Halloween bi-plane

This card came in the daily e-mail from How to Be a Retronaut, and I recognized the shape and general mechanism. I had seen one just like it many times, though not made of playing cards. Wood and canvas, steel and rubber.






Other images from that set of cards are here: http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2011/10/vintage-halloween-postcards, and the blog notes that they are from The New York Public Library Picture Collection. There wasn't a date, but the biplane was 1914. The card was probably made within ten years of the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903, so it's not a card of a witch in an old airplane. It was a picture of the very newest, most modern technology!


The plane is in Albuquerque; I see it pretty often. The photos of the plane, I lifted from an online search, and if you click the second one, you can see more image of the plane and information on its history and why it's at the Albuquerque Sunport.

Because of the internet, they can be set beside one another all over the world on Halloween! Ta-daaa!

Shadows and graffiti

One of my favorite things lately is the daily mail that comes from a blog called "How to Be a Retronaut." There are several topics per day, but today two cool things arrived, and one reminds me of a stop I made in my home town a couple of weeks ago specifically to photograph the bar where my mom used to "live." (For a while she literally did live in the apartment above and behind it, but for many years she was there all the time it was open, drinking and hanging out with her friends.)

First, this teenaged photo of Robert Mapplethorpe, in a collection of photos of young artists. The shadow of his hair is awesome. They don't say whether he took the photo himself. I think that first because Holly has taken some of the best photos of her, herself.

Here's a piece of graffiti inside an abandoned factory in New York. The article isn't about the graffiti, it's just images of that factory. They say nothing about who or what, but that graffiti, in that place, is striking.

So my mom used to drink in a bar called The Mel Patch Lounge. It was one of the only bars in my hometown that was all-English. So it was where cowboys and Indians went. Most of the other bars had Hispanic owners, managers and patrons, and as they would get drunker, they would speak less English. (Generally speaking.)

My mom has been dead for several years, and the bar has been closed longer than that, but I thought I should take some photos of the building, when we passed through Española recently. It doesn't look nearly the same. :-)

Here's a picture with a good shadow in it:


My sister, who has connections with the local art scene, says it is being set up as a studio for various forms of graphic and performance arts. That's nice. And they call it "the old Mel Patch," still, informally, she said.












(I think this was to save that part of the wall for one particular purpose, not a message to all painters for the whole building; it was just to the right of the entrance, so it might have been saved for the name and address and hours or some such... don't know.)


It says "Only the best are crowned." This is very much a Catholic town.

trail, trailer, wagon, fender

When I was 13 or 14 or so, one day I couldn't remember the name of that wide path paved with asphalt, for cars, outside my house. I thought and thought, and all I came up with was "trail." Okay, maybe I was 15 and I was stoned. But before long I remembered "road" and "street." They had just escaped me, temporarily.

But when I thought about "trail" I thought of "trailer" and the idea of something following something. A trailer trails behind a car (or truck, or tractor). And the trail itself is something people follow. Nice.

When I was 58, I saw or heard the root of the word "wagon" (it was being "waggon," the UK spelling at that moment) for the first time. It wags. It's like a trailer, often, but it has a single point of connection. Huh.

So "fender" came to mind. It fends off bumps or damage to or disruption of the wheels, on a wagon, or trailer, or truck. Nice. Plain old (really old) English words were just sitting there being meaningful antiques, and I had only heard them as sounds and pictures, without really looking.

A beautiful matching car and trailer spotted west of Albuquerque in August, 2011:



I like the reflection best (click for a better view of the car itself):



An interestingly parallel car and trailer I saw south of London (nearly to West Wittering, outside a butchershop where we stopped for meat pies for lunch, next to this place) in May, 2011:



It's a car and a half.

Threes

All threes from West Wittering, 

Sussex

Another one, from Hampton Court:

another 20 lives or another 20 minutes

In objecting to someone's new-age objection to a simple statement, I wrote something worth keeping.

