Happy Holidays! (from us)

Merry Christmas and Happy New year.

Hope the holidays treat you well.

Hope 2014 is your best year yet!

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"I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being." Hafiz of Persia"

I didn't trust it for a moment
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.
 
It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into little pieces.
 
-- Lala, 14th century Persian poet

Mary

Art in Progress

I love doing art! It's so satisfying and a great way t spend a snowy evening. This piece is for a book I am working on for my grandson. it's not done yet.

Stay safe and warm!

Happy New year!!

Spring???

Photo: Gail Slaughter

Words: Michael Serafin

The People mover at Night

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The People mover at Night, pigment markers. by me, Mary Stebbins Taitt.

Here's a good guess: EVERBODY who has a computer (and/or a laptop, I-phone, notebook, etc etc etc) is frustrated by the attempts to make technology work, daily. Point two: everybody's got at least some of these devces, therefore, the entire world is in some state of frustration.

But think about it. (I did after buying a bunch of Chinese pencils from WalMart and found I couldn't sharpen them without the points breaking. EVERY SINGLE TIME... EVERY SINGLE ONE.)

Technology does not advance or retreat, it inhabits, like those relatives who come for Christmas and won't leave. If we make it, it has a disturbing habit of hanging around long enough to wear out its welcome.

And days will come in the future that we will be nostalgic for those good-ole PCs and how easy it was in them thar days to get along in the world, then turn around and tell our grandchildren's grandchildren how screwed up we had it compared to the present cushy world of 2040. (I am assuming we'll all be living in nursing homes run by robots by then, unable to die.)

At least it will give us something to kvetch about...

The Kaleidoscopic Life

Through these windows, lightly. Life, in fragments.

My Wish

(This greeting I pass on from Sometimes Saintly Nick and his feline friend Alex, adding that wherever good wishes come from, we should feel grateful for them and pass them on down.)

Simple Rules

Fractal Work by Mary Stebbins Taitt

Fractal computer art is an art form.. let there be no mistake about that. Yes, the image is created and exists (until printed) as electrons dancing in a box and on a screen, frozen in that dance, the dance itself determined ALMOST by random chance. Fractal geometries are based on the mathematics of nature herself and are interesting in that, like nature, the patterns persist at every scale, small to large, and therefore are not random and chaotic but instead random and yet organized and, as noted here, extremely beautiful to the human eye and brain. God works through art such as this, make no mistake about THAT, either!

Happy New Year!

I haven't been able to post because my Picasa web album filled up.

I hope you ahev a great New year!

Paint project

This is a graphic work that Mary and I collaborated on by email over a year ago and posted to Silk Creek Portal. Mary created the basic artwork and then I got involved.

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It was a study in how altering the eyes of an image slightly can have a great deal of impact.

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In Paint, by zooming in and altering an image pixel by pixel you can engineer artistic effects. It takes time and effort but the program is something anyone can access.

lolcat

The lolcat thing might have peaked some while back but it's cute. For the uninitiated lolcat is the secret language of felines. It's got devotees who have translated the Bible into cat lingo. (God is "Ceiling Cat," derived from a photo of a pussy paw dipping down in consecration from a suspended ceiling.) A cat is a "kitteh". Food is generalized as "cheezeburgerz". There are certain established conventions in lolcat, but if you just want some fun, you can make up your own.

Petunia's Pals

PLEASE go visit http://petuniablogg.blogspot.com/

Petunia is a wonderful person with wonderful photos there. You might even learn a bit of Norwegian!

Mallow Fellows

Petunia of Norway says she takes pictures just for fun, and this shot proves it!

And The Band Played On

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Sometimes things, esp when I'm involved, move slowly. You get diverted, sidetracked, whatever, and I'm sure you all know what sort of thing I'm talking about.

At any rate, these pictures were last summer at a benefit concert for "Love, INC", a ministry of the First Presbyterian Church in my hometown of Jackson. Long enough ago that I've got a full beard now, but you can see that we guys are truly handsome and loveable. Love In The Name of Christ (Love INC) sponsors various relief supplies and help to needy people in our area. A WORTHY CAUSE!

The Holy Jean Band is due for another benefit concert on January 24th (a Sunday) that we plan to record on CD so that the audience can get a copy. Goal: raise $2000.

Not pictured here but joining us will be Emily, our new singer, Ted, our drummer, and Bert and Bea Furman, good friends. AND MORE... stay tuned.

Dead Man Gawking

Santa is DEAD. It's official now. Photographic proof has surfaced on the net, and here it is.

Unlike the '70's proclamation that God had passed away (because of declining church attendance) the demise of St. Nicholas was not caused by lack of interest in the holiday or even the recent decline in per capita Yuletide spending in the US to less than $364 (anything less than one dollar per day being the poverty level).

No, Virginia, Santa was a victim of his success, not failure. After approximately 1100 years of roaming the globe philanthropically filling stockings and dispensing cautionary lumps of anthracite, Nick was licked by technology, or the decline thereof.

As we all are aware, Chinese manufacturers have cornered 99.999% of the world market in Christmas holiday lighting. The inside story of this is sad in itself.

Employing slave elf labor was never Santa's style, so along about 1995 it became economically impossible for North Pole LLC to compete, and their last reliable string of multicolored bulbs was shipped out. Subsequently the Polar Ice Pack began melting, and the handwriting was on the wall. All remaining operations were translocated to Boca Raton, FL, and 75% of the elves went into retirement near Ft. Myers. By 2007 NP International's total output consisted of driedel tops and knitted Kitten Mitts, intended to allow domestic shorthair housecats the ability to survive in the wild in January.

