Happy 4th to all, everywhere

Heat, sunshine, shade, AC, PC, cat, (and cat hair), raspberries, lime-ginger pasta salad, distant barking of fireworks somewhere.... Someone is drawing. Someone is doing a crossword puzzle.

We are so lucky to be alive. To have food, quiet, electricity enough for now.

Thankful to everyone and to no one in particular for this day - to history, fate, and especially to those who have endeavored over the years, to keep separate religious dictates and political power in this country.

Ubiquitous entropy

Summer seems an odd backdrop for thinking about fall, but entropy is on my mind today. Ordered systems tend toward disarray. Everything that grows also harbors a limit of time, energy, health, of life itself. Nature ferments a slow cycle of wax and wane. These days, this is is not a popular thought. Yet, everything is cyclic, planets, plants, even people and ways of thinking about the world. All things bloom and wither. Things change in the world and in us. The interior world does not follow a smooth logical trajectory upward anymore than the exterior world does. Oceans rise. Rivers dry up. Things that are whole fall into parts. Things that have grown crumble into compost. That which crumbles doesn't permanently return. Something new might grow. And even in barren dry soil, a desert might offer it's subtle beauties. Selah.

The above picture I made in an online browser program. I was thinking about fall.

A view of land, water, sky

This new work was created entirely in browser-based programs, including DeviantArt Muro and Google+ Creative Kit. This work was inspired by a landscape workshop I went to last night. It was given at SCAN by James Grabowski - whose playful nonchalant approach prompted me to experiment more freely with color in the context of this landscape. All rights reserved.

Emerging from something or other

This morning's doodling. Made using Pixlr.com then finessed using the creative kit on Google+

CL&P not to blame - CT A.G. Jepsen is wrong

GET OVER YOURSELF CONNECTICUT

I am not a corporate shill, nor am I even a corporate enthusiast.
And our new CT Attorney General Jepsen is wrong wrong wrong on this issue~

What issue? Blaming them for the damn weather and for our own negligence in not allowing tree trimming. Ask any tree warden in Fairfield County. They have to practically plead with homeowners to remove even diseased and dying trees.

Connecticut's tree-loving "Don't touch my trees" nature lovers must acknowledge that their stance gravely increased the severity of power outages during last august's bone-crusher storm which struck when the leaves were in full leaf, bringing down hundreds of trees across the state culminating in on of the longest power-outages in recent history.  And - which the whole state seems to want to blame on CL&P.

There are lots of things on might legitimately blame them for. Not this though. Punishing the corporation by imposing penalties, as Jepsen calls for - penalties which the rate payers will ultimately shoulder - is just counter-productive. We did this to ourselves. 

I am a tree lover, I am a tree hugger in fact. If I can say it, so can you.

Contributing to the chaos was the blind arrogance of wealthy ME-FIRST towns who thought their power restoration was more important that other areas of the state -  and who complained unceasingly, and yet refused to stay off the roads where powerlines lay live under tree limbs they refused to have trimmed earlier in the year. 

If you want a real issue - let's concentrate on THE OVER FILLED SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL POOLS right here in CT which I'd bet still hold every fuel rod ever used in the state.   No it doesn't go away.

Elizabeth Thomas at last year's Sunkin Garden

Love this poem! If you like this go to it on YouTube and hit LIKE!

Cantus - gorgeous voices and arrangements

Cantus -- read that:  Lush.  A celebration of all that is human.

An all male professional a capella vocal ensemble from Minnesota, they call their performances and music the art of "spontaneous grace."   The men often weave and move and interact with each other as they sing.  They obviously love what they do, are present and focused, and the audience can't help but be swept up into their musical universe. There is no stern baton waving distraction out front and no sheet music to crinkle, no folders to block our view of their expressions as they sing. It's all from memory, all internalized. all amazing. They also create many of their own arrangements.

The program I head last Friday, at the Gardiner Theater in Pawling, NY included the classical and popular, the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the profane, never flinching as it looked at the human species and its frailty, its fragile gasp of time, at the depth of loss and the joy of living. For an idea of their range check out these two videos from YouTube. Very different. Both incredible. They have a YouTube channel and a myspace page and six or more albums, (search iTunes or Amazon or Google Play)

  Yes, it's a week and a day later. I am so far behind on my posts I may never recover.

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