Sarah Patten's work

You might look at Sarah Patten's collages -- her website added to my "Links to Friends" section at the lower right:  http://www.sarahpatten.com/collages.html

Out of the Old Boxes: Lot Two

Opening old storage boxes, more fragile butteflies fly up and into the ether.  On the way, they often go through transformation as they pass through Photoshop.  Click on the title above if you care to see a slide show of Lot Two from the old Boxes.

With apologies to all architects, my fantasy plan...

 I had this notion -- a pyramid ziggurat form.  Whether an earthen pyramid or a building in a pyramid shape, people could walk up and down the outer ramp.

But it could also be a sluice for water to irrigate a green cover or gardens along the pyramid.

But I also imagine (represented by plastic tubing) a walkway where people could walk through the sky.  Or it could be a water chute.  Or...

 ...perhaps this could just be a format for a variety of structures.  Needless to say my "model" is primitive and not professional, but then it is just a fantasy not an actual building plan. 

Click on the title of this entry if you want to see a slide show of the stages of making this model.

Doing Tai Chi in a Picture Postcard

 Some friends and I do tai chi in what is equivalent to a picture postcard, on a pier next to San Francisco's Ferry Building, with the Bay Bridge in sight, with our rhythms and motions in tandem with the rhythms of nature, the ever-changing waters and weather by the Bay.  Sometimes all six of us are present, but sometimes we are as few as two, such as here with Dana Weisshaar and Martha Hubert.  At this ideal location we do tai chi, then one or the other may have a chai tea, and should anyone sneeze while doing the form, we do not speak aloud, but we may be thinking, "tai chooo!"

Jo Ann Mischler

When I was about 13, with money saved from orchard and bakery work (60 cents an hour, as I recall), I bought my Kokak Panda camera that took square photos, and you looked down into a square viewfinder before taking the photo.  I felt compelled to make "portraits" of a little neighbor girl, Jo Ann Mischler.  I see that in one of the photos I requested that she wear some "cape" over her Hopalong Cassidy sweatshirt.  Her mother lived somewhere else, and she was living two houses away with a Mennonite woman who wore a plain dress, of course, probably fastened with pins, buttons being forbidden, and wearing the standard gauzy white cotton bonnet, strings dangling free.  She was undoubtedly one of the Mennonites whose labors small town citizens could enjoy at minimal wages.  Many years later, I met Jo Ann when she had become a young adult, and she was beautiful and chic, retaining a quick spirit that had appealed to me.  She remembered how being photographed had affected her in some way.    Sadly, I believe she did not live long after that, struck down by some illness.  Click on the photo to expand it -- Isn't that a Mona Lisa smile?:

Haiku for the Egyptians

A Peaceable Kingom

Paul Heidt sent me a sweet example of interspecies harmony.  It felt in accord with a verse (whether good or bad) that I was working on presently (below).  The video from Paul probably easier to access by clicking on the title line above, "A Peaceable Kingdom" (the name over time for portraits of all animals lying in peaceful harmony), but here is the link also:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d79ArrL8VRg

Gail Horvath's Nexus Gateway to Others' Blogs

Gail has created a site that is a gateway to blogs she follows.  I suppose she will continue to add sites as time passes.  I have added her site to my "Links to Friend's Sites" on my opening page(s):
http://eyesoftheheart.squarespace.com/other-peoples-blogs/

Sophia and Eduardo Have Turned Three...It's Written in Chocolate on Their Faces

Louise Nayer Reads at the Cafe Royale, San Francisco, in January 2011

 Louise Nayer reading from her great book, BURNED, at the Cafe Royale, Post and Leavenworth, San Francisco, in January 2011.