Vincent's Bedroom

It looks a bit like something out of Pinocchio.

Because from time to time I have a roommate, one half of my cabin I dont use even when I dont have one.

Time to time I'm told I have too much "clutter".

Tree in the Door is a room I'm sure Vincent would have appreciated!

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

June 15, 2007

Amber

Amber

Dr. Who was on when I got off work.

I think he and the girl save the earth in every episode!

Then a show I’d seen before about amber fossils.

A still photograph is like “light amber” that captures the image,

Fossil amber from ancient tree resin captures the whole thing.

Found "fossil amber metalmark butterflies" on the web.

Souvenirs.

Then Charlie Rose with Zibigney…or however it’s spelled…yakityyakity yak about Iraq.
Powel says bring them all home??

I want to hear from the people who study, who look into the amber with a loop.

I’m of the opinion, as the 99 Balloons song goes. “this is war”.

Then Charlie has an art critic on talking all about Van Gough...there's one Vincent did of an artist carrying his french easel...try to find that for tomorrow!

Butterfly pic from wikipedia.

Oh, there was a science fiction story that worked out that amber was like a hologram picture...that when it had solidified there were pictures made in it of the ancient scenes.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
June 14, 2oo7

The Great Turf

On the TV when I came home tonight was the story of the Israel Arab 1967 war, more detailed than I've seen before.

I was thinking about The Great Turf today, the famous watercolor by Durer. He did a hare too, and for my watercolor class I thought to paint the Great Turf and put the Hare in the picture. A unique idea? Well, I thought, but in the San Diego museum they hung a picture to replace one loaned to another museum (I'll have to do a post on that picture!) and it was a couple centuries old and it had the hare happily situated in the turf! I didn't finish the painting, I think I still have it. When I have chance! That's my refrain of late!!

Yesterday I was peddeling through Cook's Meadow, and I could hear things moving about in the thick meadow grasses, and tried to see them, and take a pic, and that's what got me thinking about the Great Turf.

Oh, and now a show about the history of the Flowery Flag, that's what they called it in Old China, and they'd fly it on their boats for luck--Old Glory.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

June 13, 2007

Earth to the Moon

Here a bit that goes along with the pic...the last moon rocket launch.

quote

In 1865, Jules Verne wrote a science fiction story entitled, "From the Earth to the Moon." The story outlined the author's vision of a cannon in Florida so powerful that it could shoot a "Projectile-Vehicle" carrying three adventurers to the moon. More than 100 years later NASA produced the Saturn V rocket and from a spaceport in Florida, this rocket turned Verne's fiction into fact.
As spotlights play on the rocket and launch pad at dusk, the last moon shot, Apollo 17, is pictured here awaiting its December 1972 night launch.
Image credit: NASA

end quote

And here's some Jules Verne bits about us...

quotes

But the point in which the Americans singularly distanced the Europeans was in the science of gunnery. Not, indeed, that their weapons retained a higher degree of perfection than theirs, but that they exhibited unheard-of dimensions, and consequently attained hitherto unheard-of ranges. In point of grazing, plunging, oblique, or enfilading, or point-blankfiring, the English, French, and Prussians have nothing to learn; but their cannon, howitzers, and mortars are mere pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of theAmerican artillery.

Now when an American has an idea, he directly seeks a second American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records,and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general meeting, and the club is fully constituted.

Shall there never be a fresh opportunity of trying the ranges of projectiles? Shall the air never again be lighted with the glare of our guns? No international difficulty ever arise to enable us to declare war against some transatlantic power? Shall not the French sink one of our steamers, or the English, in defiance of the rights of nations, hang a few of our countrymen?"

FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON

Jules Verne

CHAPTER I THE GUN CLUB

end quotes

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

June 12, 2007

Turtle Island

Turtle Island

I'm partial to tortoises, having had a desert tortoise found crossing the road near a bean field for 40 years. They cant be returned to the desert, they have some kindof contagious sinus condition acquired from city life.

I read Gary Snyder's "Turtle Island" a while ago, and he's a famous Sierra writer. I suppose I could do a review of his poems...but for this post it's just the notion of Turtle Island I'm after. Native Americans came up with the name Turtle Island for their land. Snyder I find tonight extended this to all of North America...I've forgotten what all I read in the book.

