Good deed

Saved a bee from a spider’s web.  Want to test theory that local honey helps allergies. Lots of hives hidden around our neighborhood, I hear.

 

Greetings From Indiana

It's really too humid to get dressed up today.

 

Thanks tumblr_lk8p22f8iu1qjn6xfo1_500 whoever you are....

 

 

 

 

Winkelhimer Smith, A Disabled Squirrel Who Taught Herself to Paint

Winkelhimer Smith, A Disabled Squirrel Who Taught Herself to Paint
LAUGHING SQUID | APRIL 19, 2013
http://pulse.me/s/kONHV

"The artist at work" Winkelhimer Smith is a Louisiana-based squirrel who became disabled in 2011 after a ... read more

---

http://pulse.me

Hands up, Griswold

This pipe has a face and hands raised, ready to belly dance?  Found in Calistoga yesterday. What a lovely weekend.

 

 

 

 

Dem's da berries?

Attended for the first time  “Off the Grid,” a weekly Friday night collection of food trucks by the Oakland Museum. Half-price admission to the museum, too. The woman in front of me, turning from her friend, touched my necklace. She practically cooed: “My those are beautiful mulberries, so very pretty.”  Uh, thank you? You be the judge.  We were in line for crème brulee, and it was so very pretty too.  

 

Emilia to Zebedee

They’re calling it a baby name generator, but also perfect for cats and SQUIRRELS, I suspect.

 

Here, kitty kitty kitty I mean Emily Bronte….

 

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/03/baby-names-generator/

Forgive me

So, which card to pick for someone I’ve offended. I know, SQUIRREL!!!  Aw, nuts. 

 

 

 

Listen with the painter process

Can’t wait to get home and listen to the actual voice message left, compared to the email transcription version just in:  “Listen with the painter process. After taking the birth control medication gas, Yasmin or Stella. You may be entitled to financial compensation. Press one now to speak with a representative to see if you qualify. Again, press one now to be connected."

 

 

Kitten Covers

Not only do I love bad album covers, I now love bad (and good) album covers transformed to include KITTENS. Thanks to Alfra Martini.

 

 

O-Type

I'm O-Type negative, so I get emailed all the time to donate. Finally feeling red-blooded this week, so think I'll head out Saturday to donate a pint, in Walnut Creek. It's the least I can do. Plus I get to go to Thrift-Town. Perhaps they'll have  Armani suits for $10 (like they did last time, but too small, and they sure seemed authentic, juding by the touch/cut). The picture connected to a search on "Armani Suits"  actually belongs to a site that has this line: "Patrick McKeon is the Tibor Kalman of thrift shops." I am still trying to parse this. I like thrift shops, I like Moira Kalman, who I think was connected to Tibor Kalman. WTF.  

 

Crafty days

Pre-Kindle, pre-Etsy, I once applied to be the managing editor of a cross-stitch magazine. I'm not sure I even knew what cross-stitch was at the time, beyond the glasses case I made for my grandmother, with her name spelled wrong. But I thought I had the skill set. Page after page of dense patterns, a proofreader's nightmare. What's your management style, they asked? Uh, meh. Benevolent dictator, perhaps. What's your impression of the overall design? Well, there's abolutely no white space, I was probably muttering by then. But the readers hated white space, apparently. Wanted their money's worth. I can't remember what I did next. Excruciating ISO-9000 documentation, I think.

 

 

Tandem falcon squirrels

Somehow this is sounding good for my birthday which is coming up soon enough.   But surely I’ll talk myself out of it in favor of a 1-hour falconry lesson.

Or taking a trip to upstate new York for some  squirrel watching.

 

 

 

Zombie Squirrels

Apparently there exists a culture of  bike hackers. I cannot yet count myself a member, but I do like squirrels.

That time of year

Wake me when winter’s over….

 

 

 

Squirrelled

I've been out and about, and now I'm back. If I can figure out how to use Pinterest, and so far I can't, I may well start a page devoted to print advertisements including squirrels. Like this one.

EXORCISMS: Cheap Prices

Watched the last half of The Exorcist Sunday night, my first viewing (in B&W) since 1973. Still exquisitely scary. I couldn’t quite remember the policeman’s name. Knew it wasn’t Lee Remick. Lee Lee Lee. Had to ask “The Brain.” Of course, Lee J. Cobb. Still, so very glad I know where to get exorcisms at cheap prices.

What are some things that money can't buy?

We live in the shadow of a reservoir and the water pressure is good but we still have to pay extra in property taxes for something or other related to this. I'm just happy to be able to turn a tap and clear goodness emerges. What are some things that money can't buy? TOP ANSWERS ON QUORA | AUGUST 29, 2012 http://pulse.me/s/cK9QI Here's one thing that most people probably won't realize money can't buy: **natively high water pressure.** I am pretty well off, and my family live... read more --- http://pulse.me Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

Be Safe

SomaFM: your source for brain music to get you through repetitive tasks. Today's selection:

 

Ambient music mixed with the sounds of San Francisco public safety radio traffic. 

 

The first day of the fair

We anxiously await the flowing gowns, especially the guy at the end of the runway.

Guess Who

At the Dairy Barn, I worked one summer during vacation from high school,making grilled cheese for the Guess Who. No, don't guess.

Kitties upset because they didn't win.

