Sunday, November 28, 2010

Saga of the Squashed abandoned Glove Continued

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Welcome to the continuation of the saga,
Episode two or three (Of The Squashed abandoned glove). Little did we know, that current events would bring us this episode, in one fell swoop:

Hand cut from The Sunday New York Times.  (Can you believe that the paper is now owned by that uber-rich Mexican guy?)


Extra Extra Read all about it! 
Okay, It's not really abandoned, It's stolen.  Which lends itself much better to a story arc.  Or operetta.


A squashed abandoned, stolen and "royal" glove.  Personally, the Ranger enjoys the handwriting almost as much as "the remains of the glove".  But most of all, the color is what we approve of.  The patina, even.

Nearby was found this part of Richard II :


which is quite opposite a glove that is an exoskeletal accessory, an added layer of skin.
Something else we've tried to distinguish ourselves from the apes. 
Let's "Get a Grip" okay.
This decade is almost over!
To review a previous Episode of "The Squashed Abandoned Glove
S is for Sunday Reading




Friday, November 26, 2010

Found Art Friday 32

Dear Blogoriffs,
Today is a 32nd week of amassing some found art for us to share. Thanks for the thankfulness of the digital daze, promoting giving of the sort that comes in to the FAF@homelandinspiration.org mailbox.

From Bonnie Hotz who must be betwixt and between this week           



And here are two from Jim Lindenthal
Who knows where nature and culture might co-exist

Hmm - Either a wedding or a funeral.


And a friend in Oakland brings us these:
"Face cup on tree" is indeed ready to learn.


and some "natural graffitini"which could be due to a little scrubbing of the air?
Indeed, the Art Ranger enjoys the subset of images now called "graffitini"

Have an excellent week that again squeaks by, and may contain or maintain a grain of an art moment in it.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Found ARt Friday 31

Hidey's Moult.  It's a lot of work.  There's going to be a ton of preening to do to get those things working again.
Welcome to another (it's now already!) Friday, and here are some findings:


well, someone's parking place.  Someone's home.  I guess it's a free country. 
Art Ranger couldn't resist collecting this
yes i said i'm all out of sorts - and no i don't want my picture taken!


From Richard Piscuskas in Los Angeles right where one of the lost angels lives



Phew, they must have found the pet goat named Abby


Yet another iteration of The Squashed Abandoned Glove
The severed thumb, or is it the savored thumb?  We're saving it for a gold nugget. Or a ride to the moon.

Have a great week.  Do not succumb to stocking stuffers near the cash register, (yet)?  Wait until they are all gone.

Peaceful sloughing to you.





Monday, November 15, 2010

M is for Moulting

M is for Monday
M is for Moulting
Moulting is for the birds!
Hah!
And reptiles
And arthropods
And dogs
And ...
Moulting Otherwise known as shedding
And I spell it the old ou way, because it is an olden process
biologically uniting many species, many points of view.

Moulting sounds like mold, but isn’t
it is instead about staying fresh and replenishing your featherage.

A bird’s second moult is known as an eclipse moult
birdwatchers often refer to a bird as being in 'eclipse'.


 
Hidey, our eldest chicken, is in fact experiencing this momentous moment in her life cycle.  And despite her being a dinosaur in my backyard that cost $1.75, with feet that are hands going backward in biological time, and her brain being the size of a lima bean, she’s having a lot of palpable bird feelings about the moult:  “I’m not quite myself.  I need to be alone”. It seems an inconvenient, awkward and disconcerting time for the bird; feathers are falling out all over the place and leaving unsightly gaps in the coverage.  Her limited flight capacity is now more limited.  Her social life is considerably affected.  

As care-giver of this chicken and as mother of two adolescent boys, I can not deny the correlation between this bird moulting display and the human adolescent’s turbulence. Both having to deal with extreme accelerations in bodily change.  A similarly in-between moment in appearances, the essence of pubescence. The body getting slammed with the new shapes and sizes of replacement parts with hormones dictating random undercurrents.
 
One of our adolescent humans has great gapes in his teething arrangement now,
and very long thin feet. Whereas, the eldest is very epidermally challenged.
And the mother herself could be, well, pre-menopausal - an amazing catchall for changing yet again.


