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15 day draw part 3

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I finished this back in July, but then August was tremendously busy.

Prompt 10: The Naenaiaehn Departure

A major historical event that I lacked an image for.

Materials

Faber-Castell pens on heavy water color paper

Reference materials

Soviet propaganda art

Prompt 11: Star

The Vironevaehn planet has no moon. This means that the nearby planet of Naenaiaeh is the brightest object in the night sky. In many Digurtian traditions, is it referred to as a watcher, as an eye, the “burning eye of the night”.

This depicts a traditional Digurtian funereal procession called the “burial in light”.

Materials

Gouache and Winsor-Newton water color markers on Canson Mi Teintes paper.

Reference materials

Children’s book, “The House in the Night”

Prompt 12: Ouryici Map

This one was tricky. I studied a lot of caving maps, trying to get a sense of how to make a map for subterranean settlement. This has promise, but looks too much like a D&D map. But this is the first time I’ve tried this and I’ll learn as I go and find a style that resonates with me.

Materials

Faber-Castell on linen-textured Mohawk copy paper.

Reference materials

Tons of caving maps.

Prompt 13: Shadow

The early years of Veneva were stark. There was never enough food, and desperate struggles to produce it often produced more disappointment than crops. The volatile Vironevaehn climate meant that a good strategy one year might be poor the next. The ascetism of the early years of Veneva is represented here in the harsh shadows of the strong sun, looking over land torn by flash flooding.

Materials

Faber-Castell pens on Canson Mi Teintes paper

Reference materials

Woodcut of the Rio Grande Gorge by contemporary artist David Barbero from “The Carved Line: Block Printmaking in New Mexico”.

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15 Day Draw #1

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Inktober has lead me to do some great art, but October is a ways off and I felt like channeling that energy again. Also, 31 days seems like a lot! So yesterday I started what I’m calling a “15 Day Draw”—I wrote down 15 prompts for the 15 days, July 17-31.

I have some specific art I’d like to produce, but I also appreciate the open-ended aspect of Inktober. So the even days are prompts specific to my project, and odd days are open ended.

The project these prompts are for is my Viropyidiaeh, a wiki of Vironevaeh based on the dokuwiki wiki tool. On this wiki, I’m working to document the history, culture, and details of Vironevaeh. Many details that have been part of my “canon” for years have no images of them—I’ve been too intimidated to just create something. This 15 Day Draw is an effort to create first and worry later.

Prompts:

  1. Monster
  2. First Founding
  3. Flow
  4. Going to Mt. Vit
  5. Balance
  6. Sheltering in Mt. Vit
  7. Bubbles
  8. Second Founding
  9. Hammer
  10. The Naenaiaehn Departure
  11. Star
  12. Ouryici map
  13. Shadow
  14. Solar system
  15. Reflection

Inktober 2018

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It’s funny how loss lands in different ways even within the same lifetime. I bought my first DSLR camera less than a month after my brother’s death. Maybe I felt like I had to make records of the uncomfortably ephemeral. On the other hand, I didn’t feel like documentation after my father’s illness and death eight months ago, and I’ve only posted on this blog a couple of times since then. Stresses have strange ways of adding and multiplying, and, for a while, the stress of committing to posting (even for this humblest of blogs) was something I didn’t need. I might be ready to re-commit to this little journal of my wonders. We’ll see!

I’m back with Inktober 2018. Every day is a new prompt for a new drawing. My personal goals are to learn to use Adobe’s iPad apps better and to share some silly drawings of probably mostly cats with my friends. Happy drawing!

2018promptlist

Apple Watch: Water Polo and Swimming

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I am a verified stat head. I keep a spreadsheet of my swimming yardage. I love to swim on intervals and work against the clock. I always missed that feedback playing water polo.

I recently got an Apple Watch. I intended it mostly for swimming, but I wore it for a few water polo scrimmages, out of curiosity. I’d never had any statistical insight into those workouts.

Below are examples of heart rates for a swim set and a water polo scrimmage.

4000 yard swim set
water polo scrimmage

The swim set is so orderly. The first plateau is my 500 yard warm-up. I go really hard to see how I’m feeling that day. Then a gap, then kicking. Then I take a break before the main swimming set. While I’m swimming, the trace is pretty constant (sometimes even more than this one), and when I take breaks, the trace drops. The fluctuations at the end are 6 x 50s, alternating between sprint and recovery.

