Refrigerator Madness - 12/21/09

Refrigerator Madness - 12/20/09

Refrigerator Madness - 12/19/09

Refrigerator Madness - 12/18/09

(Gleaned from the ton of stuff out there)

Refrigerator Madness - 12/17/09

Bears and Hockey

Attitude with "Kuyler"

I really like this one.... I like how it is a cloche, or an Attitude Hat. It can be a tam or it can just be a cap. So versatile.

Attitude Hat "Kuyler"

Nothin' Like this Combo of Grace & Strength

I have been totally mesmerized by this video all day! Enjoy

Another Piece of S.F.

San Francisco's People. Canon 5DmkII 24p from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Something about some of the images here, really strikes a chord. The 'city' chord. It doesn't have to be San Francisco, it could be New York or Chicago... but there is a big city feel about some of the lighting used with some of these images.

Again, for any of you that have lived in S.F., this is another piece of that city that might jar some memories.

Drinking our Morning Coffee

There truly is something to be said for white pimp shoes .....

Amsterdam Coffee - Oct 28, 2009

San Francisco 1958

There is just something eerily beautiful about this little clip....any of you that have ever lived in San Francisco might feel the same way.

This came from a blog called Spots Unknown - Under the Skin of San Francisco

San Francisco 1958 from Jeff Altman on Vimeo.

The Cat Piano

Take 7 minutes and watch this wonderful Cat Noir film, narrated by Nick Cave

The Cat Piano from PRA on Vimeo.

The Mid-State Fair is in Town

Nuff said....................

A Brief Pause to Mention...........

"Whisper Flight"© 2009 WB Eckert
15x30
Acrylic on Canvas
Please click to view full size

Today is my birthday. Another year has come and gone and I am still here. I am here, healthy and still creative. I am here, happy and still content.

My husband painted a painting for me. He surprised me and made me incredibly happy. This is my very own...just for me........all mine. I love my husband.

For the 4th of July

For the 4th of July we watched "The Great Debaters"

In my opinion.... the perfect movie for the holiday.

From the Film:

Wiley College argues the affirmative side of the question of civil disobedience. In the final rebuttal,
James Farmer, Jr. states:

"In Texas they lynch Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in their eyes and, worse, the shame. What was this Negro's crime that he should be hung without trial in a dark forest filled with fog. Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just lie there and do nothing. No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing. Just left us wondering, "Why?" My opponent says nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south. Not when Negroes are denied housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we are lynched. St Augustine said, "An unjust law in no law at all.' Which means I have a right, even a duty to resist. With violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.

It does take some forethought.....

So….. whenever i have to use a public restroom, i will veer towards the handicapped cubicle if no one in the line or outside seems to need to use it. I mean, it’s bigger…. i like bigger (in comparison to my knees touching the door when i sit down).

This ‘restroom’ had no one inside. i opened the door to the ‘handicapped’ cubicle, went in and took care of the business at hand…. then turned to get the toilet paper…. and there it was….. waaaaaaay over on the cubicle wall.

Now…. i am 5′9″ tall with long arms, hands and fingers, and i couldnt reach it…. no one, other then an orangatan could have reached it without first getting up.

Great planning folks…..

Pondering Colors

Below is a Factoid from a very cool book my husband has. The book is "Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color" by Leatrice Eiseman.



Factoid: "The human eye actually sees warm colors before cool colors. Generally, warm colors advance and cool colors recede, however the degree of saturation can make a difference. Highly saturated colors appear closer than colors of low saturation."

Do you have an intrinsic sense of color? Are you aware of what certain colors do? How they make you feel? If you aren't, or if you'd like more information about colors, this is a great book to have

My husband is artist, and he always says to me that he is amazed at my color sense. That I can put colors together that he would 'never' put together, and I can make them work. This always surprises me and I don't know if he is actually relating to the colors being together or the sense of what they evoke when they are together.

I happen to be one of those people that goes with my gut, my intuition, my sixth sense about alot of things. Color is one of those things and usually I am 'right' about what I choose. I have learned throughout the years that I can rely on my sense of color and how colors work together.

I know colors (and their placement with other colors) can evoke a lot of things. Colors are like musical notes and how they are put together creates visual music. Certain memories can be brought forth, or a 'sense' of a certain look time or place.

I wonder why I react so strongly to color and why I can put colors together so easily and there are people that can't... and I mean, they really, really can't. They have no sense of relationship... or maybe it is that their color schemes evoke nothing in me. No 'sense' of anything. So, is it really the colors they are putting together or what it does or doesn't evoke when I view them?


Factoid: "Confining a color to a particular feature or usage will give greater emphasis to that feature. Repeating a color too many times can create a distraction or dilution of attention."

Now this is Fun!

Funny, well-done...

How to create some real WEARABLE ART!!!!!

It has Sprung

I'm screwed..................

thank you xkcd.com

When did it happen????

When did a stuffed animal turn into a Plushie?
This is a Plushie
This is a stuffed animal

When did a Robert
turn into a Bob?

or


A Richard turn into a Dick?

When did "Sorry" turn into "Just Kidding"?

or

"Sorry, my mistake" turn into "My Bad"?

and please..........

When did they start breeding animals without legs???

The Sign of the Glove

"The Sign of the Glove"
2008 San Miquel, CA

A funny and sad thing - a single glove, or even as in the above case, a pair of gloves... that feel like single gloves.

