Being Vocal/Fashion Statement

Being Vocal

On Friday night I attended one of the two open mics in this area, both of which I recently discovered. (The other one is next Friday night.) I brought my digital recorder along and left it on in the middle of the audience, where I'd been sitting when not on stage.

I opened with extemporaneous a cappella singing, continued with true-life storytelling, and ended with a poem. The storytelling, about my close encounter with a moose, is excerpted and lightly edited from this journal entry.



My performance at the open mic (15 minutes, about 20 meg) is here.


Fashion Statement

I've always wondered why in heck the Bible contains this prohibition:
"Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together." -- Deuteronomy 22:11

Now, thanks to research I've been doing for Book #5, I think I know....

I've been reading up on linen. Really, it was for just one scene, enough for me to crank in a little bit of detail in my world-building. And I mean a little bit -- two, maybe three sentences worth, for which I've spent a far greater time trolling the Web, downloading and reading documents. Just so I can try to get it right.

Mary tells me the technical term for this is "armwave-armwave."

Or, as Naomi Epel quotes from Gabriel Garcia Marquez in her book The Observation Deck: "If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants in the sky, people probably will believe you."

I would have used a different analogy, myself. If someone pulled me aside and said there were 425 elephants in the sky, I'd wonder what drug(s) (s)he was on. On the other hand, I'd probably look up before I could stop myself.

Instead of just talking about linen when my protagonist is in the old Textile Guild section of town, I want to make sure the flax has already been planted because it should be by this time. With carrots growing in-between the rows to keep the weeds down. Things like that. I could talk about retting and scutching and all the rest of it, but those activities would have already been done -- though hands would still look pretty callused from pulling stalks through a heckling comb. And I've got a little girl running around with bits of splintery shiv in her hair.

So, what does all this have to do with Deuteronomy?

According to Die Deutschen Versicherer (German insurers), "Flax is sensitive to contamination by dust, dirt, fats/oils and rust as well as oil-containing goods, such as oil-bearing seeds/fruits, copra, raw wool etc., since oil-impregnated fibers promote self-heating/cargo fire."

Linen comes from flax. Flax contamination from raw wool (among other things) can lead to cargo fires.

Not only is flax highly combustible, but it's also highly susceptible to humidity. Not only does it absorb oxygen (readily enough so that a person can suffocate in an unventilated room), but too much oxygen can give it fuel to burn.

"Spontaneous combustion may occur as a result of exposure to moisture, animal and vegetable fats/oils, oil-bearing seeds/fruits, copra and raw wool. As a result of the very well developed oxygen-rich lumen of the flax fiber and the oxygen supply contained in the capillary cavity system, smoldering fires inside the bales often last for weeks."

Spontaneous combustion? I can see it now: Some ancient dude struts on down in a fancy outfit of interwoven linen and wool and Zap! Talk about divine retribution for a fashion faux-pas.

And we thought Mr. Blackwell was tough.

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The Office Wore Orchids

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One of our local business establishments was sporting these in its lobby, so I thought I'd have a little fun with it....


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At first I'd thought it was plastic. Then I touched it and realized it was the real thing. I'd been to the New England Flower Show several times, but this was the first time I'd really had a close encounter with an orchid. No wonder some folks are obsessed with them.



In addition to reversing the colors, I fiddled with color, contrast, gamma, and various other effects, using MS Photo Editor. Then I further manipulated the negative image:



Around 7:20 PM (EST) on February 20, I spotted Venus below the Moon. Venus is the single bright light about a third of the way up. An overexposed crescent moon, showing a bit of Earthshine and some high clouds (or a contrail), is up top. Photographed using a 4-second exposure at f/2.8.



The left-hand shot showing Earthshine was a 4-second exposure at f/4.5. The right-hand shot was a 1/30-second exposure at f/8.



The following day, Mary and I spotted this Tri-colored Heron at the "post office pond."



