Watch out when business people recommend their clients

When a friend recommends someone to sell your house, tile your bathroom or pull the engine out of your antique VW, stop up your ears and run for cover. Pause, steep some tea, pour yourself a glass of sherry or amaretto. Have a beer or a latte. Sit and contemplate alternatives. Or at least ask a few questions and do some research. Sure your friend means well, but good intentions and good advice are not the same thing.

Especially beware when friends, relatives and others recommend people who are clients in their businesses. Just because the client successfully buys services or goods doesn't mean they are good at providing goods or services themselves. Many businessmen espouse the motto, "One hand washes the other." So, they try to throw a little business to their clients by recommending them. They don't necessarily know anything about their clients practices or reputation as a service provider, and are not aware of complaints or legal actions pending against them either. All they know, is they guy pays his bill or they hope he will soon...

The unmerited assumption that a business person is trustworthy can play out badly for the one doing the trusting. I know this from painful experience.

A friend recommended a real estate agent to me several years ago, quite a few years ago, THough th ending was eventually a good one with a different realtor it cost me a year of time to right it. The lesson I learned was this - don't fail to investigate and read the fine print because you think this person your friend recommended has your best interests at heart 

I recently heard another sad tale right in the family. My cousin-in-law who is a nice fellow and a very good businessman, recommended a mortgage banker to my Uncle, told the guy, the Uncle needed a fixed rate mortgage.

When the Uncle, after also asking for a fixed rate mortgage himself, reads the mortgage contract he sees that his interest rate is guaranteed for two years only. BUT INCREDIBLY HE SIGNS IT ANYWAY. After all his daughter's husband who is very smart, recommended the guy and he must know..... NOT NOT NOT! Next year his interest rate will sky-rocket because he assumed this was the best he could do since his daughter's hubby recommended him. Or in his case,  it likely has more to do with his irrational belief that the world would end before the two year initial interest rate expired....

ALWAYS investigate. May I take my own advice.....

Will the morning paper become an afternoon paper?

The News Times, which cut a bunch of staffers last summer, and which is under new ownership, seems to have a rotating deadline for its home delivery.

Once upon a time, the weekday paper was supposed to be delivered by 6 a.m. so people on their way to work could have it before they left for the day. No more. The new deadline is 8a.m. When a friend called at 8:20 this morning, the News Times answering machine bleated that if the paper hadn't be delivered by 11 p.m. to call back. 11 PM??? Perhaps the News Times is planning to return to its roots as an AFTERNOON PAPER. Or even an EVENING PAPER?

I doubt that. What is happening though, is a bit of difficulty staffing the home delivery roster. Home carriers are poorly compensated independent contractors on whom is foisted much of the true long term costs of delivery. They use their own vehicles, on which they are raking up milage, which lowers resale value. They pay for their own gas, oil, maintenance, and have higher insurance costs as well, and shovel out extra early in the snow. By contract, they must deliver the paper seven days a week, every week, every month of the year. If they want to go out of town, or have a day off, they have to pay someone else to make the deliveries while they are gone. The also have to keep books, and must "buy" their allotment of papers from the company.

Now that gas is over three bucks a gallon, I am wondering if the News Times is having difficulty finding people foolhardy enough to take the job. Enterprising boys and girls on bicycles are apparently in short supply as well. Moms think it's way too dangerous for them to be wheeling about unsupervised, at so early an hour when who knows who is lurking about.... Besides - they have to be in class before 8 a.m.!!! Wow. It's a different world.

Adults who do take the contracts soon realize after their first independent contractor's check - that they will net a pittance after their costs, to get up at 3 am. to make all their deliveries before six. These folks are getting wise to it all. As a small concession, apparently the company is hoping to make home delivery contracts more attractive by making the delivery deadline later.

Among the other staff cuts the paper has made - is the real human being who used to answer the phone when people called to say their paper hadn't arrived. All in all, some old-time subscribers are not happy. I know one who is planning go switch to the Daily News which is always in the neighbors driveway when she passes by on her 5:30 am walk. I suggested she could take a peak a Ct news online. She's considering the idea.

Ironically, readers who get home delivery are paying subscribers. Online readers, (the up and coming, thing for newspapers hoping to compete with Internet news) are supported by an expensive infrastructure, but they read between the gaudy, flashing animated ads for free.

Lessons & Carols tomorrow

• Tomorrow is Lessons and Carols. (a job not a belief). The concert is by the combined choirs of St Mary’s and the local Congregational church. Their choir has a LOT of men and they sing like vikings. TEN bases in the combined choir. I will be recording it all on my Olympus mini thing. I recorded the entire dress rehearsal which sounds pretty good. This time I placed the recorder on the shelf behind the organ with mics facing away from the singers and out towards the congregation. That resulted in a nice natural “reverb” from the vaulted ceiling!

We also have the benefit of two folks up front. The music director from the congregational church is tickling the organ keys for this one. Our director is conducting. They make a nice team! Finally, after all this churchy stuff I am heading to a solstice bonfire at a friend’s house.

Remembering the heat in the cold - my brush with heat stroke

Last night, in obscure moments of semi-sleep - I could hear what I thought was rain. This morning it was clear the sound was actually little frozen sleet-pellets hitting the roof. The walk and driveway were full of them and it was a peculiar walking experience - almost like walking on deep sand, rather than snow. Driving was tricky but by going slow, and with some skidding and sliding, things progressed. Out by the airport it was almost all white like driving in a cold cloud with hills and sky merging into white. I made it into work and back without a hitch.

Since it's 24 degrees outside my window, naturally I am thinking of hot weather.

During the one of the hottest summers on record, I made the incredible mistake of moving to burbs of Atlanta GA. Shortly after arriving, I went for a walk one day in a long lazy southern subdivision. I got lost and wondered for hours in the terrible afternoon heat. Later I learned it was 105 degrees that afternoon. I knew it was hot, as I was soaked in sweat and my mouth was parched. After an hour and half of passing houses that looked alike, my forehead was cold, and my hands were clammy. I stopped sweating altogether and imagined I would never be heard from again. About that time, I came to a school and I spied a water spigot on the foundation. First thing I stuck my whole head under the water, so it ran down my back and shoulders. Then once I was soaked, I felt a little better and I drank, thanking the fates no one had turned off the water during the summer recess. I stuck each foot and arm under the spigot too, so I was really soaked and cooled. Then I collapsed in the shade for almost an hour, getting up several times for more water. I was lucky I didn't die that day.

When I was rested, I started to walk very slowly, to float along really on my rubbery legs. Getting overheated takes a lot out of you. Finally I came to a commercial area. The first store I saw was an air-conditioned fast food joint where I ordered a large ice tea... New to the south, I had no idea how large a large drink was down there. It came in a bucket the size of bucket of fried chicken. I could have bathed in it..... But right at that moment, I just marveled and drank as much as I could for the trip home. I really had no idea where exactly I was. On a payphone, I called a friend who came in a lovely beatup air conditioned cougar to pick me up.

