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Blog Posts for "my life"
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Bari graduated.  The ceremony was cool, including inflatable beach balls and an inflatable shark passed and bounced over the heads of the graduates. I don't have a zoom powerful enough on my little camera, but plenty of others do, and we'll get those pictures later. The after-graduation party was great. Here's me and my tribe.  That's Bari on the far right. Relatives from all over attended, and it was wonderful to see them again. My ex-father-in-law and I get along well, and we were laughing it up by the grill while we tried to get enough food cooked for everyone. He's a really good guy. Later, we did a bunch stuff together. Here's Nick on a piggy back ride with me. That's his girlfriend, Ali, with Austin on her shoulders behind us.  And Bari's friends showed up and stayed for food and laughs.  It was a good day. Next stop for her: adulthood. For about a week, I've been mulling over her life and her future. And with everything happening, I haven't emailed or blogged much, as you might know if you read this site often. In two months, she leaves. Wow... |
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I mentioned a week ago that I had given up white sugar. I'm now one week in and still sugar free. A couple of days were tough. But there is beauty in the word, "No." I wrote something about two years ago. I'll quote it here: We humans have a great advantage over the rest of the animal kingdom. Know what it is?It's choice. Animals run on instinct. They do what they do because their very nature tells them that they should. They don't really have a choice. There are no second thoughts. There is no guilt. Ambiguity? Not a chance. Not so with us humans. We have second thoughts and guilt and indecision. But wait - I did say that this was an advantage... Like animals, we also have instinct. It may be our genes driving our impulses. Maybe it's how we grew up. Whatever drives our baser instincts, there are natural tendencies that we all have. Some are beneficial, and some are not. But unlike animals, we have choice. Choice can allow us to select our way. We don't have to be a slave to instinct. At many moments throughout our day, we make small choices, almost imperceptible choices that determine what it is that we do each day. And I found that I would check myself at these moments and stop what had become my habit. Whew! Today, it's easier to say, "No." It's more obvious to me that I don't lick the jelly off my finger when I make PBJ for the boys. There is beauty in the word, "No."And thank god for orange-banana smoothies. Because there is beauty in the word, "Yes," too. The next step for me is daily exercise. And then portion sizes. Here's me about 8 years ago.  That's the first goal. The second goal is drop further, down to about the weight that I was in the Army, which looked something like this:  Hopefully next summer, I can post pictures that show serious achievement toward these goals. I don't need the food. Life is delicious all on its own, and I want to be a glutton of it. |
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It turns out that a cable in a box about 1/2 mile from where I live was bad, but it's been fixed, so we have good Internet connection again. And Qwest gave me a $20 refund on my Internet service, so all is well. While my connection was down, I read some. My daughter hogged my desk, though, so no painting. She had a lot of project work to do for classes. She has 4 days of high school left. That's a mind blower. Here she is on her first day of kindergarten:  That was a long time ago. We watched Everwood last night, as we do every Monday. Interestingly, the main characters graduated from high school last night. Thinking of Bari in her cap and gown got me choked up. And I'm now in my third day of being white sugar free. No more Snapple (there goes my product endorsement), no more soda, which I didn't drink much anyway... all for the best. I'm changing my diet as well. My morning is an orange-banana smoothie. (Oranges are 99¢ a pound, and bananas are 49¢ a pound. It doesn't get much cheaper than that. And did I mention that I love my juicer?) Lunches are standard sandwich and carrot fare, or a salad. Dinners are meat and veggies. If I feel like eating at night, I have another orange-banana smoothie. It's filling, and good for me. Once I make it through a week or so of sugar-free-ness, I'll work on my portion sizes. Which should reduce my size. In the past, I've lost weight by only doing two things: dropping white sugar and walking daily. That's all I've needed to do. To write that seems so simple. Perhaps it is and I just get distracted with other stupid habits. My foot is still broken, but with the inserts I walk okay. Losing weight will probably help my foot heal more quickly, with less weight on it. I'll find a scale and track my progress. Historically, January 1st has been the start of resolutions for people. But I think that's a stupid time to try to change habits. April 1st or May 1st makes much more sense. Most habits that need breaking require some sort of exercise or activity, and January 1st is smack dab in the middle of winter. To make a habit change in the full swing of spring is far more sensible. Anyone care to second the motion? All in favor say "Aye..." |
