Picked up in the Midd Co-op a magazine called What is Enlightenment?, last October's issue. A bit heavy in the "we're so enlightenedly cool we can hardly stand ourselves; Let Us Show You the WAY" in a NeoBuddhist kind of way, but cheerful and some interesting ideas.

One article with interesting places to poke and jump from (and this is really especially for raven_albion since I've torn out the hardcopy pages and am sending them to Dad) is
"A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21st Century" by Ross Robertson [HTML]

The PDF version has the sidebars and the advertisements. I recommend the sidebars, actually if you feel like downloading about 10 pages of colorful stuff.

Share and enjoy...

A quick check of email after getting some Real (Paying)(Web) work done (and before scurrying off to BTV to be support at a MIL's meeting with a lawyer) reveals some unsuspected and heartening art feedback:

a delightful talent you have. do nurture and love it. From a developing perspective, we all love colour, especially children, so rich reds, blues and greens, violets come singing to mind. Also contrast is very important, giving substance and depth to the work. This is where tonal range comes in and is very important in giving conviction and belief to the image. Not that your work does not have these elements mentioned but I just sense from an expanding talent point of view they need to be full exploited. Thank you for sharing your delightful art.

This is from John Graham Inkson, who has recently posted some intense bird paintings over on ArtWanted.

OK, gotta run, just wanted to share.

For bedtime stories/reading tonight, MonkeyBoy and I were looking at pictures in the Autumn 2007 issue of Faerie Magazine.

MB: I didn't know faeries wear shirts.
Me: Some do...
MB: But how do they get them on over their wings?

... an Ocelot named Erasmus (love the name!) ... You can comment for the next 12 days... I have some agreements and disagreements, myself, with this description. But hey, it was amusing, and I like the look of the site. I wish I had the time to play with Flash and do lovely cool vector designs. You can also do it yourself if you like!: http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/
Thanks to nellorat ... this reminds me of the totem discussion she started back in August.

ETA 29 Dec 07: Started off as Ocelot, became Lynx, then Spider, then Tiger. Finished off as Ermine! Maybe one other transformation in there that I didn't catch sight of; the site says it has been transformed 6 times.

In joining Enchanted Folk (http://members.enchantedfolk.com/metasilk/), and fiddling around, I came across Suzanne Gyseman (http://www.suzannegyseman.co.uk/)

Wow. Go see.

Hey jaipur!
from http://www.kripalu.org/program/view//BBEN72/
( Buddha Brain )

I'd like to go to the movies (Pirates 3; Shrek 3; Ratatouille; HP 5ish)
I'd like to make a bathrobe for MonkeyBoy, pants for me, some sort of ghawazee-based long vest or jacket with extra pockets because I hate carrying a bag but I always want the stuff that would be in it
I'd like to take [more] classes in bellydancing, aikido, graphic design
I'd like to go to Kripalu for a weekend
I'd like to get illustrations done for an alphabet book (and get it published)
I'd like to get the computers backed up, cleaned up
I'd like to go camping, join the SCA, do more gaming, invent more stories
I'd like to [want to more than I do] get together with people (i mean, I like them, miss them, enjoy their company but get too busy with family, then not enough private time so not refreshed enough to try to get enough other people time)
I'd like travel to Mongolia, parts of Africa, Finland

Just y'know, because.

...

It's just me & MonkeyBoy for next 10 days; sweetie is taking a class in CO (he hates the travelling part of being elsewhere, and hates being alone. I so wish I could go but he could have the class here, since I love travelling, especially alone...). Plus my dear friend has a birthday, then one of my almost-officially-niece ditto. Oyi. Stuff!

I always stay up too late the first night R goes away.

nellorat asked a question about totems: "FOR MY LJ FRIENDS: What are your totems, what do they reveal about your nature, and what insights can they offer about your current life?" (It's worth reading the whole post).

I replied there, but thought I'd repost her question and my (edited) comment here, since our flists aren't identical, and I'm curious about my LJ friends' thoughts as well.

---

This is -- for me -- a wonderful and timely question. I haven't thought about this in a long time, and it's a helpful series of metaphors for me. And I've been thinking recent;y I need to do some introspection, rebalance, refocus.

-- Raccoon: as the North Eastern American variation on the Chinese Monkey. Curious, capable, can bite off more than it can handle. Not as drawn to Ooh Shiny as a Raven, but similar. Can be intelligent and foolish, sometimes concurrently.
-- Skunk: private, tends toward mellowness, extremely annoying when annoyed, yet never desiring outright harm.

Had some others, but I'll have to consider these a little more. Beaver? Toad? I wear a bear paw as part of my tattoo, but that might be better interpreted as a reflection of and connection to one of my sisters and my brother, rather than a symbol of myself. I will someday have also a very gnarled tree as part of another tattoo, which will represent my spirit, I think (or perhaps more accurately my hopes for it): Old, surprising, weathered, durable, grounded, fruitful. Heh. No wonder I'm not wearing it yet. *chuckle*

I the past I used a dragon as an iconic representation of me/my presence/my signature. I also used a cougar similarly (and generally subsequently). I might have desired the cougar as a totem, but I am sure somehow that it isn't. I was given the nickname of "rodent woman" when I lived in Montana, which referred to my small quick busy-ness. In that light, this was and is probably accurate, and a chipmunk or red squirrel might be the most fitting there.