In praise of the Harper's Index

No, it's not a stock index, nor a fund index, nor related to maps, encyclopedias nor to a government census. Harper's Index is a page of offbeat statistics published each month in Harper's Magazine. We are talking odd and outlandish statistics that seem to flow into each other in some sort of semi-poetic stream-of-consciousness progression. A quasi organic tumble of cultural quirks - evidence from which (perhaps) deductions can be made. Need to know the percentage of Americans who claim they'd like to have a plug to the internet surgically hooked into their brains? The amount of CO2 released from opened champagne on New Year's Eve? The chances your daughter's bright red lipstick has an unsafe level of lead? You need this month's INDEX to find out...
(Note: Harper's Magazine is NOT to be confused with Harper's Bazaar which is NOT NOT NOT on my reading list.)

The Harper's Index that arrived today (on Page 15) has 39 tidy snippets of intrigue and outrage. Some of their stats hit like a sucker punch with a quick one-two rhythm. Here's an example of the one-two style. Tidbit number 29 - in the state of California 19,300 credit card disputes have been resolved since 2003. While that one fills readers with a satisfying sense of justice, it's a short-lived delusion. It's just the setup line. The punch is the next line which reveals that 94 percent were resolved in favor of the credit card company. On page 82 in a neat source box, you can discover that both these statistics were provided the Public Citizen, an organization founded by Ralph Nader

For the 37 other bits this month, including the three odd questions posed in the first paragraph - subscribe! Or go to the library! You can also wait two months and get the index online. Or if you know me, I can lend you the issue. And yes I realize I am plugging a bit of traditional media. I like it. If you are bored or in need of small talk stunners I urge you visit the Harper's Index Archive which runs all the way back to March of 1984. - regards and happy reading!

Books: Amitai Etzioni: The Spirit of Community

Etzioni’s Communitarianism Cookbook
(add morality to taste then stir until social movement rises)
by Mar Walker
an essay in response to the book The Spirit of Community by Amitai Etzioni
this was originally written for a grad class in 1997, has been posted on my website for years
and I also posted it to Amazon.com as a book review

A Morality “Play”

Picture the scene. On the lawn, beneath your bedroom window a crowd is gathering in the dark. They know your spouse’s car and that red coupe that pulled in at 2 a.m. isn’t it. Mrs. Abernathy, a strict communitarian who lives across the street was up taking an aspirin when she spotted this car and saw the shadowy form of some home-wreaker sneaking through the side door. Duty bound, she called out a few neighbors to help you keep your morals in line. Your spouse, who had just fallen asleep, makes an appearance in the window to disperse them. (It was inconvenient enough when the car broke down on the way home from a seminar. The red coupe is a loaner.) You’re mad, so you open the window muttering and fling tennis shoes into the retreating crowd of busybodies. In the morning, this ungrateful behavior will get its own round of censure by telephone.

Communitarianism - as proposed in Amitai Etzioni’s “The Spirit of Community” assumes the moral legitimacy and truth of your community’s assumptions about your life. It offers an external morality without epistemology, theology or logic, without any messy philosophic notions of essence or virtue, without judge or jury. It offers a slap-dash recipe for suffocating Stepford communities where neighbors are encouraged to interfere in each others lives. And this call to action is not grounded firmly in a basis of friendship, common humanity or agape caring as in Scott Peck’s work on community building.

Mr. Etzioni himself should not be pointing any fingers. His communitarian morality represents either an ineptly presented or a cleverly muddled patchwork of positions with a little something for everyone. His occasionally tempting construct was designed to attract supporters for an underlying agenda of campaign reform in Washington, which he openly states must be leveraged from a position outside of politics through the political energy of a new social movement tied to morality.

As I began reading this book, I wanted to like it. But I kept getting an uneasy feeling - that same odd feeling one gets when reading certain literature. For instance, Vladimir Nabakov’s Pale Fire - where the narrator’s voice is unreliable in ways that are not obvious at first. Although Etzioni’s awkwardly worded tome is not a novel, I believe it contains some fictions.

The self-declared “single core thesis” on which Etzioni states Communitarianism is based is that “Americans .... can now act without fear. We can act with out fear that attempts to shore up our values... will cause us to charge into a dark tunnel of moralist and authoritarianism that leads to a church-dominated state or a right-wing world.”

Besides the obvious difficulty in the notion of “shoring up” values, this statement is not a premise. "Trust me you liberals and libertarians, there is nothing to fear in supporting my as yet unstated proposals to curtail your self-centered freedoms," Etzioni seems to coo with the butterfly net carefully hidden behind his back. His self-declared premise does not undergird any of the recommendations he subsequently proposes - but it is the basis on which he selected them. He throws enough bones to both extremes so the unwary and the battle-weary might buy in hoping for consensus at last.

Americans today have an attitude of entitlement, Mr. Etzioni says. They demand rights without responsibilities. Large numbers don’t even bother to vote. Yes, I thought, it’s true. So let’s call a moratorium on new rights. Sure, I said I can buy that. The ones we have constitutionally are pretty substantial. While pointing to “rights” that have no legal foundation, Etzioni claims quite a few of our constitutional rights need to be “notched” just a tad. Like Ayn Rand, he dismisses “rights” to housing and heath care saying, “who will pay for them?” But when it comes to children of nice middle class families - never mind the bill, we are too money-centered. After all, children with two normal parents are important, unless they need housing or health care.

Individual conscience is not enough to inspire virtue, Etzioni states. Communities should marshal focused social pressure to force people to do right. Of course he admits that he personally didn’t have the backbone to say what he really thought about Japan’s “dirty tricks.” I guess it’s easier to wag a finger at a neighbor than risk censure from your intellectual peers at work. He later expresses dismay that the public pays so much attention to the private scandals of politicians. Hey - attack Washington about something that really matters and save the moral nit-picking for the neighbors.

The family should be strengthened, he says. Somebody should be home with the children. Etzioni repeatedly says it doesn’t have to be the wife. The wife can work at home or the husband can - a suggestion designed to resonate with liberals and still not offended the conservatives. It is a suggestion already among the compromises couples routinely work out without this communitarian guidance. And when he talks about the farm boys raised in moral homes and working for other farmers in moral family-like settings, it’s interesting to note how ineffective his externally imposed morality really is. The minute these farm boys head to the city they turn into reprobates according to Etzioni.

Just as an aside, he notes we are all born half a human and must find wholeness in marriage. He declares flatly that thousands of productive single and divorced people are “damaged” goods, “in every sense of the word.” This is common knowledge according to Etzioni, as he sees no need for argument or supporting evidence for this outrageous dehumanization of significant portion of the population. (Does this attitude foster community?) Let’s just turn up the social pressure to marry and make divorce more difficult at the same time, as he proposes. That way those who really didn’t want to marry in the first place can suffer long-term damage if they cave in to social pressure and tie the knot! Perhaps we can resurrect Joe McCarthy and get those damaged singles off the streets and free up their jobs for married folk who really count.

Where’s the beef?

With no real premise stated, the first two sections of the book set the communitarian table with a smorgasbord of many flexible cheerleading-type phrases and many contradictory statements. Even the books opening bit - the pathetic flag-waving “We hold these truths” says very little in specific terms. Yes - -”We can do “A” (fill in some appealing but vague proposal) without offending you by causing “B” (fill in some authoritarian horror.) Still, he suggests people get the word out, talk up what ever you think communitarianism means with your neighbors over the back fence.