The water polo trace is so noisy. They all look this way. You can see my warm-up and some inactivity before the play starts, but after that it gets fuzzy. The whole last 3/4 looks like the sprint/recovery set from swimming. The average BPM are nearly the same.

I love water polo and swimming, but these traces lent insight into why some people like one and not the other. I hadn’t realized just how different they were as workouts.

Tea for December: Week 3

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It’s been a challenging week, but tea has been my companion. At the beginning of the month, I wondered if I would be able to stay interested for 31 days. The more I learn, the more curious I am. This little challenge will stick with me for a long time.

Little tea factoid of the week

Tea is like wine: there are many different cultivars (cultivated varieties) and teas taste different when grown in different soils and in different weather. Like wine, teas that grow in challenging environments gain interesting flavors; many famous growing regions in China, India, and Taiwan are over a mile in elevation.

Unlike wine, tea can be picked multiple times per year. Darjeeling autumn crescendo is the fourth and final picking of the year. For various teas, there are spring pickings, summer pickings, monsoon pickings, and winter pickings. Some teas are made only from specific leaves; Pai Mu Tan white tea is made with the bud and the first two leaves. Some premium teas are even more selective.

With all these variables, there are many ways to make a tea. 31 days starts to seem like not so many days to fill.

week3

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St. Louis: #1 in Civil Rights?

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The Missouri History Museum in St. Louis has a new exhibit: #1 in Civil Rights: The African American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis. I grew up in St. Louis and the title sounded ridiculous. #1? Every school in the state of Missouri requires students to learn about Missouri history in 4th grade. We learned about Daniel Boone and the Pony Express and the Dred Scott case. We didn’t learn about protests or sit-ins or bus boycotts. My school district was desegregated with busing in 1983. The events in Ferguson in 2014 don’t exactly suggest a racially-progressive St. Louis.

So how could the History Museum argue that St. Louis was #1 in civil rights?

It’s a quote. For the 1964 bicentennial of St. Louis, Nathan B. Young wrote an article calling St. Louis the #1 city in civil rights. He was the editor of the St. Louis American, a black newspaper. He argued that the civil rights Supreme Court cases that originated from the city and the civil rights actions in the city made St. Louis a prominent city in the movement. The argument is summarized in the 8 minute video from the History Museum below.

The history of civil rights in St. Louis

The exhibit covers all kinds of history I never learned. Missouri was a slave state. But there were protests seeking its admission as a free state in 1819.

St. Louis spawned four major Supreme Court cases.

St. Louis also had sit-ins starting in the 40s, was active in the 1940s March on Washington movement, and had very active NAACP and CORE chapters.

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I feel cheated that we learned so little of this rich history in school. Fortunately, that deficit is being recognized today.

If you have a chance to visit the exhibit, I highly recommend it. There are several actors playing period activists (ACTivists, get it?), and the woman who played Margaret Bush Wilson was amazing. Stylized portraits of the subjects were commissioned for the exhibit, which was really cool, and necessary in the case of some of the 19th century people with limited period imagery.

The exhibit is really upbeat and focuses on the fight for equality in St. Louis. The negative parts of history–the white flight and the reactionary racism–that’s not a part of this exhibit. It’s part of the story too, but they chose to portray a history that the city can rally around. So little of this history was in my curriculum; I hope that this exhibit and the work supporting it improves that deficit.

Vironevaeh

September 8, 2017

Woof, it has been a month! The ups and downs have been so extreme that I haven’t found the clarity to write. But the stormy waters are smoothing, and I’ll have a lovely post ready on Wednesday.

Vironevaeh

May 31, 2017

My posting has been a bit thin! Between a lingering cold, a new student, and a big conference, my time has been divided. Tomorrow I’ll be posting about Turing Patterns. Alan Turing’s been dead for 63 years, but his name is still alive in the halls of patterns and bifurcations.

#Trypod: Favorite podcasts

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March is “Trypod” Month, where podcasts are asking enthusiasts to recommend their favorites. I only started listening to podcasts last summer, but I already have several favorites. One of the reasons I took so long to try podcasts was that I hadn’t heard of many. I tried out my first podcast after reading an interesting episode, and now I’m hooked.