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 | Flow |  |
Water is an amazing substance. We've been getting a lot of that in the past 24 hours here in Iowa. Being liquid, it channels around objects in its path, obeying gravity, just naturally falling. Water doesn't stress. It ignores obstacles. Maybe that's why we like the sound of running water... we wish we were more like that. Reading the book, Red Scarf Girl, I lived vicariously through the author's eyes what it was to be in Chairman Mao's communist China - seeing how people had filters for others - what they could wear, what they could say, how they could live... strange rules that changed on a whim and made all of society walk on eggshells. Or what happened with the works of Otto Dix and his fellow German expressionst painters who had their art cut short and declared degenerate by the Nazi's. I'm reading Thinkertoys, and in it, the author talks of the things that squelch innovation. The criticism of others who insist that it's been done before, or that it can't be done, or at least not by you. Or they laugh at the result and belittle the effort. This morning I listened to Bonnie Raitt's "One Part Be My Lover," which contains this lyric: He's like a boxer who had to retire
after winning but killing a man
He's got all of the moves and none of the courage
Afraid to throw a punch that might land My sons game online, and one of them has found a group of people with whom he is the most "himself" that I've seen him be with anyone. He acts goofy if he chooses, courts around having fun, and acts like a jerk on occasion, but all is forgiven. The group accepts each other they way that they are and they don't stem each other's natural expression.I took some classes in college on Interpersonal Communication, which went into great length and exhaustive study about attraction and friendships and relationships. I've been married twice. I've seen friends come and go. I think all that we're looking for - and feel free to bring every human being into this little circle I'm drawing here - all that we're looking for is a place where we can freely release our energies and for a group of people with whom we can freely express who we are without being curtailed. Unmitigated flow. A friend of mine says, "Your right to throw a punch stops just short of my nose." Live and let live, so long as your own freedom of expression doesn't hurt others or inhibit them from their own free flow. I'm going to noodle through "flow" a bit more, but for me philosophically, I'm all for free flow: whether it's a form of government or the friends that I choose. If I run into obstacles, I'll be like water. A day is too important to waste stressing about obstacles. |
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Subjectivity and the Means for Deeper Respect |
I went painting today at the local Botanical Center.  Stefanie joined me for this, and it was fun. She tried her first watercolor (did well!) and otherwise sketched and took some great photos, which I'll post later. We also met a person who has her work in the Smithsonian. Her name is Jean Wilson, and she does extraordinary calligraphy.  While Stefanie charmed the little kids who stopped by our little section of paved path to see what we were doing (she even coaxed one cute little girl to sketch along with us and submit her work for the contest!), I tried to figure out how to paint what lie in front of me. I learned a couple of things and had some thoughts on the drive home... Most of my painting thus far has been from photos. Today, I did it "plein air" style, or painting in one sitting from real life. Very different. I've mentioned before that painting is a process of constantly forcing oneself to see things as they are. You can't just see a ball and then spend five minutes at the canvas. There's no such thing as a photographic memory when painting. Memory is reconstructive and once you start reconstructing, you're guessing. Hence, the constant scanning of the subject and the few brushstrokes each produces. Well, that's tiring mental work, and in one sitting, it's not something I'm accustomed to doing. Holy cow, my hat goes off for all of those who do this a lot. I didn't finish mine... I needed a break. I will finish it later from photos that I took, but I need to do a lot more of this. I started well, I think, but as I grew tired of the constant scanning and checking and rechecking, I found myself guessing more and just throwing the brush around in a way that felt lazy. I don't do that when painting from photo. Why? Thinking about it on the way home, an analogy came to me. When I'm sitting in front of my subject, painting plein air, I lose perspective. I mean frankly, there is so much that I could paint. The far wall, the plants that are closer, the bridge, the plants in front of the bridge, the people wandering around, the plants behind the main flowers that I wanted to paint, the flowers that I wanted to paint... our eyes can focus on objects far and on objects near, and it's all important. Not so with a photograph. It's much easier to see the main elements and not get lost in everything else. Kind of like how friends can tell you that you're engaged to the wrong person, but you have a harder time seeing their point. They see you like a photograph, but you're living it and there is so much to focus on. "Dude, she's not right for you."