I used my 12x zoom for this photo. I've got a clearer shot of this species, taken from closer up, here, but this is the first time I'd seen a Tri-Colored heron in our neighborhood.

According to eNature.com, this bird, formerly called the Louisiana Heron, "is one of the most abundant herons in the Deep South. Although in the West it nests only in southern New Mexico, it is liable to turn up in late summer as far away as Arizona, California, Oregon, Colorado, and even Manitoba. The Tricolored Heron is extremely slender and moves gracefully as it searches about for frogs or fish. Despite its relatively small size, it forages in deep water; often its legs are completely underwater, and the bird appears to be swimming."

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Ethereal Gridlock

Mary named these "dragon's blood daisies," and for the longest time we didn't know what they were. Thanks to Nuytsia@Tas over in Hobart, Australia, for providing the ID of Emilia fosbergii, a daisy indeed as a member of the Asteraceae (Daisy) Family. Click here for the large view

My internet connection has been hobbling these past few days, so I limited my activities mainly to checking e-mail. Today it seems to be back to its usual chipper self -- as chipper as dial-up gets.

I had no problems offline, even during long online hold-ups, so I suspected the problem was traffic management in the ether rather than a snippet of nasty code. Updating my virus checkers and spyware blockers plus defragging for good measure did nothing to alleviate the tie-ups. When I finally got online today, my problem had vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.

Or so it seems. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Other than that, our week went quite well....

Otherwise known as the Florida Tasselflower and Cupid's Shaving Brush, Emilia fosbergii is not a native, according to the University of South Florida's Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants. Parts of the plant are poisonous if ingested, though it's "attractive to bees, butterflies and/or birds," says Dave's Garden. In our own yard I've seen butterflies in particular taking to it. I took this shot several feet away from our front door.

Not far off, the azaleas in our hedge have begun to open.



Done with MS Paint and MS Photo Editor, which came with my computer. I applied watercolor, embossing, and other effects. After isolating the flower and the bud, I inserted it over its green counterpart in a reversed image.

For those of you who can view crosseye stereograms (not everyone can), I couldn't resist adding some depth to the process. I learned a while back that this type of photography takes no special equipment. I just shoot the first shot, shift position slightly, and shoot the second. Then I fiddle with the pictures in Photo Editor, trying to line them up and make sure they're close enough in size so that they provide a decent 3D image.

Look between the photos and cross your eyes slightly, then relax your gaze until you focus on the "center" image.



And my doodle has finally gotten large enough for me to provide a large view, along with the one that fits on the screen.



I did the most recent addition while waiting for an upload and while listening to ambient music on the radio program "Hearts of Space." Drawing dimensions are now roughly 14 x 14 inches.


Large view

Thanks to this post on Barb Elgin's blog, Mary and I learned of a Valentine's Day dinner honoring people in committed relationships of two years or more. We celebrated our 11th anniversary in December; last Wednesday night we met same-sex couples who have been together more than twice as long.

The dinner was held at MCC Ocala. More on the Metropolitan Community Church, which is LGBTQ-focused, is here. Ocala is about 30 miles from us.

We had a terrific evening, met some wonderful folks, and hope to get back up there from time to time. It's an inclusive and eclectic place. Stephanie Morris, a reporter for the Ocala Star-Banner, posted her story about the event here.

The online gridlock freed up my usual surfing time, which I was able to put to good use. First, I finished my revision of Book #2. I've just completed the first tweak of Book #3, whose advanced case of flashback-itis presented me with particular challenges. The second tweak should tell me if I've been successful in my narrative-shuffling. And I've scribbled more notes for Book #5, preparatory to adding to that draft.

In other news, a workshop buddy of mine has just made her first novel sale! It's an historical western with romantic elements. Once she gives me the go-ahead I'll provide more detail. I haven't read this one yet, but I've critiqued other novels of hers, and she's critiqued the Deviations trilogy.

