While the east side of the country is getting hammered, the west side is having beautiful springlike weather. Let’s look at another walk, which probably could be classified as a hike if I had had the foresight to bring lunch. I did bring water and my walking stick, which was a good decision.
Poppies in January!
Not much water in that waterfall*.
Or this one. (It is a tiny light line in the shade.)
How in the world was this picnic table transported to this spot with no road??
Pippin was waiting for me to get home. Little sunshine kitty. Well, not actually little.
Jackson was also waiting, but he doesn’t want to look eager and make me think that he actually likes me.
Maybe I’ll get some work done tomorrow. Maybe I’ve done work already this week but haven’t shown you yet. Maybe I will work on the mural on Friday.
More will be revealed in the fullness of time.
*The waterfalls had good water when I photographed them in Spring 2023 for this painting (It shows as $700 on the website because the website is supposed to add sales tax, which I estimated to be $50.)
Salt Creek Falls, oil on wrapped canvas, 16×20″, $750
Ammonia is the main active ingredient in anti-itch medicine. If you put it on a cotton ball and rub it on bites or rashes, it helps better than those tubes of overpriced placebos. I have no idea what happened to my right foot, but it swelled up like a burrito and I scratched like a crazed animal for days. Ammonia was the only thing that provided some relief. (Nope, not gonna show you a photo.)
A heart rock, because we love to learn here.
Learned from Intern:
2. The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web where people can search through old websites; he found my first website from around 2003 or so.
3. People in Asian countries make vertical emoticons (°-°) instead of sideways :-). I’ve been having fun with this! (*U*)
4. Youth view using a period at the end of a sentence in a text as a method to makes things look really serious. Good grief, I must really scare them when I text.
I don’t care about sportsball, but some of my tens of readers might enjoy this personalized license plate.
5. “Frunk” is a real word, which in itself is a new piece of learning; do you know what it is? I laughed aloud when I heard it and when I saw it. It is the FRont trUNK on a Tesla, a storage place where an engine normally sits under the hood.
Yeppers, a real frunk on a real friend’s real car.
6. Seems as if everywhere I read, the name G. K. Chesterton appears. I finally looked him up and learned a little bit about this great thinker and prolific writer, using this site Who is G.K. Chesterton? I realized that learning about him could involve a great deal of reading. Information overload, so many books, so many sites, so little time; I simply read a few paragraphs, composed this entry, and moved on. Sigh.
Reading Rabbit, AKA Salt & Light, oil painting
7. “Nalbinding” is a needle art I have never heard of before. Here’s a definition: “Nalbinding stitches are created with a single needle, using a series short lengths of yarn (18-36″ pieces) at a time. Each newly formed loop is created when the tail end of the yarn is pulled completely through the added loop, making it unravel-proof. “ It is also called “knotless netting” or “single needle knitting” or “looped-needle netting”. There is a thorough explanation with examples and even video instruction here: nalbinding. (I don’t need any more hobbies that use up my exhausted wrists so I didn’t look too closely.)
TuckerHose holder
8. “Dongle” is a little gizmo that goes into a computer to enable a mouse to work with a laptop instead of the trackpad. A friend misplaced hers, and used the word, which made me ask if it was a real word. Yeppers. We looked and looked, and it turned out that it had magnetically adhered to the bottom of her laptop as we were scrambling around with a flashdrive. So the word is new and the fact that it is magnetic is new. These tools and their words. . .!
My tools are much less complex, although it is very easy to misplace an erasing shield.
9. DMSO, or dimethyl sulfoxide was featured on 60 Minutes several decades ago as a potential remedy (or at least a relief provider) for arthritis. It was controversial, but now it can be purchased without a prescription. A friend gave me some, and sure enough, it provides almost instant relief for my wrist (De Quervain’s Tennosynovitis is my diagnosis, not arthritis or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.) So far it hasn’t done squat for the peripheral neuropathy, and WebMD is rather dismissive of it. However, I am finding it to be helpful. Never mind. It messed up my stomach after 5 days. Go figure—it is applied to skin! But messed up digestion is one of the possible side effects.
Lavender has many uses, but it doesn’t fix wrist pain, in case you were wondering.
10. Remember when I said that intermittent fasting didn’t work to lower my A1C? According to sources (isn’t this how the media gives authenticity to its reports?), I was doing it wrong. Doing it right (as my source says, who is not a medical professional but is a very smart person) is really a hassle, and I don’t feel desperate enough to mess with this method of deprivation and inconvenience.
Always more steps to learning new things. . .
11. WAIT stands for Why Am I Talking? so I will stop now. Thank you, Blog Readers!
I recently read a useful acronym in Dusk Night Dawn by Anne Lamott: WAIT. It means Why Am I Talking. So today I will not talk, because I can’t think of a reason to talk that anyone would actually care about. Please enjoy these photos of what has masqueraded as winter in Three Rivers, California in January, 2026.
