Mystery Art

Identify this if you can.



A clue, and a link to more photos (and a link to the answer, in the words of the artist): Mystery Art #3

If you're feeling sad that you might've missed Mystery Art numbers 1 and 2, here. I did the first two, but not this third one.

Numerals and Counting

At Always Learning some people talked about having had a pattern on numerals on which they did calculations in school because teachers wouldn't let them count on their fingers, and there was a request to bring that here. Can anyone who had a personal system like that describe it?


There was also discussion there of the history of numerals. An earlier post on this blog dealt with ancient counting (aloud, names of numbers: Score! and counting sheep in prehistoric languages) but now the question is about writing numbers down.

A link was brought to this explanation. Some of us were skeptical, and someone's looking into it:

Fun With Numbers (and an illustration from that page):
Pam Sorooshian found this: http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals/Talk

Google will turn up tons of cool stories. Here are portals to a few:
If you have any theories or favorite stories on numerals, or sites about their history, or personal stories, please deposit those below!

Food, History, Fun!

Connecting food to history, art, music, geography and all that good stuff.

If you don't understand The Great Depression very well, here's an aid:



Follow the links—every page is wonderful.

This one is about the art of the paintings of Jello.

That Jello tour of The Great Depression is from The Gallery of Regrettable Food

Click the airplane for Sunbeam Bread's 1949 pro-bread propaganda pamphlet aimed at children, and some 21st century commentary by James Lilek. I advise you not to read it while you're eating bread or drinking any liquid.


Below is the creation of an unschooled girl named Hannah who was free to watch TV. She saw a cooking show and created this meal. I'm glad to have the photos and her mom's account! Click the photos to read.


Songs about food and about candy


But what really started me on this post was the books post before this. I had a link to a site with cakes made to look like medieval books, and it was on a quiet, still little page here. I'll leave the quote I started the post off with, and when/if I find where those photos went, I'll bring them. My cake-as-sacrifice link is still good, though.

I have a page on cake, and worshipful ceremonies related to cakes,
and this page on cakes made to look like medieval books ties those two together!

REAL libraries, and crows with coins

Keith, my husband, sent me this link: Red-Hot and Filthy Library Smut. Yeah, baby. For lovers of books or Europe or the Middle Ages or any two of those, these photos are HOT. Holy cow. I want to be there, I want to DO that.
Samples:

   

Not being able to poke around the libraries, I poked around the blog, and found Crows and Coins, photo-commentary (with captions upon commentary) of crows with coins, and what they must (or might possibly, but probably not) be thinking!

      

And that's all commentary on this:

The Goal

The goal of this project is to create a device that will autonomously train crows. So far we've trained captive crows to deposit dropped coins they find on the ground in exchange for peanuts. The next step is to see how quickly we can get wild crows to learn the system, and then how quickly they can learn it from each other.

Once we've got system down for teaching coin collection we'll move to seeing how flexibly they can learn *other* tasks, like collecting garbage, sorting through discarded electronics, or maybe even search and rescue. The crows continue to amaze us with their abilities, so who knows?

In the meantime, the idea of mutually beneficial synanthropy is gaining ground. That's the concept that we can have mutually beneficial relationships with animals adapted to human ecologies. We're doing some consulting with companies that have animal-related problems to find animal-related solutions - instead of just bombing, shooting, or poisoning them.

Comments on comments on connections on connections!

New Way to Walk

Here's a little article on The Pointer Sisters and their connection with Sesame Street. I had always thought that "New Way to Walk" must be a direct parody of a Pointer Sisters' song, but I guess it's just a style parody. I started wondering...

Years later Destiny's Child performed it with muppets: 1993 version between those, made of clips from guest stars from the year or so before. (I remember when they did a similar thing with "Put Down the Duckie.") According to the Sesame Street Wiki *, this clip includes Savion Glover (famous before he was a regular on Sesame Street), Bill Irwin (Mr. Noodle, who played the uncle at Thanksgiving in "Across the Universe"), David shiner, Maya Angelou, Garth Brooks, Ruth Buzzi, Michael Chang, John Goodman, Kevin Kline, Cheech Marin, The Neville Brothers, Rosie O'Donnell and Sally Jesse Raphael.

New Way to Walk Music by Joe Raposo Lyrics by Mark Saltzman I was feeling low, I was kinda blue But that's all gone since I got something new I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk And my new walk suits me fine I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk And it makes my spirit shine It's a little bit of strut and a lot of smooth And a little bit of bouncing fine My chin is up, my feet don't stall When I walk my walk, I walk real tall I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk And it shows how good I feel This little piggy went to the market This little piggy stayed home This little piggy got a whole new walk And look at these pig feet take me home I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk And it shows I've got some sense I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk And I walk with confidence

Russian Nesting Dolls

We had nesting Santa dolls for years, and just this year I burned the chipped up unbroken few left. The wood had dried and cracked. They were inexpensive, though, from a cheap catalog that sells bulk imports.

There was a Flight of the Conchords mention of Russian dolls. And so with it already in my head, I came across a page called History of Russian nesting dolls. The translation is rough and interesting, and here are a few quotes:

"In 1918 the unique Museum of Russian and Foreign Toys was opened in Sergiev Posad. The first Russian matryoshka by S. Maliutin is a part of its exhibition."

The life and death of nesting dolls: "Private making of matryoshkas and production of other hand crafted things was forbidden in the USSR – craftsmen had to work at the factories where was no possibility neither to earn enough money for their labor (rates were quite low as at other state enterprises) nor to show their art abilities (goods had to be simple enough for mass production)."

Present time Now Semionovo matryoshka has not the best time. The complex economic situation in Russia mirrors at these crafts too: it's harder to buy raw materials, fuel and electricity became more expensive. In these condition it hard to create something new, people instead of wage in money get just ready goods: matryoshkas, wooden spoons, wooden tableware. It press people to leave a factory and to work separately at home. Maybe it is hard in the beginning but in such conditions can be born new ideas, types, goods - there are more to room for creative activity. We sincerely hope that Semionovo matryoshka will blossom soon and will expose us new unusual things. (From Russian-crafts.com.)

I didn't know the Soviet Union forbade home crafts. Way to kill a culture.


Above, 1970's stop-action animation from Sesame Street.
Below, Flight of the Conchords use Russian Dolls in a philosophical analogy.



For sale on e-Bay 4/6:

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Added July 2008:



Some images I had above, before, quit working, so I've brought a google link to more Nesting Dolls than you could ever look at. Some are pretty funny these days!

Russian Nesting Doll image search, Google

Photography: What about it?

What are your thoughts about photographs? How have they changed life, or how has life changed them?
At your house, what's the difference between the oldest photos you own and the newest?
What are photos good for? Bad for?

Daguerreotypes
"Welcome to the Mirror Image Gallery, the place on internet for all interested in photos and history."

I like that the description said "photos and history," because photos become history. The buildings and cars behind people in documentaries become records. The surroundings of movies shot on location become history. New Orleans shows in Easy Rider is a distorted but 1960s way, and in A Love Song for Bobby Long, one neighborhood is shown in a very casual, leisurely way. It might not be there anymore, but with the passage of time it wouldn't be there any more in the way it was during the filming anyway.

"Is it a picture or a painting?" "There is recent speculation that 17th century artist Johannes Vermeer used a precurser to the camera, the Camera Obscura, to create his incredibly detailed paintings. The result is an interesting blurring between artistic and scientific mediums...." (blog post with responses and many links)

Mirrors in images, and mirror images

Miraculous Photographs