Tiny Houses. A great Concept!

I was surfing the other day, and you know how serendipitous things can be, this popper up and I thought it was something worth comment. Have you heard about tiny houses? Check out this link Tiny House and see what I'm talking about. It's pretty interesting to see how people are living in a minimum of space. Pretty radical thought in America, land of the 250,000 sq ft home. Very needed in the battle we need to realistically start on sustainability. What is the minimum space you could live in? I think with the right setup, I could live in about 140 to 150 square feet. My family would not be as happy in such a small space. Currently we have about 1200 square feet and it seems no one has any space. In the Orient, people are used to living in small spaces, and do just fine. Probably what you get used to. I was listening to Montana Public Radio the other day, and this man was trying to get people to believe that we need to quit building on farmland and create communities that are more densely populated and utilizing what we have more efficiently. Allowing people (all people, especially poor ones) access to land that they can use to farm and produce their own foods. Bring back the craftsman, and small farmers and becoming locavores. Teaching people to can and put up their own foods, and thus stopping hunger. Putting people back to work doing all sorts of work that was taken away by machines. Paying people a fair price for their goods, and receiving fair value for our own labors. Pretty much the opposite of what we have now. I have come across this thinking before, here at Dave Pollard's site. This particular blog helps to understand why things are the way they are, and although it will be a tough road to change that, we will start having to move in the direction these people are moving. Poor people eat junk food because it's cheap and bad for you. Hence, they are more likely to have serious health problems. Health problems shorten and decrease quality of life, as well as cost extra at health insurance time, causing less money to be available for nutritious food, so you can only buy cheap, bad food, and then if that's not enough, it is perpetuated in the next generation because they know nothing else. An unsustainable cycle. sooner or later there will not be enough workers to do the labor required to keep the bourgeoisie in the manner in which they have become accustomed to. A veritable house of cards with lives as the supports. Insanity.
Done ranting for today, Shey Hoy

Painting Part 2

I said earlier I was painting, and this is the
series from the last week. i am using a watercolor notebook made by Moleskine. the first two look pretty bad, as far as I'm concerned. the clouds are lackluster and boring. The clouds in the second look like a crippled plesiosaur.




The First one is a hazy day here in the valley, the second is after I watched an eight minute You Tube video, and got some good ideas and came up with something pretty good, by my standards.















I have one last picture to show off, and that is the sort of southwest thing I managed to paint while my son was swimming for an hour at home. I did watch him swim, and paid attention to him, I was within 16 feet from him at all times. And the pool is only 2 1/2 feet deep.

I think it is a good thing to look at the way light works in watercolor paintings, because most of the paint is transparent, a great discussion of Lambert-Beers law and the interaction of light and matter can take place. One other thing I will mention is that I watched a video from Micheal Wilcox about mixing blue and yellow not making green and recieved some of the best scientific and artistic information on color theory ever. After looking at that and changing my paints somewht, I now usually can mix exactly what I want. It really is a pretty good system. And one of these days, I will break down and buy a set of those paints, instead of havng to make do with others. Who says Art and Science don't make a good pair? Shey Hoy. (by the way, I had a few formatting problems, so I hope this get out OK.)

Painting

I'm painting again, which is to say I've picked up and dusted off my paintbrush again in artistic endeavor. As I mentioned last week, I have picked up a new notebook, and found my watercolors (field set and crayons) and set my hand to page. Such as it is. I have always wanted to be able to draw and paint lifelike portraits and deeper than deep realistic landscapes. So far, that sort of thing is beyond me, but I keep trying. Maybe when I'm 80 or so I'll get good at that sort of thing. I paint some abstract and symbolic things now, and people tell me they like them, but you can never tell. Maybe I need to actually buy frames for the art so it looks like I'm a real artist. My art friends tell me that I really should paint more, I guess because they think I might have some talent. I have listened to them, because they would know, and they tell me the truth for the most part. Things like I'm good looking and make beautiful jewelry. I love to paint with acrylics, I like the ability to add texture and wild colors like the photo below.
I call this "Formed v. Unformed" and there are a lot of details involved that I won't go into here, just take a look and tell me your opinion, should I keep on painting or hang it up? ;)

Curriculum Development, Pt 1

I have been away working on a curriculum project I'm on in Fort Collins, Colorado. With all of the other things I do, this has been pushed to the back burner for the last couple of months. To all of the people I work with on that project, I apologize. Making new things and trying to not use old things is a difficult task at best. Original thinking is a a premium these days, and highly underrated. In the political arena, the scientific area, education, agriculture, automobile, all are suffering from the "in a rut" syndrome. Any new thinking is maybe being held off until after the Presidential elections, or the New Year or some other regime change. My new thinking has been held off due to family matters, but at least I have a weak excuse. Native science has been in full force with me, and writing has been cast aside. I really don't enjoy writing sometimes, but I also feel that if I totally stop, my ideas will languish and die. The thought itself will continue, but the record of it's progress will stop. As a constantly evolving entity, the knowledge section always is past explanation here, and I hope the crumbs and fragments of the basic ideas get through.
This is also a curriculum development activity. A written document chronicling the thought patterns of someone who walks in at least two different neighborhoods in the same city. Many natives call it living in two worlds, but as I see it, there is only one world, one place humans can call the communal home. If I went to China, or France, I would still be in this one world, but the perceptions around me would change of the same place, would they not? Do we all see the same world? I have asked this before, I think, but it is worth revisiting. Would you want to see the world through my eyes and I out of yours? Some days I think the world has gone into the proverbial hand-basket. Other days are much better. Especially days without television.

More on that later.

My newest thing are my Moleskine sketchbook and watercolor notebook. These are the best thing to come along for a while for the writer and artist. Nice lined, unlined and sized pages, great paper, variety of styles, all good stuff. Check them out.