We live in the foothills at the entrance to Sequoia National Park, which we simply call “The Park”. It’s right here in Tulare County! Because we can go anytime, sometimes we don’t go for several years. Yesterday I had the opportunity to go, so I went. Let’s have some photos.
Moro Rock has steps up the other side. I didn’t go there yesterday.
Eleven Range Overlook has never photographed with my little camera. For some reason it can’t see the blues in the distance. Apparently my inferior phone camera is superior in that aspect.
Why have I never noticed this at the base of the General Sherman Tree?
Sequoia Gigantea, redwood, Big Tree
The bases of these trees resemble elephant feet.
This is all the snow there is in Crescent Meadow in JANUARY!!
The Squatter’s Cabin has this old sign explaining that it “was built in the eighties”. That’s the 1880s!
This is a baby redwood, something I’ve rarely seen. Maybe it is because of the fires in 2020, 2021, 2024. (They all run together in my memory.)
That is one weird burl.
On the way home I took this quick photo of Castle Rocks to show Intern because I spent so much time painting it carefully on the library mural.
Yeah, yeah, I’ll start working again. Eventually. Just taking a little time off.
Yeah, yeah, I could be painting sequoia trees. Instead, I’m just lollygagging around. No deadlines, no pressure, just enjoying the season masquerading as winter in Three Rivers. Here are some photos from a recent walk. Yes, I am so boring that a walk passes for fun and goofing off in my life.
The elephant is quite visible: full body, facing right.
The day had high clouds, so the poppies aren’t open. But they are poppies, in JANUARY!!
The bush lupine* are out too, if you know where to look (and I’m not telling, because this is the world wide web, we were trespassing, and if too many people trespass, then even more gates will appear.
A house we passed has bricks painted as books!!
*Is “lupine” the plural of “lupine”, as “deer” is the plural of “deer”? It is in my vocabulary, but should you trust someone who says “tryna” instead of “trying to”, “remorial” for “memorial”, and “prolly” for “probably”?
First, in case you were wondering, there are actually 5 rivers here, all part of the Kaweah drainage. Marble Fork, East Fork, Middle Fork, North Fork, South Fork, all part of the Kaweah river. “Kuh-WEE-uh”, in case you were wondering further.
Second, we don’t have a river view; we opted for mountain views, since they are less expensive.
Third, why am I not working and showing you progress? Because it is really pretty out right now, and I thought you might enjoy it.
Moro Rock and Alta Peak, with its signature elephant.
I’ll stop bragging about our sunshine now. Here’s Jackson, the least friendly and most fat of our three felines.
Jackson and Pippin, put away for the night, watching me leave the studio. Tucker is safely inside too, just not staring at me.
*“Light” meaning the sun was shining and also meaning I didn’t do much work.
Let’s get the work part over with, and then we can enjoy some photos that might shock anyone who lives where there is real winter.
Three new sequoia gigantea 6×18” paintings are now on the easel.
Next, I battled with Adobe InDesign for awhile. I bought a couple of book design templates, and they aren’t working correctly. Rather than keep tinkering, I emailed the company where I bought them to ask if they still sell such items. They are probably all lying on the floor laughing at the idjit who thinks that something 10 years old SHOULD STILL BE WORKING!
Then I got the bright idea of going to Lulu, a book printing company that Louise Jackson and I used for her novel, Only the Living, last fall. We are about to publish her second novel, and I don’t want to waste any more time fighting with the wonky book templates.
In order to mitigate the irritation and frustration of all the tech hassles, Trail Guy and I took a walk. While it is pea-soup fog down the hill, we have had brilliant sunshine.
Today I expect to be painting in Ivanhoe on the west-facing wall of the library. If my website is functional, I’ll post about it for you to read on Monday.
Thank you for sticking with me through this techno-chaos.
On a sunny morning in Three Rivers, Trail Guy and I took a drive up the Mineral King Road to see how far we could get, and to see what the construction project looks like.
We only made it to the lower gate. Although word went out that the construction crew was on hiatus until the following week, that word was wrong. We had a nice visit with the gatekeeper, who said that she couldn’t keep us from going ahead, but that we would encounter large trucks at Lookout Point. Her job is to tell people that the road is closed, but she isn’t a sheriff. So, not wanting to get in the way, we turned back. We were disappointed that the construction crew was back. However, being mature adults, we soldiered back home.
I only took one photo. Even though it is very green out, this photo captures all the brown and gray of mid winter.
So, we came home, and I gave myself a dirt manicure. These pots contained sprouting daffodil bulbs, and I hope our gophers around here haven’t begun to appreciate them. Deer and gophers are capricious in their tastes.
Reader Marjie requested more cat photos, so Pippin posed for her.
This pose is called The Meatloaf.
He chased Tucker off the rock.
Then I went into the studio to tackle the dreaded year-end bookkeeping. Tiresome stuff.
Tomorrow I plan to paint in Ivanhoe.
