Out of the Loop Except for Facebook

Yes I have read the pamphlet on the sides of the state Propositions. There are many this time as the causes and the so called causes of special interest groups made their way to the November ballot. I was particularly interested in finding out what the teachers and other progressive groups felt regarding the propositions vetted. (I love that new word in our vocabulary). It is a very new word that is meant to mean prepared for, checked out and qualified for our support.

The progressive groups with the most defined positions are the Democratic Party and the CA Labor Federation.  All of the groups seem to share the same positions. Some of the groups did not indicate positions on many of the propositions but consistently they were for prop 30 and against prop 32.

Here is the rundown on each:

• 30 Yes
• 31 No
• 32 No
• 33 No
• 34 Yes
• 35 Yes
• 36 Yes
• 37 Yes
• 38 No
• 39 Yes
• 40 Yes

The first Rain of the Season

We were over in the Bay Area for the first rain of the season in the Central Valley of California.

I knew it rained because when I picked up the paper in my driveway when we got home, it was drenched even through it was wrapped in a plastic sleeve.

I asked my friends at the coffee house what the rain was like. They said it was a very steady gentle rain. It lasted several hours.

These rains are great for everyone but those farmers with cotton still in the field, tomato farmers because it generates mold, and raisin farmers that have grape clusters on the ground. It looked to me like most of this activity was pretty well over. The trees have given up their almonds and the grapes have had a long Hot summer allowing them to turn to raisins. The almond harvest has left a cloud in the valley of its dust that just won't settle. This rain has settled the dust.

Almonds are a major crop. In the 30's through the 70's this area was known for its peach and apricot crops. Huge processing plants were set up in every valley city to can the produce and trucks and trains would haul the cans to warehouses for distribution throughout the country and throughout the year. As prices of labor and water and sewage have gone up, the peaches have been canned in other countries and the canneries have been disassembled for their metal. Almond trees have taken the place of peaches. Almonds do not require cans or distribution. They are an export rather than a product for domestic consumption. The decrease of canned fruit in the american diet can also be noted here. Fresh fruit could be airlifted in from Chile in the winter and Mexico on the shoulders of our fresh harvest. Canned fruit disappeared from our tables.

Almonds are harvested by very low riding tractors with enclosed drivers capsules. The tractors shake the trunk of the trees and all of the nuts fall to the ground. Other vehicles with weird shapes have nylon fingers on them and similar to a weed wacker.  They prowl the rows and line of the nuts and the leaves that have fallen with the nuts in a gigantic row. They scrape along the dirt line as they go and prepare the rows for another machine that scoops of the rows and sends them into 16wheel like trucks with bins on them that take the rows to the nut processors. This year the nut processors could not keep up with the huge piles that were brought to them. All around the nut yards are multiple piles of nut harvest material neatly labels and ready for processing. Many have tarps over them. This is the first year that I remember seeing so many piles of nuts waiting to be harvested. This was often done with the cotton crop as it lies in cased in plastic waiting for "gin" time. They look like big blue caterpillars, in the southern part of the county. Almonds in plies join these caterpillars.

So October is what it is in the Central Valley of California. Cool mornings and warm to hot afternoons. Snow.. once in 8 to 16years and usually in January.

: ) Pat

Thursday Ramble to the Bay

Last Thursday we headed to SF via Berkeley to capture and examine the public murals at Coit Tower and the Chalet Beach house on the great highway beside the beach.

We took off a little later than we planned but arrived in Berkley around 2 pm. A storm was headed into the area and it looked like the valley was going to get more rain than the Bay Area. It had not rained in the valley for four months. This is typical of the Mediterranean climate type that we have in the valley.

We had a lunch/snack at the Cheeseboard in Berkeley. Its a unique sort of pizza place. We had with us, David,   Pronounced...... Da ......Veed. Linzi and Sean's friend from Madrid, Spain. He was sure that he didn't want pizza again. In fact what he really wanted was pasta. No pasta is available at this spot. They only make pizza and one pizza type her day. So the call is... do you want a whole one, a half one or by the piece. They have great salads too. We bought one of them as well.

The pizza for the day was  gorgonzola, pear, and walnut pizza. We ordered a half a pizza for 10 bucks and say down and enjoyed the live music that comes with the ambiance. The quartet was singing jazz/ pop combinations with a little blues..  The drummer, keyboard and bass player snapped out some nice back up to a diminutive a female black singer who was choosing the songs. The sky was dizzly but no rain.

We gathered up the clan and headed over to the city to do coit tower. Sean was still at work and would join us later for dinner.