No where in this patchwork of moralizing and reassurance do we find Etzioni’s motivations for stitching this crazy quilt together. It’s not until the third section “The Public Interest.” that we come to a clear sequence of cogent reasoning - which I propose is the underlying motive for the entire unwieldy structure in first two chapters. In this section he targets big-monied special interests in Washington. “What is missing is a wide recognition that special interests are at the core of our systemic problems, a consensus powerful enough to unlock their grip on our legislature,” (Page 221). Again “The ultimate goal is to replace a government by and for deep pockets with a political system that is based on the principle of one person one vote, one that is responsive to all members of the community.” (Except the damaged ones who are obviously only half human.)

What does Etzioni really want? What he calls a “neoprogressive, communitarian,” legislative solution:

Finance congressional elections with public funds.” (Starting on page 234)
“Curb the flow of private money into the coffers of members of congress.
Impose a ban on PACS.”
Reduce the cost of running for office by offering free TV and radio ads.
Promote disclosure of the political process by lobbyists sign into a registration book each time they visit a congressional office. (Then the power lunch might become even more powerful)
Enhance the enforcement of all rules, old and new
Enhance the role of political parties - Channel campaign contributions through political parties rather than directly to individual candidates. (Isn’t that the so-called “soft money” that is so hard to track.? I guess it might increase public confidence if we didn’t know our who was bought or who did the buying.)
To get these reforms Etzioni has a plan: “There must be a new source of political energy sufficiently powerful to over come strong opposition and to propel far reaching changes...” (Page 226) “For reform to succeed, reformers, like Archimedes, must find a point of leverage outside the political world in order to be able to change it...... the challenge is to find ways to mobilize the great underrepresented majorities.” (Page 227) “Historical experience suggest that social movements are the source of the needed political energy... They command cadres that mobilize the rank and file to what ever social action is called for...” (Page 230)

After bemoaning the failure of groups like Common Cause to create widespread change he says “....as I see it, what is missing is a broader agenda, one that goes beyond legislative reform and encompasses the deep moral issues at stake.... (Page 244) “Without a major social movement, the reforms required to render public policy responsive to the public at large will not take place.” (Page 245)

From the text of “The Spirit of Community” it’s hard to avoid concluding that entire moral construct of Etzioni’s communitarianism has been built to sign people up so later they can be called out to vote for his legislative reforms.

“It is sociologically naive to sit back and wait for new communities to spring up,” Etzioni says. Or social movements for that matter - why not build your own? ”It is often necessary, and there is nothing artificial or otherwise improper, in recruiting or training organizers and facilitators of we-ness,” he says. (Page 125)

However, as Etzioni’s brand of communitarianism attempts to cut a swath through the middle to pick up as much support as possible - it gets attacked from both edges. In a 1995 newsgroup post on the Progressive Sociology Network, Morton G. Wenger a professor of Sociology at the University of Louisville called Etzioni's ideas “a form of fascist ideology for the squeamish petit bourgeois.” Etzioni apparently responded by implied there were “reds under the bed” at the progressive network. On the other hand the libertarians cast glances across the middle from the other shoulder of the road: In a Sept. 1996 article published on the web by the libertarian Cato Institute, Tom G. Palmer calls Karl Marx, “an early and especially brilliant and biting communitarian critic of libertarianism.”

Greg Smith, Research Officer writing for Aston Charities’ Community Involvement Unit in London cited Etzioni's background. “Etzioni is a keen publicist writing in popular as well as academic journals, speaking in public and on the mass media....”

Could it be that the ideologic patchwork found in the first two chapters of The Spirit of Community and in the far less specific Communitarian Manifesto is not accidental and represents an attempt to lure as many people as possible into the fold?

In Chapter 1 of Smith’s on-line book “Community-arianism” Smith wondered how marginal groups or groups with divergent value systems could find a place in an America run by Communitarians.

“Although Etzioni denies that he is majoritarian and claims to accept pluralism there is an obvious problem in a diverse and plural society..... With a normative view of mainstream values and harmonious and homogenous local communities it is hard to see how groups with marginal or divergent values systems can be given space to participate in the community of communities which is national life. Can "fundamentalist" Islamic or Christian groups or other religious sectarian groups, New Age travelers or homeless street dwellers be give equal human dignity let alone equal economic, political and social rights?”

Despite his misgivings Smith's book undertakes a detailed consideration of communitarianism and community. By Chapter 9, he concludes that in a pluralistic society, the hope for a common core of shared values maybe untenable. He offers an alternative communitarianism with a more tolerant framework, after questioning the movement's moral tone.

"This is not so much because it expresses a preference for marriage and stable two parent families over libertarian sexual attitudes, but because it opens the way to stereotyping, blaming and stigmatising..."

As an American citizen who prizes my constitutional rights, I see no need to pursue any worthwhile ideas about community under some nebulous umbrella of communitarianism. (Not unless you're trying to drum up a social movement as Etzioni obviously is.) Frankly I’m not satisfied with the “extensively edited, rewritten and modified” and far-more palatable Communitarian Manifesto sanitized by Mary Ann Geldon and William Glaston (who no doubt removed the offensive specifics in Etzioni’s original draft.)

As a member of an about-to-be-oppressed minority, I’m taking my damaged goods over the to American Civil Liberties Union. My wallet suddenly seems one ID card too light.

Copyright 1997 Marjorie M. Walker

Sending unwanted treasure on consignment

Maisy wanted to take some slacks (that were too long), to a consignment store today, so we visited "Such-A-Deal" on Old Mill Plain Road. We wobbled up the stairs into a well-stocked, nicely arranged shop. She consigned her slacks and found a purple sweater to take home. I consigned three jackets and a sequined top - pink, lavender and silver on black. I don't even know anyone who can envision me in a sequined top these days. I don't think I ever wore it. I have no idea when I wore any of them, if ever. However I know were I got all of them ... in one of three second hand stores I frequent.

While it felt good to shed a few items, the pile that still lives here is a problem. I could easily disappear under unopened mail and half-read books. My world sits low in the water, like a sinking dingy, overburdened with past collections both physical and psychological. That's an idea. A mental junk sale. What kind of buyers would that attract? Probably writers of all genre, looking for quirky character traits, freshly spoiled relationships, tipsy metaphor and other such debris.

After we got home Maisy also wanted to walk around the block (It's a pretty steeply draped slap of pavement I must say.) We did. It was good for us both. She did well but was happy to get inside and put on slippers. Now I have to get ready for work tonight. Afterwards I get to walk the dog around the block.

latest install of Leopard was purring, we'll see how it goes..

This is the first post I have made from the macbook post Leopard Install#2.

With all the trouble I had last time, I am being very cautious with this new setup. So far I have installed absolutely nothing. I have run software update and gotten the latest code. I have arranged the dock, synced for my address book and bookmarks and imported my purchased tunes from the iPod as well as a bunch of CDs. (iTunes would only let me import items purchased from the iTunes store, not stuff loaded via CD) Recordings I made myself I had backup on the G5. Another bit of good news, after repeated tries, the external hard drive I had acidently dropped is suddenly mounting again. And strange to say - its "on-off" button which NEVER worked, is suddenly functional. Go figure. Today I am planning to add iLife. Am keeping my fingers crossed.

Immediately after typing that last line, my network connection just dropped out just as it was doing last time. Cut and paste in this blogger window is acting weird too. I used photo both and took a good morning shot. Maybe I will hold off on iLife.

Post script - I have added firefox now, as some of the problems with blogger were Safari errors, according to the consol log.. hmmm. I also added taco html edit. so far so good.

