The Makers of Quilts

I just went to an incredible art show at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland, Oregon. The show is quilts and works on paper by women from Gee's Bend. Gee’s Bend is a small, rural community southwest of Selma, Alabama. Quilting skills are passed down from woman to woman, going back six generations. The composition, colors, and sewing skills evident in these quilts awakens new creative synapses in the viewer's brain!

The show also includes Textile Assemblages by Kris Hoppe. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the works by the less famous Hoppe, a resident of Ashland. The photo above is of part of one of her quilts and, alas, doesn't really do it justice. Her quilts make your eyes jump, your brain swim, and your heart smile. Viewing her artwork and the quilts by the women of Gee's Bend was one of the best hours I've spent, comparable to the hours I spent in the Tate Museum of Modern Art in London. I highly recommend this show! I am so lucky to live in Ashland, OR, where the cultural advantages rival London. (The Oregon Shakespeare Festival plays rival anything I saw in London too, by the way.)

Seeing the show was especially fun on this of all days, by the way. Today We-Envision.com shipped their latest iPhone app. Guess what? It's quilts! For only $0.99, Quilt Envi lets you keep a collection of antique, Amish, and contemporary quilts in your pocket, on your iPhone.

40 years ago today!

The year 1969 was a difficult year for many. People in the U.S. had grown cynical after the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and the re-election of Tricky Dick. There was racial unrest, war protests, and drug arrests. On June 27th, Life magazine published portrait photos of all 242 Americans killed in Vietnam during the previous week. But on July 16th at 13:32 UTC (9:32 a.m. local time), the bad news took a breather. People gathered around their TVs to watch as a Saturn V rocket launched Apollo 11 from the Kennedy Space Center. This would be the first mission to land people on the moon!

A condensation cloud, shown in the picture, formed around an interstage as the Saturn V approached Mach 1, one minute into flight. Saturn V entered orbit 11 minutes later. After 1.5 orbits, the S-IVB third-stage engine pushed the spacecraft onto its trajectory toward the moon with the trans-lunar injection burn. About 30 minutes later, the command/service module pair separated from this last remaining Saturn V stage and docked with the lunar module still nestled in the lunar module adaptor. After the lunar module was extracted, the combined spacecraft headed for the moon. (The third stage booster headed toward the Sun.)

Even those who were in despair over the state of the country celebrated. Well a few nay-sayers said the money should have been spent to reduce hunger, bring the troops home, etc. But certainly all of us future nerds celebrated. This was a huge achievement brought about by the makers of things: the engineers, designers, scientists, and project managers, and of course Neil, Buzz, and Michael.

Are newspapers dead?

Do you still read a newspaper (an actual tree-based newspaper with ink)? I read my local newspaper (The Mail Tribune) everyday. I skip some of the local articles, especially if they involve fishing or boating or anything OryGun-ish. I also read other newspapers occasionally at the coffee shop (and a variety of papers online, but those don't count for this inquiry).

I am often disappointed by the local paper and not just because it focuses more on made-up Ashland controversies and local business men (always men, by the way) than stories from Africa, Israel, Iran, the Soviet Union, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgzstan and all the other stans. I'm also disappointed because I find myself checking the top right corner for a clock (I'm a Mac user) or sometimes the bottom right corner (I use a PC too), and there's no clock! I also am just dying to click on words I don't recognize to get a definition. And why isn't Google reachable from the newspaper? Once a photo in the newspaper happened to include a little triangle and I tried to tap it to start the video! Alas, I fear that I will soon live entirely in the virtual world and won't understand anachronisms like tree-based delivery mechanisms for news and entertainment. How about the rest of you? Dear readers, do you read a newspaper? Thanks for commenting.

I <3 my iPhone!

I made the sketch to the left on my iPhone! It's of a homeless person who was sitting near me. If you read my Twitter stream, which is a highly-rated cure for insomnia, you will know that I spent Saturday morning waiting for the Ashland, Oregon July 4th parade to start and then spent two hours watching said parade. Now, what does this have to do with a weird looking sketch, and for that matter, what does it have to do with "the makers of things," you may be wondering? Well, here's the scoop. I couldn't have waited for two hours if it weren't for my favorite toys and delectable foods, made by engineers, baristas, chefs, and other skilled artisans. While waiting for the parade, I sat outside the Mix Sweet Shop, sipping a delicious latte, eating a fantastic tayberry, pecan, bran cake, using the shop's wireless access point, and sketching on my iPhone. The Mix Sweet Shop is top-notch, by the way, probably my favorite coffee shop in Ashland after the Rogue Valley Roasting Company.

A few years ago I would have brought my Macintosh to the parade to stay busy while waiting. No need this year! This year I had my iPhone. The iPhone gave me access to an ocarina for practicing my limited musical skills, a leaf trombone for displaying my limited skills on the World Stage, a terrific art collection, a space museum, and a sketch pad. The iPhone lets me be a Renaissance woman! If I eat many more of those delicious tayberry cakes, I will start to look like a Baroque woman (something from a Rubens painting possibly). Well, no worries. My personal trainer is working on an iPhone app!