June Notes

Society defines and confines each of us in a multitude of ways, and to varying degrees, based solely on the facets of our most readily perceived characteristics—race, gender, age, class, sexuality, ability, occupation.We, too, often define and confine ourselves in accordance with this pigeonholing.

Throughout most of my adult life—as a black, fat, queer, working-class, first-generation college graduate, now an artist and educator —I’d struggled to escape my own theoretical limitations, which, by necessity, required the fierce and relentless invention of individuality.

Caroline Gaye, 16-years-old, shows her prize-winning Duroc gilt, Penny, at Oklahoma Youth Expo Purebred Gilt Show in March 2022. Gaye won first place in her class and third place overall in the livestock show’s Purebred Duroc Gilt Divisio. She then sold her hog for $17,500.

Gilts ~ female pigs that haven’t had piglets yet

Afforestt ~ convert (land) into forest, especially for commercial use. Early 16th century: from medieval Latin afforestare, from ad- ‘to’ (expressing change) + foresta ‘forest’.

depanneur; plural noun: depanneurs (especially in Quebec) a convenience store. Canadian French dépanneur, from French (in the sense ‘mechanic, repairman’) (the Canadian French sense apparently deriving from the idea that last-minute or emergency purchases can be made from such a store).

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the beauty in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882)

Dalit – plural noun: Dalits – (in the traditional Indian caste system) a member of the lowest caste. The term Dalit, which has replaced untouchable, can have negative connotations: its literal meaning is “oppressed; broken.” The Indian courts and government instead use the terms Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe. Descendants of enslaved people or prisoners. Because they are considered impure from birth, Untouchables perform jobs that are traditionally considered “unclean” or exceedingly menial, and for very little pay. One million Dalits work as manual scavengers, cleaning latrines and sewers by hand and clearing away dead animals. The Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are officially designated groups of people and among the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups in India. The terms are recognized in the Constitution of India and the groups are designated in one or other of the categories. Dalit children are particularly more vulnerable. They are at risk for child labor and child slavery as they are born into marginalization. Young Dalit girls suffer systematic sexual abuse in temples, serving as prostitutes for men from the dominant caste. Dalits are often limited from equal political participation. India’s caste system was officially abolished in 1950, but the 2,000-year-old social hierarchy imposed on people by birth still exists in many aspects of life. The caste system categorizes Hindus at birth, defining their place in society, what jobs they can do and who they can marry. In India there are approximately 240 million Dalits. This means that nearly 25% of the population is Dalit. It also means that in a country, where everybody is supposed to have equal rights and opportunities, 1 out of 5 persons is condemned to be untouchable. They often do not have the facility to electricity, sanitation facilities or water pumps in lower caste neighbourhoods. Access to better education, housing and medical facilities than that of the higher castes is denied. While Dalit women share common problems of gender discrimination with their high caste counterparts, they also suffer from problems specific to them. Dalit women are the worst affected and suffer the three forms oppression — caste, class and gender. Dalits are severely disadvantaged when it comes to education. In fact, only 10-20% of Dalits can read or write and only 2-3% of Dalit women are literate. With over 50% of the general Indian population being illiterate, the education disparity between Dalits and other castes is apparent. Dalits are routinely attacked for what upper-caste groups see as acts of assertion and equality, including entering temples, sporting mustaches and riding a decorated wedding horse.

Sanskrit – the language of ancient Hindu scriptures.

Caste – birth-based hierarchy.

“Show up. Over and over and over
again. Show up at run-of-the-mill
meetings and celebratory
community gatherings so that
people don’t just associate you
with crises and chaos.”

– Keri Mitchell
Photographer Unlnown. Lenticular clouds are stationary clouds that form mostly in the troposphere, typically in parallel alignment to the wind direction. They are often comparable in appearance to a lens or saucer. Nacreous clouds that form in the lower stratosphere sometimes have lenticular shapes.

Lenticular 1 : having the shape of a double-convex lens; shaped like a lentil, especially by being biconvex. 2 : of or relating to a lens. 3 : provided with or utilizing lenticules.

Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?

