Book reviews, nature notes, recipes, hand crafts, local news, Green philosophy, and more.
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Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Funny Things I've Googled
Web Log for 5.14.24
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Petfinder Post: Seeing Spots on Cats
His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/ripley-71026279/ny/new-york/anjellicle-cats-rescue-ny488/
Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/speedy-snappy-bonded-sisters-71551053/ny/new-york/advocat-rescue-ny1420/
Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/skye-16263-71344709/dc/washington/city-dogs-city-kitties-rescue-dc22/
Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/bert-ernie-bonded-70402476/ga/avondale-estates/meow-or-never-inc-ga915/
Monday, May 13, 2024
New Book Review: Sara and the Moonlight Rescue
New Book Review: Garden of Lies
Butterfly of the Week: Mexican Kite
The photographer known as Syntheticpurples didn't say what person did to get this individual to put out its osmeterium, nor whether its bird-repellent scent was unpleasant or even noticeable to humans.
Photo from inaturalist.ala.org.au. This caterpillar's lower sides look almost exactly like the leaf on which it's sitting...now that's camouflage!
Sunday, May 12, 2024
Book Review: The Mary Miracle
Title: The Mary Miracle
Author: Jack Hayford
Date: 1994
Publisher: Gospel Light
ISBN: 0-8307-1652-1
Length: 201 pages
Quote: “A pregnancy is the ultimate analogy. Everything in life is ‘like it’.”
So, whoever you are, and whatever may be going on in your life at the moment, Jack Hayford proposes to strain for an analogy to Mary’s accepting the call to be the Mother of Christ.
Let’s just say, as charitably as possible, that although some women have apparently approved of this analogy, it doesn’t work for me. .
Jack Hayford is generally a skillful writer and speaker. The individual chapters are coherent, logical, and terse.
Some people collect Hayford's writing and may want this book to complete their collection. Right. I have it.
Unto the Skeptics I Became Skeptical
Friday, May 10, 2024
New Book Review: Pearse
Lost Poetry of Cellphones
Thursday, May 9, 2024
Web Log for 5.8.24
Sharing Crafts with Your Niece
No one is ever too young for scrapbooks, whether you’ve lived long enough to have compiled a really historic scrapbook, or just want to have fun cutting and pasting. Add decorative stickers, ribbons, sequins--whatever you find to enhance photos, programs, cards, etc. You can also buy or make stampers for further decoration--see below.
Anyone who can write legibly is ready to try calligraphy. Use scrap paper until your italic or cursive style pleases you, then move on to fancy paper.
Your niece presses the clay into interesting shapes--round, square, free-form, whatever. You poke holes in it and bake it. Either or both of you can paint the buttons when dry.
Find material to suit your purpose--heavy cord for hanging flowerpots, dainty threads for bracelets and hair ornaments. Begin by letting your niece practice making basic braids and knots. Once she’s learned the techniques, you can add beads, junk jewelry, shells or other found natural objects, to make things suitable for hanging on the walls, wearing around your neck, or hanging flower pots.
You can cut thin even strips off the tops of your family’s old socks, if you’ve accumulated enough of them, or buy precut loops just for weaving, or even use loops of knitting yarn (trim the knots to make a nice even fringe). Your niece can have fun planning stripes, plaids, and rainbow-shaded effects.
Knitting frames come in a wide range of sizes and shapes. Straight plastic frames can be hooked together to make full-sized garments and afghans. Knitting spools or circular knitting frames are usually suitable for knitting only a limited selection of shapes. You can, however, use circular knitting frames with eight or more pegs to make flat strips, which can then be sewn, braided, or woven together to make legs for stuffed animals, sleeves for dolls’ clothes, strands for braided rugs, or even fingers for thumbs or mittens.
Art Writing Is a Genre
I. Faces of India
1. Weaving. Several large pieces of woven fabric were displayed. One Indian word for fabric is sutra, which can refer to cloth or to the fabric of the universe. This brings to American minds the Kama Sutra, Kama being a Hindu deity associated with love, but the connection was not traced by the museum guide.
A sari was displayed with instructions on how the sari itself is wound around the body, tucked into the skirt, and draped over the blouse. According to an Indian legend, an elaborate sari once saved the life of a righteous lady. Enemies chased her and caught the end of her sari, but the lady prayed aloud as she danced out of their reach, unwinding her sari. Some say the sari miraculously stretched and unwound, stretched and unwound, for half a mile or more, until the lady reached a house where the enemies dared not follow her...still wrapped in the silken sheath-dress Indian women wear to show patriotic pride.
2. Photographs. Around one wall were several photographs of individuals and a landscape. Some people’s attention was caught by a photograph of an old man smoking a pipe and looking unusually contemplative. Others noticed a sequence of pictures of a young man demonstrating Yoga positions (asana), which are thought to promote transcendental-type meditation while they build strength and flexibility, or pictures of an extremely thin boy and a gaunt old man. I was most intrigued by the portrait of an old woman. Photographs rarely give me a sense of the subject’s personality except through the use of poses and props. This one did.