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The dog's lumps, the world's bumps

The dog has a growth on the back of her paw. I noticed this a few weeks ago when I trimmed her toe nails. This week she started licking it, and limping just slightly. So this morning, off we go to the vets.

Dogs love a car ride. And getting out at the vets is Okay too -- so many interesting smells in the yard! But from a dog's eye view, the exam room is ominous. The PEOPLE are great, but that aluminum table is for cats. Poor dog gets tricked into standing on it and suddenly something emits a growl-like hum and the table starts to shudder and Lo! The dog Ascendeth! Acsendeth to the vet, that is. And the table is slippery too, like life, a little dance, a little prance and a leg can hang precariously over the side. Then as blood gets drawn, poor dog's behind begins to slip out from under her and soon she is laying down on this cold aluminum precipice. No stairs, no place to land, too slippery even to try. I imagine Oggi leaping. Imagine clouds instead of tiles. Wonder if I too can fly, then they hand me an estimated bill. The landing is a shock!

Leopard, a clean install this time

Often when things run amok on a computer there are two software programs having an unresolved argument over system resources, or one going into some endless loop for some inexplicable cosmic reason..

After the clean install that I HAD to make of Tiger, I had nothing more on the hard drive to lose. So I thought I would give the spotted cat one more try with nice clean reformated installation on my Intel macbook.

I did that this morning. Have not installed anything else. Got my wireless network right away, have been loading CDs into itunes. SO FAR SO GOOD (hold breath tightly...) I think I will add my programs one at a time and see how it goes. Perhaps the OS was not at fault, but the programs adapted to run on it.... On the other had there was a large Leopard update which I installed immediately after the wireless was connected....

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The kicker: a realization on iWeb files

Ah the final kicker on my intel macbook troubles. I was hoping against hope (Irrationally I must say) that there would be some way to import the websites I'd made and published in iWeb. I had carefully saved a published-to-a-folder representation of my websites, never once realizing the obvious fact that this would not help at all. Oddly, when the OS finally started having some sort of loop where it could not fully load, I was still able to hook it up in Target disk mode via firewire to the G5 and drag things off of the hard drive... I thought I had everything haha... SO in addition to total software snafu - I am also suffering from operator stupid (in not recovering enough stuff and in dropping the backup hard drive where previous backups were located.) ****** IMPORTANT ADDED POSTSCRIPT 2/27/08 ---> the file to back up is: domain.sites2 --- which is located in your homefolder: /Library/ApplicationSupport/iWeb/Domain.sites2 ***** This file has all the info on your sites and all their pages.....

So I spent most of Monday night and Tuesday morning building a new main page for the Wednesday Night Poetry Series on a blogspot site. (Which is now live at http://wedpoetry.net ) I moved the sub pages that could be moved out of the iDisk web folder to the old sites folder. I moved the WNPS features archive and blog but it doesn't seem to be functional outside its origional spot. ( I will recreate them and the founder's page slide show at a later time.

The problem for me is this -- in order to recreate and upload wedpoetry.net - I would obliterate the current issue of Bent Pin Quarterly because the program would over-write the web folder. After the upload only the files from the current IWeb publishing event would be left in that folder. NOTE: It didn't work this way it added to what was on the iDisk when I finally uploaded it in Jan -- though I am not sure what would happen if the site names were exactly the same.

I also ran mac Hardware test from the Tiger disk which found nothing. I have almost nothing on that machine, and I may reinstall Leopard sans additional programs to see if it will work alone..

Leopard is out temporarily

Well, it' s not over, but Leopard is off the macbook. But that means no Bonjour scan support. Even With Tiger back Soho Notes was unable to open the database backup. Never liked its group feeling anyway. it's open base heart always wanted to go out somewhere and contact some distant database. Maybe it was Soho notes all along. FOR THE RECORD I LOVED STICKY BRAIN. GREAT PRODUCT. I RUE THE DAY CHRONOS DITCHED IT FOR SOHO Luckily while the thing was still operational I exported my files so I have the rtf and text files of my writings at least up to a month or so ago.

I have have lost my itunes library, except for the files I created by recording or garageband. lost all my project files. I had backups but accidently knocked the External HD off the shelf when switching between machines. Now it won't work.

Not sure how to get iWeb to import what's on the idisk instead of replacing it.

This might be my worst fake-geek day ever. I should have stayed in bed. At the time it the external HD fell, I had already made a 28 gig timemachine backup for the G5.

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Will be removing Leopard from the Intel Mac

Yes, I will be removing Leopard. Now my ethernet connection keeps dropping just like the wireless connection. I am posting this from my old G5 which seems to be running Leopard like a champ. Go figure...  Soho Notes will no longer export either . I will be restoring OS X 1.4

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Leopard OS on my Intel mac has some aggravating problems

NOW THAT I HAVE IMPROVED MY INTEL MAC by installing the Leopard OS I have begun having all sorts of problems - with the key board and with the wireless connection.  Slow boot, a blackedout menu bar, a stuck shift key then a stuck num lock, and the airport connection in out in ou in out the finally no connection at all.

 I am really angry and frustrated that this expensive piece of equipment which worked very well for six months now is an aggravating piece of crap after I spent money to UPGRADE it.  Guess you can't guild the lily.... Ironically Leopard works just fine on my G5 which I almost got rid of....  

On the upside -  with my apple airport network I could plug a spare ethernet cable into my macbook and be instantly connected to the internet -   I have tried quick switches between wireless and ethernet on a PC with Windows XP -  the OS doesn't seem to find the connection - so I guess to be fair Apple is still ahead despite the snafus.

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The stuff we can never find

Keys? What keys?

Can't keep hold of keys. it seems I really don't want to open or close much at all. But keys are not the only objects that plague me. Grocery lists, cough drops, bills, pencils, poems I have scrawled on envelopes, the cup of coffee I am drinking... Whatever it is, I can pick it up, hold it my hands contemplate its uses and destination, but only half a minute later - it's no longer there and I have no idea what I did with it

I am not the only one with this problem - though for a while I wasn't sure.... A few years back I witnessed a scene that was a revelation. I was visiting a couple I know – the husband is a pianist who was getting ready to rush off to accompany a choral group's concert. He was standing in the kitchen clutching the directions to his concert location, when he and his wife realized he didnt have his dress jacket. They began to frantically search for it and finally found the jacket, smoothed it, covered the hanger with plastic. But now he discovers that although he has the jacket in hand, he no longer has the directions to the hall where he is going to play. A new search is mounted for the directions which cannot be found anywhere. A call is made to get new directions. After he leaves, I noticed the original set of directions on the floor right where he was standing when the search for the jacket began. yikes!

This sort of drama has happened to me repeatedly, except that I curse and slam as i am searching which does not really help.

It was so clear to me that my friend was thinking about where his jacket was and was not paying the slightest attention to his hands or what was in them... As he walked away his hand opened without his realizing it and the list skittered to the floor like a lost leaf. It's the thinking about something else and not paying attention that seems to be the cause...

Maisy goes for a walk early in the morning, a short one, but the terrain is not smooth. Couldn't find her cane today. We looked in every room, behind all the doors, in the car, beside all the chairs. No cane.

She went to the grocery store yesterday though where the same not-paying-attention phenom came into play. People with canes tend to put them in the grocery cart when they are pushing it around the store. That works great until they get to the car and happily stow their food, while contemplating future meals, the drive home, the next stop on their errand route. (Cane? What cane?) The last time Maisy inquired if they had found any canes, they offered a choice of a dozen that had been left behind in shopping carts. That's where we went and sure enough they had her cane which has her name and address right on it.