Podcasts are great companions to life’s chores that occupy the hands but not the brain. I listen to podcasts when I do the dishes, when I fold clothes, and when I work in the garden. I love to learn, and this way I can learn at times I couldn’t before.

I listen to quite a range of stuff, as my favorites list will show. I’m also eager for new oddball recommendations.

BackStory: American history from the experts

On BackStory, three University of Virginia professors of history discuss a topic as it has played out through American history. (In 2017, they switched to four professors.) Topics include the history of church and state in America, the history of scandal, and the history of infrastructure, among others. Backstory delights in illuminating the bizarre and exciting about history, while connecting these topics to the present day. And with professors of history, you know you’re listening to real, researched history. Hooray!

Myths and Legends Podcast: Delightful myths from around the world

Narrator Jason brings good cheer to myths, legends, and fairy tales from around the world. Whether it’s the Norse Volsung Saga, Native American stories about giant skunks that can fart you to death, or Russia’s Baba Yaga, who’s home stands on chicken legs, Myths and Legends is guaranteed fun once a week. And that doesn’t even get into the weekly creature segments, like the butter cat, who steals butter from the neighbors for his master.

Russian Rulers History Podcast: Russian rulers, history, and culture

I’m a long-time Russian history enthusiast; if you aren’t this might not be your cup of tea, but it’s one of my favorites. The host isn’t a historian, he just likes Russian history, and does a good job telling it. Nothing flashy, just the history of this massive and enigmatic country, from the time of the Kievan Rus through the present day. The first ~130 episodes cover the Russian rulers, but from there it branches out. There is a massive archive for this podcast, and it’s one of my favorites for doing chores.

Science Magazine Podcast: The week in Science from America’s premier science publication

It’s hard to find good science journalism. That’s why the Science Magazine podcast is so spectacular. Beyond being informative, Science Podcast is fun. I understand my corner of science well enough, but I didn’t have a good insight into advancements in biological studies, for example. Everyone’s read about hair-brained sounding science studies, like making shrimp walk on treadmills (yes, this is real!); the podcast reveals how these strange studies are often really clever ways to answer tough questions. Science Magazine is a product of AAAS (the American Association for the Advancement of Science), of which I am a member and highly recommend.

Stuff You Missed in History Class: Miscellaneous history from around the world

My gateway podcast. Missed in History focuses on the topics given short shrift, often focusing on women, people of color and history from Asia and Africa. Everything that isn’t commonly taught history is fair game, from the Montgolfier brothers who invented the first hot air balloon, to Maria Montessori, founder of the Montessori school, to a history of Rhodesia. This means the podcast leaps around from week to week, but it also means that if one topic doesn’t suit your fancy, another will. Missed in History also has years of archived episodes.

Nature Podcast: the week in science from the UK’s premier science publication

Science and Nature are the top publication venues in the physical sciences. And Nature has a podcast as well! Nature does a wider variety of podcasts within the main podcast–it features a monthly science fiction story and a monthly roundtable discussion, in addition to the weekly review. Nature also did a series called PastCast that discussed historical publications in the journal. The journal goes back to 1869, so there’s a lot to work with. Nature also focuses more on science in the international community.

Rain in the land of fair weather

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It’s raining in California. A lot.  I’ve lived in the midwest, the mountains, the desert, and the northeast, but California weather is weird. Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert (which I reviewed here) details how California’s precipitation comes in 30 year cycles. Since we only have 150 years of modern weather records, that’s 5 cycles of rain. That’s not much data. So it causes havok. In 1916, San Diego hired a guy named Hatfield to literally make it rain. Just as he started work, it rained torrentially, and Hatfield had to flee a lynch mob. (Below is the Backstory Podcast segment on this story.)

I visited beautiful Balboa Park (home of the San Diego Zoo) in endless rain. I braved bus stops without awnings and big puddles. Because San Diegans live outdoors so much, only one restaurant had indoor seating, and was full of dripping puddle people like me. It was a harrowing adventure for one from the desert. I took a few rain-speckled pictures and fled back to the museums. I was lucky they weren’t outdoors too!

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