History Redux

It’s hard not to have flashbacks to the days of hearings re Agnew and Nixon in the Watergate days.

For those who weren’t alive then, it was riveting and scary and comforting, the later because it seemed without much doubt that the system would stand to undo the wrongs that were being revealed.

That’s what we need most now – reassurance that this “bull in a china shop” as he was recently described will not undo this experiment in democracy. That the government will stand and not stand for those who would undo it.

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Welcome Visitors! 100! Paint! Quote!

For awhile now this blog has existed in two planes, the much older, self-hosted wordpress.org version and of late the wordpress.com version. I’d had a .com account for a long time mainly so I could answer questions about it by getting into the nuts and bolts of the settings but frankly I didn’t use it. Then one day I discovered that I could, through the magic of a plug in on the .org side, mirror all my posts to the .com side. Well why not? There was a little learning curve along the way and I really should get over there and get a better layout going etc but it’s been fine.

The best part of all this is that I have followers on the dot com side! Over time the number has gone up slow and steady and yesterday I got notice that Candace M. Bisram, over at pocket full of smiles and 99 others were following my blog. Thank you Candace for being number one hundred and giving me a little geek moment!

Hope you’re enjoying the posts, whether it’s on quiltr.com or mbquilts.wordpress.com. As always, I enjoy your comments when you’ve got ’em!

Just for some color, here’s a quick painting I did inspired by one of John Constable’s. I used the Canson paper (did better this time) and focused on blending the colors on the paper and mostly using my biggest round brush. Hey, that paper is 12 x 18 so it’s a lot of ground to cover. The paint did some interesting mineralizing effects in the sky where the ultramarine and indigo met the burnt sienna.

after constable

Turns out the paper is a smidge bigger than my oversized scanner – what’s a painter to do?

And a quote from the quote box, because why not?

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor. — Aristotle

Posted in clouds, Do the Work, From the Quote Box, geeky stuff, life on the web, the creative process, watercolor | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Kindness – From the Quote Box

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness. — Dalai Lama

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painting and painting some more

The past couple days I’ve been working on this. You can see more in progress views and details here.

After working on it for awhile today I pulled out a sheet of Canson Watercolor XL Paper. I got a pad of this recently and it’s a bit smoother texture than I like but it held up ok to this sloshing around wet paint, tilting the paper to see what happened.

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Terrorist President

Got up this morning and after awhile thought to look at what Twitterlandia had to offer. [For those who don’t mix with me on Facebook, Twitterlandia is how I re-tweet screenshots of the 45’s tweets. This started when I kept going to verify what I was reading about. Did he really tweet THAT? Yes. And that??? Yes. And Holy Crap THAT??? and so on. Some people don’t do twitter so I capture screen shots and post them to facebook with a minimal bit of tagline after the opening “Twitterlandia:”]

I can’t even say “just when you think it can’t get any more stupid/crazy/ridiculous/preposterous” anymore. Every single time the guy tweets he just makes it more surreal/absurd/beyond understanding.

So today I was thinking about this progression and about yesterday’s attack in London and about 45’s responses and about the very pointed and mocking responses to his tweets and the very real effect of those tweets globally and more locally.

Donald Trump, the forty-fifth president of the United States is a terrorist.

One of the things that sets terrorism apart is the erratic, unexpected nature of it, along with the idea that such actions and the resulting fear it causes will disrupt normal society and life, making people willing to do extraordinary things in order to feel safe and normal again.

Who do we have that does this on a regular basis? Yeah that guy.

So consider this a reminder not to get bogged down by it all – do what you can to keep your own life on an even keel – resist in all the ways you can but don’t give up what’s important to you. It’s vital that we continue to resist and insist that our other officials represent us and do what is right. It’s equally vital that we keep on making art and enjoying the world and taking care of each other because that’s what really matters.

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