"You just can't see her like I do." Exactly. That's the point. It's subjectivity and objectivity. I'm sure that you've been told before that you're too close to something to see it as it is. Painting from real life is just like this, ironically enough. I think this is why Picasso painted as he did. He literally painted it as he saw it - even if his model moved or if his perspective changed - whether it made sense to others or not. Painting is a growth experience. I look forward to finishing what I started today and then sometime this week, begin to paint what I see and stop working from photos for a while. ETC: Pictures...    |
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The song by The Cure, Friday I'm in Love, is what I wake up to each day. I don't care if Monday's blue
Tuesday's gray and Wednesday too... Followed by Phil Collins' Son of Man (from Tarzan) and then by Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard. With that playlist as my alarm clock, every day is fabulous :)Today was a particularly good day. If you recall the search engine that I was building for work, today was the day that we indexed the files for the beta site. Most awesome. My body is responding to the daily bike ride to and from work. The great thing about muscles is that they remember and come back quickly. God blessed me with very strong legs, so my legs are singing on the ride. I hope that I'm able to ride a bike until the day I die. It's the best. Picked up the boys from school and we went to a local game spot and got a SpongeBob game for the XBox. Then to Barnes & Noble where Austin loves to listen to music. Jacob and I played tug of Dad while Austin was jamming out. And then we all went upsatirs upstairs for Jacob to play with the Thomas train set. I picked up Red Scarf Girl, which was mentioned by Kris recently. And then home. I got home to find that red fish mentioned another painter's site. Duane Keiser paints a postcard-sized painting each day and then sells it for $100. He does very nice work, and he sells the work. Which leads to a question I've asked myself lately: what am I doing with my art? I'm new to painting, but I know that I can paint (see my gallery if you're unfamiliar with my work). At the moment, I'm in a period of wax on/wax off. I'm trying a lot of things and reading a lot to get an education in art that I never received. But once I'm done with that, yes, I intend to sell my work. So how will I sell it? Most likely through PayPal. They take credit cards now and you don't need to sign up for PayPal to use the service. Works for me. In the past, I've had Internet merchant accounts for software that I sold through my business web site. I think the PayPal method will work just as well for this. About 1/4 of the books in my library here at home are business-y books. And about half of those are marketing. I broke out Thinkertoys yesterday to begin re-reading that. One concept is the Idea Box. The blueprint for the concept is to: - Specify the challenge (selling my art)
- Identify the parameters that determine the success of the challenge (such as the quality of my work, the media I use to generate buzz, the price point, and the distance I have from the buyer - more about this in a minute, etc)
- List the variations
- Finally, try different combinations
It's something like scenario planning, where you pick scenarios to posit different problems and then see which approaches most uniformally provide a resolution.So what appeals to me? As Bella might say, how do I best follow my bliss? The quality of my work is driven by the time I put into it. With my five kids, three of whom live with me, and other factors, I can probably put out a larger painting once a week. Or I can go for smaller work and finish it in about 1 to 3 days. I don't want to scrimp on the quality though for volume's sake. I need to like it before I expect anyone else to like it... The media to generate buzz - when I'm ready, I'd like to crack open my guerilla marketing books and see what I can do. Certainly having a blog helps because I can be googled or yahoo'd. (I'm currently the number #1 hit on Yahoo for "watercolor painting blog," for example.) But I can't rely only on good search engine placement. "If I build it, they will come" is an Internet myth that popped 4 years ago. So the buzz will have to come from elsewhere, in addition to blogs (and thank you to those who link to me :) Price point... this is tough for me. I don't like $100 art. It's out of the reach of the average person. I mean no disrespect to Duane or others who do this, but I have a hard time limiting good art to just a few. (It ain't my bliss, although if that's the better way, I can be educated if it's the difference between success and no success.) What I would like to see is for people to be able to get prints of my work for around $20. Anyone can afford $20. But at that price, I need volume, and I'll also need a large gallery of work. So I don't know about price point... you have an opinion you'd like to share? And then there is the distance I have from the buyer - or, how personal is the art? Do I just paint whatever I feel like painting, or do I paint by request, as some artists do? I suppose if a commission came in, I'd take it as a good challenge and get right to it. So, I have some questions in front of me, variations to consider, and some labor in marketing in addition to building up a gallery of work. I love all of this. I'll leave you with a haiku by Evelyn Lang: perfect summer sky -
one blue crayon
missing from the box |
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I had wanted to release the Graffiti portion of the website last night, but unfortunately, I didn't. After hanging with my kids for a while, I did two computer caricatures for a woman with whom I work (she asked if I would work on something artsy of her children) and then I hit a brick wall called "fatigue." So I lay on the couch, Da Vinci Code in hand and fell asleep reading. My daughter read the book about a year ago and told me that I need to read it. Then a friend recommended it to me, knowing my religious stance, and so I've started it. I'm not too far in yet. Langdon has observed the body and just met Ms. Neveu (sp?). History is the collective point of view of those who best marketed or offered their points of view. It's not necessarily what actually happened. The subjective nature of memory, screened through our biases and experiences, shade our view. As individuals, we're too small to capture "the truth" ourselves. At this point in history, I think that a lot of people now notice that the version of events given in the media are not necessarily what happened. What they show may in fact be true, but does it best represent the truth? It's an open question. My opinion is that some reporters are good at getting the gist of the facts to us, and others are obscenely prejudiced and too driven by agenda to be trusted. (I did a fairly robust study of press bias last fall during the election and came away with the assessment that the Associated Press has too many reporters who favor the slant of the Democrats - and as I mentioned, some obscenely so, such as Liz Sidoti.) My daughter has a deep fascination with history. I've never met a high school student so fluent with information about history as she is. For her, the Da Vinci Code proved riveting. Early church history is a murky topic in many respects, but the translated documents from 2nd and 3rd century forward are fairly available on the web for viewing. You can start with Tertullian and gobble up the writings of those involved in early Christianity. But I'm quite sure that much has been suppressed. What we know today of early church history is what has been allowed to survive. I don't know that the truth of early history matters much to a person's elemental faith. I don't expect the book to change my own opinions, but like my daughter, I'm fascinated with Dan Brown's grasp of information. |
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 My favorite song at the moment is "This Must Be the Place" by the Talking Heads. I owned the Speaking in Tongues album when it first came out in the early 80's, but I swear I never liked David Byrne's compositions and texturing as much as I do today. Where was my head back then??