Go figure.

Medical bruohaha needs context

A letter I am sending today to the local paper

To the editor:

The News Times and Connecticut's various versions of television news have repeatedly run stories that illegal immigrants are costing Danbury Hospital $4 million in unpaid bills. The figure has been cited over and over again. Any reporter and any thinker worth his salt knows a figure without context can be a little like holding a dime up next to the moon on a dark night or looking at one line from a drawing. Could be the side of a skyscraper. Then again it could be the side of a jelly jar.

There are two numbers without which the $4 million dollar figure is completely meaningless. It is necessary to know the total amount billed out for medical care (both paid and unpaid) by the same hospital during the same time period - and also how much was spent by that hospital covering for medical care for uninsured and UNDERINSURED American Citizens.

Then there must be a comparison - what percentage of the total billed out for medical care does that $4 million represent? And what is the percentage of the total for the unpaid bills of citizens? Give us context and then we'll know how to consider that $4 million. I suspect we are whining about the jelly jar when we should be furious about the skyscraper...

ADENDUM - As of Dec, The Danbury News Times never chose to print this. They never even called to confirm the letter sender as is usual at most newspapers.

the wild roar of this day

        The trees are tossing in a fit of false-March on this wild morning. Though it was quite cold earlier now it is a balmy 50 degrees.  Some November.    Around here, at least the oak trees sport  a lovely copper cast, while  many leaves are merely brown.
        I live on the upper-lip of I-84 and I still can't get over the continual wind. Walk straight across our small backyard, scale the fence, and keep going for 20 feet and there is a sudden drop-off where the highway cuts through. You can't see it from here, but there's  an ever present background hum. When the air temp is changing, the wind tends to push through the i-84 canyon rattling all the trees on both embankments.

I see on the Nature Geezer blog there is a page about the winds of autumn.

Cat woman lives!

Truthism - crazier than other isms?

It's tragic how people's ideas can clash.

On Youtube on my SingingMist channel, (Now thePuzzledDragon channel) I have a "Got Christmas Dread " video. Someone left a comment on it, that Religion and Science were bullshit and should be junked infavor of Truthism.

When I visited the website indicated on Truthism, I found about six pagse of of circular bushwhacking before it finally got around to the crux of it - an emphatic belief that the planet is controlled by "Reptilian Overseers." And of course you can see these reptiles only under the influence of meditation or hallucinogenic drugs. Imagine that.

I thought that was crazy enough, but then an equally strange thing happened. One of my regular viewers told the "truthist" person to get outta dodge with his "filth" I replied with some notes about free speech - but shortly after the fellow's account was suspended. I guess that was considered spam? His comments had vanished. I thought well, I will just start over again. And I deleted all the comments on that video.....

Funny how one man's truth is another's ridiculous fantasy - how one man's free discourse is another's filth. When talking about the religion, the storyline always gets crazy no matter what faith is under discussion. How outlandish is a virgin birth or people rising from death or the whole world being carried on a giant turtles back? It seems like no one is able to think of these crazy notions as psychological metaphor. No wonder we are bumping each other off at a frantic pace over religion. Maybe that's man's tragic flaw - his penchant for us-and-them self-delusion.

-- Mar Walker

The pre-christmas bleak

The holidays are sure a time of greatly varying mental states. Some of it is very sweet, On the other had there are the choking bitters. Thanksgiving starts the Christmas season. Mostly I could live without a lot of the Christmas doings. I like the music and the pretty lights. Gifting is for the birds though.

My friend Rich just left. He is usually a veritable Christmas elf. But he has recently lost his job, his car, his apartment and his dog in the span of three or four months. Yet somehow he borrowed a car from his sister-in-law to drive down from Brattleboro on the spur of the moment to visit a few folks he knows down here. He was subdued today. Probably needing to be near people, and remembering better times.

He is lucky that he has a brother with a cabin and so he has a roof over his head for a while. I am another nar do well that is lucky to have a roof.

This past weekend I have been watching Christmas specials which I cannot believe are already on the air. I get more melancholy with each one. A couple of weeks after Christmas all this heart-warming stuff evaporates leaving a crop of crime shows in its stead.

For now though, It seems though, that when you feel sad, it's best just to feel it. Never run from it or try to drown it. If it's not clinical Just suffer through. If you feel each thing as it comes, it doesn't come back to haunt you later.

merry.

Where falling off a chair can lead....

My uncle, my father's younger brother, fell of a chair while he was setting the clock back a few weeks ago. (This not one of my fictional "uncle" stories which are based on other uncles. This is more of a journal entry.) This uncle broke a knee cap and shattered the top of the leg bone. He is an internet Junkie, and had to spend eight days without his computer in a rehab facility. OMG!!!!

In any event he's home now, but cannot climb the stairs to the upstairs room where his computer was located. So, this morning, his son David and I came over and dragged the whole setup downstairs where he is living in the firstfloor den. Dave strung the 50 feet of phone wire and carried the heavy components down the stairs, while I hooked it all back together again.

When we left he had 19 email messages to investigate and the whole word of forums and message boards on a DSL thread. I have never seen a happier man, not even one who had recently won the lottery.

Thankful? Yup! Thankful the diner was open!!!

For the very first time this year, my mother and I celebrated our Thanksgiving in a diner. Not a fancy restaurant but a simple humble diner.

She is almost 80 now and has never once eaten out on Thanksgiving - until this year. In the old days sometimes there were 30 people from Mom's side of the family who arrived for this holiday meal at her sister Pearl's house. Later it was  her daughter, my cousin Linda who made the meal.

Things change though. Some relatives moved, died, grew up, became estranged. My father died in 1984. In the last few years, Thanksgiving has been smaller. With a cousin or two and their children, either been at mom's, or at my cousin Denise's house near Hartford.

This year, Denise went to see her grand-babies in PA, with whom she is utterly obsessed. Their mom is prego again and sickish, not fit to travel. Dense and her husband passed through yesterday on their way to the grandbaby palace. They stopped here for lunch. we had ham and cheese and bagels. But that left Mom and I all on our own for THE meal on Thursday.

Somethings never change - nobody ever suggests that I cook anything. (Prudent choice...) So, today we went to Elmer's Dinner. She had the turkey special with cream of Turkey soup, I had the turkey special with a salad. It came with mashed potatoes, apple stuffing, candied yams, greenbeans and carrots, coffee, and pudding. They cooked it and took away the dirty dishes.

When we eat with the family there are six or seven deserts, and left-overs for weeks - months if you count the freezer! Thanksgiving is normally a caloric high-fat disaster. NOT THIS YEAR. We had a successfully moderate day foodwise. We didn't eat the potatoes, scrapped off the gravy. I did enjoy the apple stuffing and the pudding. The salad was great too. The Turkey was tender and hot and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

In the parking lot on our way out, we passed a family arriving for their meal - a middle-aged husband and wife, a wild ten-year old child, and an elderly couple. The older gent was a bit wobbly, grey-headed and all dapper in a black and white modern art sweater and sun glasses, but his wife looked out of it, and was maneuvered deftly into a wheel chair. Life does have its necessities. So today, I am thankful for diners.

