Friday, August 29, 2008

Yearbook yourself. From a Kim Komando recommended site

From THIS Kim K site




The above looks more like a hat I would've worn than my hair!

I never can resist these. What's really uncanny is how much I actually looked like this is some of the different 'yearbook' shots except my hair was pale brown, closer to the second one down. :-)

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Your ten most famous Americans

The May issue of Smithsonian Magazine reported on a poll they'd given to 11th and 12th graders, as well as people in their forties or above. They handed them a sheet of paper with 10 blanks and and asked who they thought were the ten most famous Americans beginning with the days of Columbus until now, excluding Presidents and first ladies. The teens, to their surprise didn't name ten pop stars or other entertainment celebrities as those ten. In fact, the lists in both age groups was surprisingly similar.

Rather than post the top ten named overall in both groups, I'd be curious who YOU would pick. I'll post the names from the poll in a few days. It's a difficult choice

THURSDAY NOTE:
Okay, here are the results of the poll:

Martin Luther King
Rosa Parks
Harriet Tubman
Susan B Anthony
Benjamin Franklin
Amelia Earhart
Ophra Winfrey
Marilyn Monroe
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Read this and gnash your teeth, then do something!

I just read Collin Kelley's post from yesterday about Stacy Brown's horrendous experience with a book of poetry, winning a contest and how the publsher then not only jerked her around, but... well go to Collin's blog HERE and follow his links to her story. If it bothers you as much as it did me, pass the story on.

(I'm referring to Collin's August 25 entry)

Pris

Hurricane Gustav

Well, hurricane season has started in earnest now. So far, it looks as if Gustav will stay to our west but may hit Louisiana and Texas again, still not recovered from the 2004 and 2005 devastation. Only time will tell what it'll do. This is the time of year for sweaty palms, supplies gotten in, and hoping your shutters hold and the roof doesn't get a tree on it or blown off.


Monday, August 25, 2008

So, what do you think of Biden on the ticket??

Think he'll help the Democratic ticket win? I would love to hear replies and reasons you think he will or won't.

Patsy Cline ...one of a kind!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

In admiration of Odilon Redon



The mystery and the evocation of the drawings (by Redon) are described by Huysmans in the following passage:

"Those were the pictures bearing the signature: Odilon Redon. They held, between their gold-edged frames of unpolished pearwood, undreamed-of images: a Merovingian-type head, resting upon a cup; a bearded man, reminiscent both of a Buddhist priest and a public orator, touching an enormous cannon-ball with his finger; a spider with a human face lodged in the centre of its body. Then there were charcoal sketches which delved even deeper into the terrors of fever-ridden dreams. Here, on an enormous die, a melancholy eyelid winked; over there stretched dry and arid landscapes, calcinated plains, heaving and quaking ground, where volcanos erupted into rebellious clouds, under foul and murky skies; sometimes the subjects seemed to have been taken from the nightmarish dreams of science, and hark back to prehistoric times; monstrous flora bloomed on the rocks; everywhere, in among the erratic blocks and glacial mud, were figures whose simian appearance--heavy jawbone, protruding brows, receding forehead, and flattened skull top--recalled the ancestral head, the head of the first Quaternary Period, the head of man when he was still fructivorous and without speech, the contemporary of the mammoth, of the rhinoceros with septate nostrils, and of the giant bear. These drawings defied classification; unheeding, for the most part, of the limitations of painting, they ushered in a very special type of the fantastic, one born of sickness and delirium."[3]
Redon also describes his work as ambiguous and undefinable:

"My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined."[4]
Redon's work represent an exploration of his internal feelings and psyche. He himself wanted to "place the visible at the service of the invisible"; thus, although his work seems filled with strange beings and grotesque dichotomies, his aim was to represent pictorially the ghosts of his own mind. A telling source of Redon's inspiration and the forces behind his works can be found in his journal A Soi-même (To Myself). His process was explained best by himself when he said:

"I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased."

Read the entire article HERE.



(note: Tropical Storm Fay is passing in waves over us now. So far, so good)

Friday, August 15, 2008

Tropical Storm Fay

We're on the SE coast of South Florida. Looks like this could bring extra wind and rain. Let's hope that's all.

I've been remiss...

..at keeping my blog up in a more timely fashion.

My haiku for the day.



powderpuff blooms
tumble free in the wind...
changing clothes

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Oranges and Sardines interviews poets and artists

This is already a fascinating series of ongoing interviews. You can scroll to what is currently the second interview down to find mine by clicking HERE.

I hope more come in. Thanks again, Didi!

Pris
PS Mine's a lot further down than second now. I really enjoying reading these!

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Poets/Writers How do you keep track of submissions?

Everybody does it in different ways, I would imagine. When you have only a few submissions/acceptances/rejections, a folder of paper works just fine..or did for me. Soon, the folder was filled with scribblings of what poems were rejected HERE and accepted THERE and I could make no sense of it.

About two years ago a friend set up an Excel file. Three tabs. Accepted. Rejected. Submitted. On each page is a place for poem name (or haiga jpg name), Journal submitted to, Year, date, and a column for extraneous information. When a reply comes to a submission, all I have to do is right click to the left of the line, highlighting it, choose 'cut' from the drop down menu, hit the accepted or the rejected tab, and right click to the left of a blank line, then paste. So easy!

Since these can be 'sorted' alphabetically, it's easier to double check on a poem before submitting, too.

What method do YOU use. Tell?

Pris