Jimi Hendrix, “Purple Haze,” Are You Experienced?

SITS—shelter, income, transportation, and social contact – basic like needs.

Uxoricide – wife murder

The six elements of recursive reading should be considered as a circular, not linear, process. Rereading is called recursive reading.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) – the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior

Generative AI – a branch of AI capable of generating new and original content, such as images, videos, music, or text

Machine Learning (ML) – development of algorithms that can access data, analyze patterns, and make predictions or take actions based on the analysis, allowing computers to learn and adapt w/o explicit instructions

Large Language Model (LLM) – AI systems that learn from massive amounts of text data and can produce meaningful responses, answer questions, and have natural conversations with people, ex. ChatGPT

Computer Vision – a field of AI that enables computers to analyze, interpret, and understand visual data to perform tasks like object detection, image recognition, and facial recognition.

Virtual reality (VR), the use of computer modeling and simulation that enables a person to interact with an artificial three-dimensional (3-D) visual or other sensory environment. VR applications immerse the user in a computer-generated environment that simulates reality through the use of interactive devices, which send and receive information and are worn as goggles, headsets, gloves, or body suits.

Augmented reality (AR) is the result of using technology to superimpose information — sounds, images and text — on the world we see.

May Notes

Aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: aphorismos, denoting ‘delimitation’, ‘distinction’, and ‘definition’) is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by tradition from generation to generation. The concept is generally distinct from those of an adage, brocard, chiasmus, epigram, maxim (legal or philosophical), principle, proverb, and saying; although some of these concepts may be construed as types of aphorism.

Coddled eggs are cooked inside their own little “pots”, so the egg never touches the water, unlike poached eggs which are cooked directly in water.

Shirred eggs, also known as baked eggs, are eggs that have been baked in a flat-bottomed dish; the name originates from the type of dish in which it was traditionally baked. An alternative way of cooking is to crack the eggs into individual
ramekins, and cook them in a water bath, creating the French dish œufs en cocotte. (Ouefs en cocotte is the French name for eggs in pots which could refer to coddled or baked eggs. )

6-minute eggs – an egg boiled for exactly 6 minutes, which is the precise time it takes for the whites to completely cook and the yolk to remain liquid.

Sgraffito – decoration by cutting away parts of a surface layer (as of plaster or clay) to expose a different colored ground

It is not possible to step into the same river twice.

—Heraclitus

“Once you have had a wonderful dog, a life without one, is a life diminished.”

— Dean Koontz

I should track my wins at work and measure them where possible, so I can unfurl my scroll of badassery when it’s time to talk about promotions!

April Notes

“Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all
facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of
opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

― John F. Kennedy [Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11 1962]

Persillade (French pronunciation: [pɛʁsijad]) is a sauce or seasoning mixture of parsley (French: persil) chopped together with seasonings including garlic, herbs, oil, and vinegar.

Mirepoix – mixture of diced vegetables cooked with fat (usually butter) for a long time on low heat without coloring or browning.

Gastrique – caramelized sugar, deglazed with vinegar or other sour liquids, used as a sweet and sour flavoring for sauces.

How to use Dicord:


“It is true that we can imagine cultures in which pleasure is very different, where people rub food in feces to improve taste and have no interest in salt, sugar, or chili peppers; or where they spend fortunes on forgeries and throw originals into the trash; or line up to listen to static, cringing at the sound of a melody. But this is science fiction, not reality.
One way to sum this up is that humans start off with a fixed list of pleasures and we can’t add to that list. This might sound like an insanely strong claim, because of course one can introduce new pleasures into the world, as with the inventions of the television, chocolate, video games, cocaine, dildos, saunas, crossword puzzles, reality television, novels, and so on. But I would suggest that these are enjoyable because they are not that new; they connect—in a reasonably direct way—to pleasures that humans already possess. Belgian chocolate and barbecued ribs are modern inventions, but they appeal to our prior love of sugar and fat. There are novel forms of music created
all the time, but a creature that is biologically unprepared for rhythm will never grow to like any of them; they will always be noise.”

