, and it was tucked away since then until I pulled it out last week and cleaned it up a little. I don't think it's a great drawing, but I sort of like it, and it could easily be used as the basis for another work.
The subject is a skull I found outside
This was done with charcoal and chalk.
I found this old drawing in the back of a closet and thought it had some promise, so I worked on it a little more - mostly making some areas better defined, and filling in some holes in the sketchiness.
I had my
I'm pleased with how they look. Now comes the hardest part of all: selling them.
I'm also trying to figure out the best way to sign them.
This downtown Louisville scene was painted a couple of years later. I don't think it's too bad, and it was actually a part of my BFA show; it's still pretty far removed from how I'd like my paintings to look now. Whaddya think?
I finally cleaned out my box of things I dug up while metal detecting. There wasn't a whole lot of stuff, because I haven't done much hunting this year. However, it was the first time I'd cleaned it out since I-don't-know-when (last winter sometime, probably) so there was a little.
I had about five dollars in coins. The coin at the top left is a Sacagawea dollar, the second I've found. I can't remember where I found it, or even whether I already knew I had it. I might have thought it was a quarter when I threw it in the box I carry with me.
The other stuff is just junk. The toy plane tail and the aluminum glasses frame were found near one another on the grounds of a children's home/former orphanage. The plane tail is still streaked with tears. I don't know what kind of frames those are—perhaps some kind of sports safety glasses? The rifle casings are from the grounds of an old church (from those uncompromising olden days when they used to shoot sinners). The ring-shaped thing is actually a pipe fitting or pipe cutting. Mickey the dog must have taken up a new life under an assumed identity. It's all worthless.
Regarding the swallowtail caterpillars: Just at a glance, I saw five or six of them on the fennel, so I'm sure there are more I didn't see. Ever since I saw a butterfly laying eggs on it, each time I've walked past the fennel I've looked for caterpillars, but this is the first time I've found them.
This morning from our window I watched a bright red, chirping cardinal hopping around the top of one of my tomato plants. He was pulling at stems and leaves, and I thought he was eating flowers or small green tomatoes, but wasn't sure. Finally, I saw him grab something and pull and gobble it down. It looked like a green caterpillar, which had been eating the plant. Go cardinal!
I picked my first two red cayenne peppers today
Yesterday, my youngest child was pretending to be someone named Alyssa, and she eagerly told me the story of how she "got borned":
"For some reason, just before I got borned, my mother died. Then, all of a sudden [dramatic hand wave] in a big flash of lightning, I came out of my dad's tummy. We were living in
We had corn from the garden with our dinner. Some of it was a little under-ripe, but I picked it before the varmints could beat me to it, which they frequently do. The ears were less buggy and better developed than any I've grown and picked before, but there wee still some "ear-fill" problems.
I am now markedly out-paced in my tomato consumption. For a little while, I was eating enough to almost keep up with what was coming in, but no more. I have even become pretty good at frying some adequately delicious green tomatoes, and I'll make another batch of salsa in the next day or two, but there are too many tomatoes on my counter. Not enough to bother with canning, though. Perhaps I should oven- or dashboard-dry some.
Last night I had the idea that I should sautee some of the onions from my garden with some garlic, then use that in bread dough. Perhaps I could even use some pureed tomatoes; that could be a fantastic pizza crust.
I incorrectly set my alarm for 2:20, resulting in it not awakening me. Fortunately, I woke up on my own at 2:40 and checked the clock, got dressed, and set out.
I decided to take a faster route out to Long Run Park, but got lost when I couldn't find the back end of
It was supposed to take about 20 minutes to get to the park, but it ended up taking almost twice that. Along the way I saw more deer (six or seven) than cars (three). The deer and I weren't much of a danger to one another, since I was slowly feeling my way along unfamiliar roads.
This is one of the latest times I've been out to watch the Perseids. Usually I've gone out anywhere from 10:00 to 2:00, and been home well before sunrise. At those hours, I'm more likely to run into other people at the park (some I've seen have obviously been sky watchers like me; but others I've not been so sure about and might be better off not knowing.) Arriving at the park this morning at 3:30, I only saw on other car. I didn't see whoever came in it, but they left before I did.
I set up my lawn chair by the road. I used a little bug repellent, but they mosquitoes weren't too bad. Occasionally, geese or ducks on the lake would make a racket; distant dogs barked; a barred owl was repeating, "Who-cooks-for-you?" in the trees downhill; once, I heard a very far-off donkey braying loudly. It had a pleasantly pastoral feel.