So this moment of Monday (while procrastinating about something) we meditate on moulting also known as shedding or sloughing.  Now sloughing is a word of superior sonic capability to the Ranger’s ear. This is what a loofa sponge, or partially decomposed cactus, is able to do for you! To gently abrade a layer of microbes and dead skin. Sloughing is a procedure, which facilitates the casting off of old skins, the way a snake will rub itself over the ground to rid, renew and expand.
 
Yet, slough (same spelling, different vowel sound) is defined as “a place of deep mud or mire”  …  a “slough of despond” – a state of depression.  And if we may dare to compare again, this feels to be one of the layers of adolescence that we must in some way contend with, in order to find their independent way through the “deep mire” in the search for identity.  So if sloughing can become a process, maybe the great “slough of desponds” is one we can hike out of, like the swampy lowpoints along the trail.



Okay okay, back to moulting 

For the developing bird, the new feathers that emerge are called pin feathers.  As the pin feathers become full feathers, then other feathers are shed.  A cyclical and somewhat symmetrical process.  The pin feather is also known as a "blood feather” and actually has a blood supply flowing through it which makes it very sensitive. (Just as is the chicken, Hidey, is about her feelings).  And you guessed it, the adolescent humans too can be extra sensitive, as though you just touched them right on their new blood feather.


Interesting how the process of regeneration and maturation of the new feathers requires preening in order to stimulate the blood flow of nutrients along the feather shaft and remove a waxy coating.  Preening delivers each feather from one phase of development to another.  For the adolescent human as well, it seems important to put in extra work in front of the mirror.  Preening to figure out if the smell is going to fit.  To adjust to the latest, to get things situated.

Until reading about moulting in order to better understand my chicken’s predicament (and accidently my blood children’s too), It really hadn't occurred to me how many different kinds and uses for feathers there are on one bird.




For instance, feathers needed for flying involve barbs, interconnected by miniscule barbules.  It’s a complex communication of multiple of elements making it possible to steer and veer and scoot around in the air. Whereas, birds downy underlayer lets the tiny barbs fly loose and free, unconnected to eachother, thereby better entrapping warm air at all odd angles next to the skin.  Just say “duvet” and doesn’t sound loving?  Imagine all the warmth, insulation, and nurturance that birds the world over have provided us with.


 What is beautiful and vulnerable about the bird moult, is that this purposeful loss is made so absolutely obvious. The ancient DNA clues are embedded somewhere in us as we humans grapple with our own changes, both inside and out.  A visual signifier helps us to acknowledge the phases that we must go through in order to earn renewable health.  And when we shed or moult, we must grow it back ourselves; i mean we can put on clothes and buy a coat, but we still need to feel good in our skins.  And while you are moulting, while you are coming and going at the same time, well it is hard to do.
Hmmm Mmmm   m
is for moulting and
We must now come to an end of our Monday meditation on
Mmmmoulting
Shheddding
Or sloughing it off.
May your own exfoliations be invigorating as autumn plays itself out.
And may the Ranger learn to patiently teach maintenance to her adolescents
(Instead of yelling at them) about all those shedded socks on the floor of the bedroom
or the hair clogging the shower drain, because it’s just moulting.


























Friday, November 12, 2010

Found Art Friday #30

Dear Blogobuffs
Wow, here we are again and today, as is often the case, the Ranger has to wonder if "a post" will even happen or even should happen, and then the good luck of being away from her electronics all day brings forth the offerings:

Park Bench Mickey from Gary Ghirardi living in Caracas, Venezuela
 Poignant, and yet ....  Ranger focuses on how different the slats of a bench look from there.
 http://medialeft.net Please check out Gary's blog.  As in, the "truth" may set us free even if we are held hostage by the political constipation of reality.

Two images from Aunt Madge, our home town hero:  a girl who can regularly make us laugh so hard we cry, or at least stretch our face and djiggle our ribcages to creative disrepair.
Some cool downtown Denver art cable bridge thingys:



 And Thanks to Rhiana in San Diego:  waves roll in my thoughts
You so got both the big and the tiny goin on there girrll !!!
Art Ranger is glad about her neighborhood, that it can have this sort of mishap:

though i really hope that one horn Abby was just hiding somewhere.