Due to the unstable and variable nature of my website (working/notworking/working/not working. . .), I may not be able to post anything on Friday. More will be revealed in the fullness of time.
Due to my limited capacity to tolerate both bookkeeping and tech phone calls, I will just hope the site works over the weekend so that I can show you Friday’s mural progress.
My website croaked. I called the server? host? platform? something to ask for help on Tuesday morning, January 6. The man on the phone said he could see what happened, fixed it, and it would be fine in about 10 minutes.
It wasn’t.
Twelve hours later, it was back, but nothing after December 30, 2025, appeared on the blog, and the 1/2 price calendar sale also didn’t show.
I found the draft of the Learned List from December, but it only showed nine things instead of the twelve I eventually came up with. I published it immediately as it was.
Now I have to figure out how to get my email working again.
Maybe I’ll rewrite some of the posts from earlier this week, if I can remember what I said.
Maybe I’ll just take up smoking.
Prolly not. Fret not. I’d rather eat dark chocolate. Or complain about tech. (“If sin enticeth thee, consent thou not.” Proverbs 1:10)
Wouldn’t you just know that it croaked the day after I mailed out a newsletter that announced there are a few slots left in the beginning drawing workshop and that the calendars are half-price now? Prolly missed a bunch of sales and signups. Or not, but I won’t know. Now the calendar won’t even appear in my online store.
Oh well. Here’s the flyer about the beginning drawing workshop.
P.S. If you want a calendar, email me at cabinart [zero] [six} at sbcglobal dot net because that email works (trusting that you will be able to decipher it correctly).
P.P.S. A broken website is a nothing-burger in light of what several dear friends are going through: one recently lost her son to suicide; another has cancer in his bones (Dudes, get your PSA checked even if your doctor says it isn’t needed after 70—it’s only a blood test, not a nasty procedure); yesterday I learned that yet another has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. That’s all Very Very Difficult stuff; a website can be repaired, lost posts can be written, workshops can be given with empty seats, and unsold calendars can be tossed if too much time passes.
This is a reposting of the December Learned List, one that was still in draft form; the final version disappeared in The Great Website Splat.
Photos accompanying our monthly Learned List are very random this month, sprinkled in to prevent this from looking daunting and TLDR.
Cursive writing is good for your brain, according to The Case for Cursive. (Thank you for the link, Reader Sharon!)
Jackson doesn’t write either cursive or printing.
2. COL might actually stand for “chuckle out loud”, although my friend wrote it as “chuckle out load”, which made me COL. (Thank you, Reader JC!)
3. “Cuco” is the common nickname for “Refugio”. Go figure. (How does “Billy” emerge from “William”, or even weirder, “Jack” from “John”, or perhaps weirdest of all, “Chewy” from “Jesus”?)
4. Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, a professor, historian, and farmer, is the most brilliant person I have ever encountered. I cannot keep up with his podcasts, articles, or books, and much is way over my head. Here is a recent article he wrote on the decline of Western civilization (and for the sake of honesty here, I don’t even know exactly what “Western civilization” means). Can the Dark Ages Return? is a sobering look at what is taking place in our time, and well worth laboring through. (He makes it a little easier by using far more paragraphs than were deemed necessary when we were all learning to write, because he understands that his material is a bit difficult for us lesser minds to digest with our current squirrely attention spans.)
5. I subscribed to something called Tangle, a daily email that breaks down the facts of one major news topic per day. This is what caught my attention from their website: “Most news outlets have biases that are obvious to every American, we are all living in self-curated “news bubbles” where we are spoon-fed beliefs we already have, and if we log onto social media the people we disagree with are caricatured into the worst people possible.” So far, I haven’t made it through a single article, but my intentions remain good. I think I am getting exhausted by current events.
6. After 2 weeks of inconvenience, I found the inner fortitude to stand my ground: when a customer wants a mural but will not provide access to the building, hold to common sense, which is that humans need facilities where they work. (Thus, I will only be painting in Ivanhoe on Fridays when the library is open.)
7. Eighty-Four is the actual name of an actual town in Pennsylvania. Something (a labor union? a lumberyard?) called “84 Lumber” originated there.
8. This large-ish wooden panel of a redwood tree was displayed at Stem & Stone. I stopped by to deliver more notecards and saw that it had developed a problem. Turns out that knotholes in wood contain substance that soaks through paint.
9. Have you ever heard of a Tule elk? I hadn’t, but there is one wandering around Three Rivers. They used to be plentiful in the Central Valley but were a nuisance to cattle ranchers, and the largest ranch in the valley, Miller Lux, may have had a role in mostly eradicating them. (Who knows for sure? I read it on the interwebs. . .)
This photo is an enlargement from my friend’s early morning phone photo.
*Of course they are “new” —otherwise would they be on a list of things learned? Supposedly the Search Engines bring more readers when one includes “new” in a post title. Why do I care? I know my readers, write for them (YOU!) and don’t need a pile of strangers “liking” me in order to feel validated.
