Connection

I am currently reading "On Italy" written by Henry James.This travel narrative written in the late 1800s has given me another connectivity moment. These rare(for me anyway)moments are always fascinating . Really relating to an author makes the book seem to be written just for you . This one began as the author was visiting a picturesque old mountain top village. As he is describing it he observes a man that he writes as having the characteristics of an Opera singer . Mr. James automatically begins to romanticize this man to fit his vision of an "Italian landscape" but is really off base when he begins to talk to him.
My connection moment comes with an experience I had in Venice. On day as I was exploring (lets call it wandering aimlessly) I came to a canal bridge where I saw a crowd looking up the canal. I got to the bridge just in time to see a man in a strange boat approaching. As he got nearer I could see his boat was a wooden replica of a Volkswagen beetle convertible . He was also singing some Operatic number. He waved to the cheering crowd, as he passed beneath the bridge and sailed off into the grand Canal.
As Mr. James had done I was in a Romantic tizzy about the happenings in this wonderful magic place.
As it turns out I later learned it was all a PR stunt .
I still think Venice is a wonderful magic place though.

The way it feels sometimes

Cable in Motion

the Great Ben Webster

Peaks of Otter

Ga Ga over Italy

Sunrise at Portmeirion

Calm before Storm

Treat

I just started Henry James On Italy . If this Illustration in the first chapter is any indication , I am in for a real treat. More later.

Bach with a twist

Winter Wonderland

What Cat?

Lava 1- ropey Pahoehoe

Blues progress

More Portmeirion

Tropics

Notso serious

Restoration continues

This photo illustrates what we are trying to do on our project. The area to the left has been weeded while in the background at the right has not. Clearing like this lets more sunlight reach the forest floor and helps generation of new plants. Of course it needs to be weeded on a regular basis. We have been working on this for 5 years now. Maybe one day we will finish

This is gorgeous

Still struggling

More Venice Memories

Say no more!

Beautiful Betty Carter - Moonlight in Vermont

Long Time

It has been a long time since I completed a jigsaw puzzle.This is double sided but one is enough!

Jazz Classics: Charles Mingus - Boogie Stop Shuffle

Heaven

The way it feels sometimes

New Guinea impatiens

We get lots of complements on these New Guinea Impatiens. There are only 28 plants here but they have filled out to form a solid block. This color(orange crush) seems to be more hardy than others. The one problem with them is that they will wilt badly in the afternoon if there is no rain . Other than that they will last for months .

Alawys wanted my Palms Red

Not too kind but right on

Reforestation Experiment

As this reforesting thing is an ongoing experiment, we make changes if something does not develop as we expected. Not too long ago this area had a spralling beach Naupaka plant that was not looking that good so we decided to make some changes. The kukui nut tree to the rear had started to produce seedlings around its base so we removed the Naupaka and replaced it with one of the Kukui sprouts. Lets see how this works out!

Goodbye Blossom Dearie

Aftermath

Aftermath ,day two. I spent today doing more post pig clean up . This will probably take one more morning to finish. That is unless they show up tonight and make things worse. Stay tuned!

Insulting

Living in a rural setting has its interesting moments, and here is the the aftermath of one of them.This section of our property used to have a straight edge along the street. Last night some wild boars altered it slightly. The grass extends about a foot beyond the edge of the pavement so should be edged anyway. It somehow seems insulting that it took a group of pigs to remind
me to do it.

Favorite View

This is one of my favorite views of our place.Taken at the back of the 400 foot lot, it is especially pleasing because I planted almost all of the small tress in the photo six years ago . It has been rewarding, as well as a lot of work but worth every sweaty moment!

Great stuff

flashback

Pub Mats Continued

Loose Ends

A few loose ends for Dorian Gray.As is the case in many of the classic books this work is readable on different levels. In this case there a four themes.