Paul Bloom in his 2010 book How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like:

Fluency Heuristic – a cognitive heuristic in which, if one statement or idea can be processed more fluently, faster, or more smoothly than another, the mind infers that this statement has a higher value. In other words, the more skillfully or elegantly an idea is communicated, the more likely it is to be considered seriously, whether or not it is logical.

Gravid – pregnant – from Latin gravis, meaning “heavy.” It can refer to a female who is literally pregnant, and it also has the figurative meanings of pregnant: “full or teeming” and “meaningful.”

Elements of Design
  • Line — the visual path that enables the eye to move within the piece Shape — areas defined by edges within the piece, whether geometric or organic
  • Color — hues with their various values and intensities
  • Texture — surface qualities which translate into tactile illusions
  • Tone — Shading used to emphasize form
  • Form — 3-D length, width, or depth
  • Space — the space taken up by (positive) or in between (negative) objects
  • Depth — perceived distance from the observer, separated in foreground, background, and optionally middle ground.”

Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, – a questioning attitude or doub toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the person doubts that these claims are accurate. In such cases, skeptics normally recommend not disbelief but suspension of belief, i.e. maintaining a neutral attitude that neither affirms nor denies the claim. This attitude is often motivated by the impression that the available evidence is insufficient to support the claim. Formally, skepticism is a topic of interest in philosophy, particularly epistemology. More informally, skepticism as an expression of questioning or doubt can be applied to any topic, such as politics, religion, or pseudoscience. It is often applied within restricted domains, such as morality,
atheism (skepticism about the existence of God), or the supernatural.

Epistemology – the theory of knowledge. It is concerned with the mind’s relation to reality. What is it for this relation to be one of knowledge? Do we know things? And if we do, how and when do we know things?

100 Faces (64 to 100)

64 to 70 of 100 Faces. Ink in 9 by 12 Canson XL mixed media sketchbook
71 to 77 of 100 Faces. Ink in 9 by 12 Canson XL mixed media sketchbook
78 to 83 of 100 Faces. Ink in 9 by 12 Canson XL mixed media sketchbook
84 to 89 of 100 Faces. Ink in 9 by 12 Canson XL mixed media sketchbook
90 to 96 of 100 Faces. Ink in 9 by 12 Canson XL mixed media sketchbook
97 to 100 Faces. Ink in 9 by 12 Canson XL mixed media sketchbook. #100faces

White America’s Token Gestures

One of my hobbies growing up that I revisit occasionally is collecting coins. Every once in a while the US Mint releases a coin that inspires me.

This Dr. Maya Angelou quarter released last year inspired me. I purchased a couple of sets from the Mint last year. It is distressing, however, that an enslaver of Black people is on the other side of the coin.

In a flurry of excitement over the Dr. Maya Angelou quarters, I want to know WHY a quarter was produced within months of being announced, while the highly anticipated Tubman $20 note is still not in circulation.

All seven circulating united states banknote denominations feature white men: George Washington on the $1 bill, Thomas Jefferson on the $2 bill, Abraham Lincoln on the $5 bill, Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill, and Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill.

COMPOSITE IMAGE BY CLARICE BAJKOWSKI/WIKI COMMONS

Back during the Obama administration, a concept design was promised to be unveiled in 2020 to coincide with the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Obama administration Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had selected Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson, a slave-owning president who forced Cherokees and many other Indian nations on deadly marches out of their southern homelands, on the $20 bill.

The plan was halted by President Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said as far as he was concerned, Jackson would remain on the $20 bill.

Harvey B. Lindsley/Library of Congress via AP, Getty Images

If the Biden administration proceeds with the full scope of redesign plans laid out by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in 2016 (before it was tabled by the Trump administration), we will see not only a change to the $20 note, but also the addition of suffragists Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul to the back of the $10 bill, and civil rights icons Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Marian Anderson on the back of the $5 bill.

These three new notes would break the century-old exclusion of women from being depicted on American banknotes—the last and only woman to appear in a portrait on a federal banknote was Martha Washington, more than a century ago—and would feature Black historical figures on federal banknotes for the first time.

Beyond expanding representation, the new designs would reflect some of the major social movements of the past 200 years that have helped to move the United States toward its founding ideals of freedom, equality and justice.

