alive but far from well.

Mean Miss Clementine

I have been attacking life with both fists and it has retaliated.  All the usual occurrences - birth, death, infinity have come my way.  Lots of cleaning up people's belongings - very sad.  All the things they treasured reduced to about 15 cents in the desirability market.

I say, I will not leave my children with all the detritus to clean up - I say it and I mean it at the time- but life for me consists of new projects started with a 2 hour search for items I know I own but haven't seen recently.  In my mind they are in a pristine utopia of neatness and perfect preservation.  In reality, they reside in some container I threw them in because house guests were coming and I needed to scrape a surface clean for seating them.

I am making dolls - more accurately, I am on step two of lessons that have gone 87 pages beyond me.  I am hooked on classes from A for Artistic.  Way beyond my comfort zone - soldering and stringing and sculpting.

I am gearing up for a painting class with Kevin Beilfus - please check his work out - Mahvelous

The Green Skirt

I have taken from him before - this is a pastel of his model Ha Pham.  The doll is paper clay and I am learning how to create wigs.  I am having a bit of a problem there too.

van jones

To say that I am upset with the way the new regime is operating is the understatement of the week. I mentioned health care - or more properly government care on my face book and lost two friends. I'm agin it and the two guys who jettisoned me were also against it. But there were two other guys for it and the gloves came off after a polite post or two and then all hell broke loose. It got very personal - turns out I'm a mindless knitwit. Well anyone who knows me , knows that already. Sadly the two who abandoned me because they didn't need the invectives hurled their way are the reason we're going to lose our country. Too much hassle to stay involved or to stay informed. The democrats and the media have done an excellent job marginalizing Fox news, conservative talk radio, Sara Palin, republicans and anybody else who does not agree with their world view. I have friends in the Northeast who have never tuned into Fox news but believe that anyone who does is a knuckle dragging flat earther. They prefer to get their news from NPR or one of the mainstream media outlets. I figured out a long time ago that those outlets control the dissemination of knowledge by omission.

This brings me to Van Jones. Quite a piece of work is mr. Jones. A bigot with a big mouth and an oratory style which combines characteristics of the Kingfish of Amos and Andy and Sportin Life in Porgy and Bess. If you've seen Reverend Wright do his thang against whitey and America then you've seen Van Jones in action. Now, the mainstream media never reported on Mr. Jones other than to tell the cudchewers out there that he was an up and coming youngster invited by Mr. Obama into the whitehouse fold to advise him regarding the environment and light bulbs and such like. The green tzar. An avowed communist - (a by now discredited philosophy) who hates America, capitalism, caucasions and a conspiracy theory nut. Mr. Jones has been a veritable feather in the wind - floating here and there but ever and always atuned to an anti-America cause.

The whole Obama Whitehouse infrastructure with the various Tzars is very disturbing to me. When they get their way on Government care they are going to hire a new one who will oversee all of the implementation of guv health care. There seems to be a never ending supply of left leaning, America hating, spread the wealthers and Obama shuffles through them til he finds the most radical. Obama is a fellow traveler. He is very comfortable in their company.

So far on foreign affairs, he has been a disaster. Allowing the like of Conyers and nadler to prosecute the CIA is despicable. The world is moving away from us. The picture of Chavez and Achmadenijad in a lip lock tells it all. Now we are going to have a one on one with North Korea. That guy already humiliated us once with the Clinton visit. I don't think Obama is ready for prime time in the broader game of world politics.

His millieu is a cosy tete a tete with lefty American Academics who have never created a job, run a company, or indeed mixed with the despised masses. They look down from the Ivory Tower and see whats wrong with all of us and they just gotta tell us. Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dorne (recently eluded to on the Mason murders anniversary) Reverend Wright, Van jones, Ezekiel Emmanuel, Cas Sunstein. These are the fabric of Obama's life.

van jones

posting new pic - but oh my health care

I went to see aged relatives in real need of health care. People that have paid into the system and therefore for everyone who hasn't for years - now they need help - but they will handle it privately and with dignity. Started a discussion on healthcare on facebook and the venomous hatred against Bush and repubs is palpable. On the other hand - we are being swept along by folks who voted for change - and that meant change from Bush - I'm not quite sure it mean change to France or change to canada. Obama is the blind date we pinned our hopes on and he turns out to be the (figuratively speeking) buck toothed, acne ridden oaf we will have to spend the next 4 years with. He either needs to grow up fast and take charge - or let nancy Pelosi and barney frank gross people out for the next four years so we can vote 'em all out.

obama and the hit list

I have arrived - not one but two letters from David Axelrod of the Whitehouse. He slurps at the great man's feet on a daily basis. Wowee. They need me - they need me to refute the angry mob of swastika bearing hooligans disrupting these town meetings. They need me to ridicule all of the well dressed (ala Barbara Boxer) nuts who presume to question the President's idea of what is best for America. I can't. I agree with them - except for those with the swastikas of course

The Congress and Senate are bewildered - even flabbergasted by the negative reaction. That should speak volumes. Irrefutable evidence of how distant Washington, D.C. is from their own constituents. They seem to feel that we are incapable of seeing what a great deal this is. We should all just open wide and swallow. I'm not going into all the problems with the healthcare proposal - others are more eloquent.

