All of 2017
Static8 Journal Entries

Well. um. Happy New Year!

I have had some creative down time... I never completed the posts for my daily drawing month in November, I didn't post again after that, and, most importantly, I did not post my annual First of January year in review.

I've been doing a Jan 1st post for about a million years, and this is the first time I've ever missed it!

My Excuses: I got busy. Then I got busy with the holidays. And then I got sick with a bad and lingering flu.

I'm feeling better now, so, here's the plan... I will fill in older posts as I get the time. I will back date them, but I will post them here on this page in the order that I type them.

I have deleted the rest of this page in order to encourage my participation in this plan: it looks kind of empty around here, doesn't it??! Look! You can see the bottom of the page! hello, rift?! Type something, rift!!!

*laughs*

for Inauguration Day:
I stand on the side of LOVE.

Looking down at an Egret in the Rain.

Yay Mail! and Yay Month of Letters!

Okay, so you know the State of the Blog is way behind... so what is the State of the Postcards?? Well, there's good. and bad. and normal.

Good: I got a slow start at the beginning of the month because I was not feeling well... but I am catching up big time and am on track to have a regular month. During a regular month, I send out about 130 postcards and notecards! Yay Mail!

Bad: I am very behind on my mail log. What's involved here? I scan my incoming mail and type it into my mail log and then postcards need to be registered with certain websites. I'm still dealing with december mail, here! ack!

And Normal: xmas Thank You notes, not written yet. Probably won't be sent until March or so! haha! yep. this is normal.

My letter writing work space in Dec when I was writing Amnesty International protest letters for Write for Rights. I thought the Star Trek stamps were appropriate! and I'm still decorating my envelopes with my Wide markers.

Sent: 1 GR Welcome PC

Sent: 1 GR Welcome PC
+ 1 Swap-Bot PC

Sent: 1 condolence card

sighs. Last year I lost track of how many condolence cards I sent. And this year is starting out the same. This is the second sympathy card I've sent this year, already.

It's a hard thing to do. It's sad and there is nothing you can say on a card that will help. But, believe me, it is very very important that you write and send something!

Sent: 3 welcome postcards

I cut up a couple world maps to make a bunch of postcards this past weekend. They came out amazingly well! I put 11 of them in the this morning's mail.

Also Sent: 2 welcome postcards
+ 2 letters
= 15 total bits of mail today!

Haha! So much for taking pics of my mail every day! (I've not posted anything here for a week.) Truth be told, I got bored of the pics because I was only sending one or two postcards every day last week. And I ran out of time to get creative with the backgrounds.

So, here is what I worked on this weekend, with the standard boring background... tho I do like the Copic markers as props! :)

Sending on Monday: 4 letters
One to a friend, one swap-bot notecard
and two swap-bot Interest Me in a Book notes

Oh, and I love to use digital paper as belly bands when I send standard letter-size paper in the US#10 envelope... You can't see it in the pic, but the brownish dot paper is very beautiful and is included in this set, made by my friend Linda at Happy Print Club: Tea Time Stationery Printables. And yes, there's tons of free printables on the Internets... but I prefer to support artists, financially!

I guess I forgot to post anything here, last weekend... Yeah, that uploading a photo every day is going Great, isn't it??! haha!

So this week, I've been working on the february postcards for the postcard group I host. I like to send a postcard to everyone who participates. It was a fun and joyful thing to do when the group was small. Last year, the monthly exchanges hit 50 and 60 participants, which was more difficult: I would spend hours every evening for most of two weeks writing postcards. I enjoyed it, but it was taking over my life!

This year, the group is up over 70 players every month. I've simplified my process by typing my message on the postcards instead of writing. It has helped immensely. It's not as personal, but I can type a lot more since I can reduce the font size. And of course, things go much more quickly now. We are back to having fun and joy again!

Here's a pic of my work space as I'm cutting up the 2nd half of the postcards...

As I cut out each postcard, I arrange them by country. I send out International postcards first since it takes them a bit longer to get to where they're going.

When I cut up the USA postcards, I arrange them by zip code so I can send to the east coast first, which is the furthest away. Closest locations -- California, Oregon and Washington state -- are sent last and only take a day or two of travel time.

Before I printed all the postcards, I did stress a bit about the wordage I was typing. When I was hand-writing my postcards, I would practice what I wanted to say and my words would change as I edited myself. And that doesn't happen when I'm typing my words. I guess in the future, I need to actually write my stuff a few times over before I go to the computer to type it!

It's a big project, and I love it. The people are wonderful and kind and I always enjoy conversing with them... both online and in the post!