In "This Must Be the Place," there's one part of the song that goes: "Home is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there." No idea why, but that's sticking with me... and I don't usually notice lyrics. Mr. Byrne - he's a genius. It's funny how related music seems to painting lately. The layers and textures... I can see the transparency of the song as though it were displayed in front of me, like watercolor washes. I had lunch with a friend of mine today whom I've known for years. His birthday is in two days and we take each other out for lunch on our birthdays. We stopped at the restaurant where a childhood friend of mine works. They'd never met, so I introduced them. It's odd, but I find a lot of common threads running together lately. From "Once in a Lifetime," I hear in my ear, "You may ask yourself, 'Where does that highway lead to?' You may ask yourself, 'Am I right? Am I wrong?'" Someone once told me that we only get angry when we don't get our way. I find that painting reduces my desire to change the world, as I've sought to do in the past. Instead, I want to observe it as it is and enjoy it for what it is. I think everyone should try painting. It's changing my life. |
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I woke up this morning at 9:30, which is very unusual for me. But boy was it welcome.  Followed by a raspberry Snapple. Yummy... After hanging with my kids through the morning and a game of Scattergories with Aaron in the afternoon, I took my bike to the shop to get it ready for riding. The chain, after a damp winter, is so very rusty. Then, off to Barnes & Noble, the library, and finally Michael's, a craft store. I went to Michael's to help me resolve a couple of painting issues. The paper for this recent painting that I've started was excessively wet and so it curled a great deal. To prevent warp, I need to tape the paper to hard surface. In addition, I've been using an art bin, but it's not large enough. So I scouted out a great wooden box and it is most wonderful :)  And I've decided to start over with the painting... it's like trying to paint inside of a cup for all the warping the paper did. The rest of the night belongs to me and Suzanne Vega. I downloaded Solitude Standing and Days of Open Hand the other night. The gentle rocking motion of Gypsy is perfect.  |
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My sister, who lives in Kentucky, stopped up in Ames to visit my mom and so I went up last night to spend time with everyone. It's a shame that my kids are all out of town, but you know, with it just being my mom, her husband, my sister, her two kids, and myself at the table, it was very nice. With my five, it, uh, would'a been crowded.  Traci and I laughed ourselves silly over Patrick Stewart's narration of Dragons!, an Animal Planet show. He was so serious... hell, between him and that guy on the All-State commercials, if either of them try to sell me something, I'd buy it. Their voice and presence are enough to get my head just bobbin'... "Yes, sir. Where do I sign." Traci too.  That's my nephew, Logan. Cutest kid. He'd have the four faces on Rushmore beaming from ear to ear if he ever got near them.  And Mackenzie, my niece - ready to take on the world. Later, it was pinochle. I'd never played. Well, maybe once, but it was ages ago. So I had to re-learn, and I did so quickly, but not fast enough. My sister is the most competitive person I know. She'll be running in the Boston Marathon this year. So, she took our loss at cards with, um, politeness - lol I wish they lived closer than Kentucky. Not gonna happen though... in a few years, Mom and Kerm will move to be near Traci when Kerm retires. That'll leave me to hold the fort here in Iowa. And I'm here for at least 12 years. Jacob will only be in the first grade next year. |
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