I have learned that the commenting system is irritating.
Mineral King sunset photo by Trail Guy
This is the procedure:
1. Click on “Be the first to respond” or “# responses so far”. This is at the bottom of the post.
2. After you type your thoughts and submit or enter (I’m unclear because as the “administrator” of the blog, it doesn’t ask me for this step)
3. It goes to a Spam folder, and then I have to mark it “not spam”. After that, it goes to a pending folder, and then I have to approve it. THEN it appears!
The commenting system isn’t very good. My own replies go to the spam folder and I have to do the process with them too. It also doesn’t give anyone confidence that their remarks have gone through.
Oh, and you might suspect this of me – I correct your typos, and remove anything that I deem too personal for the World Wide Web. (Please feel free to correct my typos too!)
It might be possible for me to change the annoying characteristics of the commenting system. However, my attempts might break the whole blog, so let’s just limp along with the current method for now.
What do you think? Want to try responding to this?
P.S. If you don’t see your comment for awhile, it might mean I am in the Land of No Electricity or Internet. Eventually I’ll catch up with you!
You “MUST” be on Facebook/LinkedIn/GooglePlus/Twitter to be considered a serious promoter of your work.
Oh yeah? Do I really need more time on the computer, with “virtual” friendships?
Are these Giant Sequoias having a water cooler conversation? Four Guardsmen, pencil on paper, 11×14, unframed, $175
I’ve heard that Facebook is like the backyard barbecue, another one whose name I’ve forgotten is like the bar scene, and LinkedIn has been compared to the water cooler.
I chose LinkedIn, because the barbecue is too big and feels like a waste of time, I don’t like bars, and having not worked for big companies, I’m curious about the proverbial water cooler. (Ever seen farmers on the side of the road, their pick-ups side-by-side in opposite directions, windows down as they chat? That’s their water cooler.)
LinkedIn is a bit of a puzzle to this simple rural artist. I haven’t yet concluded if it is helpful, or if it is just another distraction from being in the studio. It takes so much time to follow the links, find people’s websites, examine their work, comment if they have a blog, and for what? Are other artists truly my potential customers? And as a definite regionalist (referring to my subject matter), is anyone outside of my area truly a potential customer? Do these people in Minnesota/Washington/New Jersey care about Mineral King or Sequoia or Wilsonia??
Sure, it is fun to be asked to join people’s networks, and I feel warm and fuzzy to see that I now have 120 connections. But why? I’m not having personal conversations with these folks. I’m not looking for a job, which seems to be the primary function of this virtual water cooler place.
I’m always hoping for sales and for commissions, but doubt if this is going to happen from clicking “Accept Invitation” or “Send Invitation”. And that seems to be the motivation behind every person’s request to join his network. We all want sales – we are in business, and businesses exist to make a profit.
On LinkedIn, I am somewhat active in an Art Business group. So far, I have picked up a few tips, commented occasionally, and enjoyed some good virtual conversation. This is conversation minus body-language and vocal inflections, so who can say how authentic it is??
In Mineral King, we seek authentic conversation with real people, complete with body language and vocal inflections. Sunshine at the Neighbor’s Place, pencil on paper, 11×14, unframed, $175
In this Art Business group there are many beginning artists, seeking answers and help. (Most established artists are too busy working to be spending time talking to strangers on the computer. Yikes, what does this make me?) So many commenters obviously don’t take the time to reread what they have written – the typos almost give me a rash at times. It takes time to weed through the dross.
I pay attention to those who are articulate, friendly, professional and thoughtful. This sometimes causes me to look for their websites, which is a little tricky and time-consuming on LI. (lots of clicking and link following and window opening) Again I ask, “Why?” Is this my version of reality teevee, am I just procrastinating, am I seeking like-minded colleagues or do I just want to find a secret recipe to success by copying the business practices of Someone Who Gets It?
I could buy Linked In For Dummies. If I read it and followed its recommendations, would I begin to sell more work to strangers?
I’d rather be drawing, painting, teaching, or blogging. When I’m not doing those things (i.e. WORKING!), I’d rather be knitting, gardening, reading something, or hanging out in Mineral King.
For some reason, reading becomes a topic of discussion in newspapers, magazines and blogs in the summer. Are we all so ingrained with the idea that summer is filled with leisure activities that we all just read in summer?
Yep.