There is a mailing campaign aimed at the US White House for the Ides of March...

And I intend to participate and inundate!!!

I made a postcard which I am offering as a free download. The PDF has two single-sided postcards on letter sized paper. Print it up on card stock at Actual Size and cut it on the crop marks to create two 4x6inch postcards.

Write your comments on the back. Put a Postcard or Forever Stamp on the front... 34¢ is all that is required. Then mail on 15 March 2017.

Free Printable: #TheIdesOfTrump postcard

Today's outgoing mail included a postcard protest directed at the Department of Education.

I'm looking forward to the big postcard protest of the 15th of March...
The Ides Of...

My partner and I have adopted Piper the guinea pig!

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is my favorite chapter in The Wind in the Willows and I love the name Piper. I think she is named appropriately: her webpage at the humane society mentioned that she's talkative, and loves to sing!

Piper is about 6 months old. Her intake papers make me sad. This is the paperwork filed out by the previous caretaker who surrendered her to the humane society. They list her name as Brown. Sighs, that's not a name. That's not even a description, since she's yellow and white.

And How often is your pet handled? Not Multiple times per day, and Not Daily... but weekly. Which probably means less. Sad, because she is very friendly. Definitely not shy or timid, which is almost a joke.

And her Problem Behaviors are Chewing and Escape Artist... *giggles* I wonder if they kept her in a cardboard box!!!

(In case you don't know, guinea pigs and all rodents are SUPPOSED to chew! Their teeth grow continually and they have to chew hard things like wood to wear them down. Trimming their teeth is a routine procedure at your veterinary appointments.)

Here's Piper at home, accessing the escape possibilities. ;)

Thanks to one of my friends over at GoodReads, I am going to attempt another month of daily blogging. The Blogging from A to Z Challenge sounds do-able and fun... Every day's topic is to begin with each letter of the alphabet. So rather than an infinite number of topics I could be typing about, I'll be more limited and hopefully not as overwhelmed! :)

So. Art. Yeah, capital A art!

Yep, I love Art. But this post is actually about me. I am an Artist. I don't throw that word around lightly, but I definitely own it.

I am a photographer and I share my photos with the world: here on my web site and on the postcards that I send out.

I am not a professional and I have never made money on my art. I don't have to worry about such things because I have a decent day job which pays me a living wage. That's not to say I'm opposed to making money on photos, I'm just not interested in it right now. And I don't consider money to be an indicator of my success.

Success, to me right now, is simply knowing that I've brought a smile to someone's face when they are standing at their mailbox. :)

P.S. I do not have comments enabled here on the blog. I just don't have the time to maintain them. If you wish to say something to me, my email and my PO box are listed in the sidebar on the right. Happy Day, rift

P.P.S. Another good A word, that I felt bad about passing by: Abecedarian

And Another Thing: I have Announcements to make, which I will be typing soon and post-dating. They'll be at the top of this page in the next day or so!

Before Piper was brought to the local humane society, she was kept with a male guinea pig. uh huh.

Greenhill Humane Society fostered Piper for a month, and there were multiple vet appointments before she was up for adoption. Her last ultrasound was on 14 feb, Rechecked abdominal ultrasound... Unlikely to be pregnant, ok for adoption.

Well, yeah. Humane Society people were very confident and I totally assumed they knew what they were talking about!

But last thursday, I came home from the day job, spent some time with Piper and realized she was very pregnant. I could see a very active fetus on her left side, and a more relaxed fetus on the right side of her tummy. and more fetuses hanging out underneath? eek!

I looked up Guinea Pig gestation -- 70 days -- and did the math. If Piper got pregnant on the very morning that she was brought in to the humane society, the babies would be born on sunday 26 march. That gave me a time-line to work with.

Basically, SOON!!!!

ha. I worried as Piper got more round every day. And more round!

Finally: Friday 24th of March, around noon. Two babies born!!!

I am so surprised and amazed that there are just the two. It means that I have meet and become acquainted with both before they were born!

It took a couple of minutes, but soon I could tell who was the active baby, who I had called a tap dancer as a fetus, from the smaller, relaxed baby, who just stretched every once in a while inside Piper. Tap Dancer is much bigger, and the stretcher is practically a runt.

They are quite adorable. In all my years of taking care of guinea pigs, I've never had to care for babies, so this is new and wonderful and terrifying and anxiety producing for me!

I love reading!