Poet Bob Taylor: One man's upload... the non-techie view

Though many folks can hardly believe it, not everyone is really into technology. The holdouts span generations. Their reasons are legion, A poet friend, Bob, has his own theory of uploading and downloading which he discussed at a recent poetry society meeting. He was not the least bit shy about talking for the camera, and was not concerned about appearing on a medium he doubted he would even look at - even if the people halfway across the world were to view it. So here's to poets, and Bob. A toast! -- mad mar

What is so problematic about keys? And where the heck are they?

WHAT IS IT ABOUT KEYS? DO some people including me have a need not to go anywhere? Not to unlock anything? this is the second time I have had a Key blip on my way to a poetry event. I completely missed a reading early in Nov. because I locked my keys in the car and had to wait for the local fuzz to come and break into it. I wasn't thinking when I got out of the car. I had just seen a small child walk behind a car with backup lights on.... Thank the fates the polixe do that sort of thing in small towns.

But Last night in city of White Plains i apparently dropped them. This time, I guess I managed to lock the car, and walk away with the keys inhand but forgot to put the long string around my neck . I added the neck band because I have so much trouble locating my keys almost anywhere I go, even at home. I get to the meter in the parking garage and find I only have a twenty, and no change. Of course the meter won't take a 20. Apparently as I rummaged around in my purse, I let go of my keys. And as I was cursing to myself, didn't hear them land on the cement floor. Fool.

By the time I came back with change and now realizing my keys were gone, no keys were in evidence either in the car or on the floor by the meter.

I thought the hell with it and went in to hear the poetry. Naturally I had already missed the feature. But I got to hear and participate in the open mic anyway. What a great open mic! After I asked at the bookstore's customer service. No Keys. I went back into the garage and noticed an arrow pointing towards the office. You can imagine my relief that someone had turned them in, and I didn't have to beg for a ride or call locksmith or pay for overnight parking.

So there is my tale of Key mentallics. arrgh. All's well that ends well. I guess. i think a spare key in my shoe might be a good idea.

Lack of Synergies

Today I made a decision to put google ads on as many of my webpages  as I can. I have an amazing amount of content on my various sites - i have quite a few domains or more residing on .mac, (mistryel.com, shijinlive.com, bentpinquarterly.net, wedpoetry.net quickmist.com, etc etc ) I have two blogs on blogger, a youtube channel. my content includes prose, poetry, videos, artwork, photos and mp3s. I just keep making more and more of this stuff because I am a compulsive maniac. None of this activity generates income and actually costs money to maintain (DOT MAC is not free....)  My life is seriously in need of income, not that this act will generate anything anytime soon.  In the year 2010 I suppose I will get a check. If I am lucky. The youtube channel though is promising....

Ha - after a year google owes me $22.  Before I'm dead I might get a check, maybe....  UPDATE: Still nowhere near getting a check. Now I can't even figure it out - I think the 22 bucks disapeared somehow or I accidently started a different account. But now I have moved my main blog to word press and not so many hits on blogger.. oh well

back to back imps

This is a drawing with pencil, charcol, conte crayon and gesso. I had an actual person in mind, but I was drawing the inner attitude rather than the outer detail. Oddly the person who's back is towards us is also someone who knew the imp in the front. The profile is telling. You know who you are...

Bent Pin Quarterly Vol 1 No 3 !

View the table of contents and follow the links to read the entire issue:

http://bentpinquarterly.blogspot.com/2007/10/october-2007-contents-with-links.html

An interview with poet Cortney Davis (2007)

This is an interview from  quite a few years ago. It has been on my iDisk and hence the internet since  2007.  I thought I might as well add it to this blog. So this is a backfill post made on Jan 24, 2010 of material from 2007. 

An Interview with Cortney Davis
            by Mar Walker

 Cortney Davis, a well-known poet, a nurse practitioner with two full-length collections of poetry, an NEA Poetry Fellowship, and two Connecticut Commission on the Arts poetry grants to her credit will be the featured reader for WNPS on Sept 30. (2007) When you write what is your process? "I have to have a whole day off. I have to clear everything out of the way, the grocery shopping done, no outstanding chores. I have to be able to wander around, read some poetry, read something. If I have an idea, I have been wondering about, I begin to write and as I write it takes the form of a poem or an essay. I am not prolific writer. I am a long-distance writer. I can write from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Once I start I can write for hours. I get lost in and keep going. It’s hard to find the time. I have kids and grand kids and all the chores anyone would have. I live like everyone else. I try to grab these writing times when I can." How does she know when a poem is finished? "Because it has a certain wholeness to it You just feel it is done. A painter looks at his painting and sees that not another drop of paint is needed. Some are never done. Donald Hall says when a poem is finished there is a click at the end, like the lid on a box and you can’t change anything. I am a prodigous reviser and I revise and revise and revise. I want clean and crisp use, unusal language, but not inaccessible. I am an opptimist. The glass is half full. There is so much suffering and so much beauty and grace all outpouring to humanity in the world. It’s hard not to be optimistic." =================================================================

  The following is an article which appeared on February 8, 2007 in the Redding Pilot, a weekly newspaper. 