 

Three Graces and Serendipity

This week I’ve been looking at sculptures and paintings of the “Three Graces” (I’m on a mythology kick) and came across a bursting-forth version by Niki de Saint Phalle, whom I know very little about and think of never.  Then, in noontime class, today, Sally hands me a postcard I sent her 10/14/93 from Paris. “Sally: Well, I made it. Now I’m sitting in a café, the sound of pinball and murmuring help me muse over a glass of wine, as I watch the rain and people pass by. Phrase book and map are barely getting me along. So far, all I can remember is “Je voudrais…” (I would like) and merci merci merci. I flew from Dublin to London yesterday, then took an all night bus to here, so I’m fairly out of it. Every time I get someplace new all I want to do is go home but in a day all I want to do is explore. My walking shoes are sopped; soon I’ll return to my shoebox-sized room and collapse and write. Yes, you have to smoke here. And in Dublin, too. I'l clean out driving back across Arizona in a few weeks. For dinner? The best bread, a pear, and some goat cheese. This wandering has its fun moments.”  So who’s on the front but an elephant, “Sculptures animees de Tinguely et Nicky de St Phalle.”  So I have a Niki thing going on. And I am so overdue for a long solitary trip.

Poem of the Day

Messenger

By Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird— equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on

what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and

learning to be astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here, which

is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a

mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to

the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever.

 

 

Riffling in the morning

I was taking the casual commute to San Francisco this morning (2 people jump in a driver’s car, and speed across the bridge in carpool lane), and Eric (“The derrick”—so I remember his name) said his rider yesterday gave him $1 (standard), then in minutes riffled her purse to give him change equaling a dollar. “But you already gave me a dollar.” “Oh God,” she said, “It’s that kind of day. I put oatmeal in the cat’s bowl this morning.” I’m not that bad, yet, but of course the day is young….

Hot Water and Wrestling

Anniversary, wrestling masks, good friends, hot water, flowers, who could ask for more!?

Eclipse light

Not the transit of Venus. Rocket 89....uh make that, Rocket Number 9, take off for the planet....

The Mermaid and the Wrestler

Only in Indiana.

 

 

At long last

My chance to create  wallpaper from certain of my photos now seems possible:

 

http://www.designyourwall.com

 

 

 

I didn't take it

From our junk mail alias: “If anyone has accidentally borrowed a purple mug with the letters [redacted]  written across the entirety of the mug for the past week and a half, I’d greatly appreciate its return in the near future. It generally resides in the cupboard in the fourth floor kitchen until about 8:00 am Monday through Friday, which is where it can be returned. Sooner rather than later would be great, as this is the mug my mother gave to me when I left for college 30 years ago, that I generally use every morning so that I can tell her I still use it every morning, when I talk to her every week…which I didn’t do last week because I couldn’t actually tell her I used it last week. Or this week. Hopefully I can tell her on Saturday that I used it on Thursday. So, if you could just do a quick check to see if it’s sitting on your desk it would be greatly appreciated.”  UPDATE: Michael found his mug, within minutes. It wasn't my mug. I just liked the message.

Stripey

Well, I did not know one could purchase a zebra. Perhaps over the weekend I will wander down the nasturtium-strewn path, followed by grey boys, open to possibility, to see if there's room in the back 40, by the girl's clubhouse.

 

 

Sweet Sunday in SF

OK, ended up using sigh, Facebook to post photos:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3116022100493.2126612.1262693524&type=1&l=546a170645

Gumps offered free dog portraits with the city's best dog portraitist. He was goooooooooooood. Cartier Bresson? Elliott Erwitt? Maybe. His portfolio is here:  http://jessefreidin.com/

My friend Leslie's lady, a rescue collie, was very photogenic and behaved very well. And I fell for an ethereal white standard poodle whose ears reminded me of Marianne Faithful, somehow. The dog works with Alzheimer's patients.

(sorry, embedding continues to elude me)

For the beauty of the earth.

And eggs...

 

 

I just vacuumed my office--all the dust shows so clearly in the sunlight. Blows forward, blows back. Next time I turned around, minutes later,  there was a pile of fluffy stuff on the floor, with Huey chewing. Ewwwwwwww he caught and ate a HUMMINGBIRD. It was gone except for a few feathers. Sorry, universe.I'll get the collar with bell...

I stepped aside to let a woman walking her big ole dog get by me, as I was meandering. She had on what looked like Tibetan skiwear (today's beautiful, but chilly). As she passed she said, "Ahhhhhh  it's like having a drunken sailor for a boyfriend, this dog. Wanders around bumping into things, drooliing." We were bumping into things too, the three of us lolling along for a few minutes.

Health Care

Bob's letter to the editor of the SF Chronicle was published March 30, 2012:

The choice: health vs. money

Debra J. Saunders succinctly sums up the Republican view of our medical care crisis in "Why Romneycare outdoes Obamacare," March 27).

It's never the fault of Big Pharma or the medical-industrial complex or the profit-driven machinations of private hospital groups. It's the fault of the people, who use too much so-called "unnecessary care," like the colonoscopy I had seven years ago that discovered and removed precancerous polyps.

Their solution: "cost-sharing" to encourage families to make "smart choices," healthwise and moneywise. The problem is that what is health-wise is not always money-wise. Is that a severe headache or a stroke I'm having? Indigestion or the onset of a heart attack? Can I afford to spend $100, $200, $300 or more to find out?

For all their rhetoric about "government rationing," they fail to point out that their plans will result in a different form of rationing. Many Americans and their families will be forced to self-ration. High deductibles and onerous co-pays will result in more sickness and deaths that could have been avoided.

Robert Madera, Oakland

Enjoy the wind

“An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future.” 

 

Talk about information mapping!  http://hint.fm/wind/