Everyone needs a dog or small child. The things they bring you are priceless. Usually Ernie brings me stuff from around the house and yard in a condition that requires a litttle pondering about its origin and purpose, sometimes we wonder simply what it might have been in its former life before becoming a chew toy. This morning, Ernie brought me a small tag. “Important Safety Instructions” it shouted at me in big, red(well, a little more orange than red now) print. I figured whatever it was had been operated for a fair amount of time without injuring me to my knowlege; but despite my laziness about reading such fair (also includes instructions and technical manuals unless I can’t get the device to work properly without them), I read the small tag. It read:
This portable lamp has a polarized plug (one blade is wider than the other.) Ok, I am following this so far, and I really want to be safe and teach safe practices in the peoper operation of our lamp, whichever one it may be. As a safety feature this plug will fit in a polarized outlet only one way, if the plug does not fit fully into the outlet, reverse the plug, if it still does not fit, contact a qualified electrician. Wow! How will that phone call go?! Sir, I can’t get my plug to plug in. Um, is it a polarized plug, did you try it the other way?
But wait this gets better: Never use with an extension cord unless the plug can be fully inserted, Do not attempt to defeat this safety feature. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DEFEAT THIS SAFETY FEATURE?! I love the wording on this. It makes it sound as though this the shape of the plug has become a mortal enemy on par with Galactus or Darth Vader- clearly a villian to dangerous to attempt to defeat. Leave that up to the Justice League or perhaps a qualified electrician. There’s more to the note following this, but I suddenly found myself hatching plots to defeat my new enemy. All I need to do now is figure out from which lamp this came and contact the A-Team. Happy NewYear! jp
Posted on December 31st, 2008 by Pete
Filed under: Hollow Men | 1 Comment »
Did any of you see that movie “Once”. Sara and I watched it a few nights ago, and I was surprised by how much I liked it. It’s been out for a while now so maybe some of you have seen it?
Posted on December 22nd, 2008 by Ned
Filed under: Hollow Men | 1 Comment »
Don’t know if anybody’s reading this anymore, since there haven’t been many posts or comments. My last painting only received comments from Toby, but here I am undaunted. I infer that many of you have moved to Facebook, but since I am not “friends” with you, this is still the best way to get people’s attention. And I kind of like this mode. Recently, I have finished reading E. O. Wislon’s Concilience, a good challenging book which was a faculty discussion book at the University. I ended up discussing the book with a bunch of scientists. I watched a pretty cool movie called the Visitor, which personalizes the immigration dilemmas in this country. Eliot turned six and Claire will soon be three. James and Sarah will likely be parents, and Kathleen has a boyfriend. Here’s a new painting called Apex. I am going to relate a bit of history that means something to me.
This painting is, of course, about some of the reading on wolves I’ve done. They have studied them for about thirteen years with regards to their return to Yellowstone and their impact on the Ecosystem there. I could go on about this, but long story short, they’re very healthy for the ecosystem. So one Sunday night I was getting ready to read with Eliot, and Sara was checking the Internet to see if there was a mystery on PBS. She called me over to show me there was a program called “The Wolf that Saved America” starting in a few minutes. Of course, I ran downstairs with Eliot, and we watched it. It was fun to see how much Eliot enjoyed it.
It was a mix of history, science, and myth, as they retold the story of an outdoorsman named Ernest Thompson Seton, who was well-known for a time as a professional exterminator of wolves. He boasted that he could rid ranches of marauding wolves in three days. A wolf in New Mexico, that he called Lobo, evaded him for three months. One incident tells of the wolf collecting four chunks of meat Seton had carefully poisoned in a pile and defecating on them. Anyway, Seton was filled with such sadness when he finally killed the wolf that he had a bit of a conversion. He began to promote conservation of the west and influenced T. Roosevelt to protect Yellowstone. One incident about Lobo tells of their ploy to catch him by trapping his mate first. Supposedly, he cried all night, howling strangely. Doug Smith, the head of the Yellowstone project, was interviewed and related a similar incident in Yellowstone. He said, “You’ll forgive the expression, but he sounded as if he was mourning.” I brought this up in my book discussion, questioning why biologists aren’t allowed to anthropomorphize animals, but they must stress the links we share with animals biologically.
