Monthly Archives: June 2011

Art and Culture, Dogs, Weather +Climate

Second Life

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Beltane                                                                      New Garlic Moon

Rigel has spent the morning with a very worried look.  She doesn’t like thunder and barks at it to tell it to go away.  That doesn’t work well.

She’s not nearly as reactive as Tira, one of our Irish Wolfhounds, who somehow had it in her head that she was safest inside a vehicle.  That meant if a window in either the truck or the Celica had been left open, she’d jump inside.  My Celica still has her clawmarks in the upholstery.

In the wee hours of one morning I found her hanging worn out over the top of a chain link gate we used to keep the big dogs out of the garage.  She’d jumped it, but gotten stuck.  In her frenzy she ripped the truck license plate, which was within reach, to shreds and scratched up the truck hood.  The license plate cut her lip and there was blood everywhere.  I thought she was dead.

Running over to her, I lifted her off the gate–not easy, since even the smallest Wolfhound bitch weighs in at 150 pounds–with sheer adrenalin.  She struggled to her feet and looked very happy to see me.

Stayed up a bit late last night working on my avatar in Second Life.  Inspired by the presentation yesterday I decided to check out a virtual world.  There’s a learning curve to it.  So far my avatar, Quam, a Latin word for why, has ash blond hair and is wearing a get up cobbled together from an array of clothing options, none of which really suit me.  In this regard a typical male, however, Quam does not want to spend all his time figuring out how to be a clothes horse so his current outfit is good enough for now.

Quam learned how to walk, fly, push things, see up close, how to chat, how to change his clothes, but his meat package real world avatar got sleepy and had to go to bed.  Not sure I’ll stick with Quam, but if I figure out how to do it, I’ll get a snapshot of him and post it here.

Here’s the weird part.  I had dreams of flying and of going to the tops of buildings to scout the terrain.  I did both of these things in Second Life.  Hmmm….

Art and Culture, Asia

Art Immersion

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Beltane                                                                              New Garlic Moon

One of those days.  Into the museum, leaving at 10:30 am and just got back now, 6:00 pm.  Had a Japan Art Cart, oh boy, with very few visitors.  A group of autistic kids and a classical musician and his daughters stopped by and that was about it.  The art cart business is just too passive on the one hand and too intrusive on the other, i.e. we have to encourage people to stop.  On the other hand, I do love talking about the Japanese tea ceremony, a great gift to world civilization.

After that, and I mean right after that, the art cart closed up at 1:30 and the continuing ed for the day started at 1:30.  Celia Peterson gave a very interesting presentation on games and art, both physical and virtual games, as possible adjuncts to museum experiences and as art objects themselves.   It really cranked up my thinking about the possible, the nearly possible and oh boy I can’t wait until it is possible.

(screenshot from acmipark, a virtual version of an Australian museum)

Example.  How about a museum that displays its objects inside a virtual world like second life?  Or, a virtual museum where interaction with objects could bring up art historical, geographical, biographical information, for example, about an object that interested you.  This kind of stuff turns me on, makes me want to get involved.

After that a meeting on my direct action idea, a rolling, international projection of the artist’s image on museum walls from eastern Europe to California on June 30th, the night before the 90th celebration of Chinese Communism.  A docent has agreed to take the idea to our museum president.  She’s also president of an international association of museums that would probably make this pretty easy.  It’s a big, yet simple idea, and it would have plenty of media punch.  Hope it happens.

Humanities, Letters

Books

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Beltane                                                                              New Garlic Moon

When I get interested in something, I buy books.  Not just one book, but many books.  Book buying has always been an important of my life and continues to be.

Latin is a for instance.  When I first got interested, I bought Wheelock, an iconic text for autodidacts wanting to tackle the language.  At another point I bought a dictionary and a book, library2011-05-06_0874501 Latin verbs fully conjugated.  Once I begin to learn Latin and could see more learning ahead, I purchased the OLD, the Oxford Latin Dictionary, which is the gold standard of Latin-English works.  Thanks to Amazon I got one for a very good price.

At the same time I began to focus on Ovid.  I needed a Latin text without English, but with a commentary.  I found William Anderson’s.  It’s not bad, but it’s not as helpful to a real tyro like me as it could be.  I just bought a translation with commentary by D.E. Hill.  Again, the commentary leaves a lot to be desired from my amateur perspective.  I also bought a wholly Latin text by Richard Tarrant, a contemporary Ovidian scholar who has done careful research into the oldest texts available, all from the middle ages, 1100-1200.  I bought this last one because while learning Biblical interpretation I got stamped with the important of textual criticism.  Words matter and having the best text matters.

At this point, if I can’t find something on Perseus, the go to place for classics scholars, I have, so far, always found it in one of my books. I also have several books on Ovid and Roman poetry.  Each has helped me at some point.

I have similar collections of books for other areas:  Lake Superior, Biblical interpretation, theology, liberal thought, liberal religion, the enlightenment, the Renaissance, depth psychology, travel, China, Japan, Angkor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, neuroscience, Hawai’i, Minnesota and various other states, the Celts, Meso and Latin America, art, a nature/space/geography/history collection, poetry, philosophy, fairy tales, mythology, literature and graphic novels.  I rarely use certain collections until I find I need them, then I go deep.  That’s why I need to have them.  When I decide to get active on a topic, I don’t have time to go scouring for resources.  I like to have them at hand.

Bees, Garden, Great Work, permaculture

In the Garden

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Beltane                                                                           New  Garlic Moon

One of those nights last night, unable to get to sleep, still rolling around awake at 1:00 a.m.  Up a little bleary.  Wrote  few e-mails, then out in the orchard, first.  I’ve had tent caterpillars on two trees.  Each time I have removed the tent and stepped on it or crushed the worms.  This is non-chemical pest control, a route I prefer and, as long as I’m not running a commercial operation, one I can pursue.

Now I wander in the orchard, looking at seed pods (fruit) beginning to develop from the last of the blossoms which dropped this week.  I’ll try to find worms and moths before they do 2011-05-17_0805early-spring-2011damage and as long as I can I’ll follow pinch and destroy.  After that, I think, right now anyway, that I’ll go with Gary Reuter, the bee rangler for Marla Spivak.  I’ll just put up with wormy apples.  This is partly out of regard for the bees who have enough pressure of them and they don’t need an added pesticide load from our orchard, but it’s more out of a commitment to no pesticides, grow strong plants and let them fend for themselves.  It’s worked reasonably well for me so far.

(before the fall)

After the orchard the potatoes were next.  Now that the soil has warmed up the potatoes have begun to grow, their dark lobe shaped leaves appearing atop a fragile looking stalk.  At this point the basics of potato culture involves mounding earth over the stalk as it grows.  That’s what I did today.  In the long raised bed where I have most of the potatoes this year, I also have a bumper crop of asiatic lilies and tulips.

I planted this bed originally as a cutting garden, years ago.  The same fall the bed was built I went out to the Arboretum to a lily growers sale and bought Minnesota hardy bulbs.  They’ve been in that bed ever since, maybe 10 years.  Boy, have they enjoyed that bed.  They’ve started lilies all over the place.  That means that as I mound the potatoes I have to move around the lily bulbs that have generated.  I hate to just throw them away because they’re so hardy and have been with me so long.  I’m trying right now to raise vegetables and flowers in the same bed.  That’s also worked reasonably well for me.06-28-10_earlylilies

I also mounded the leeks as my last action in the garden this morning.  In the case of leeks the mounding blanches the stalk, keeps it white underground and increases the usable part of the leek.

That done, I’ve come inside to work on my Latin.  Pentheus, now, Book III:509-to the end.