She'd just begun working on this one when we went out to lunch a while back. At that time I'd just begun planning Book #5. We commiserated on how our characters wake us up in the middle of the night and whack us upside the head until we stagger off to our respective computers.

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Dood!

Ways of dealing with dial-up....

I recently splurged on a 24-pack of colored Sharpies. During my recent and ongoing studio clean-up, I cleared away some flat work space onto which I've placed a 22 x 30-inch sheet of watercolor paper, then put the pens next to it.

My computer is on dial-up, which means I often wait a while for my screen to load. I decided to fill some of that waiting time by doodling.

My first doodling session (above) measured roughly 5-1/2 x 6 inches. My doodles are improvisations, pure stream-of-visual with no advance planning. I remember doing similar drawings on the blackboard in grade school and feeling particularly adventurous when I had colored chalk to play with.



The second installment had nothing to do with waiting through uploads. I was listening to late-night jazz, and fiddling with the markers proved a meditative exercise. The doodle now measures around 8 x 10 inches.

I'll post more updates as they happen. The Sharpies allow for some color-mixing, though I've done only a little bit of layering so far. I'm toying with the idea of slapping on some gloss medium and drawing over it to create more of a layered effect, but will do so first in a corner of the paper, away from the main design, to see if it works.

I spent half of last night marking up my printout of Book #2. Later today (after seeing Pygmalion at our community theatre) I'll input the changes and send off the file.

Heard back from one of the local papers so far, in response to my promotion of Nature Coast Performances: "We'll do our best to run it as space is available." Which is actually pretty cool, since I hadn't sent my message as a press release but as a way for the papers to log in to learn of any events they might not have heard about. I figure it can work two ways: I've gotten information from them that I've put on the calendar, but my calendar has entries I haven't seen in the papers.

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Free-Write and a Protocol Question

The free-writing group I facilitate at the art center uses prompts for writing on the spot and for taking home, where we generate pieces to bring in the following week. Several members have come up with their own collections of prompts. One has given the group a series of situational assignments -- the last such piece I posted here was, "Hi, Honey, I'm Home!"

The situational prompt this time was:

"You’ve been stranded on an island with only three things: a bowling trophy, a vacuum cleaner and a mystery item (which you must reveal). How did you get on the island, and why do you have these particular items?"

I dashed this one off Wednesday night: ....

To whoever finds this bottle:

Please do not be alarmed by the appearance of this bottle or its label. It is not really a liter of Pleiades Chardonnay with a vintage of 2148. It is not a wine bottle from the future into which I have slipped this note. Rather, if you look on the bottom you will find engraved into the punt the words, "All My Androids, Season Two, Episode Six."

It's a prop, you see. Used in a soap opera. That was the episode "Carrie's Brain Transplant," I believe, not bad for such a banal art form. Carrie's programming had failed, she needed a data graft from her evil twin -- and, well, you can understand why a situation like that would ultimately take All My Androids through five more seasons of angst-ridden story line. Enough to keep its sponsors wallowing in American pesos for years to come.

I'm glad I found this bottle. It's artificial glass but it still has a tight seal, enough for me to believe it will survive its ocean voyage and is now resting in your hands.

I can see no other islands around this one, nothing to indicate where I am. The sun's angle tells me I am somewhere near the equator, but there is plenty of shade available away from the beach. The island is relatively flat. I can see the occasional tropicbird or vermilion flycatcher, but not much else. Except for the other props.

This morning a large red Hoover materialized on the beach. I say materialized because I don't know how it got there. I went to sleep last night and this morning it was just sitting on the sand, well away from the incoming tide and shining ruddy with the dawn. I'd place its manufacture as some time in the 1950s. It looked like something out of Leave It To Beaver or a movie directed by Sirk. Something where the women dressed in narrow-waisted dresses with flared skirts and conical busts, with blonde hair piled high on their heads and doing housework in heels.