Cortney Davis Nurse-practitioner: a poet's essay read on NPR
  by mar walker 

Cortney Davis of Granite Ridge Road, who has lived in Redding for 18 years, was the featured essayist this past Monday on "This I Believe," a segment on National Public Radio's (NPR) All Things Considered, a program with millions of listeners. Her essay was heard locally on WSHU (91.1 FM). It was chosen from some 18,000 submissions sent in from all around the country. Ms. Davis is a nurse-practitioner at a woman's health clinic in Danbury and had previously spent years working in other medical capacities, as a head nurse in a cancer unit and as an operating room technician. She is also a well-known poet with two full-length collections of poetry ( Details of the Flesh and Leopold's Maneuvers), an NEA Poetry Fellowship, and two Connecticut Commission on the Arts poetry grants to her credit. Ms. Davis said that most of the time, prevailing social attitudes prevent people from fully experiencing their grief. "Our society says, .Move on, '" she said. One day at work, Ms. Davis said a woman patient had come in for an obstetrical visit. "On examination it was found the baby had died. She began to mourn and cry and moan out loud," Ms. Davis said. This patient's utterly unselfconscious grieving made her think, she said. "In other cultures, they tear their clothing, cover themselves with sackcloth and ashes. They have visible reminders they are mourning. Here in the United States, we tend to suppress that ... I believe in grief. I was given a subject to write about ... It was that woman grieving that gave me the subject," she said. As a nurse, Ms. Davis said she is often a witness to people's grief, and also to their suffering. "So often if someone is dying, I don't have the power to stop that death. I do have the power to support and to be deeply aware of their suffering. To some extent, I do that also in my writing," Ms. Davis said. Growing up, she said, a nursing career was not one she had even considered. "I never wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to be a veterinarian or an artist or a writer, anything but a nurse," she said. "My whole growing up was oriented at creative pastimes. I painted, took art class, dancing class, belonged to art club and drama club. I was an art major at Gettysburg College. I went to college two years and got married. "In those days (Ms. Davis is a youthful 61), marriage was the goal of all young women. I stopped going to school, had two young children," she said. But divorce interrupted that plan. "I had to get a job and I became a nurse's aide because it had on-the-job training, and uniforms were provided. The hospital was right around the corner. I worked like a dog. I worked hard," Ms. Davis said. "The very first night on the job, wearing my brand-new pinstripe uniform ... the very first room I went into, the man was dead ... I looked at him and something was not right. I sat down next to him and put my hand on his arm and it was cool, not cold, but cool." He had died, and Ms. Davis said for people in the medical field, the first death they encounter is often a turning point that either drives them away or keeps them in the profession. "I sat there and thought this is the place where life and death happen and I am being given the responsibility to be a witness to this." "Little by little I began to enjoy caring for people intimately, talking to them to comfort them, bathing them, all the maternal things nurses do," she said. After a while, she was asked if she would take surgical technician training. Once again it was on-the-job training with a pay boost. "With the ignorance of youth, I didn't even think about what it meant to work in the OR. I just signed up," she said. After training, she worked as an operating room technician at Norwalk Hospital. "As a nurses aide, I had worked with the outside of patients. In the OR, I worked with the insides of people. There isn't a more poetic place than inside the body. To see the works of the body is just astounding," she said. However, she was not yet writing about her work. "I was a struggling single mom with two kids trying to make a living. I didn't think of myself as a writer," Ms. Davis said. After a while, another invitation to change came to her. "In the OR, one of the doctors said, .You are really good at this. You should be a nurse.' I said .Yes.' I just blew with the wind," she said, laughing. Subsequently, Ms. Davis attended the Norwalk Community College nursing program. While in school, she went back to working as a nurse's aide on the evening shift. She also shared an apartment and baby-sitting costs with another single mother. When she graduated, Ms. Davis worked first at St. Joseph's in Stamford (which no longer exists), and then moved to critical care at Danbury Hospital and to the position of head nurse of the oncology unit, which is the cancer unit, she said. It was there that all of her experiences came together and she began to write to deal with what she saw. "I was taking care of patients so sick and many who were dying. I didn't know what to do with all the emotions and I started writing poems about my work. If you really pay attention and you are working with people who are suffering, it goes deep, far beyond the superficial feelings of pity," she observed. "When you are caring for someone who is suffering, to be able to be present when s omeone else is so close to the elemental nature of humanity when people are suffering, you see they are stripped bare - everything is taken away when you are suffering. I found poetry was the only container that was strong enough to hold that kind of emotion." After a while, another invitation for change appeared. "So then, a group of physicians asked if I wanted to go back to school to be a nurse-practitioner. In my usual thoughtful fashion, I said, .Sure.' After they left, I had to ask what that was," she said. A nurse-practitioner is a registered nurse with advanced training in diagnosis and treatment who can write prescriptions, similar to a physician's assistant, Ms. Davis explained. "Whatever opportunity comes my way, I seem to go with it. My guardian angel was watching. They sent me to school, paid for my time and school with the understanding I would work for them." She attended the nurse-practitioner program at Cornell. At the time she graduated, there were only 4,000 nursepractitioners in the United States, she said. "Once again, I was feeling as if all of my previous experience has helped me tremendously. Now I am seeing the walking wounded, people who are up and walking about, but have acute or chronic illnesses," she said. "Now their lifestyle and life situation comes into play with their physical condition. We talk about their jobs, their hopes and dreams," she said "I am seeing them in a different dimension than when they are suffering in the oncology unit ... I could see all the pieces of a person's health and illness story - all writing is about story," she said. Ms. Davis said her work influences her writing and her writing influences her work. "When I am writing, I am paying attention to image and metaphor, deep meaning below the surface meaning and to narrative ... I think because I pay attention to deep meaning ... I try to pay attention to what they (patients) are not telling, which can be the most important of all," she said. Ms. Davis joins a long list of essayists to be featured on "This I Believe." Past columnists include John McCain, Gloria Steinem, Tony Hawk, David Copperfield, Bill Gates, and Colin Powell. Her essay will be available to read or listen to at www.npr.org/thisibelieve, an archive of the broadcast essays. She will also be reading and teaching writing at two upcoming workshops. On May 5 2007 , from 1 to 4, she will be reading her poetry and teaching a workshop, "Writing the Personal Lyric Poem," at the Freshwater Poetry Festival, Asnuntuck Community College, 170 Elm St., Enfield, CT06082. For information or reservations, e-mail freshwater@acc.commnet.edu. This summer,  (2007) Ms. Davis will be teaching at Sarah Lawrence College. The weeklong session, from July 8 to July 14, is called "Writing the Medical Experience." For information go to www.sarahlawrence.edu. More information on Ms. Davis and her writing may be found on her Web site, cortneydavis.com.

Enlighten

This was moved from the Metaphoratorium Gallery where it was a May entry.

Butterscotch light illumines the dark interior. Talk about visual metaphor - here it is.... I don't like to think of myself as this lightless, but I am always hoping for a shot of brilliance to wake me..

Painting: Alternate reality sunrise

This was moved from the Metaphoratorium Gallery where it was a January 07 entry
This small oil painting of mine is from 15 years ago or so. I was trying to avoid the cliqued, though lovely view of the sun over the ocean, that can be found in literally thousands of paintings. This one is 18 by 24 on canvas board. I like the way the sun seems to be melting, but the wild clouds always look like a distant war or a misplaced 4th of July rather than then a daily appearance by the sun. Of course if a sun rise or sunset looks this wild, it means there are a lot of unusual pollutants floating in the atmosphere. I wasn't at the ocean when I painted this. I wasn't even outside. Perhaps that's the problem.

Red girl or maybe pink girl...

This entry was moved from the Metaphoratorium Gallery.



With the potential for endless digital manipulation it is really difficult to know when you are done with a picture like this. Andy Warhol might have loved the idea - a production line of variation. I have quite a few varriations on this. The original was much more crudely drawn. Also it was a larger screen with reams of wild hair. I had just discovered the blender,smearing tools in NeoPaint and was having fun.

Now here is a project for a geeky artist out there somewhere - write a program that randomly creates altered versions of one photo in a slide show installation in a museum.......

Poetry Poster: for 2/8/2006 event

This is a 8.5 by 11 inch poster which I did for a reading by poet Sou MacMillan. It was part of a series I made for the Wednesday Night Poetry Series in 2006. The method involved collaging bits of paper, (including publicity materials sent by the poet & the Wednesday Night Poetry program/flyer) marking on paper with oil pastel, crayon, white-out, pen and pencil, etc. In all my hand made posters, (as opposed to the strictly electronic ones) I was shooting for a depth of touch on each page. What I mean by that is, in the higher ressolution versions, if you zoom in on any part of the page, there is a lot going, a lot if interesting marks and colors to see.

---

*Moved from the gallery blog where it was a Jan 07 entry

Bent Pin Quarterly Vol 1, No 2 Online!

View the table of contents and follow the links to read the entire issue!

http://bentpinquarterly.blogspot.com/2007/07/july-2007-contents-with-links.html

blue crazy quilt

This is a strictly digital work. I have two more that are similar in style. Some folks I know hate them. I think these three pieces represent some of my most interesting work. As always, movement has a large role here. It is partially conveyed by the lines, partially but the journey of each color within the whole.

For more
https://picasaweb.google.com/100545602569648912341/MMWSAbstractArtwork

MIXED MEDIA: pushing the envelope(s)

At the left is a collage of actual pay envelopes from two jobs made for some art class I took somewhere. I can't even remember where or when, though it might have been the Design with Collage class I took at GLSP program at Weseleyan in the late 80s. I have had a lot of trouble deciding which way is up in this piece.

