I've recently become an Index Manager on Blogshares, and have found a few new and interesting blogs (and, yes, I DID need another excuse to spend even more time on Blogshares :-)
Collage Mama's Itty Bitty Blog - an art teacher with varied interests.
Art For Housewives - I would like this one much better if it weren't vibrating red on electric green. If you can stand it, lots of cool art and craft links.
Quiltville's Quips and Snips I love looking at other people's quilts.
Lazy Gal Quilting - Another one!
And here's something I did not find on blogshares, but would like to put in my dream studio someday. I like computers, but I don't like them in my sewing machines.
From Monroe's Fourth Reader (see previous post):
Benjamin Franklin, when a young man, visited Dr.Cotton Mather. When the interview was ended, the doctor showed him out of the house by a back way. As they proceeded along a narrow passage, the doctor said to the lad, "Stoop! Stoop!"Not at once understanding the meaning of the advice, Franklin took another step, and brought his head pretty sharply against a beam that projected over the passage.
"My lad," said the divine, "you are young, and the world is before you; learn to stoop as you go through it, and you will save yourself many a hard thump."
Yet it is not an easy lesson to learn, --the art of stooping gracefully, and at the right time.
When a young man stands before you in a passion, fuming and foaming, although you know he is both unreasonable and wrong, it is folly to stand as straight, and stamp as hard, and talk as loud, as he does. This places two temporary madmen face to face. Stoop, as you would if a tornado were passing.
It is no disgrace to stoop before a heavy wind. It is just as sensible to echo back the bellowings of a mad bull, as to answer in the same tone the ravings of a madman. Stoop gracefully, and, amid the pauses of the wind, throw in the "soft words that turn away wrath."
When reproved for an error you have committed, for a wrong you have done, for a neglect chargeable against you, stoop! Do not try to justify or excuse a palpable fault. This only increases the wrong. This only excites greater wrath. Stoop!
If you say mildly, "I know I was wrong; forgive me," you have stolen away all your complainant's thunder. I have seen this tried with the happiest effect.
A friend came to me once with a face black with frowns, and with fury bottled up ready for an explosion because I had failed to fulfill a promise. I foresaw the storm, and took both his hands in mine as he approached, simply saying, "I am very sorry; I forgot. Pardon me this time." What could the man say? He kept the cork in the bottle and I escaped a terrible blast.
How much more easily and pleasantly we should get through life, if we knew how and when to stoop!
But when tempted to do a mean thing or a wrong thing, --when solicited to evil by companions or circumstances, --then don't stoop! You may give up your own personal rights if you will, you may give "coat and cloak" to an unjust demand, --sometimes even this is necessary, --to stoop in silence to an injustice. It may be done without disgrace or guilt. But never stoop to a meanness, to a base deed. Never stoop to pick up a forbidden object, the possession of which righteously exposes you to scorn or censure.
I have recently become enamoured of old school textbooks. When I say old, I mean old - anything from the 20's or earlier. I am continually amazed at how much children were taught back then as opposed to what they are taught now. My most recent acquisition is from 1872 - Monroe's Fourth Reader published by Cowperthwait & Co., Philadelphia. This Fourth Reader is a 4th year textbook, though how old the students would be could vary. But consider what our 4th graders learn and then read this (from the preface "To Teachers.")
The natural mode of acquiring languag is through the ear. If a child should hear nothing but correct pronunciation, he would pronounce correctly, even though he did not attend school or have special instruction in language for a day. But unfortunately he imitates the defects quite as much as the merits of those to whom he listens. In the course of a few years the habits of the organs of speech become fixed, the ear is less impressible, and the individual retains faults early acquired.
I just can't imagine seeing anything like this in a book printed today, although one written for speech therapists - specialists, mind you - might repeat some of these ideas. Later, I think I'll post a story or two from the reader. See if you know any 4th graders who could comprehend them.
The short list is up for the Greatest Painting in Britain poll. Go vote.
An article in today's New York Times reviews a show at the Museum of Biblical Art called "The Next Generation: Contemporary Expressions of Faith". The show itself sounds interesting enough, but what caught my attention is the fact that these artists are specifically painting expressions of their (Christian) faith.
Including traditional still-life painting, sculpture, installation, photographs documenting a performance, and an interactive video projection, the show reflects the range of techniques found in contemporary art in general. In many cases, you would not know that Christian faith had anything to do with the work were it not for accompanying statements by the artists [my emphasis].
For hundreds of years, most European art was an expression of faith in some way, whether directly or indirectly. God is in everything, after all, and any image is a representation of God's world. In our modern, secular times, though, God has been removed from the picture. He is not part of the meaning, unless the artist says He is.
Christine Huck and George Wingate, for example, say their small, sensitively made still-life paintings are about seeing ordinary things in God's beneficent light. And while a handsome grid of pages from pool design books, with everything obscured by gold paint except windows and swimming pools, would look like a comment on consumerism in another context, it is said by its maker, Lynn Aldrich, to be about baptism.Given our habits of viewing art aesthetically and psychologically rather than religiously, paintings that involve the appropriation of Christian imagery from antique pictures do not necessarily read as expressions of faith. An intensively worked, organically shaped panel by Robert B. Eustace, with a medieval Madonna and Child emerging at the center as though in a luminous vision, could have been manufactured by a nonbeliever toying with conventions of Roman Catholic kitsch.
Such is contemporary art. A urinal disassociated from a restroom beomes art because the artist has proclaimed it so. An image of a mother bathing her child is a symbol for the Madonna and Child, only if the artist proclaims it as such. Otherwise, anything we might read into it is pure speculation.
I just saw something on CNN that truly disturbed me. Some Marines on the road to Faluja were checking for booby traps. They found a car, no license plates, looked abandoned. They spent a long time looking at it from a distance trying to determine whether it was a bomb or not. They finally decided to push it out of the road with a HumVee. So, of course, that's when it exploded. My heart was in my mouth. I was so relieved to hear that no one was seriously injured that tears came to my eyes.
Now, I get pissed off. Why shouldn't they have just used a grenade launcher on the damn thing? Blow it up from a distance and no one gets hurt. I asked my former Marine husband, and he said it had to do with our "kinder, gentler war." No one wants to be blamed for blowing up someone's car. This is ludicrous!! Why is it more important to avoid hurting someone's feelings than to protect the lives of our troops? It's pretty obvious we shouldn't be there at all, but if we are going to keep doing this, we should at least allow our troops to protect themselves. Remember Beirut? No bullets in the guns? And we all know how that turned out.
This is rich: Thieves steal fake Munch artworks. I can only say serves them right.
So I gave Stargate:SG1 a chance, even though they have a whole bunch of new people and lost Richard Dean Anderson. The show was supposed to end last season, but some bright exec managed to resuscitate it with a whole new emphasis as well as a whole new cast. All signs of a major shark jump, as anyone who watches TV knows. But I grasped at straws, I thought it could work. (sigh)
It's not that the show is bad now, it's just that it's a whole new show. It has veered off in a totally different direction. I think it's Farscape now, though I can't be sure because I never really watched that show. And there's my point - I didn't like Farscape, so there's little hope for the new SG1.
I'm thinking they should ditch it and put their money in Firefly. I can see what all the fuss was about. Cool show, and that Nathan Fillion is a major hottie. I really hope they are thinking about picking it up wherever Serenty leaves off. That would be must see TV.