What disturbs me is the elitist attitude. To characterize protesters of the health care plan as nazis or white sheeted kkk people came from Nancy Pelosi on day one of the town hall forums. I happen to have the boob tube on all day and watched and heard that heap of evil vapidity say that about who???? At that time it was just het up regular citizens. Where the hell was she during Watts - or the Rodney King riots. Ask a few dead Korean store owners what a really angry mob is all about. That truck driver forever brain damaged.

The 13 year old kid that saw mean signs when she went to the NH Obama love fest cannot be real. It probably took all her mother's intellect and ingenuity to write out that question for her to read. How stupid and gullible does Obama think we are. Its this kind of tactic that leads to so much distrust. Maybe it is shocking to the media and the dems that just regular people are actually vehemently expressing their opinions. They are used to condoning real radicals. NAry a word was said when Bush was depicted as Hitler on several occasions - or when his motorcade was stoned - or when art films came out depicting his assasination. That was considered the people's right to voice their opnion. This shoe on the other foot bit is not to be tolerated.

Apparently David reads this blog. Dave - we need to break up. Please don't write again - I asked you the last time you wrote. i don't like the plan - I worry about it for my grandchildren- I have yet to see any politician with a talent for anticipating unintended consequences.

dancing girls

I'm doing a series on Indonesia and these little girls will figure in

Lively discussion

i have caused a heated discussion on facebook and now I can't post - what's up with that?????? Just because a girl doesn't want public health care and takes exception to the whitehouse wanting info on all healthcare dissenters - blogs or emails - . Yeah let me say it again - they put a video ad out with this leathery newsbabe named Linda Du something or other - asking that "friends" notify the whitehouse and turn over any emails or blogs with "fishy" info about healthcare. I didn't want to think I had those kinds of friends so I went ahead and turned myself in.

health care, Obama, and a world view

I am writing to you all from the ice flow. Luckily, as I drift out in the frigid air - but wait - another bit of luck. Al Gore has decreed global warming so it ain't so frigid after all. I'm also fortunate to think I won't be eaten by a polar bear. what are the odds of me running into one of the only three left outside of zoos?

When my government health care counselor showed me the charts and graphs and the powerpoint presentation, I could see that I had indeed used up all the oxygen alloted to me. He was such a kind young man and so persuasive. When he told me there were people much younger than myself that could benefit from my medicines - or I should say, what would have been my medicines, why I could see what was expected of me.

Of course, I was a bit offended when he asked me to step up onto the scale. It was hardly necessary for him to go into lifestyle choices and actuary and morbidity statistics. I'm sure I never meant to do harm to my fellow citizens. I don't smoke, have quiet hobbies, I guess what you would call a stodgy lifestyle but I would call wholesome, and just a teeny weeny glass of merlot or 3 at night.

No, it was hardly necessary to "blame" me for my future and imminent death for the greater good. Best to appeal to my altruism. To think of a young person unable to control his bladder because I was taking the Enablex he should, by right of youth have, would just be unthinkable. Also, the Actonel - but he would probably not have brittle bones yet. Those were the only meds I took but I guess the government knew I'd break a hip or get cancer, or alzheimer's and why should the United States of America have to put up with an old woman with any of those conditions. So unseemly - so expensive.

So, I guess I'll just drift around out here on the ice flow - soon to melt because of global warming - and palaver with the other old ladies drifting about. The sky is a beautiful blue, the water is a dazzling shade of aqua, I say adieu you beautiful old world you. But hark, what's this - its one of those dead as a dodo polar bears we've lost and lamented as portrayed on National Geographic . They assured me that by the very act of my living my life, I had destroyed them with my carbon emmissions and my eating a bag of potato chips. But what's this. What a big nose he has, and my what sharp teeth.

Am I wearing too much makeup????

Sorry - I love color - just couldn't stop

monkey border fabric

I found another source to print my designs - this is pricier but it is on silk or silk twill or cotton sheeting. Fabric width is more generous but minimum yardage is bigger. What the heck is the use really. It is my fate to pay in life and not to be paid.