At the right is a digitized rendition of it which I think works better. I like the differing near and far feel of dark and light areas. This work is  not about pay, or mail or society. It's just about shapes in repetition and the way the eye moves through them.

MIXED MEDIA: the Conductress

This is one of my favorite works. It's fairly recent, from the last two years. I collaged shopping bags from Music Plus, (a local sheet music store in Danbury) and some discarded photocopied music  to a stretched canvas with acrylic medium. The figure I drew on heavy paper with a pencil and I cut it out with sissors as a hollow silloette. Then it was painted red and glued on top of the collage. I changed my mind just recently and painted the figure black and added the baton, which I had actually intended to add when I originally drew the figure. I toyed with the idea of a piano keyboard instead because I couldn't decide what angle the baton should take. The little areas of pastel color are highlighter. pencil, crayon. I like the sense of movement which is created by the angles of the staff lines, the edges of the pages, and where the photocopy machine made a dark area on the page. One little thing I did on purpose - inside the figure there are some blank staves. We are not finished works, new parts can be added, even if the previous melodys are never quite erased.

The tourist's shirt

Moved from the Metaphoratorium blog

It's a dark touring madness, all curled and twisting.

finding my way

I heard today that when wind chimes shimmer their bright bells on the wind, that the sound chases out the old stagnant fears.  Well, I have no idea but one left untried. It's not so much happiness I seek, as that is in the moments. It is sustaining income without the loss of sanity as a trade-off. I feel like this old pup - constrained by a panel of glass I am only dimly aware of, and looking sadly into the distance.

The argument takes a surprising turn

This seems very French to me. It's all digital and I think that most people will not like it, as it is not very realistic. It depicts the inner not the outer color of this fictional event. One crazy frilly oddball is getting ready to shoot another crazy frilly oddball. Go figure.

Electric sea of Turmoil

This item was moved from the Metaphoratorium Gallery. It was created in Corel Painter 9.5. I think it reflects the inner termoil I felt on this date, as I was stressed out working full-time for a newspaper as a land use reporter.

Things might settle down, not sure just yet.

Billowing bright life

After a day of heartburn and stomach knots, being asked to rethink something difficult - something I thought was settled - I wanted it all to be over. (I was trying to quit my job.... and my declaration was not taken seriously... and like so many other things I had said at work, was ignored.)

But circumstances required that I re-decide, re-agonize all over again. Just then in the inbox for Bent Pin, I got a piece of writing made me relax. The central metaphor was a box of puzzle pieces, the writing was experimental.

It was about not having a solution, about there being no perfect solution, no exactly right life, but making it up and just being instead of searching.

So I had chamomile tea, and made this wild bright billow of life in Corel Painter (the work to the left).

My puzzle, and wonderfully alive any way I choose to arrange it. So be it.

and thank you Danny Bernardi. Thanks very much.

Caprice #4 Balance in blue and a decision carried out

Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get a version I like. Morning pages, morning palette. Yes this is right. I got a really sound night's sleep last night for the first time in months. Something that has been wrong is right.**

(I quit my reporting job, finally....)

The maze of days

Moved from the Metaphoratorium Gallery:

The twists and turns of daily plot and plan, the chagrin, the mistakes, the dismay, interwoven with joy, contorted by ambient energy. How do we live day to day? What twist next? Hush Mar, and go to work.... So here is the morning page or I guess the morning palette...

Red storm, still contained

Oh a sky full of storm and building and unseen wind, a disturbed feeling, unease.

This has been a very productive weekend. Productive but pensive. It seems I have begun a furious period of frantic work starting with putting out the first edition of my new lit mag which took every free minute for a while. Now that hepped need to do, the need to do in the face of news I do not want is keeping me fiddling at a frantic pace. I am rearranging my living space today too. What mess. Or is that my life, or the lives around me?

Well here is the new painting fresh and crazed from this morning.... Fiddling with layers and cutting out sections and moving sections played a big part here in the first stages of this piece. I also did some arbitrary rotations which bumped up the canvas size. Didn't know it would do that.  Or how about in blue....

Where petals fade, fragrance lingers

Eventually , the plants the blooming plants will drop their petals. I remember my one and only stay on Nantucket. I stayed a week, slept on the floor of some couple's living room. There was a giant wooden bowl on an old table by the window filled with petals that had fallen off various flowers. They dried but still retained so much color, still retained so much fragrance. I had never seen that done before. And Nantucket has so many roses. I was thinking of that bowl when I made this.

Caprice 3 in greens

Here is another caprice I just made in Corel Painter. I love the moody darkness and roiling multicolored patterns. It seems full of furious foreboding!

Caprice #2 - Blue vigor on a fine day

Another crazy bit I made in Corel Painter. Today has been a very good day. Interesting morning seminar at work on iMove and on Google Analytics. Quiet afternoon, boss away. And a three day weekend is coming!!! Also, I am pleased with the leads on my P1 stories as well. Here's one:

Tufted ears barely rotating. A sleepy look, a stretch. The slight movement of a dangling paw. All cats seem to nap once in a while, even bobcats. Recently one was seen snoozing right here in Redding. 

and here's the other:

Rebuilding the stone wall out front? Considering the addition of imposing entrance pillars? Repaving your driveway apron? If you live on an officially declared “scenic road,” a commissioner with a digital camera and a notebook may be watching. 

First issue of Bent Pin Quarterly Vol 1 No 1 !

   

Check out the wonderful titles and authors - view the table of contents with page links:

http://bentpinquarterly.blogspot.com/2007/04/april-2007-contents-with-links.html

brain center for metaphor found?

Is metaphor an unfathomable enigma to you or to anyone you know? According to research at the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, a small region of our brains may either equip us for metaphor or limit us to literal narration.

According to researcher V. S. Ramachandran, director at the center, a region of the brain dubbed the angular gyrus is most likely partly responsible for the human ability to understand metaphor, according to a May 2005 article that appeared in Science Daily, an online science magazine.

The photo is detail of a mixed media oil painting of mine from long ago. It has hunks of broken  mirror glued on to the canvas board

What is art? some questions...

This article has been on my web pages in similar form for a few years.

This rose is lovely, but the plant and the photo , well they are not exactly art. But what is art?

What’s the difference between art and decoration? Nice colors, a pleasant sound, an emblem of some barely attainable perfection? Is it art or craft?

Or need it be a philosophical statement? If it's art, there must be beauty, yes? No? If it's art there must be a message, right?

Does art have a meaning, deep significance that transcends the generation in which it was created... or does it? Must the significance be a concept expressible in words? Or does art have to embody the ineffable? Is it a mystery? Is it “spiritual?” errrr....

Who gets to say whether a given work is "ART!" Is this solely the purview of self-declared critics, experts, appraisers, historians? The creation of current high-end market forces? The aspiration of cultural social climbers? Is the art of writing mere nattering? Is avante garde art the froth of madmen and misfits, practitioners of liminality, the product of twisted intellect gone astray?

I personally think that it's the spotty legacy of a species of ape that is materially and ideologically busy beyond any of its closest kin, an expression, a sort of cultural phlegm - the unavoidable by product of breathing and growing and moving in the surrounding cultural air when one is more or less allergic.

Do artists know when they are art-making and when they are just fiddling around? Or are those the same? I am just asking a few questions here.... -- mad mar (Mistryel) walker