When I spoke to my dad, the only person who wanted to listen to my excited rant about the program and wolves, he told me that after Seton became a conservationist, he went camping with my grandfather Clell a couple of times in the Badlands and once down south. I guess Grael has several of Seton’s books dedicated to Clell.
Thanks for listening. If you’re curious about some of the articles that influenced this painting, I’ll be happy to post more.
Posted on December 12th, 2008 by Ned
Filed under: Hollow Men | 2 Comments »
Oh the long tradition. Much regret we are not gathering together. Many good wishes and gratitude to all of you on this Thanksgiving. A lot to be thankful for this year. A raised glass to you.
Posted on November 23rd, 2008 by Shotts
Filed under: Autumn, Family, Food, Holidays, Hollow Men, Nostalgia | 2 Comments »
A piece of Walt Whitman on this historic day:
From 1884
If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
‘Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor your huge
rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops
ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones - nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes - nor
Mississippi’s stream:
This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name - the still small
voice vibrating - America’s choosing day…
Posted on November 4th, 2008 by Shotts
Filed under: Autumn, Beginnings & Endings, Ethics & Morality, Politics, Quotes | 3 Comments »
Ned, thanks for the quick examples of your take on the frightening theme. About two weeks ago I started digging through my art from college because I had a hankering to start in on my work again. I hadn’t looked at my work since college in many cases, and was surprised by what I thought was crap then didn’t seem so crappy. I worked on "restoring" a couple of drawings that had gotten smeared from my few moves since an undergrad and fixing some parts that I wanted to alter. A couple of drawings I thought would be fine contributions to Project Frightening.
I am hopefully going to post a couple of creepy things that aren’t mine and one that is mine in the comments later today. Click on the thumbnails to see an enlarged view.
Study of Bernini’s Death on the Tomb of Pope Urban VIII
Box Elder, Part of the "My Icons" Series
I had to take photos of these both and adjust them in Photoshop, so they look much different in real life. The Box Elder piece is at least five feet in height, so I had to take two shots and seam them together. The Death study is on white paper, but I created the effect you see in Photoshop and thought it created a nice mood for this project. Hope you like my additions!
Posted on October 31st, 2008 by Tobias
Filed under: Art, Autumn, Holidays | 1 Comment »
Thought I’d share a few tracks from the Fleet Foxes album that came out recently. J.E. came to my mind when I saw the Bruegel image used on the cover. Speaking of J.E., hope your busy season goes well, sir!
01 | White Winter Hymnal
02 | Quiet Houses
03 | Your Protector
04 | Blue Ridge Mountains
Have a fantastic autumnal week!
Posted on October 13th, 2008 by Tobias
Filed under: Autumn, Music | 2 Comments »
Here’s my newest painting. You can also see it and a close-up on my website. The Bear refers to the market and who actually pays for our financial miscalculations - a weight no one can really carry. The text is Wordsworth’s "Lines in Early Spring." If you want to know how Toby influenced this painting, I can tell you.
Posted on October 7th, 2008 by Ned
Filed under: Art, Holidays | 3 Comments »
So I was flipping through some files on my computer at work before I take off for MI, and I passed this sketch from an old sketchbook that I scanned into Photoshop. I have a bunch of these that I intended as chapter headings for a story I wrote. Here’s the first one done in pencil w/ Photoshop duotone. I think it is in the spirit of Tob’s pumpkin.
Posted on October 3rd, 2008 by Ned
Filed under: Art, Holidays | 1 Comment »
It’s October. A few thoughts have seized my mind about posting some sort of collaborative challenge for the group. I don’t mean to add to anyone’s burden but I thought it might be fun to participate in a sort of group exercise. The poetry writing turned out really well during Beckett’s Baby Shower, and while I don’t imagine it taking the same shape as it did this summer, I thought it would be fun to engage the creativity of the group.
My challenge: create something scary or frightening.
The events that precipitated this were:
1) One of my favorite novels had it’s genesis in the "ghost story" challenge (Frankenstein).
2) I read "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and it frightened me more effectively in short story than many things I see or read today. It’s amazing to me the atmosphere Hawthorne (and Washington Irving) both were able to create in the span of their short stories.