The light pollution out at Long Run Park now truly sucks, though. It is darker than the street on which I live, but not by much. I had considered going farther out, either looking for a place way out Highway 22, or going with an astronomy group out to a viewing site in
Over the course of the first hour, I saw twenty meteors. Once I hit twenty, I almost decided to call it quits, but hung on for another fifteen or twenty minutes until I hit a tally of twenty five. The best one I saw wasn't a Perseid meteor; it came from another direction, and I only saw the end of it as it came from behind me, flaring bright yellow.
The drive home was much smoother.
I intend to go out to watch the Perseid meteor shower tonight. It will be reaching its peak tonight after midnight. This is something I've done many years since I was sixteen (there were quite a few years in which the weather was uncooperative, and a few years I just forgot.)
Very rarely has anyone gone with me, and I don't really blame them. It's tough being out at that hour, even for a great fireworks display.
And the Perseids are NOT a great fireworks display. However, each year on the news shows or news Web sites or in other popular media, I see the Perseids billed as something spectacular. Yesterday on CNN there was a short story which told people to go ahead and stay up late to watch the vivid meteors and to take their cameras with them and to submit their amazing shooting star photos and videos. This struck me as idiotic. Yes, there are great photographers and amateur astronomers who can get wonderful shots of meteors; but it takes the right equipment, patience, and skill. And the photos all look pretty much alike and aren't that amazing, just grainy streaks of light across a dark screen.
Streaks of light across a dark screen (the sky) is exactly what a shooting star looks like. I think the media, in what little attention they give this sort of thing, play it up all wrong.
Here is what I find wonderful about watching meteors. I love knowing that there are little specks of rock, most of them the size of a grain of sand, some perhaps as big as a pea, that have broken free from a comet. This speck has been drifting through our solar system in one form or another ever since the Earth was a young churning mass of goo. It has probably ranged far out past the orbit of Pluto. Now you can see it hit the atmosphere above you, vaporizing in a flash of light; it may be faint, or it may be bright enough to cast a shadow and leave a train of glowing gas that will hang there for second.
I can watch this someplace very dark, with crickets singing and scores of ancient stars shining, and with few other people around. It all seems supremely huge and, at the same time, secret and quiet.
I was thinking today: In the future, all art will be made by machines and for machines. It just seems like the highly likely outcome.
What will be the role of humans, you ask?
I respond: Humans?
I've just ridded myself of a misconception. For years (I don't know how many years, because I don't know when I acquired this error; 5 years, or 30 years, it beats me) I thought Hogan was another name for Pan.
I took this photo a month ago, but forgot to post it. We passed this fellow while we were looking for yard sales not far from where Kim's mom lives, and we all thought he was pretty cool.
Misc:
A couple of night ago I made salsa out of tomatoes and banana peppers from Kim's dad, crushed pineapple, green onions, lime juice, black pepper, and red pepper. It came out pretty good, and I want to eat some more as soon as I can.
Garden:
Something uprooted a couple of my corn stalks (including the biggest, healthiest one) and ate the little ears off of them. It seems like squirrels would be too small to pull over the biggest plants, and I've never seen deer in our neighborhood, so I'm guessing a raccoon or a possum did it.
We're finally getting some big ripe tomatoes. We also have lots of basil, which I used a few days ago for some focaccia, which turned out pretty good, too.
Art:
I'm almost done with
Art:
Here's another photo of my work-in-progress. It's slow going, but I'm making noticeable progress each day. I'm happy with it.
A couple of months ago I discovered that I wasn't as low on my homemade walnut ink as I had thought, for I found some forgotten jars of it stashed beneath my dresser. Last weekend I took them outside and re-strained them (they had become moldy) and added denatured alcohol as a preservative. There was enough of it that I felt comfortable giving a couple of little jars to interested friends.
Garden:
Last night I picked four ears of yellow sweet corn from our garden. I fear that will be all we're going to get. Only one ear was well-developed, the other three being small and missing many kernels. There are other ears growing, but they look puny and unhealthy. I think that inconsistent watering has played a role, but that most of the blame falls on insects. Japanese beetles and earwigs just love the corn, and eat the silk, which results in poor fertilization and therefore poor "ear-fill."
Fortunately, I hope, I also have another clump of corn growing quickly. This is a different type, and it's planted in a better location. Maybe the rainier weather will help this, too.
Anyway, the little corn we had last night tasted really good, even if it wasn't pretty.
The basil is growing very well, and I must make some pesto with it this weekend. I picked a grocery bag full of it last week and have had it in the refrigerator since then. I hope it's still usable, but it grows so fast that it probably doesn't matter if it's not.
The tomatoes are growing pretty well, but I've only had one large ripe one so far. There are many green ones that are starting to turn. There have also been a lot of red cherry tomatoes that have split in half from inconsistent watering (I try to hold off from watering as long as possible, so things get dry, then we get a huge rainfall, and the next day the tomatoes have ruptured.)