A glove without a partner. A solitary glove. A glove without love. A lost glove. A glove with no owner. A trampled glove, run over while just laying there. To me, the lost glove always evokes something wistful and sad. But maybe I am completely wrong? Maybe these lost gloves are just 'signs'. Portents pointing to new pathways?

We take pictures of lost gloves. Why? Probably some of the above reasons, probably some that I haven't even thought of. I googled 'lost gloves' and came up with a wonderful site "Lost Glove" . I am so glad there are others that have feelings about lost gloves.

These are a couple of my lost gloves pictures. My thanks to my husband for recognizing the importance of photographing a lost glove as it is found. I intend to continue cataloging them as they come into my life.

"Worked to the Bone" Glove
2009 Paso Robles, CA

"I Wasn't Always Alone" Glove

2007 Carmel, CA

What I Don't Like about Myself....I Will See in You

As I walked out the door today I realized that the color of my sunglasses matched the color of my shoes. This made me inordinately happy. I told my husband, "Hon... my sunglasses match my shoes". I was happy.

But of course, my happy can't last long because I immediately had to figure out what it was about this particular matching sunglasses/shoes thing that made me so happy.

I realized I would have noticed this matching thing if it occurred on someone else. If YOU were walking down the street and had matching sunglasses/shoes, I surely would have noticed and I would have been happy about it too.

This then moved on to.... "Oh no.. so if I notice that my pants are too tight, I will notice if everyone else's pants are too tight also". Which led to: Whatever someone else noticed about themselves, they would surely notice about me.

So if someone hated how their hair always stuck in their shirt collar, they would always notice hair sticking in shirt collars on other people.

There is just no damn way any of us are ever going to be perfect! Either I will notice something I don't like about me and see it in you... or you will notice something you don't like about yourself and notice it in me...

oh woe :(

Now tell me how this whole train of thought went from something making me happy to something making me worry. In a matter of moments, the initial happy thought turned to shit.

I must work on this.

My Theory of Relativity

i am beginning to wonder about the amount of coffee i drink in relationship to the amount of questions i ask.

• the less coffee i have, the more questions
• the more coffee i have, the more answers i have
• go figure.

I'm Going to Talk about Child Molestation

Let me talk about child molestation and children's museums. Why? Because I want to and I feel I need to talk about it.

There is a current article in our local paper about the new Children's Museum. The headline for the article reads "Lone adults not always welcome -SLO Children’s Museum bars entry to anyone not accompanying a child or on a tour, while other facilities in the area are more lenient". SLO Tribune - Jan 11, 2009


ZZZZT, what a grabber title that is, huh? Interestingly enough, that is exactly what the article is about... usually we get this flashy, hot-issue, bold title only to find out the story is a piece of fluff. But this article really is about a children's museum that is excluding lone adults under the pretense that they would rather be 'erring toward caution' when it comes to their establishment and that they are creating a safe haven for all those little ones that come in with mommy or daddy or grandpa.

Look, i've raised two children. I think child molestation sucks and is a sickness and I would probably have tried to kill any adult that would have tried to molest either of my children... but some things just go to damn far.

If the museum is really erring on the side of caution, and not just catering to 'the fear factor', they better stop letting in parents with children, grandparents and uncles with children, babysitters and neighbors with children and any adult that may know the child, including school teachers, priests and police.

Why?

Because if they did their homework they would know that out of all the child molestation cases, **60% of them are done by family members and acquaintances.

If you are going to open a CHILDRENS museum, then there should also be enough staff to properly care for it and its patrons, with enough security so that the museum wouldnt have to settle on the use of an archaic, preemptive reasoning that infers that a lone adult constitutes a potential child molester.

I am all for being informed and cautious and safe. I am very much against instituting fear where there is no need for fear. I am very much against the insinuation that a lone man or woman is, by default, a sexual predator, until they can prove otherwise.


**strangers are the offenders in approx 10% of child sexual abuse cases. Most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approx 30% are relatives of the child, most often fathers, uncles or cousins; around 60% are other acquaintances/neighbors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse

BEWARE!!!

BEWARE!

BEWARE!!!

This makes me feel like tossing my lunch.....

The following article was posted on January 8th, 2009, in the New Times - Volume 23, Issue 23
http://www.newtimes-slo.com/shredder/1733/missing-but-unmissed/

Tossing it
Call it the Dumpster dive opportunity of a decade or the dumbest government decision since the war, but according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, as of Feb. 10, thrift stores, re-use stores and Goodwills are going to have to toss out all their used kids clothes and toys.

That’s right, just in time for the worst recession in American history, Congress and the Bush Administration are apparently banning thrift stores from selling used kid stuff.

Here’s the background: After last year’s scare about lead in everything from lunchboxes to T-shirts, Congress passed a law demanding that retailers verify that all children’s products are lead-free.

In practice, that means that all children’s products sold after Feb. 10 have to be tested for lead. It costs upwards of $1,000 to get the test done, per batch of product. That’s not a big cost for Mattel, one of the manufacturers actually found to have sold products with lead. But it is a big deal to people who hand-make toys, games, and clothes. In other words, it’s a big deal to the type of folks least likely to make products anybody has to worry about.

It’s an even bigger deal to consignment shops and thrift stores, because they can’t go around spending $1,000 to test a $1 hoodie. Their only apparent choice? Toss it out.