And lastly, how or why or when we came upon the following contraption?
We knowest not, but must share it with you briefly before flushing this from consciousness forever.
  Warning:  Do not let your pet see this image!

Only in America?

 
PEACE AND LOVE.  Have a stupendous week.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

You are Starting to see all that Stuff

Now the Ranger had to go in the CVS drugstore recently and was jaggedly assaulted by crackly cellophaney re-shelving activities in preparation for the holidays shshsh.  Just today, the mother Phoebe reminded us of the year that she was carrying such a burdensome amount of catalogs from her mailbox that she dropped a few and proceeded to slip on the slippery things and fell right down in front of her own home.

A strange 28 second movie arrives which includes a secret pre good luck wish for all of us as the frenzy of the season begins to simmer.  All tinselish with drummerboy music and bags and bags of pre-staled bread for someone's stuffing.  Let's calm the mind and help some girls and boys in Africa get beehives to start a business with instead.  It's okay to run out of "skotch tape" in the middle of the night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELQ8C1XQMco

See you Friday.  "Got Art" in your sights?

Friday, November 5, 2010

Found art Friday 29

Dear Blogoriffs,
Found Art has it's sleeper weeks, doesn't it?
That is why Random Mother has hijacked the day with a different subject subset.  That of the TECHNOLOGY and PARENTING nature of nurture today.  A prelude to a conundrum she has been chewing on.

Let's start with some early and basic forms of technology:  we would like to show you a never before divulged site. The Lindenthal Family Broken Lamp Graveyard.  At last amassed to bow their heads together. They can accidently remind us of the global economy. They have degrees of no healthcare coverage.  Yet they have been living in a nice warm garage for years.  Patiently awaiting someone's good intentions.  They have very distinct political views.


A very long time ago, perhaps when motherhood was about how Spongebob cartoons never end but just morph into another episode, The Random Mother started an Essay about Media Monitoring. Well, she will never finish it -  because each time she goes back to the text to edit, the technology has evolved yet again.   A few months ago, I walk into our study and see that our twelve year old is video conferencing with a girl.  She's waving to me sweetly, herky jerky fashion.  Wow! When did I miss that transition? !!


Lately, no actually for years, the husband and I have had the growing battle of trying to get the boys to untouch their machines with screens for certain hours during our time together.  Example:  Time for Dinner.  Time for Bed.  We're seeing too how much all the different kinds of machines can add up to if you touch all of them in one day.  Between I-touch and phone and computer/Facebook and TV and X-box game.  And we actually think we have high standards about how much of this stuff should be taken in by a growing boy.  You might have better luck if you text the boy to come for dinner.


"when i was your age ...."



Hats off to you for scrolling down this far.  We used to see children mesmerized in airports with their eyes glazed over while their fingers floated deftly over rubberized buttons on various Gameboy/ PDA type devices.  We swore we'd never let our offspring go down that detrimentally hypnotized permanently plugged-in path.


Well,  before you know it,  you've given your children a game console as a reward for finally making honor roll.  And then, right under your nose, in your very own family room, they are playing a war game that never ends while wearing a headset and talking to their friends throughout the land  LIVE, They have game names like Chicken Pie, Warm Beans, Detrimental, and What-a-Rat.  "Just let me finish this match", they say . Boys join up in lobbies where they may work together in their decimations, and getting of "kills".  They love quickscoping and  nosescoping while an ominous helicopter or harrier buzzrings throughout the experience.

" This is not my beautiful house"  .... 
Here's the thing Random Mother has noticed is a fundamental part of the disconnect:  we think of their life in our home as time, as in WOW what an amazing waste of time.  You have spent too much time doing that thing instead of doing this more productive thing.  But what I see is this:  to this generation, media is just part of them, as in being or breathing or having an identity or skull cavity or working brain/ face within a social matrix.  Whereas to us, the parentals, media is a thing to be regulatory about.  To limit.  That you turn ON and OFF!

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT !!
And see?  Well, what is the Random Mother doing right now herself?  She is sneaking a blog entry in.
"Who's on first?"  and "What's a mother to do?"
Not nothing  ....   and yet over regulation only makes the heart grow insaner.
... to be continued ...