And Birds are cool too. Sometimes I read books about birds. The biggest reason why I like birds, is because they are almost always available to be photographed! Even when you don't have a bird feeder. :)

But this post is actually about books. I have a terrible habit of buying more books than I can read. I'm not sure of the exact count, but I'm positive that I have 60 or 70 books here, that I've bought but haven't yet read. Yeah, there are piles of books all over the place!

Including on my kindle! A curse on those Daily Deals. (The book is 2$! Today Only! and I meant to read it some day, anyway!) (Arg!)

Haha!

One of my piles. These are some of the books I got for xmas. A couple of the books, I have read. Most I have not! There are three bird books in this pile. :)

I have had a very happy relationship with computers since my Dad got a TRS-80 when I was a kid! I eventually minored in Computer Science at university. I got As and Bs, but the programming classes were more difficult... school stuff came pretty easily for me, so it was a surprise when I actually had to think.

I never wanted a computer job, because I knew if I worked on or with computers all day I would not want to play with the computer on my own time.

But every once in a while, I do think I want to try with the programming again. I'll buy a new book about some random language, and then I will realize I don't have time to read the hefty book, let alone learn anything!

ha, but some day I will get bored with my regular books, and I'll dig out one of those old programming books...

Drawing is one of those random things I like to do, except, like blogging, it seems to only happen in concentrated daily challenges like this one. I usually do my daily drawing challenge in November.

(ha, I just remembered I ran out of time to upload all my drawings from last november! Need to do some scanning and pre-date a few more blog entries, I guess.)

Anyway. I usually do a half-decent job when I draw... as in you can mostly tell what it is I'm drawing! And drawing is a skill and I can easily improve, just by practicing every day. Thing is, I've got a million other projects that I work on every day as well. Just have to let some stuff go.

I discovered Project Gutenberg in 1997 or 98. I think the first book I read on my computer was Alice in Wonderland... or maybe it was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I read both, early on and it was the combination of two of my loves: books and computers!

I bought a Palm handheld device, at some point. I loved that thing! I could read old Gutenberg books, or buy new books from Fictionwise (now defunct). Plus I could play Sudoku and an awesome pinball game.

Eventually the battery went out. Instead of fixing it, I bought an Amazon Kindle. Which I'm still reading today, even though it has a couple of micro cracks in the screen and is slow as dirt. :)

When I bought the kindle, the deal I made with myself was that I would only have one (bought and paid for) book at a time. If anything else came up while I was reading my one, I would get the free sample.

This worked brilliantly for years!

I have still bought more than I can read of the dead-tree books. But my digital collection has remained manageable. I had tons of free samples, but just the one book I'm currently reading.

Until recently.

I signed up for this stupid Daily Deal thing at GoodReads. And, as I mentioned before: A curse on those Daily Deals. The book is 2$! Today Only! and I meant to read it some day, anyway.

Lordy. And, the bought-but-unread books are piling up on my Kindle as well as in real life. But at least I'm not paying 10+$ for these books I might not ever read! *giggles*

The kindle, with some dead-tree books I've read recently.

Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life's light to be determined by the darkness around me.
~ Sojourner Truth

I am a human rights activist. I do my best to Fight the Good Fight of Freedom for everybody on the planet. My activism through letter writing and postcard sending is an important part of my life.

I am a letter writer for Amnesty International's Urgent Action Network. It's been a while since I've been super active: I used to take on an Urgent Action every weekend. These days, I am not quite so dedicated: I'm writing one case a month.

And I take on other mailing campaigns, as I see them: I've sent postcards for the blitz to Betsy DeVos to #DefendPublicEducation and I sent a bunch of postcards for the The Ides of Trump.

The baby guinea pigs are now 2 weeks old. They are definitely the picture of cuteness! Still no names, yet, but I am pretty sure the Big One is female and the Little One is male. We've got a vet appt next week to be sure.

Taking care of guinea pigs is part of my activism for animals. Guinea pigs, as a species, have been so abused by humans that their name is synonymous with experimentation. It is part of my mission in life to love and care for them.

And the gardening...

We have had a Community Garden plot since 2009. I still don't consider myself a real gardener... I just pretend: I'm mostly there for the photo opportunities, but I'm happy to get a few zucchini and sun gold cherry tomatoes out of the deal as well! :)

The Community Garden is about a mile away, and right on the bike path that follows the creek which runs near my home. It's a lovely walk, and I go out to the garden most every weekend all through the winter. During the spring and summer, I usually have to drive there because I've got baby plants or tools or compost.

Our go to veges that we plant every year are: Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, Zucchini, Lemon Cucumbers, Sweet Potatoes, Butternut Squash. We do have some Strawberry plants, but only get a handful of strawberries every year. After that, we experiment with new veges every year.

