Selfie Sunday
Road Trip!
The wife and I drove to Vassar yesterday to watch our youngest child play basketball for Swarthmore College in a season opener showcase.
This morning we explored the Vassar’s beautiful 1000-acre campus. I almost wished I had packed a “real” camera. However, I did enjoy snapping away with my old, tired IPhone SE 2020.
Testing Charcoal and Graphite
I have 30 years of charcoal and graphite that I have purchased and did not use.
Hands and Heads
As part of my personal growth in 2022, I am auditing art classes at the Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts, taught by Jeff Nesbit.
I layered water soluble graphite, purple watercolor paint and gesso to make a ground. A ground, short for background, is a base used to prepare a support for drawing or a painting.
I drew over the ground with waterproof ink and added shadows and highlights with oil pastels. For the final layer I sprayed on several coats of workable fix.
Ears
Bean Harvest
This was the first year in a long time that I have planted black beans. The colorful ones are dragon tongue beans. The white ones are brush green bean seeds saved to plant next year.
Light Box Photography
This week’s substitute teaching assignment is photography.
Today the intermediate class explored using a light box.
Students brought objects from home that are special to them.
Pen Practice
October Gallery
October Notes
Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own.
Jamokes ~ an ordinary, unimpressive, or inept person —typically used as a term of mild or joking disparagement for a man. Also spelled jamook, giamoke, and giamope, the term as used for an idiot has also been suggested to derive from a dialectal Italian (Neapolitan or Sicilian) word giamope. In the 1960s it also began to be used as slang for male genitalia.
Dastard ~ a dishonorable or despicable person. Late Middle English (in the sense ‘stupid person’): probably from dazed, influenced by dotard and bastard
Senescent ~ the state of being old : the process of becoming old. the growth phase in a plant or plant part (such as a leaf) from full maturity to death.
Ethos ~ the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations.
I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time.
James Baldwin
wu wei — “trying not to try.” This state of harmony is both complex and holistic, involving as it does the integration of the body, the emotions, and the mind.
Syncope ~ temporary loss of consciousness caused by a fall in blood pressure. the omission of sounds or letters from within a word
There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC–AD 65)
House gifts will always be remembered and appreciated so never accept a dinner invitation or weekend’s stay without a small token of gratitude.
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.”– NEIL GAIMAN
kallaloo (callaloo, calaloo, calalloo, or callalloo)) ~ a thick, Caribbean, whimsically seasoned melange of weeds, fish, salted beef or pigtails and conch and crab. Saint Lucians use Callaloo leaves/ dasheen bush, okra, coconut milk, pumpkin, onions, bell peppers, local seasonings and spices along with crabs or pigtails.
“Luck is when an opportunity comes along and you’re prepared for it.”
– Denzel Washington
Relentless Robin 