We found a handicapped spot at Coit tower and the wheelchair entrance. There were just a few tourists there dropped off by their bus. We looked at the frescos and I snapped a bunch of good photos. My intent was to get some idea as to how the people are represented in these murals. I am doing some crowd depiction in my watercolor pursuit. I was particularly interested in how the transitions occur from hair to background on the people depicted.

The Coit tower murals and the Chalet Beach House murals represent life of the working people of the depression/post depression era in the San Francisco area. They were commissioned as part of the WPA. This government stimulus helped keep artists alive by doing pubic works.

While we were their we picked up Heather at her new office area, and she joined our group. With a tourist with us,David, from Madrid,  we had to do Lombard street, the so called crookedest street in the city.  A drive through Golden Gate Park was on the agenda too.  Linzi wanted David to see the buffalo herd. I wanted to get some background shots of the Japanese Tea Garden. I had done a sketch book redenering of a  group of girls dressed in purple dresses. I missed the details on the gate and the prospective of the steps leading up the the gate.  The tea garden was closed on this day as we were kind of late getting there. There were a ton of chair set up in front of the Tea Garden looking like a wedding No people were in the chairs.

We headed back down through the park to eat at Tom Kiang. Tom Kiang is our favorite Dim Sum place. The food is impeccably the right temperature when it is served. The room has table cloths and it is considerably upscale to most restaurants in this genre.

Sean was to pack and meet us there as the younger crowd was headed to San Jose for a big magic tournament. Sean got misdirected on the way from Berkeley to San Francisco. That is pretty easy to do as San Francisco is not an easy city to navigate in a car. He made it and we all had a great meal.

Our overnight was in Milbrae. Its a city on the peninsula, not far from where I grew up. This allowed for us to go take some reference photos of the places that I grew up and went to school.

We then headed south and had a nice chat with my mom and dad that live in Morgan Hill.

It was almost dark when we arrived home. What a nice trip.

Along the way I listened to the San Francisco Giants win their way into the National League Championship Series.

:) Pat 

Finally Fall Weather

Fall weather in the great central valley of California is something special.
Its still a "no coats needed" sort of experience.

Its a kind of weather that some days you want to hang out in the shade and others you want to basque in the bucolically warm sun.

Our city of Merced is an 80,000 plus city surrounded by agriculture fields of almonds,pistachios, dairy, peaches and nectarines. We even have some cotton fields within our city borders.

This year great piles of almonds are gather on the ground and swept into rows and dragged to processing plants. The hulls are whacked off and constitute the vast majority of the tree's product and reason for existence for the year. This year is a another great year. The trees were burdened with branches almost touching the ground. It is the first year that I can remember that there are giant piles of almonds in their hulls neatly labeled and waiting for processing. In most of the years the processing plants have kept up with harvest.

I have been told that there is no fear the price will ravage the farmers because of the quantity. The market place for most of these nuts is not domestic. We export most of these gems to Asia. They are high prized in their consumption. Can you imagine if we got fancy with our Chinese tariffs? Our valley depends on exporting these goods.

Get out there and enjoy some fall if you have any left. The folks in the mountains will not have to water or mow their lawns much longer.  We wait for the first serious rainfall. Here in the valley it may be after Halloween.

: ) Pat  

Modern Speech Writing to a Clear Choice

In the last two weeks we have seen some amazing speech writing and performances by modern political candidates and their staffs.

Its easy to look at what was forgotten. Both conventions missed a classic element in their content. The Republicans forgot to mention the 80,000 men and women at harms way fighting our batles around the world. The Democrats forgot to evoke God in their speeches. Doe it make Republicans less concerned with the military or Democrats God less?  No. Clearly a gotcha moment was shared by both. But now with the quick turnaround with the news cycle, it seems that the focus is on gotcha rather than transparency.

Transparency is the new catch phrases of the era. It reflects are ineptitude in making our points clearly about who we are. Look beyond the rhetoric and see what is behind the organizations.

Its true the parties are on different tracks. The choices of how we get to where will be are clearly defined. Transparency put it that way.  Despite rhetorical devices and beautiful metaphoric images, the message from both conventions is clear.

Presidential candidate Romney is sure that the way to increase jobs is to make business climate ideal for the millionaires that generate job for the country. Supply side, trickle down and less government intervention is the hallmark of his campaign. Reductions in government spending and fraud would be recovered to benefit the wealthy 1 percent that generate new jobs by capitalizing with their businesses.  Military spending would increase because this is were the party thinks that this is where government should exercise its duty. In the campaign they want to eliminate the affordable health care plan. Health care is a major industry and should be protected like a major industry, their losses are their losses and their profits are their profits. Romney is no social conservative so their is no reaching out to the poor or the less fortunate in our society. While he claims he was poor growing up, his sympathy to that is questionable. His claim is that only a true businessman can understand job growth.