3. Dolls. Two fashion dolls were displayed on a stand. These dolls differ from European and American dolls by their costumes and by the exaggeration of their painted eyes. “Long eyes” are a feature of beautiful people as painted by Indian artists. I have heard Indian men, not necessarily Hindus, use “long eyes” or “lotus eyes” as Americans might use “blonde,” as a shorthand summary of conventional beauty. In the Hindu paintings on the wall behind the dolls, the characters’ eyes were even more exaggerated. It appears more grotesque than beautiful to the American observer, but then there are cultures in which blondness is considered unattractive too. Ear and nose ornaments were conspicuous in the dolls’ costumes, and also in the paintings. One doll wore a classic sari of loosely woven yellow fabric with lace borders. The other wore a rose-colored velvet gown whose close-fitting waist, sheer set-in sleeves gathered at wrists and shoulders, and plain long skirt could equally well have been accessorized as a European or Early American dress.
4. Paintings. One wall displayed a sequence of paintings illustrating episodes of the life of Krishna, a Hindu figure often described as Christlike. Hindu deities are said to have “blue blood” and Krishna could be identified in each picture by his blue-gray face. In the most bizarre painting Krishna is being nursed by a female giant with a monstrous tongue that coils through and around the baby’s fist. More conventional scenes show Krishna among ordinary people, in conversation ina courtyard, in rowboats, etc.
5. Inadequacy. India is a very large country comprised of many different ethnic groups who follow different customs, practice different religions, and speak different languages. Despite government efforts to reduce the number of languages in use, still natives of India are not always able to talk naturally with one another. It would be impossible to get an adequate survey of Indian art into a room of this size, or make even a casual study of it in a one-hour visit. Many groups are completely ignored, even the substantial Muslim and Christian minorities.
The guide appeared nervous and not fully prepared to discuss the display. Instead his lecture was mostly about the reasons why American observers should not be prejudiced against Indian art. Since this American observer grew up with family friends who came from India and Pakistan, this lecture failed to make a favorable impression. More information on the artwork displayed would have been more useful.
II. Darryl Halbrooks
The guide appeared to take it for granted that the audience would prefer the exhibition of Styrofoam painting by Darryl Halbrooks. The observer heard at least two other visitors from Berea express a preference for “Faces of India.” I don’t feel that the two exhibitions can be compared. They represent different types of art (or craft) produced and displayed for different purposes. Although some of the Indian pieces expressed joy and merriment, none of them was a cartoon. The purpose of displaying them was to introduce Americans to Indian art. Most of the Halbrooks pieces were political cartoons. The purpose of displaying them was to prod Americans to reconsider various aspects of our own culture. These purposes may not be entirely incompatible but it would be hard to trace any connection between these collections.
1. Portrait: “Mi Madre.” Among the Halbrooks pieces, one titled “Mi Madre” did not suggest a sarcastic commentary on U.S. culture. This seemed to be a simple portrait in painted Styrofoam.
2. Animals. Two more paintings used dog images, one with an apparently wild dog pack and one with dogs’heads. No specific message was clear to this observer.
3. American Idolatries. The tone of the other Holbrooks pieces was compared by several observers to Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons. Bombs and soda cans appeared in triptychs recalling the phrase, “Your ‘god’ is what you serve.” Americans “serve” bombs and warfare through taxes; individually, we “serve” favorite foods, drinks, and drugs. Another piece showed a bomb cradled in the arms of a madonnalike figure, presumably Lise Meitner, a physicist whose discoveries led to modern atomic science, so that she was nicknamed the “Mother of the Bomb.” The North and Northwest were portrayed by two creatures that might be wild dogs or wolverines, fighting below what I saw as the familiar faces on Mount Rushmore, badly copied. To Southerners this probably seems like a valid way to characterize this part of the country, nor are similar opinions unfamiliar to Canadians of my acquaintance. How this piece would impress a native of the northern border States, I don’t care to imagine.
4. “Open Demonstration of Affection.” My favorite of the Halbrooks pieces was this simple cartoon image, in which a human body is “opened” down the front to reveal the heart and other internal organs. I was once troubled by a plague of excessively evangelical Christians who used the undefined term “open” to describe some quality of human beings. This image came to my mind, too. An alternative had to do with the phrase “open slut”; I think Halbrooks chose the image that is more likely to suggest to those who describe people as “open” that this usage conveys no useful information. If they mean “interested” or “tolerant” or “sympathetic,” their purpose would be better served by one of those words. This cartoon has social value. It graphically illustrates something that needed to be said and has not been said many times before.
[Christians who describe people as "open," as if that were a good thing, might have been influenced by this 1948 essay recently reprinted in Plough Quarterly:
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/discipleship/get-ready-to-be-changed
In this specifically religious context the word usage makes sense, but talking about it as if the speaker could have any idea whether anyone else is "open to spiritual transformation" still seems out of bounds to me.]
5. Satirical References to the Bible and Christian Beliefs. Most of the Halbrooks pieces were satires on religious themes. Although they did not offend this observer, who took them as an example of the working of an immature mind in rebellion against the religious teachings of his childhood, their crude sarcasm offended many visitors. This offense was probably intended, but it is unimpressive, the way primary school children swearing is unimpressive. To Christians the story of the sacrifice of Isaac does not mean that God plays elaborate, painful practical jokes on people, but (primarily, among other things) that people should be prepared to give up whatever is dearest to them in order to serve God. For me as a Christian, “Just Kidding,” which suggests that this Bible story is about God’s mean sense of humor, does not arouse moral indignation but only a condescending variety of pity. Therefore, I say all the Styrofoam painting/sculptures that ridicule Christian beliefs fail. And, knowing evangelical types, I expect that they’ll also fail to keep the evangelists from Halbrooks’ door.