My self is myself. That's what I was talking about in the first place. Live in a way so that you're being aware and honest. Integrity. No "true self" and some other self. Just the one, whole self. Whether you think I'm more evolved than you are or not doesn't matter to me OR to you. Whether you think what you're discussing is "a much deeper perspective" than mine or not, mine stands and yours wasn't the topic.

You probably assume I don't know about the whole astral plane, third level, spirit guide, children choose their parents, blahdeblah, but I've known quite a bit about it since 1967. References on request. :-)

I will state the idea that it is part of a bundle of wishful thinking that can and does distract people from being right here, right now. I don't recommend it. It justifies violence and ignorance. That is not helpful to ANYone's spiritual value, regardless of whether they think they'll live another 20 times, or another 20 minutes.

The original statement was addressed to a young man (teen) who was disturbed about a situation between others. I had originally written this:

Consider ideas. If something makes sense, good. Use the idea. Remember where you got it. Be honest. Live your life in such a way that you're not ashamed if someone quotes what you said, or tells something you did.

(Note to a young friend yesterday, but it seemed potentially useful to others.)

Don't know how long it will work, this link, but it's here: http://www.facebook.com/SandraDoddABQ/posts/193160007377934

Same and Different: easy answers and second looks

For young children, this might seem obvious. It's not about color, so that might be another way to look at what youngest children look at first.

The video is new at youtube, and the comments there include "the converse has laces and the rest of them don't!"

Many answers that seemed obvious to us in childhood look different in the light of years and experience. The uniqueness of any object, person, idea, plant or animal can be discussed, as can similarities to other things.

All of that reminded me of the game "SET." It's a game that seems easier for younger children than adults. When I play it, I think in words. Maybe people who are more visual will find it simpler.


In everyday comparison and contrast, there are many other factors past verbal, logical, size or color. Which of those shoes were made in the U.S.? Which fit? Which are stylish? How hot is it outside? Ah. but the question isn't about which shoes someone might want to wear. Shoe stores are about which shoes people want to wear!

The video is a good example of multiple choice questions, and a good toy for playing with how we sort and choose, how we name things, and how we interpret what we see. And the song is nice. It reminds me of when Kirby was little, and he'll be 24 later this month.

Much of the comparison/contrast that comes up naturally at our house is about musical styles and forms and versions.

Holly and I saw a quilt at an antiques mall, and I said "Stained glass window!" but I was pointing at the glass case it was in, so Holly thought I was talking about the glass (which was clear).

Patterns, patterns, patterns...

Old Age

"Kama Chinen, from Japan, was born in 1895 and incredibly lived through three different centuries.
She was born on May 10, 1895 — the same year as King George VI.

"France's Eugenie Blanchard now holds the crown of the globe's oldest person, aged 114." http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2958511/Worlds-oldest-woman-has-died.html

My favorite thing in that article is the United Nations prediction that by 2050 there will be nearly one million people in Japan over the age of 100.

The article that led me to this one was the 130th birthday of a woman in Georgia (former Soviet Georgia, not former Confederate Georgia). Her records have been long lost, so she can't win the international race, as it were... but 1880. She was born in 1880. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3046794/Oldest-woman-celebrates-130th.html



Anyway... the articles are from the racy, crazy SUN, in London, and the reason I get their e-mails is that they had an article on the letter I got from David Bowie, when Antisa Khvichava was only 87 years old. For a while there were letters in response to that, so I was checking in on occasion.

I had a grandfather born before the 1900's, but he died in the late 1970's or so. Here we are in the 1950's:



Holly and I visited my friend Beau the other day. Beau can start collecting social security when she's 62, because she was born before 1950. I'll have to wait until I'm 65, because I was born in 1953. All this information is patterns, patterns, patterns. It involves government finances, family relations, and future careers in gerontological fields.

Save the Date - Careers in Aging Week 2011
April 10-16, 2011