3) I had a very vivid dream last night that Steph woke me up in the middle of. Curiously, after being awake about fifteen minutes, I resolved the dream by coming up with an ending. It was really hard to shake it before that.
Now, this only has to be as complicated as anyone wants it to be. And each person can create as much as we’d like. For instance, I could (and plan on) describing this dream I had last night. I also had a story idea that I could flesh out for everyone, or just give plot points to. I could haiku, write about the scariest moment in my life, take a photo, draw something, link to something scary. It can be supernatural (ghost, demons, etc.), unnatural (politics, the economy 
), or even natural.
What say you all? Is this a good idea or bad one?
Posted on October 2nd, 2008 by Tobias
Filed under: Art, Holidays | 4 Comments »
I apologize for coming on too strong in advance. I previously said I don’t like to tell people who to vote for, but this goes beyond voting. Despite how much this election represents to me.
Maybe I am adding flames to the fire, but the amount any of us writes to the federal government is going to get a whole lot bigger because of previous Republican leadership, instead of just getting a little bigger like it might have. The truth is social security worked and the only reason we questioned it is because people wanted to be taking cruises and living in huge mansions on Caribbean islands when they retired instead of living modestly. I reiterate my arguments from during the previous election against privatization. We are basically financing a war rooted in energy issues on money from China. What’s more immoral than that? We consume more than a ¼ of the world’s oil.
Read more…
Posted on September 29th, 2008 by Ned
Filed under: Ethics & Morality, Politics | No Comments »
I have been thinking a lot recently about the nature of wealth and what is fair taxation, etc.
I heard Bill O’Reilly talking the other night and accusing Obama of wanting to do wealth redistribution. This got me thinking: “this is something people think of as negative because it means taking something hard-earned from those who have toiled to earn it and giving it to those whose actions have done nothing to make it.”
Then, my thoughts drifted to a few events, one from Policy class and two more recently occurring at family reunions. First of all, the statistic that something like 97 percent of the wealth is controlled by three percent of the population. The others are a game of Risk with my cousins, and a conversation with Mandy about her family.
As we know the divide of the uber-wealthy and the lower classes is growing. The amount of wealth is continuing to be governed by a smaller percentage of the population. This is fact. This is inevitable if you have read much on behavioral economics. I recommend the “logic of Life” as a book to illustrate this point.
This became clear to me as I found myself on side of a losing campaign in Risk, a game I had not played since young. At one point I decided to hole up in Australia, after spreading too thin and being conquered elsewhere. I thought, ” at least I can defend the bottle neck here in the south pacific by putting all my new resources into the defense of the one country blocking my cousin’s way to world domination. The fallacy that I quickly discovered is that if you had captured continents you amassed more armies because you had more resources, same too for just having sheer numbers of already existing armies. In essence, if you already had wealth, you could make so much more. So there is a tipping point there where defeat is inevitable, no matter how great your geographical advantage. I realized that the percentages were about the same as those discussed previously in policy class, my cousin owned about 95 percent of the board and defeat began to unfold at an exponential rate.
Read more…
Posted on September 19th, 2008 by Pete
Filed under: Charity, Ethics & Morality, Politics | 5 Comments »
Yes, indeed, we might well have been the luckiest of all our friends this weekend.
We got a first hand Beckett sighting and Clara sighting as well. Bouncing baby Beckett, a bundle of beautiful babbling, was quite the sight. We are grateful to the Shotts-Aspengrens for hosting us and only wish we would have had more time to visit, but alas, we had a wedding to get to. On the way home we got to see Tobandsteph with Clara. Also wonderful, and thanks, to you, too for going out of your way to accomodate our travels and time constraints.
I was reminded of how fortunate we all are this week when I saw a posting on facebook. Apparently, Kori Karstetter (a year or two younger than us, if memory serves correct) was in the midst of her second child birth when they lost their child. To make matters worse, she had a heart attack a short time later and at last check was touch and go. Really brings home how fortunate we all have been.
Thanks so much to you all for sharing your families with us.
Posted on September 17th, 2008 by Pete
Filed under: Beginnings & Endings, Family, Hollow Men | 1 Comment »
What I’ve been listening to this week…
Posted on September 17th, 2008 by Tobias
Filed under: Music | 6 Comments »