#1) The Purpose of Art.
Oscar Wild believed Art had no purpose. This contradicts the Victorian view that art could be used for social education and enlightenment.Being in the Aestheticism movement he tried to free art from those standards.This work tries to jolt the middle class, attempting to convince them that art had no purpose other than being beautiful.

#2 The Supremacy of Youth And Beauty.
Although Youth and beauty are present throughout the entire story line, a main point is, there is a price to pay,mainly Dorain's Soul

#3The Superficial Nature of Society
I is important to most of the the characters of the book that a man is handsome . As Dorian descends into moral depravity he is never rejected because of his pure face.

#4 The Negative Consequences of Influence
The Painting , the character of Lord Henery (and the yellow book he suggests ) have an enormous influence on Dorian eventually leading to his downfall and death.

I will leave the motifs for another time as all of this is making me tired!

I just finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is a Gothic moral novel written by Oscar Wild in 1891.
The main Character, Dorian Gray is the subject of a portrait painted by his friend Basil Hallward . Dorian is a beautiful young man at the time when he is introduced by Basil to Lord Henry Wotton. Influenced by Lord Wotton Dorian, descends into a life of vice. He begins by praying to have the portrait absorb his sins if he can retain his astonishing youthful appearance. Through out the novel the portrait becomes more hideous(as a result of Dorian's sins) but he remains youthful and handsome . As he descends into darkness he eventually Kills his friend Basil and in the end attempts to destroy the painting only to kill himself instead. After Dorian's death his likeness in the portrait returns to its original condition.
This would have made a great Twilight Zone story.

One can never hear too much Coltrane

ah, Indianapolis in the winter!

Tuesday's snow scenes - More IndyStar Galleries

View this gallery at IndyStar: Tuesday's snow scenes

More Venice memories

The Prisoner: Patrick McGoohan Tribute 1928 - 2009

On the Estate

I 'm Not worthy!

Early Jazz Greats Continued

have we no shame

Love potion update

My Long Love Affair With Cats

Cars I regret selling!

Why we live here

Famous

Check this out. During the campaign my cousin Stacy had the honor of canvassing Northern Indiana with The new President.She had done much work in his organization and was selected to have this honor. She was able to meet the entire new first family and was even given the task of not letting things fall behind schedule as they worked a rope line.
In Stacy's typical witty manner she told (then senator) Obama she never thought she would be in a position to nag a potential president .
She told me she would still talk to me now that she is famous

Pub mat # 1

SliceofLife

from the archives (some things never change)

As you can see we took the Christ deco down today. As a kid I remember being really down removing the trim.It seemed so long until It rolled around again. Endless dreary days at School seemed to stretch out for an eternity. As an adult it seems to have changed to an uplifting time of simplification and reorganization .
It is much better this way.

Corporate Madness

When will all of this corporate madness end? It has permeated everything! I suppose it has been worsening over many years but now has gotten to a point that it is not even thought about. In sports(not to mention television or other media) at a professional or collegiate level, logos are everywhere . It doesn't matter which sports, either .Football, Baseball ,or Basketball, they are all infected. On facilities , uniforms , around the playing fields ,between the goal posts , even on blimps . Not only are there images, but there is audio too.You know, when the opening lineup is brought to you by someone , the security company presents a stolen base report or the phone company makes its call to the bullpen for a relief pitcher. We are drowning in Ads! While at Indiana University I loved going to Basketball games. Since that time I watch the Hoosiers periodically and a year ago was appalled when I found that they had installed a new immense hideous scoreboard suspended from the roof over center court. But that was not the worst . There are new brilliantly lighted logo scroller machines on the sidelines .To me, all of this seems pervert a basic principal that information should be presented for the benefit of the public rather than to line someones pocket. It should be presented honestly, not taken by a second party and then dispensed only after being used for their benefit. Some time soon I hope the public wakes up and sees what a detriment all of this is.