It took me a while to find the tag, which was hidden in the dirt collection bag. Property of Avatar Studios, a producer of retro films. Famous for such classics as A Day in the Kitchen and Devil From the PTA. I believe the vacuum may have come from The Maid Wore Handcuffs, one of their racier offerings. If there were a place to plug it in, I'd see if it really worked. But that bag can hold only so much sand, and there's plenty of sand to go around.

I've placed the vacuum beside the bowling trophy, which was already here when I arrived. Though how I arrived here, I have no idea. I'd gone to bed last night with a clear head and a clearer conscience, no matter what anyone else might think. I know Brandon was beside me. I know what we did. And I know that Carrie is heartbroken, too, but she's the one who had pushed Brandon away. It was only natural that he would come to me.

He's probably gone back to her, now that I've disappeared from his life. I'd fallen asleep in his arms and awakened on this godforsaken island. At first I thought I was dreaming, but dreams don't last for days. Not dreams like this.

The trophy is a prop, too, judging from the inscription inside the cup. My Kingdom For a Spare, one of those below-par offerings from Virtual House. The plaque reads, "Benny Pickford, First Place, 1962 Tournament of Champions, Avenue K Lanes." Another retro, then, but none of Virtual House's movies had the bite that Avatar's had.

I wish I'd worked for Avatar. If I had, I probably wouldn't be here.

I'm waiting for the next prop to arrive. I'm sitting on the beach tonight and I'll do my damnedest to stay awake this time. I want to see what they use to transport us all, whoever "they" are. And I want companionship. If they're going to dump me here, they should at least dump some other sentient being here with me, or soon I'll start talking to the birds.

At least the birds are real. At least, I think they are. If they aren't, whoever designed them did a fantastic job, and whoever is controlling them by remote has got all the moves right. But I didn't study ornithology, so what do I know?

Is this island a prop, too? Is its identity hidden beneath the rocks, under the water? Or inside a tree made of fake wood and planted among the real ones? I could be sitting on something taken out of Pirates From Neptune or Return to the Blue Lagoon. For all I know this could be one vast storage bin where all of us are left to molder in some long-forgotten backup memory, until we all degrade over time into static. Why am I sending a message in a bottle at all? Who would possibly find it, when it is as trapped as I am?

Whoever you are, if you are reading this, and if you know who is doing this, send me someone I can talk to. Someone who can talk back to me. I don't mind a voice out of the sky, or a burning bush, or a god rising from the sea. Just tell me you haven't put me completely out to pasture, or out to island as the case may be. Tell me I still live in someone's memory. Some memory other than a blink on a microchip.

Sincerely yours,
Darla
Prop #367, Recurring character
All My Androids, Season Thirty-Five
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Now for the protocol question:

I've noticed that different blog communities have different ways of doing things. On Open Diary, for example, bloggers often answer notes by returning to the note-leaver's diary and leaving a comment that starts with "RYN:" (Re your note). Over here, folks tend to answer notes by leaving comments on their own blogs.

I personally prefer the former. Diarists on OD can check the notes left on their sites for a reply. I get e-mail notification of comments left here. As one who is on dial-up, I don't often get to entries on which I've commented to see if a reply has been left on that same entry. It's why I haven't yet gotten into the habit of answering comments by leaving notes on my own entries, though I understand that doing so creates more of an ongoing dialogue among readers.

So, for those of you who check in here and leave comments, please let me know which you prefer. Should I reply to you here, or at your place? (Thanks!)

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Early Spring

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On February 6 I noticed the first azalea buds of the year out on our hedge. I've seen more growth in other, sunnier locations around the neighborhood.

As with the robins coming through on their migration, these buds appear about a month earlier than I anticipated. Compare with this March 7 photo from last year. I think of the contrast with the snow being dumped up north, and the bone-chilling cold hitting my former haunts.

Stay warm up there....

