Rules for being human

postal history

A carrier poses on skis, with an 80–pound pack of mail on his back, while on the mail route from Rocky Bar, Idaho, to Atlanta, Idaho. This 16–mile route was one of the most dangerous in the country. Between 1892 and 1913, seven carriers lost their lives in snow slides.

theory of design etc (50 books)

http://publicdomainreview.org/2012/04/04/a-theory-of-pure-design-harmony-balance-rhythm-1907/


a very thorough discussion of design, harmony, balance and rhythm - a book published in 1907

and 50 other scanned books on a variety of topics

when my blog or google is stuck on french

http://support.google.com/websearch/?hl=en&hlrm=en#topic=1224172&rd=1

http://support.google.com/websearch/?hl=en&hlrm=en#topic=1224172&rd=1

my google was stuck on french for a really long time
and i could not read the choices to change it back to english
finally i found this link
and i have to store it here...in case i ever get stuck in french again

this link doesn't work
try going to the little gear in the upper right corner
and try the third item in the column

famous mail carriers & postal workers

this is from http://www.envelopes.com/blog/2012/04/%E2%80%9Cpostalebrities%E2%80%9D/
i don't know how long they will leave the information up, so i reprinted it here.

Famous Mail Carriers & Postal Workers

We often see public figures appearing on television shows talking about what they did before they became an actor, singer, politician, etc. We thought it would be fun to explore who may have once been responsible for delivering the mail. You may find many of the names quite surprising…
Stellar Mail Carriers…
Charles Bukowski, author and poet – who penned of the 1971 novel “Post Office”
Steve Carell, actor in films such as “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Evan Almighty,” and “The Forty Year Old Virgin”
Walt Disney was a substitute mail carrier in Chicago, IL
Ace Frehely, the original guitarist for the rock n’ roll band KISS
Rock Hudson worked as a letter carrier in Winnetka, IL
John Prine, Grammy winning folk singer
The Presidential Treatment…

Abraham Lincoln was the postmaster in New Salem, IL
William McKinley was an assistant postmaster in Poland, OH
Harry S. Truman was the postmaster in Grandview, MO

More Power Postmasters…

William Faulkner, famed novelist who served as postmaster in University, MS
Benjamin Franklin, our famed Founding Father was also our first Postmaster General.
Will Hays, President of the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America served as Postmaster General
Conrad Hilton, the businessman and hotel magnate was postmaster in San Antonio, NM
Harry Hooper, this baseball Hall-of-Famer played the position of postmaster in Capitola, CA after his ball playing career ended
Bill Nye, the distinguished journalist and humorist was the postmaster of Laramie, WY when he founded the newspaper the Laramie Boomerang in 1881
Adlai E. Stevenson, who was the Assistant Postmaster General during President Grover Cleveland’s first
administration and Vice President of the US during Cleveland’s second administration (1893-1897)

Celebrity Clerks & Others…

Bing Crosby, before “White Christmas,” he likely handled many holiday cards as a clerk in Spokane, WA
Samuel L. Gravely, the first African-American admiral was a railway mail clerk after returning from his first stint as an ensign with the Navy; he later returned to that branch of the armed forces for 31-year career as a highly decorated officer
Sherman Hemsley, prior to “movin’ on up,” the actor worked as a clerk in Philadelphia, PA and New York, NY
Charles Lindbergh, the famed aviator winged it as contract airmail pilot
Knute Rockne, was a clerk in Chicago, IL before his legendary football coaching career
Noah Webster, the noted lexicographer was a special agent for the USPS
Foreign Service…

Olivier Besancenot, a candidate in the 2002 and 2007 French presidential elections has worked as a postal carrier since 1997 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris (taking a break in 1999 and 2002 to serve as a parliamentary attaché)
Alan Johnson, the former UK Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer worked at the post office in his youth
Bon Scott, the late lead singer of rock n’ roll’s AC/DC was once a “postie” in Australia
Allan Smethurst, the English singer who was known as “The Singing Postman,” who started out humming tunes on his daily postal rounds for 12 years
Famous though Fictional…
Cliff Clavin, mailman and bar patron (played by John Ratzenberger) on the TV sitcom, “Cheers”
Newman, mailman and Jerry’s nemesis (played by Wayne Knight) on the TV sitcom, “Seinfeld”
Pat Clifton, the main character of the stop-motion animated children’s TV series, Postman Pat
Mister McFeely, the postman on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, played by David Newell
Reba the Mail Lady, the children’s TV series Pee-Wee’s Playhouse played by S. Epatha Merkerson (perhaps best known for her work on TV’s Law and Order)
Next time you buy stamps at your local Post Office or see your mail carrier delivering letters and parcels along your route, you just may be having a brush with greatness. You never know!

magic origami ball

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_852129&v=tGhcTwIJ4Es&src_vid=uyX-T4y_INQ&feature=iv

view from the eiffle tower - view of the universe

http://www.gillesvidal.com/blogpano/paris.htm

wait for it to load
and you can scan 360-degrees

also
you can look at a very nice representation of our universe

http://langa.posterous.com/its-all-about-perspective

Michael Gartner's Column - No Left Turns

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/2006-06-15-gartner_x.htm

A life without left turns

Posted 6/15/2006 9:57 PM ET

E-mail | Print |

Enlarge Gartner family photo Carl Gartner in 1934.

By Michael Gartner

My father never drove a car.

Well, that's not quite right.

I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

"In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:

"Oh, bull——!" she said. "He hit a horse."

"Well," my father said, "there was that, too."

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars — the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford — but we had none. My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

Our 1950 Chevy

My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that. But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one."

It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.

But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown. It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.

Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother. So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying once.

For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps — though they seldom left the city limits — and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

The ritual walk to church

Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.) He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church.

He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."

After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. (In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored.") If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out — and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream.

As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?" "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

"No left turns," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."

"What?" I said again. "No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights."

"You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works."

But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."

I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing. "Loses count?" I asked. "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."

I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.

"No," he said. "If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."

My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90. She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102. They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom — the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.) He continued to walk daily — he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising — and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.

A happy life

One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news. A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer." "You're probably right," I said. "Why would you say that?" he countered, somewhat irritated. "Because you're 102 years old," I said. "Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day. That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet." 

An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:

"I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."

A short time later, he died.

I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.

I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life.

Or because he quit taking left turns.

Michael Gartner has been editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.

GOUACHE / Paint / Color Theory

http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color14.html

a long article, but explains things better than i can

http://www.wetcanvas.com/ArtSchool/Color/ColorMixing_Lee/index.html

http://schoolofcolour.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=86&Itemid=606&lang=en

Cool Primary Palette
Alizarin crimson
Taylor blue
Lemon Yellow

Warm Primary Palette
Ultramarine blue
Spectrum yellow
Spectrum red

******
Windsor Newton Permanent White - Gouache
Squeeze it out
Let it dry to remove sizing
then wet and apply
Zinc white for mixing - permanent white for highlights

********
dried up tubes
cut them open
put in a small jar with glycerin
let sit several days
mix with distilled water

*******
Peter recommends NW Jet Black Gouache - a drop of gum arabic and distilled water