I don't feel "connected" to these animals per se. I don't decorate my space with any of these, the way a friend's life is filled with frogs. I don't identify with them (I'm not a furry, not even a little bit). It's more a matter of given the symbolism and behaviors I know of these, which one(s) metaphorically represent myself as I see myself? As I am seen? As I am? In turn, what do I want and perhaps need to learn from these? ?

What about you, for yourself?

Would you want others to share their totemic ideas/animalistic representations of you with you? I'm curious whether my self-conceptions jive at all with your conceptions, and vice versa as well of course. (This is of course a fun and silly conversation to have about other people, as well as to/with them. *grinchuckle*)

My car -- a 1996 Subaru Legacy Outback wagon -- needs a minimum of $1100 work. It's trade-in/sale value is somewhere between $500 and $1500 (yeah, right). It has 212,000 miles on it.

Why don't I want another Legacy Outback? They've got room, AWD, reliability (well, if you don't keep them as long as I do), there are tons around, and really, it seems to be more car for the money than the Toyota Matrix, which I do want, despite it having some things I'm concerned about (its AWD has issues and is in fact not being manufactured in the recent models) in general, and the specific ones we can find as well (generally too high a price, also various odd things like silly larger wheel size or sucky customer service or automatic transmissions).

We've been looking at and driving cars a LOT this week, not to mention calling around to see what's available, reading/researching online.... We were out from 10-5 today, just car shopping... yargh... what a way to spend my hubby's vacation...

In my daydreams? A Toyota Prius with AWD. But there ain't no sich thing (and I don't want, let alone could afford, a Toyota Hybrid Highlander)...

In our this-is-reasonable price range? A '00 Subaru Forester. *sigh*

I've talked (er, test-driven) myself out of the incredibly charming and wonderfully efficient Nissan Versa. It's just... there's just too much snow for me in that car. (My hubby would probably be fine, but a) I drive more hills more often, and b) he's a better driver.) Well, and it's new (read: too much money by, oh, maybe a factor of 2).

I just don't want anything bigger than the Outback, or less efficient; apparently I want something that drives as comfortably (to me) as will last as long, while being smaller, more efficient, more reliable/durable, and cheaper. And the Impreza is too small for the dog (who is, admittedly, 10½, and a Berner), at least, as long as I have the car seat too.

I just want a good car that fits what I schlepp and how/where I drive (dirt and/or hills) for something less than I make a year (OK, so I'm not working much, but...). How come that seems to be too much to ask?

Heeeelllllppp...

It's of course extra-fabulous when someone I've never heard of buys something from Whimsical Dreams. And get this ... I even earned a check from them! (This is because I didn't spend my wee incremental earnings on things to give away/use as marketing as they were accruing... but they also accrued a bit faster as well.)

I got a check! **dances** A wee tiny check! But a check! In the mail! That's better than I've done so far, it really is.

And every little thing like this encourages me far more than the dollar amount could possibly do.

Shop to-dos:

• newsletter
• new designs
• cross-post existing stuff on other galleries/check links
• Bricks-n-mortar/vending outlets???
• take suggestions

(Nevertheless, it's back to prepping for a Thursday web-client meeting now.)

Giving people the care they need is not socialism, it's Judaism. It's Christianity. It's Buddhism. It's Islam. It's mandated by nearly every religious tradition and moral code, going back to the Code of Hammurabi: "to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land... so that the strong should not harm the weak." There is separation of church and state, but there should never be separation of decency and state, especially in a democracy, where the sovereign IS the people, and the government an expression of their will.

--Nick Dupree

Thanx to supergee who pulled this from The Sideshow.

Google Moon
Google Mars

and just in case you didn't know, Google Earth

Thanks, Jed!

It was hard not to degenerate into my large list of things I like to do/want to do/practice/accomplish/finish. I think this is symptomatic of my general feeling of vague thwartedness that is, perhaps, an inevitable byproduct of me (being me) getting one of the things I wished for (Mouse!).

I want my Resolutions to push me in some good, growing-as-a-person way. So I managed to avoid that List. Sort of—I made it, set it aside (especially since I kept wanting to add to it), got it at least mostly out of my head.

Also didn't look at last year's resolutions before making this one's, eh, that is both helpful and not that critical maybe. So.

• Have dessert one out of every seven days.
  Mom suggested I phrase this positively (how often I may, not about restrictions). It's specific, which is very helpful in focus for me, large (year-long), practice (not something to do and immediately move on to next item on list), pre-emptive (I'm at risk for Type II diabetes, and this is one facet to move me personally further from the statistics*), allows me unsweetened cocoa, flexible (I can choose the day), and rewarding (I may put silver star stickers on the calendar days I succeed, at least to start). I understand dessert to mean treats from candy bars to creme brulee, independent of whether a meal happened first, but does not include yogurt or fruit, even if it's after dinner.
• Write about the books I read.
  Preferably here. I missed doing the 50 Book Challenge this year, although I don't feel a need to post there. I want to take a little more time with what I read, reflect on it more, practice writing more, aid my memory (which is approximately as useful as cold oatmeal right now). If I toss in a little discipline, I might also manage to read all the unread books on my shelves before buying/borrowing more... but let's not get crazy here.

I'm not sure why I did not form any regarding parenting (lots of work ones (in the work-is-love-in-action sense) made it onto the List, of course). Um. Hm.

( Older ones... getting there? Somewhat... )

Crow's Changeling by Sarah Prineas

Go read it. I'm not surprised Jed thought I might like it.

In a fit of impatience, I give you this before I finish the layout customizations and so on...

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