I just don't have the knack or fire in the belly or something. Still, if i could sew - I mean really sew competently - not just the quavery wavery seams i achieve in quilting - I would love to construct a garment with this little guy in a border repeat. I can imagine folks asking where I got this clever fabric. me. I'd say - me. I designed the fabric - and for thus and such a price I will sell you some.

tentatively back

life is humming along. I'm into my third cast. This one is yellow - I had hoped for a sunny buttercup, instead the color leaves chameleons hoping to meet that big mama with the funny sticky outy things (my toes). But it pays to be flamboyant now and again. I took a little one day watercolor session at SCAD. The point was to experiment with techniques and the class was called no fear watercolor. I am still scared of the medium. But i do love the colors you get on accident, as today's youth would say.

Thank you note

I's sending this to all the folks who made me a casserole. Sincere thanks.

Still more work

Here she is with a little more pizzazz. I have begun painting her. I like the hair so kept the general outline. More work on that to come.

Then I began to work on her hand. More work needed here. So hard when you just make up people. You have a concept and a vague Idea of emotional or whimsical theatricality but when you do just create a little person from scratch all of your drawing flaws are exagerrated.

My title began to come to me - He loves me, He loves me not. So I thought i would drape her in daisies. The squiggles may or may not stay in the finished piece. They need to add to a feeling of movement and bounce to the whole thing and if i can't make that work - they are out.

more work

Here you can see that I have scanned her into photoshop and erased all the things that were not she or cupid ( to the best of my ability). There are problems I see. Her hand is definitely sad and the out thrust leg is a tad short. Hmmmm.

flora consulting cupid - in progress

this is an intaglio I created for a valentine fun show at City Arts in Wichita, Kansas. I wanted to convey a sort of sadie hawkins situation in which a young girl captures cupid and takes matters into her own hands.

I printed on marbled paper I made and combined hard ground and aquatint. I put $5.00 on it and it didn't sell. Fancy that.

Anyway in the next image you will see that public rejection is mother's milk to me and I never get rid of anything I've ever done - no matter how sappy or ill made. It generally is the best i can do at the time.

brokee footee x2

Zounds. what a week!!!! Only a week ago I was a nubile gazelle. Moving forcefully and gracefully throughout my little domain. Picking up clutter or choosing not to, dipping into numerous projects and diversions - needlework, dollmaking, photoshop. geneaology, gardening. I was a restless lovely butterfly not content until each of my favorite "flowers" had been visited. But lo, something dwells within our little edens that cannot bear to see such simple and satisfying pleasure go on. And so I was to be cast into the pit of despond sooner than I could forget the second line of the lyrics to Saint Louie woman, the song i happened to be singing when fate and disaster rendered me the pitiable wretch I am today.

It was 7 or a little, AM - I had just finished brushing my teeth and imposing some sort of order to my hair - and humming the Saint Louie Woman bit about the diamond rings and musing how you bridge to apron strings - naked as the day i was born, when I stepped up on the little platform which separates the master bath from the utility room. My object was the dryer, or chifferobe as it is known in our home, where all clean clothes are stored. I slipped on something wet on the linoleum tile floor (dare i guess dog pee), and after a Frick and Frack moment- landed on my twisted right ankle. Here let me interject the time honored - snapped like a twig.

I lay there stunned and soon passed out altogether. Any thought of making progress with the lyrics of Saint Louie woman gone forever. After several bouts of nausea, I managed to roll over and in doing so broke the small toe on the other foot. Further passings out and waves of nausea.

About an hour later, I was able to crawl and limp (combo) to a phone where husband - poor soul- collected me and we have been having various hospital experiences ever since. I am casted up - can't drive - walk - or make it to the bathroom. I have become the Contessa Neroni in Trollope's Barchester Towers. But, by scootching up the stairs on my fanny, I can at least sit before my beloved mac and create something fun. I will post what I create.

I am thrilled to tell you that i have gotten my first hate male on this blog. A person who is apparently uninsured or uninsurable - not quite sure which he meant - anyway - this person took great umbrage at the Obamanation cartoon. From his tone and gist, I take it, he will not have the bottom tits of the government sow - lawsy no - he'll clamp on like a lamprey to prime tit real estate.

two more quilt blocks

continuing on - the knave has recieved an invitation.

Her husband, the King of Hearts

It is very had to do men's faces - for me anyway - in the end I had to settle for the fact that he looks like basil Rathbone. Its okay because none of the people I am making these for have ever heard of basil. Sad really but there you go. Just another reminder that I am very past it.

PLAYING CARD QUILT

I AM sorry - I don't mean to yell - its just that my caps lock was on. I am making a quilt on which we will play cards. This is the Queen of Hearts and I am sure in the course of the game she will provide, elation, desolation, and generally run the gamut of emotions twixt the two. Some will chuckle with delight, some will burst out crying (me) and run from the room and swear to never play another game with any of us (me). Not sure yet how I will preserve her good looks and winsome allure. Someone said i could sew clear plastic over the whole thing. I hate to think it but it would be asking too much for my little game players to have to keep up with a separate "rain coat" for the quilt. My thinking cap is currently on the fritz.