Coins:
I actually spent an hour or two a few nights ago working on my collection. I have quite a few very low-end world coins I need to label and sort, and I really want to log them all into a spreadsheet. That will make it easier to keep track of what countries from which I don't have examples.
I'm still undecided about what to do with the gift certificate Mom and Dad gave me. Now I'm leaning back toward trying to acquire a Greek coin bearing a gorgoneion (gorgon's head).
Here's another great fact you can bring up at parties: For a hundred years or so, up until the early 20th Century, many artists used a brown oil paint that was made from Egyptian mummies. It was called mummy brown.
Here is something I think about every time I blow my nose. In chess, rooks are considered more valuable pieces than bishops. That's because rooks move orthogonally (up and down and back and forth across the board) and bishops move diagonally. That means rooks can move to any square on the board, but a bishop can only move to the same color square that it starts out on; rooks have the potential to control twice as much of the board as bishops.
Kleenex is the bishop. It's great for blowing noses, but you can't flush it. Toilet paper is the rook. You can both blow your nose with it and it's also flushable. Dual purpose! That means toilet paper is a more valuable commodity than Kleenex.
I think about that when I'm looking for something to blow my nose with. I don't really think about other times.
There is one corner of our office that is a Bob corner. There are three offices located in that corner; two of the offices belong to Bobs. Within thirty feet of that corner are four cubicles that belong to Bobs. The percentage of the population named Bob for that small part of the office is about 42%.
Finally, some numismatic news to report.
For my birthday, my parents have given me a gift certificate to VCoins.com. Now comes the torture: I have to decide what to spend it on. How do I make up my mind? They is a great selection of ancient coins there, but I need to find a way to develop a focus.
I've decided I'd better read some history to find something I find particularly interesting.
My coins have been very neglected. I really want to go through an do some organizing and weeding, but haven't had the time. Fortunately—at least, in that regard—I accrue coins so slowly that the disorganization in my collection is a problem that has been looming for years without becoming a crisis.
I finally read Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. Aaron loaned it to me (about three years ago) thinking I enjoy it since I'd had enjoyed Gaiman's American Gods, and he was right. It comes across as a little bit of a cross between The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Alice in Wonderland; a young Scottish man moves to London for work, and ends up sucked into parallel supernatural London, existing in the forgotten crevices and tunnels beneath the city and on rooftops, inhabited by the overlooked and forgotten. It's a sort of spirit world of homelessness and mythology, capable of observing the "real" world while going unnoticed itself. It's a strange idea, but carried off pretty well.
It's less complex and sprawling than American Gods, with more modest aspirations, but it was fun and involving. It also really, really helped that Gaiman has easy-to-like writing style. I read through it very quickly; it was very well paced; it was frequently funny; and the two main villains were loads of grotesque fun.
It's too bad that the writers of the TV series "Lost" didn't take a few notes here. Both stories dealt with every-day people suddenly thrust into strange worlds governed by alien rules and customs. For reasons I'm still pondering, Gaiman's world seems to hold together better than that of "Lost."
Laurie, the organizer of the Louisville Area Skeptics meetup group (http://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Area-Skeptics/), mentioned at last night's Science Café meeting that future presenters will include a retired couple from
This prompted a string of thoughts to run through my head: Is once a week for a science lab enough? That seems so slight. But shouldn't every subject taught in a school be considered, in some way, a science? Do I consider all such subjects a science? Some obviously have more to do with science than others: Math and the other sciences are closely bound. History involves lots of research, with ties to archaeology, geology, psychology, and medicine.
How do you apply science to literature and art, though? I suppose I'm so used to the skeptical mindset now that it never seems natural to erect a wall between "the sciences" and "the humanities." They are all wrapped up together.
At last night's Science Café meetup, Dr. Lee Alan Dugatkin gave a presentation based on his new book, _Mr.
Dr. Dugatkin related how many of our nation's founding fathers became involved in a conflict that was only tangentially related to our war of independence from
Thomas Jefferson, who proclaimed himself to be a scientist first and a politician second, became obsessed (according to Dugatkin) with refuting these claims, which became widely believed in
It seemed obvious that Dr. Dugatkin really knew his material, and took delight in answering questions. He was an engaging speaker on a very interesting topic, illustrated by great anecdotes (and when you mix cultural conflict, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, French naturalists, frontiersmen, giant moose, and Native Americans, you're bound to get some great anecdotes). It was often quite funny. It even involved weasel penises.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote a series of essays for Natural History magazine in which he sought to illustrate the importance of the very human, error-prone personalities who have been involved in our scientific history. In much the same way as I can't see any real line that keeps science out of art, there is often a false notion that science is an endeavor removed from other human passions. That couldn't be less accurate; all human prides and prejudices are displayed in the history of science, and without their great motivations, the sciences themselves would be stunted and feeble.