Since Nature Coast Performances came into existence early Saturday morning, it has gained:

9 New Members
20 New Links
2 New Messages
2 New Databases
1 New File

So far, almost all the input is mine, including a jam-packed calendar of meetings, events, classes, etc., relating to the arts. But one member has also been inputting to the calendar, adding performances at his community theatre. I am thrilled -- I designed the group to be both a network and a clearinghouse in which members are able to input information in addition to just viewing it. Along with posting messages, they can add calendar items and links (I'd already inserted a link for that theatre). The fact that someone else is inputting information tells me this is working!

I'm finding out some amazing things as I develop the site, like the playwriting contest the Marion County Library is holding. (Marion is adjacent to Citrus.) Who knew?

I've input more material since I made this screen grab, but below is a sampling of the February Calendar and the Links section:



Click here and then on the magnifying glass for a more legible view. Clicking on a calendar item (on the original calendar) reveals additional information.

The two messages I've posted so far include one that's basically a mission statement and another that's a tour of the site, letting people know what's available and where they can add their own info. That second message, which is a user manual of sorts, is also the one file, downloadable in Rich Text Format.

The first of the two databases contains local press contacts, updated (at least partially) from one that I'd put together when I was the PR person on the Art Center's festival committee, a volunteer job I took shortly after I moved here. NCP members can use that database for publicizing their events. The second database is for member contact info. While the Links page contains arts resources and the websites of visiting performers, members can use the contacts info database to post links to their own websites.

I've been having a blast doing this. It lets me combine a number of things that are "home" to me: artistic sensibility combined with skills in organization, communications, and networking. I'm a good public speaker, and there's also a bit of teaching in this process because I'm disseminating information. I'm hoping it will lead to some pretty neat things -- it already looks as though it's starting to go in that direction.

In other news, the latest Star*Line (Jan./Feb. 2007) reprints my article, "Using Metaphor to Terrify," which had originally appeared in the members only-accessible newsletter of the Horror Writers Association as a guest spot in Marge Simon's regular column, "Blood and Spades: Poets of the Dark Side."

Book #2 prints out as I type this, in preparation for tweak #2 (that is, prepublication tweaks after the workshop tweaks that I've already made). I did the first tweak onscreen. The second is markup. I'll likely make further changes as I input those from the markup. Then it will be on to Book #3, which will be the most challenging of all because it suffers from flashback-itis. But I've got plenty of time to whup it into shape.

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Nature Coast Performances

Mary and I do something we call "the two-year-old dance." We hold onto each other and bob up and down. It looks and feels incurably silly, which is the whole idea. It's like a Snoopy dance but less coordinated, although the emotions behind it are the same. Actually, it's probably considerably less coordinated than something a real two-year-old would do.

I initiated one around midnight Friday into Saturday, for a variety of reasons that have all met in one big, happy smoosh, and that started even before the open mic....

After Inverness Writers and before the Woodview Coffeehouse open mic, I stopped into the natural foods store near the library where IW meets. As I was waiting to check out I noticed the staff was having trouble setting up a template in Word, so I offered my assistance.

One of the store's employees went to school in New Jersey and worked in lower Manhattan's Fashion District for a while, meaning that we had shared many of the same old haunts. She was very familiar with the open mics at the now-defunct Beat'N'Path Cafe in Hoboken. I mentioned the open mics I've just discovered here, and she blurted, "We need a newsletter!" She commutes from Hernando County, just south of here, so she doesn't get much news of what goes on.

Back in Cambridge my friend Michael holds an annual "artistic potluck" as part of his birthday celebration, and another friend (who moved to New Mexico over a decade ago) held extraordinary parties that were one big jam session among artists, writers, and musicians. Someone I met a couple of weeks ago, who just moved here from San Francisco, had similar experiences and was also looking for something like that here. She's gone ahead and started the ball rolling to open a new performance space in Dunnellon, right over the line in Marion County just north of here, and is in talks with the city.