Mystic Tree

This Is Interesting

An email I received from a friend the other day made me think about math. It had a list of 10
names that could be a role model to you.The 9th name was my friends name . In order to get your role model's name (number) you had to go through several steps of calculations. Of course it was set up for my friends name which was # 9 on the list. Ordinarily I shy away from stuff like this because math makes my head hurt. I have always struggled with it being easily distracted. Oddly enough during my time working at Sears the personnel manager called me to his office one day and said my aptitude scores indicated I was good with math(go figure ) and asked me if I would be interested in working in the pay roll office. I still can not figure out where he got that crazy idea but I decided to do it. Well, I lasted about 8 months (mainly because no one else wanted to replace me) but I digress.

Selecting your role model worked like this.
(1)select a number (from 1to 9)
(2) multiply by 3
(3) add 3
(4) multiply by 3 again
(5) add the 2 digits

I then realized that all of the numbers you might pick (1 through 9) caused the the same result .
1x3=3+3=6x3=18 1+8=9
2x3=6+3=9x3=27 2+7=9
3x3=9+3=12x3=36 3+6=9
4x3=12+3=15x3=45+4+5=9
5x3=15+3=18x3=54+5+4=9
6x3=18+3=21x3=63 6 +3=9
7x3=21+3=24x3=72 7+2=9
8x3=24+3=27x3=81 8+1=9
9x3=27+3=30x3=90 9+0=9
notice how the first and second sums increase by 3 the 3rd by 9 . What is
even more fascinating is that they all produce numbers that add up to 9
I still don't like math but this is interesting

Merry Charistmas from Dian

Precision spin

My love of music goes back a long way. In High School I was of course in the band . We were pretty good (or so I thought at the time) but we were full of ourselves too! We marched in several parades but I remember one when the sousaphone players got the bright idea of doing a 360 degree spin periodically while we were marching but not playing. They timed it very well ,so the spin occurred at the same place, during the cymbal crash of the drum cadence. It was pretty flashy so our the band director (the revered Mr. Calvert) went along with it reluctantly.All went well until we approached the review stand . This is the location of all the events officials, including the ones who judge the best units in the parade. We smartly strutted past the stand and then the disaster struck. As the sousaphone rank got right opposite the stand, they executed their precision spin but a bell (top) of one of the instruments flew off . As if that wasn't bad enough it landed behind us, as they were the last rank, hitting the street at an angle and proceeding to spin for what seemed like an eternity. The player sheepishly retrieved it and rushed to catch up with us. Needless to say they never did their precision spin again.

neighborhood

a new day begins in our neighborhood

another Couples photo 1980s

Holidays continued

Happy Holidays

Jazz Greats Continued

Reading plan

Finishing this



Just Starting this

Main Street

For me finishing a book is always a bitter sweet experience, a mixture of letdown and satisfaction . Having just completed Main Street (Sinclair Lewis) there was more balance between the two this time.Maybe it was the afterwards
analyzing the story that softened the letdown.

The book was written in 1920 . It is a novel that follows an "emancipated woman" through the early 1900's as she tries to socially reform a
small mid western town . After years of frustration and failure she decides to leave . Ending up in Washington DC for two years , she discovers it is too late for her to be a revolutionary and returns to except her husband and the town on their terms .
The book can be read in different ways as it is written as an allegory on exile and return . I found it interesting read as an historical novel. Here is an example of its great evocative detail.



Under the stilly boughs and the black gauze of dusk the street was meshed in silence. There was but a hum of motor tires crunching the road, the creak of a rocker on the Howlands' porch, the slap of a hand attacking a mosquito, a heat - weary conversation starting and dying, the precise rhythm of crickets, the thud of moths against the screen-sounds that were a distilled silence.It was a street beyond the end of the world , beyond the boundaries of hope. Though she should sit here forever ,no brave procession, no one who was interesting , would be coming by. It was tediousness made tangible,a street builded of lassitude and of futility.

Although sorry the story is finished I look forward to absorbing another classic soon.

the voice!

everyone wants in the act