America is a fine name and I don't see the point of changing it to get at a different ethos with regard to the environment which is what something called Deep Ecology is about (curiously in JFK lore there is the notion of Deep Politics...at work we have something called Deep Cleaning!!) Anyway, anyway, here's a Snyder quote:

Snyder himself wrote:
Buddhist teachings go on to say that the true source of compassion and ethical behavior is paradoxically none other than one's own realization of the insubstantial and ephemeral nature of everything. Much of animism and paganism celebrate the actual, in its inevitable pain and death, and offer no utopian hopes. Add to this contemporary ecosystem theory, and environmental history, and you get a sense of what's at work. One recent philosophical outcome is "Deep Ecology" which informs the work of the Wild Lands Project [sic], among others. (Snyder, 1995, Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, Sessions, ed.)

http://www.wildlandsprojectrevealed.org/htm/turtle.htm

So I looked up Deep Ecology and read Wiki's bit which has the story of the originator, a Norwegian...

Quote

The phrase deep ecology was coined by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss in 1973,[1] and he helped give it a theoretical foundation.

Unquote
Now, Arne Naes got his start with a protest...

Quote

Næss cited Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring as being a key influence in his vision of deep ecology. Næss also engaged in direct action. In 1970, together with a large number of demonstrators, he chained himself to rocks in front of Mardalsfossen a waterfall in a Norwegian fjord and refused to descend until plans to build a dam were dropped

Unquote

I found this waterfall protest charming, and wrote a poem which I posted in "Second Arrow".

All these environmental groups, all of them, are elitists, there's very little grass roots common man in them. Oh sure, everyone is invited to join them, but the general populace has as much chance of genuinely participating as an average journalist does of influencing the editors of network news shows. This to say these groups have their talking heads too, Snyder famously being one.

America is famous for making groups, joining together over special interests...maybe that's where I go next...Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon!

Why is Letterman funny??

Well, I signed off with the cabin shaking funny, then it rocked and rolled a bit. Watch the news now...

Ferguson is funny!!

Well, the quake was 9 miles se of Mammoth...I found that google searching the blogs with "earthquake california"...and this is very cool, it took me here:

Thank you! We got your input.
If you answered all the questions under Your experience and Earthquake effects, we can compute an estimated digital intensity based on your answer alone.
Note that the maps are computed using all the responses in your area, which may be different from yours. Also, community intensities are more accurate with a higher number of responses (say, 10 or more.) See the scientific background section for more details on how these maps are made, or the FAQ for questions about the maintainance of this site. If you still have questions, fill out our comment form.
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Event
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YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
Name
David
E-mail
dsharpness@sbcglobal.net
State
CA
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Cabin across street from Yosemite Lodge
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http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/cgi-bin2/ciim_update.pl

That's neat.


DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

June 11, 2007

The Lost Boys

Well, Chevy Chase has just punched the moose...Summer Vacation.

Wendy and the Lost Boys of Neverland.

Pic from Gutenberg.

I feel like a lost boy here in the Valley, and there's a regular tribe, lost girls too. We're not kids of course, but there is the sense of being away from family and home. No one can call the Valley home, except for awhile. Families can establish homes for generations. But for the lost here it's valued to be on our own, and be it so humble, saying after work, "I'm going home."

Ah, so I google up 'lost boys' to try and make a post and find myself reading about the Lost Boys and Lost Girls of Sudan. These are children who perished or managed to escape the wars in Sudan. From 1984 to 2oo4 some two million of all ages have perished. Some thousands of the Lost Boys have come to America. The Lost Girls perished or were enslaved.

ALIAS is on with Nora Jones on the soundtrack. Television is the solace of the lost.

a poem

Neverland

And what of other worlds circling around the far stars?

"Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning..."

Read in a book their inhabitants adventures and travails,

Or for a Sunday afternoon movie crowd of kids,

Distant Neverlands.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

June 10, 2007

The Forest of Arden

Well, I come home to find a hammer stuck in the cedar tree in the door--workmen have installed two bunkbeds, four beds!, in the room across the alcove, and came into mine clearing a few things off the empty bed. (New roommate soon, and the room across the alcove is now a "bunkhouse" room. )

I found this frog I was looking for...see Fauna Flora post. And got to googling jeweled frogs from an old recollection in my readings. Some Shakespeare....

Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,

The seasons' difference, as the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,

Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,

Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say

'This is no flattery: these are counsellors

That feelingly persuade me what I am.'

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life exempt from public haunt

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones and good in every thing.

I would not change it.

As You Like It
Act 2 Scene 1


In The Forest of Arden John Collier 1892

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

June 9, 2007