As I drove home via several errands, I started mentally putting together a way to network area artists. This county and surrounding ones have various groups, but I'd seen little coordination outside organizations and among different artistic media. A print newsletter would incur expenses, which means I'd want to look for sponsors and advertisers if not actual subscribers. I'm not discounting the idea entirely, but I've started with an interim step:

Yahoo.

The text below is taken from an e-mail I sent out to my local artistic contacts at, oh, about four on Saturday morning:
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I've begun a group called Nature Coast Performances because I saw the need (my need, at least) for a way in which creative individuals and supporters can keep each other informed of events throughout the Nature Coast and West-Central Florida.

Three things led me to start this forum. First, thanks to a listing in the St. Pete Times' "Citrus Times" section, I learned about the Performers Circle open mic at the Nature Coast Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship. At that gathering I learned about the Woodview Coffeehouse at the Unity Church of Citrus County. I'd been looking for open mics for years, just hadn't looked in the right places.

Second, I know someone who is in the process of starting up a new performance space in the area, and I wanted to offer a forum to get the word out when that space is up and running. (Stay tuned.)

Third, I am writing this less than 12 hours after I was told, "We need a newsletter!" by someone looking for information about performance spaces, and who added that people living outside Citrus County often don't get news of some of the events occurring within Citrus. Likewise, I'm sure there are art and performance events happening outside Citrus of which I'm unaware. (This message is going out to people in several counties.)

I hope that Nature Coast Performances can serve as a bridge among counties, organizations, and art forms. Some of my most memorable experiences have involved cross-pollination among different art and performance media.

If you want to publicize a performance (e.g., theater, spoken word, music); book signing; exhibit; class; creative group; festival; performance venue; etc., please consider joining the group. If you want to start something new, if you are looking for people with whom to collaborate on a creative project, or if you just want to ask if a particular type of gathering already exists in the area, I hope the group can facilitate that as well.

Nature Coast Performances is a collaborative work in progress and is open to suggestions! If there's something you'd like from this network that I haven't covered, please let me know or join and post to the forum. Please also mention the group to people whom you think might be interested in joining.
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Over the weekend I've been building up the group calendar and links section with events and organizations I know about, along with a list of press contacts for people who want to promote their work or event. Several people have joined so far. I've placed a link in the sidebar of this blog's front page.

Then there was Friday's open mic.

Two Fridays ago I'd gone to Performers Circle and gotten a great reception. This past Friday night it was the considerably larger Woodview Coffeehouse. PC is pure open mic. Woodview has a sandwich format: open mic, the featured performers, then another open. I signed up for the open after the feature. The feature was a terrific duo, Ellie Daulton and Doug Travers, who came up from "around Tampa" and who have an eclectic song repertoire that they perform using guitars, banjo (Doug), and mandolin (Ellie). They stayed around for the second open mic. Wonderful performances throughout. I had a blast.

As I had done at PC, I opened with my scat singing, read a small section from Covenant (I gave the same pitch as I had at PC but read a different excerpt, since there's overlap between the groups), and closed with a poem. Performers are limited to 15 minutes, during which time they can do up to three pieces.

At the end of the evening Ellie came up to me, took both my hands in hers, and said, "You're not going to believe this." Turns out she and Doug live on Kimbo Savino's land. Bo Savino is COO of Koboca Publishing and the woman I met at Necronomicon, to whom I gave my pitch package. Ellie added that Bo has been raving about my work to her (big grin).

One of the musicians also asked me if I'd be willing to join him on stage to add my vocals to his, since he liked what I'd done at PC, when we had a jam session. I told him I'd love to. I do that stuff at the drop of a hat.

I'd added my contact info to the e-mail list at Woodview, and on Saturday morning I got a glowing message (and a great poem) from one of Friday night's emcees, who had also performed at both Woodview and PC. I let him know about the Yahoo group. As if one "small world" experience weren't enough, when I arrived at Woodview on Friday night one of the first people I met was his wife, who's a former student of mine. She told me she's still keeping her journal.