Salt & Light, or Reading Rabbit, oil on board, 11×14″
1. A Train Called Forgiveness, an audio book by Dan Erickson. I listened to a free chapter on Audible.com and it convinced me to buy. Dan was in a cult as a child and teen. He got away, but it has taken him years to heal from the abuse. He is now an English professor, author and songwriter with a very interesting story to tell. He writes of his life experiences in novel form, interspersed with his original songs. The story is a bit disturbing, and made me sort of squirmy with uncomfortable and unidentifiable emotions. The songs take the edge off. The ending doesn’t feel over, and it’s not, because he has written 2 more books on the same subject. This book is worth buying, and because of the music, I recommend the audio version.
2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-timeis told by an autistic boy. It really helps the reader understand the mindset of autism. I listened to this story too, and it was also uncomfortable. Captivating. The author is Mark Haddon. It felt so accurate that I wonder if he is autistic.
3. Overdressed: the Shockingly High Price of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth Cline is about just what its title says. One of the most interesting facts I’ve learned so far is how much less clothing costs than it used to. (Perhaps this is why I have enough clothing for a small island nation.) It tells of how quickly fashion changes (I never actually noticed because I stopped caring after about age 18) and how easy it is to keep up with the trends because cheap clothing is so available. There are so many names of people and companies that I don’t recognize, so much talk about trades, tariffs, exports and imports. I might just skim this to get the gist of it.
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
4. God Inside The Fire by Greg Stelley. I also paid money for this book, as an ebook, which I read on my laptop (I don’t have a Kindle and I think I don’t want one – too much stuff to own). In 1993 my favorite uncle’s house burned down in a San Diego County wildfire. 10 years later, to the very day, he was evacuated for another wildfire. This one was called the Cedar Canyon Fire, named after the place where it started. This fire burned up my cousin’s house. It was horrible horrible horrible.
It burned up lots of people’s homes, and this book is about a very remarkable incident, a true miracle, that took place in the midst of that. BUY THIS BOOK!!
Trail Guy and I have a weird hobby. When we hike, we like to improve trails. We toss rocks off, scrape out places for water to drain off the trail, improve water bars and just generally take notes on trails.
A favorite walk of mine is the almost 2 miles to the Franklin Creek crossing. (To refresh your memory, a hike is when you take food and wear a pack; a walk is just a walk.)
This photo of Franklin Creek was taken in August of 2011. I didn’t want you to be confused about the flowers.
Crossing Franklin Creek can be scary early in the season. If you are lacking in depth perception as I am, it is really scary. This isn’t a very high water year, so we weren’t sure what to expect. I expected to take my shoes off and get a little relief to my stupid Plantar Fasciitis, and then to turn around and head for this:
When we got to the crossing, there was water flowing down the trail. No no, can’t have that! We began with a little water diversion, getting the water to flow off the trail and back into the creek.
We worked our way up toward the stream, where I removed my shoes and got into the water. Pretty soon, Trail Guy was shouting at me to move this rock and that rock (not because he was agitated, but because the water was roaring.) Eventually, he got tired of shouting and joined me in the stream. He crossed to discover the weak places.
This looks scary to me. If I had to cross, I’d do it barefoot and wade through rather than misstep or slip.
More rocks were moved. The idea was to break down the dam that well-meaning but uninformed hikers had built. If you build a dam for crossing, you will be crossing on a wet wall. If you break the dam and let the water flow through, you will be crossing on steps that are above the water. So, we cleaned out stones to allow for greater water flow.
See all that dry ground? It was under water when we first arrived.
Now, there are nicely spaced stepping stones across the creek, no water flowing down the trail, and no dam.
Yep, hawking those Mineral King tee shirts again. We are calling them Trail Guy Tee Shirts. Cute, yes?
Here is the men’s shirt in action:
This man usually wears a size Large. This is a Large. No problem.
Here is the women’s:
This is a women’s medium, which is the equivalent of a 8-10. This woman usually wears an 8, sometimes a 6. The women’s small is too tight. The medium is sort of roomy. It will shrink and fit exactly right.
We have sold out of Women’s Large. More are on order, and this time we have added Women’s XL, because the women’s run small AND shrink. We’ve had requests for sweatshirts (maybe someday), Children’s tees (probably not), Men’s XXL (yes, coming with the Women’s Large and XL order), white (sorry, we chose these blues), and long sleeved (nope, this is summer).
A few years ago I was at my local yarn store. There were some bins of sale yarns. I could not concentrate until I had arranged the yarns in those bins by color. The woman working there at the time told me it was because I am a color junkie.
WOW! A term to describe my obsession with color!
