February 19, 2010 at 9:35 pm
And as if one trip out to the rural western half of Johnson County wasn’t enough yesterday, Lore and I went to draw in an art studio in Cosgrove last night.
I haven’t done anything like this since my first year of college. I could hear my art muscles creaking as I drew. Unhappy with my initial sketches using a 6B pencil, I found what can only be described as a graphite brick in Lore’s pencil bag. I discovered that I liked it because it forced me to not be so precise. Some of the results:
Figure drawing #1
Figure drawing #2
Figure drawing #3
Figure drawing #4
As you can see I can’t draw faces, hands, or other extremities yet. I also was having a very hard time with their relative positions (some of the horizontal and vertical strokes are where I drew an ersatz grid by dragging the graphite across the paper).
The model was pretty cool. She brought a suitcase of clothes (when she bothered wearing any) and a mattress that could be folded into different configurations.
February 19, 2010 at 8:28 pm
Safety refresher training is an annual ritual for wildland firefighters. I attended the class in the Conservation Education Center, a nice facility park at F.W. Kent Park between Tiffin and Oxford. As usual, I took a short walk in the snow during our lunch break. There were some animal tracks but mostly people tracks.
Ice fishing hole
Wood duck box
The class itself usually involves watching safety videos and discussions of last year’s accidents. This year we had a new fire shelter video. I was getting sick of the last one. The fire shelters are our portable refuges of last resort. Anyway, the video demonstrated how the new models hold up to direct flame contact better than the older ones by pitching them (uninhabited, of course) among a small brush fire. At the end of the class, we practiced deploying the shelters. Practice involves shaking out the shelters and covering yourself with it while laying on the ground like a giant baked potato wrapped in foil.
February 13, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Instead of saying “there’s a crow” when she saw one, my friend and colleague Debbie used to say simply, “there’s Crow.”
While depositing my recyclables in the bins at City Carton at dusk, I heard and saw a massive murder of crows overhead. There were easily two thousand of them or more circling the river basin just south of downtown. I’ve seen big noisy flocks before, often mobbing a threatening bird of prey that happened to be nearby. But usually it’s just a few dozen birds. Imagine being the owl harassed by two thousand noisy crows?
Since these birds were much more interesting than, say, looking for the “mixed paper” bin, I paused to watch them until they passed. A little later I saw them a couple of blocks away, sitting quietly on bare trees along the railroad. They made the trees look as if they had clusters of black fruits on their tops.
Remember West Nile virus? That (and if I recall correctly, shark attacks) was what we Americans were panicking about before September 11, 2001. Anyway, crows were especially susceptible to West Nile virus and disappeared from Staten Island for a while. In fact, I remember seeing one at work and thinking, “there’s a crow,” then realizing it was noteworthy only because I hadn’t seen one in a year. I haven’t seen very many since then, in any of the states I’ve lived.
Well, it looks like the crows are back. “There’s Crow” indeed.
February 7, 2010 at 9:12 pm
It was on snail.
February 7, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Thank heavens for rich white women. If America could fully mobilize its richest white women resources it could conquer almost one percent of all its problems. Why should the poor inconvenience the wealthy with higher taxes just so they can use their own government to help themselves out of poverty, when they can wait for a rich white woman to condescend to adopting one of them? Didn’t those poor folks listen to anything Cindy McCain said when she congratulated herself for her humanitarianism at the Republican National Convention a couple of years ago?
January 31, 2010 at 12:55 am
The naughty list
At the community center where we swim, a poster from the neighboring junior high school described the school’s four goals for developing character. The poster was pink, with the lettering in white, except for the first letter of each characteristic, which was black.
The first characteristic was “Self discipline”, except the black S didn’t contrast enough with the pink background, so all I saw at first was elf discipline.
“Elf discipline!” I thought. “This is my kind of junior high school.” Followed by the inevitable disappointment.
January 23, 2010 at 7:01 pm
While reviewing some old posts I was dismayed to see how much profanity I use in this blog. In case you are wondering, “shit” and “fuck” (including all compound words and verb tenses) appear in 18 posts apiece.
Now that I think about it, that’s not so bad out of 945 published posts. In his book On Writing Stephen King said he did not have a big problem with writing profanity if it was “truthful.” He was referring to writing fiction, though. And while I am being “truthful” with my use of these words, I can probably do better.
And yet, here are the final standings, excluding this post:
Shit: 18 posts
Fuck: 18 posts
Bitch (in a non-canine context): 3 posts
Dick (in a non-Cheney context): 3 posts
Asshole: 1 post
January 20, 2010 at 8:11 pm
I noticed I hadn’t gotten any e-mails through this site in a long time. This is probably because my readership is nearly nonexistent, but also because the form on the Contact page no longer works.
I’ve installed a new contact form. I know it works with Firefox 3.5. If you have trouble with the form in Internet Explorer 8, try viewing the page in compatibility mode. I’m still working out some kinks.
I apologize if anyone tried to contact me and wasn’t able to or didn’t get a response. If the contact form still doesn’t work, please let me know using the comment form for this entry, below.
Thanks for your patience.
January 20, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Cedar waxwings outside my window in a storm
Most of the area is under siege from a slow-moving ice storm today. A little freezing rain, though, has not deterred a flock of cedar waxwings from visiting the tree outside my window. These birds are obviously tougher than I am.
Then again, I don’t fly into windows, as one just did.
January 13, 2010 at 10:45 pm
Walking along one of the roads at work, I nearly stepped on a small rodent: a meadow vole.
I’ve seen meadow voles before in pellet form, that is, after owls were done digesting them. This one ignored me as it foraged inches from my feet. Insulted that I did not inspire fear in this insignificant beast, I stamped my feet couple of times but it did not scurry away. When I mentioned this to our biologist, she said that voles spend most of their time burrowed under something, and so aren’t as skittish as mice or other similarly small critters when out in the open.