The poem I read was one published in the We'Moon calendar for 2005. In this year's calendar, the "Year at a Glance" for my sign Libra says:

"In the last couple of years, you've brought some of your highest aspirations into fruition, so 2007 is an excellent year to set your sights upon new goals. Seek out allies and co-conspirators to help you achieve the seemingly impossible....Take advantage of new technologies to make more profound and widespread connections. Your insights cut beneath the surface of things, and combined with your natural diplomatic persuasiveness you could inspire just about anyone into seeing things your way. Integrate art or music into your message for maximum influence. Do pursue opportunities that arise for specialized education or teaching status...."

Hmm. D'ya think? :D

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Happy Midwinter!

(I initially tried to post this on Friday morning, but Blogger was having technical difficulties.)

According to my We'Moon calendar, February 2nd marks Imbolc, the Midwinter celebration in the Celtic calendar: "celebration, prophecy, purification, initiation." It is also the Christian Candlemas; the Jewish Tu B'Shevat (Arbor Day); and the Tibetan, Chinese, and Iroquois New Year.

The collage above (done with MS Paint and MS Photo Editor) began with a photo of me that was taken on my 14th birthday. After cropping the shot, I added watercolor and edge effects and tweaked brightness, contrast, and gamma. I then reversed the colors. In Paint, I replaced my reversed face and hands with those from the non-reversed, tweaked shot.

I added a 9-day-old moon that I'd photographed in October 2006, rotated. Back in Photo Editor I smudged the borders of the birthday shot.

The birthday shot is one of many pictures I found in a box unearthed during my latest round of studio clean-up....

The cardboard box, half eaten away, contained items ranging from intact photos to those resembling Swiss cheese. Fortunately, I had a plastic box in which to transfer them, but more plastic boxes are now on my shopping list.



Included was this collection of postcards from the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, New York. I'd been to the 1964 World's Fair held at the same location, but my mother had been to the 1939 Fair as well. The full set is here.

This next shot may well be over a century old.



Hannah, my maternal grandmother, is third from the left. There is no date on this photograph, which was likely taken either at the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th. I never knew my grandmother's real age (partly because she lied about it to get work when she was a girl) or her real birthday. Rather, I began to doubt her birthday had really occurred on the day we celebrated it, after I read Elana Dykewomon's excellent novel Beyond the Pale. Set in Manhattan during the height of immigration from Eastern Europe and chronicling the deplorable conditions of sweatshops (including the Triangle Shirtwaist fire), the book also details the assignment of birthdays to Jewish immigrants. Seems at least some immigration officials at Ellis Island, unfamiliar with the Jewish lunar calendar, simply recorded Christmas Day as the immigrant's birthday. In my home, we'd always celebrated my grandmother's birthday on December 25.

When the sky was still clear, I'd spotted this from my front porch:



A large red balloon about a quarter-mile from home catches light from the setting sun. The balloon was part of an automobile sale held at a strip mall parking lot outside the supermarket. I used a 1/640-second exposure at f/8, then enhanced brightness and contrast a bit.

The balloon shared space with a waxing gibbous moon seen at the other end of the sky.



At the time the moon was 89 percent of full. I again used a 1/640-second exposure, this time at f/6.3.

I'd spotted both when I went out to wrap the pipes due to a freeze advisory. Sure enough, what passes for grass in our yard turned brown overnight, though since then the temperature's climbed with the onset of thunderstorms, including a nearby tornado (mild as tornadoes go, F0 on the Fujita scale). I was awake a bit after 3AM, listening to constant wind and heavy rain.

(I had written the above paragraph before I'd seen the news reports about tornado deaths here in Florida. Unfortunately, even an F0 can be devastating.)

Meanwhile, someone's gotten into our scheduling software. Not to jump to any conclusions, but the paw prints and kibble dust on my keyboard provide a bit of a clue. I'm just sayin'.

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