Filmmaking Week 5

What is Theme?
Write Your Story

Time to settle on one idea (ideally one of the three you pitched in class) and expand it into a full story.

*At this stage, you are not writing this in screenplay format, yet*

Write in prose form, with two additional requirements:

#1: Do your best to only write what we would see on the screen. In other words, no lengthy backstory descriptions, and no explanations of what is happening in a character’s mind. Describe the people, scenery, dialog, and actions. Develop the plot through scenes as they progress from one to the next. Each scene should reveal the next part of the story and provide new information to the reader/viewer. (If you’re having trouble with this style of writing, imagine that you are playing a movie on mute, and describing what is happening out loud to someone who can’t see the film.)

My Story: A giant grow-man sized 12-year old bulldozes his way through middle school in search of maturity, self-control and belonging at an independent school. The Theme is the chaos of being bigger than everyone in middle school, including the teachers. The short is set in 2023 on a suburban campus and takes place over the course of one school day.

A little flood of little kids get off a school bus before and after Tommy.

Tommy wades through a sea of middle school kids in the lobby of Lewis to check in and surrender his cellphone.

Tommy is sitting in a classroom sharing a desk with a kid 1/2 his size. His head is bent low to hers as they work out on a project together.

Tommy stands in the lunch line surrounded by kids who are two heads shorter than he is.

Tommy runs around on a field of grass knocking smaller kids out of his way to get to a soccer ball.

Tommy stands in the hall looking down at a teacher who is yelling at him for knocking a kid over. The kid is behind the teacher pointing and laughing.

Tommy stands at the white board with 4 other kids working on a math problem. The tallest other kid at the board comes to his arm pit.

Tommy is on the basketball court playing in a scrimmage. He gets passed the ball, drives to the basketball and shoots with two defenders hanging off his body trying to stop him. He runs over another defender in the lane.

Tommy and two friends sit on the wall outside of Bradley, drink Peace teas and wait for the bus.

Best Picture Debate

Each member of the class will be assigned one of the Best Picture nominees (draw from a hat first, then trade with someone if you’d like).

Prepare a convincing (and, if you wish, entertaining) statement you will present in class on Monday about why you think your film should win Best Picture. Statements should be 2-3 minutes long. You do not need to have watched the film, but you should at least watch the trailer and do some reading about your film. We will likely watch the trailers in class on Monday.

MY Answer:

How do we measure what the “best” picture is? Best at what? Quality is subjective. If we just stick to objective measurements, the winner would just be the highest-grossing movie every year. This year Avatar: The Way of Water would win hands down: $2.2 billion and counting. Most of the other best picture nominees have been box-office flops.

James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, a sequel to 2009’s Avatar, should win multiple Oscar even using subjective grading. Thirteen years after Avatar, The Way of Water is nominated in four categories, Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, and Best Production Design (formerly known as Best Art Direction). The Way of Water continued the story of the Sully family and pitted them against an old enemy in new Avatar.

Cameron crafted exciting action and stunning and imaginative visuals and venture into conceptualizing and creating an entirely new alien world with its own flora, fauna, ecology, atmosphere, and so on. Everything was rendered in mind-boggling life-like detail with bright colors and an authentic yet fantasy-like feel. Everything is gorgeous in a cinematic, dynamic way. Cameron build an exciting narrative around action set pieces.

The computer-generated imagery, the motion capture, the 3D, the textures and physics of creatures and objects moving in space, and underwater are state-of-the-art digital film-making perfection; all of Avatar’s fantastical creatures and cultures were designed and rendered from scratch.(Speaking of which, why doesn’t this movie qualify in the “best animated feature” category?)

New creatures in the film include over-friendly whale-like mammals called tulkun, and naturally, there are whalers extracting from their blubber the Pandora equivalent of whale oil, Amrita. Similar to the nectar in Hindu mythology that is supposed to make its consumer immortal, Amrita stops aging.

The Way of Water hammered home the point that we should protect our oceans. Cameron is genuinely trying to save the world. For me, that makes it the Best Picture.