I practice Veganic gardening, for the most part. That means Organic (no pesticides, organic starts and seeds) and Vegan (no animal-based compost, no attempts to kill slugs or other critters).

The only non-vegan thing I do is the very occasional vermicompost: We've got a worm bin at home... keeping and using worms as pets is not vegan, but it helps the earth so much I think the end justifies the means... but I am quite ambivalent about it.

We started this year's garden Today! I don't have very good luck planting seeds, so we usually buy most of our veges as seedlings from Saturday Market. Today we got Snap Peas, Cauliflower and a new experiment Cherokee Lettuce.

I'm looking forward to warmer weather so we can fill up our space with plants and flowers!

Yep, I'm crazy for horses!

I graduated college with a BS in Equine Science... nope, I didn't go into the business: the summer jobs I had taught me that working with horses is extremely hard work for little pay. :) But I would not have done it any other way, my misdirected schooling got me where I am, and I'm quite happy here.

I do sometimes miss riding horses. I rode dressage, and enjoyed it. But now that I'm vegan, I know it's wrong to enslave a fellow earthling.

So these days, I occasionally draw horses but that's the extent of it.

I'm an extreme introvert. Toss in some shyness and some social anxiety. Yep, that's me!

I love open space. I do not want humans in my bubble. My bubble is pretty big. I'd rather not talk to you... but if you want to type or write, I'm all for it!

I am pretty serious about keeping my journal. In the past, this has manifested as Daily Stories, Morning Pages, Art Journals, and just Filling Up Note Pads.

Currently I am journaling digitally on the weekends, adding photos, blog posts and emails... And then printing and adding paper notes, written journal pages and random ephemera... And then binding it all up into a wire-bound book!

This has worked really well for me for several years.

Well, except I perpetually don't have time for this project. So, I'll print and bind a couple months here and there, and then much later I'll do a couple more. Not sure how long it's been since I've completed a full year!

And, you know? I am completely okay with that! I do journal on a consistent basis... it's just the form that's somewhat inconsistent!

Yeah, if I only write one blog post a year, this is the one I'm going to type! :)

It's been a few years since I have added to the Classics List. But this year, I've read The Catcher in the Rye... Which brings my Classics total to 12 of 46:

2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
9. 1984, by George Orwell
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
57. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron

And, I am excited to report, I've read at least one book from each year's Top Ten list...

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
  
• The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
  
• Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
  
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
  
• Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher
  
• And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
  
• Beloved, by Toni Morrison
  
• The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
  
• The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
  
• His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
  
• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
  
• To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
  
• (Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer)
  
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
  
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
  
• (The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins)
  
• Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
  
• I Am Jazz written by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, and illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas
  

Yay, Reading!

The thing I love about Banned Books Week is that it introduces me to books I wouldn't ordinarily read. Beyond Magenta about transgender teens??! How random! And yet, it made me laugh, it made me cry, and I hope it made me a better person.

Uploaded a couple old entries. Got some back end stuff cleaned up.

And wishing I could spare some more time for my poor, abandoned web site.

For the month of October, I've challenged myself to send at least one bit of mail, every day.

This used to be standard operating procedure. But this summer, I took a break. ha: no good came of it, that I could tell! ;) So, I need to get back to my mailing normals. Every Day.

So far, so good.

And for November, I will be drawing every day.

Last November, I sketched on 4x6 index cards and my focus was drawing myself in the mirror. It was definitely something different, since I don't really like drawing humans. But I think it turned out rather well.

I'm not sure if I completed the challenge of drawing every day of the month... I did run out of time to upload all my drawings, and I don't remember how much further into the month I got. I will look into this!

So anyway. This annual drawing challenge is important to me because it's mostly the only time I bother to sketch. I do other artsy things: I take a couple hundred photos every week, and I design a postcard or notecard every week. I create several journal pages every week.

But physically drawing something takes different creative muscles. It's a bummer that those muscles only get stretched once a year... but maybe one November, I will keep going into December, and then into the new year.

This is what I hope for. And this is why I keep challenging myself with a daily drawing during November.

I've not been posting... but I have been drawing every day this month!

I sit down every evening to write some postcards, and then I pull out an index card to do my drawing.

I'm using pencils and Copic Sketch greys. Many of my drawings are coloured.

I am drawing from my own photos. I've got several pics of Guinea Pigs Piper and Dawn. I've also drawn some of my postcard photos of birds.

My drawings are not that great. Mostly, I am okay with this. I only draw once a year, after all, and I'm definitely losing my talent with so little practice! Arg.