In 2008 production of even this dubious moneymaker was halted by legal action, the Florida Supreme Court holding that "kitten mitts" was a copyright infringement against "Kitchen Mitts Conglomerated", a wholly-owned subsidiary of "Everything and ANYTHING Kitchen-Related," a Hong Kong holding company with damn good lawyers.

Holiday spending peaked in 2009 when the last domestically owned American dollar passed to the Chinese. The holiday which Santa built from little more than a reindeer and ruddy nose had been pushed to the final tipping point long feared by some but ignored by too many. We all know what resulted. A worldwide economic financial disaster.

The Chinese, of course, took over everything remaining of the holiday not already in their grasp, retaining all rights to the name, which was modified to ChrisMart Day and moved to September 25th.

Santa was put out to pasture, ie, made homeless, since his Workshop was now floating through oil slicks in the North Sea. Rumors persist that Japanese whale fishermen sank it with explosive harpoons but those remain unconfirmed.

Santa drifted from city to city and town to town, pathetically picking up litter and stuffing it into his suit as padding to replace the pounds of jolly he'd lost on his quest for spiritual guidance. "Show me the LIGHT! Show me the LIGHT!" he would moan, bending down time and time again for a McCheesy wrapper or a BurgerWop box.

God listens.

Santa found himself in the lower Michigan town called JACKSON, apparently drawn to the state by the mitten shape of its Lower Peninsula on Google Earth. Lights weren't working on the inherently defective Chinese-made street decorations. Santa tried to fix them and died from electrocution.

He's finally at Peace, but not on Earth.

Photo by: KAT KULCHINSKI

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope you have a wonderful, loving, safe and healthy holiday!  :-D

Proposal: The Southern Michigan State Fair

Dear Brad: I'm sending copies of this letter to a variety of contacts and friends.. Your column and the accompanying article which appeared today in the Jackson Citizen Patriot regarding the future of the Jackson County Fairgrounds was timely, lively, and clearly puts forth the issues regarding this important tradition. I was gratified to see that you included my suggestion about relocating the State Fair to Jackson. Thank YOU!! Here's my view. Mr. Treacher is an administrator, and I hope he continues to be a good one. But the Fair needs an Events Coordinator, I believe, and this task alone is a full-bore, full time job. Problem? Paying such an expert's salary. Well, I have a solution to THAT to propose to you and the Fair Board. I will offer my services to fill such a role, if it is made official, for $1 a year. Just as it was in the Depression, times call for experienced and knowledgeable professionals in the business world to step forward to serve their country and community where they can, and because I have been a Jackson County fair goer and resident for 58 years and have experience for over forty of those years in the entertainment business, I WANT THE JOB. Mr. Treacher is good with money. The Fair needs ideas and promotion and a slam-bang selling job to revive. I am willing to help. I would also encourage any professionals also willing to step up to the plate to serve on an advisory committee for the Southern Michigan State Fair, which is what I propose the new venue be named. I am planning to attend the Fair Board meeting on Monday, if they let me in!! Thanks again, Brad. I always enjoy your column and I think you, too, are a professional. Sincerely, Michael Serafin-St. John 339 Oak Grove Ave Apt Q Jackson, MI 49203

E in P Rerun:The Following is NOT a Hate Cartoon!

(If this cartoon is hazy, click on it to enlarge it.)

In modern politics, or in olden politics, for that matter, "handlers" of the candidates try, sometimes desperately, to mold the image of an office seeker to fit what they think is some sort of ideal of electability. This is what is known as "packaging". The same thing that is done with bread, beer, corn chips, and lunchmeat... the four food groups.

We don't complain about this situation very much until election time approaches, but of course it has been going on without our notice all along. This is no surprise... a candidate is really perpetually either running for an office or running from one all their political career.

Go, go, go.

But at election time we notice what we've been trying to ignore, because some politician will bring it to our attention to try to defame his or her opponent. In political terminology this is referred to as "calling someone out" and in regular speak as "the pot calling the kettle black".

Being "packaged" is made out to be a sin, and we are supposed to think these handlers and their "image issues" are devils of deception. We're supposed to wonder what rotten, no-good, low-down, cotton-pickin' rascal this candidate must be deep down if he or she needs to be gussied up like Emma's prize pig at the county fair. Something, somehow, must be gang agley. There's squirreliness afoot someway, and we the public must beware, beware, beware.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. Humbug.

This sort of worrying is like being afraid to fly because the plane is painted purple. It's not of any importance. Not at all, for one simple reason. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

No, the real problem isn't in what we are told to believe about politicians, because on the whole we're perfectly skeptical. We voters are basically too savvy about the way the game is played to be fooled by the cheerleaders on the sidelines. The real problem isn't in what we are pressured to believe. It's what we talk ourselves into thinking that's dangerous. It's in what we WANT to believe, even if all the evidence is to the contrary.

For example, if we vote for Hillary it's because we want to believe she'll bring this country together, stop the war, fight poverty, give us all affordable health care, correct the economy, and be the perfect representative for all our interests around the world.

Now go back and fill in the foregoing statement with the name of any other candidate you want, and the statement remains true for any of them. I don't care who you plug in, if you want to believe, you will believe, and that's your right, even if you're wrong.

It's really a good example of blind faith in action, the way we vote. But what other choice is there? We could look at the candidates' voting history, maybe? Not much help there. Things and people and their opinions change, as do the times. Look at their professional careers? Maybe, but in the case of the Presidency it's a whole new ballgame with different umpires, and a lot further between the bases.

I decided that I'm not going to expect miracles or sainthood from my choice for President, just that they be somebody I wouldn't feel ashamed of a couple years from now. How can you ask for more than that?