I wonder why I was happy drawing in pencil for all those years when I definitely have an obsession with color. Since I’ve devoted this entire year to completing all the pencil drawings for the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia, I really get immense pleasure from working with color wherever I can – knitting, arranging the clothes in my closet in color order (Everyone does that, right?), mixing paint to cover up dress up parts of the workshop, organizing my drawing students’ colored pencils, et cetera.
Awhile ago, I discovered something really fun to do online. It is a color test, and it is free. I scored very high (low, actually, because in the test low is a high score.) Then I forgot about it until last week. I took the test again and look!
Isn’t that thrilling??
You can take the test too. Try it and tell me what you think, either by email or by commenting on this blog. I’d love to hear if it is as fun for you as for me. It’s probably just me. That’s okay, I’m used to being different from the average bear.
On the Mineral King Road there are 4 water troughs. Some years I think I will memorize the elevations and mileage markers. More realistically, I can remember their names and order of appearance.
This one is called Trauger’s, after Mr. and Mary Trauger (what was her hubby’s name? She was the one everyone talks about!) who had a home above. It’s my guess they built there because of the spring. Duh.
The National Park Service has spray painted all sorts of information on these historic items. Sanctioned graffiti, perhaps? Back in the olden days, they were places you could fill your radiator after it boiled over on the steep, nay, very steep Mineral King Road.
Mary Trauger planted sweet peas. They bloom near this water trough each spring.
HEY!! What are you doing up there? That is Trail Guy, formerly known as Road Guy. It bugs him when the troughs aren’t flowing, so sometimes we stop on the way up the hill so he can clear junk out of the stream and get the water flowing through the pipe into the water troughs.
He may be known as Trail Guy, but deep down inside Road Guy still exists.
REMEMBER, Mineral King Tee shirts are available through my website and from Trail Guy himself. This is the season for tee shirts. We are the people who have them. You may be a person who needs one. We can help.
Barbara’s French Lavender, 8×10, oil on wrapped canvas, private collection
This is a view of my friend Barbara’s French Lavender in Three Rivers. Livingston Lavender Farms, named after her grandmother who built the home, will be open soon for you to come harvest lavender. June 15? More will be revealed.
Imagine a blank journal with lines inside and this painting on the cover for around $15. Aren’t you just itching to own and use one?
My amazing friend Barbara grows lavender. She opens her lavender gardens (or is it a farm?) to the public each June when the lavender is at its peak. People can harvest bunches of lavender.
English lavender in bloom
The dates of this event are a little squishy, because the bloom is dependent on the weather.
This year, it is possibly Saturday June 15. This happens here in Three Rivers, and you just sort of have to pay attention to the paper and to people who might know.
Barbara and I like to collaborate on art projects. She had me paint lavenders on saltillo tiles for her garden and to sell during the Hidden Gardens Tour. These sold well, so I have painted more for her Lavender Harvest Event.
In addition, I have finished 2 new paintings based on her beautiful lavender. The hope was to have them printed into blank books to be useful as journals. More will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .
First, a confession. I thought “lavender” was spelled “lavendar”. Really! Me, the Typo-Psycho! I was getting it mixed up with “calendar”. This is a prime example of the Middle-Aged-Mush-Brain I am currently experiencing.
Barbara’s Lavender
Now that I know how to spell it properly, let’s talk about it.
Lavender is light purple. I used to hate that color. This was the result of a trauma that happened when I was in about the 3rd grade.
My older sister had a bee-yoo-tee-full lavender dress that I COULD NOT WAIT for her to outgrow. Finally, finally, it came to me. I tried it on, looked in the mirror and was HORRIFIED. My skin looked YELLOW!! I ran to find Mom and told her, “This dress makes my skin look yellow!” She was astonished that yes indeed, it did make my skin look yellow and probably even more astonished that her 8 year old daughter noticed such a thing.
It was a life-defining moment, although I didn’t know it at the time.
In the 1980s, my Mom took my older sister and me to a color consultant to “have our colors done”. (My younger sister was and is too smart to need this and too cute to care.) Doesn’t that sound wonderful?
It was. Turns out that everyone can wear almost every color. The problems occur when you choose the wrong shade. That lavender did not have enough blue in it to suit me. I still have my color swatches from that session, and they have helped me tremendously through the years.
I also learned that as we age, our eyes become more aware of the color purple. Sure enough, in the last 5 years or so, I have come to be almost obsessed with the purple color that has a ton of blue in it. There is a version called periwinkle, and a darker version that is the color of my favorite dutch iris and some lupine and definitely a penstemmon and for sure my favorite Mineral King wildflower called “Explorer’s Gentian.
Explorer’s Gentian
So, I’ve grown from “I hate lavender” to “Oh wow, check out that color!”