Presidential candidate and sitting President Obama has a very different prospective. His agenda is more grass roots. He feels that job growth has to come from the bottom up. Infrastructure and healthcare are his emphasis. His way to grow the economy with job growth comes from people who spend money will generate new jobs. The country will be left with a viable infrastructure. Teachers jobs have been saved through support in people infrastructure. In recent times the Obama presidency lead to investing in the middle class through job support allowed more money to be spent in local facilities. It kept teachers in homes. It supported police officers and firefighters. His plans allowed for major work to be done in our town on roads and bridges and a train overpass. So the economy will begin to grow out of its unemployment by catching up and nation building at home. Its a very different agenda.

Its clear to me that if either candidate gets into office we will need to bring the troops home from Afganistan. We will need to support our growing elderly population, of which I am one. We will need to bring in the rapid cost growth of health care and tuition. We may have to look at what we subsidize in the private sector. Are those subsidies still doing what we wanted them to do. We need to subsidize the programs that help the people that cannot truly afford their lives without it.

Despite all of the hoopla... and I am one to enjoy hoopla, the bottom line of what needs to be done is pretty clear. Congress needs to pitch out its pledges work together with the president and craft a recovery act that will work.

Just my opinion.

Pat

Oliver the Kitten

I have just completed the watercolor book, Oliver the Little Kitten.

I started making from a watercolor notebook that Sue gave me for Christmas. The hand made paper and the the binding were made in India. The paper is so rough and absorbent that making color changes in the watercolor washes was pretty easy and really fun. It was a little more difficult to make scenes that were realistic.  The book by virtue of its media became pretty impressionistic.

What is really fun with this book is that the aspect is pretty extreme about 4  by 9. The 9 inches is the height.

In 51 pages the reader taken  from a decidedly little kitten of about 8 months old to becoming a little more adult at a year and a half.

I have written commentary for the book. It outlines Oliver's favorite activities and how he has integrated into the colony with a couple of human adults and two other male cats.

I have grown as an illustrator in the process of doing this book. Unlike most books that are illustrated after the story is written and the quality of the illustration and the writing are even, this book was made over eight months and there  are some pages that are not very good from the the illustrator's prospective. There are also some pages and illustrations that I am very proud to be the illustrator. 

It was really fun to do a diary of sorts of a nonhuman animal. I also cut my chops on how to do background furniture and day to day situations when painting Oliver in his day to day activities.

I showed the almost completed book. My dad was pleased at the voice I gave the little kitten in the story. 

The illustrative style for this little book is a pen sketch done with a watercolor wash over it. I used .5 lines in the sketches that are made from unipen pens. They are permanent and do not lose their point easily in the illustration.

Most of the pages use a common watercolor palate of yellow ochre, Quin gold and Paynes Gray. Payne's Grey is a combination of lamp black with Ultramarine blue.

Olilver is a tuxedo cat with yellow green eyes.

Each page as been scanned is will soon be sent to my niece and sister who have shown interest in making it into an E-book.

I think that I will take the scans and print the results on a color printer and see if a canvas like paper will work for it.  It might me fun to have as a printed book as well as an E-book.

: ) Pat

1TB The New Floppy

I recently added a new addition to the back up arsenel. Its a 1 Tetra Byte Seagate goflex portable hard drive.

Its about the size of the small external floppy drives that we used to use with computers in the 90's. When macs came out they revolutionized the industry with a hard plastic shuttered floppy made by Sony. Computer enthusiasts would spend hours pushing in the floppy and pulling out the floppy as it wrote to this external disk of 400k. They started out at 10 dollars each. We cheered as the price went down and they became double sided. We even didn't have to turn them over. Imagine that!

Flash to the present. The new floppy is a on TB on a go flex. They sell for about 100 dollars at all the major stores from Target to Best Buy. They do not need a separate power source. They use the the power from the USB port to drive the backup. My what back up. I bought the Seagate version. It is easy to but on your Mac Network and dump off all the data and photos you need. When done, you take the hard drive to the trash. Then unplug it from the USB and store it away. It does not need to be up and running on your network at all times. Pretty cool.

It is true that you really need at least 3 back ups of all your original work. I have two hard drives on my network as well as a personal cloud network away from the usual attachments.

My latest project... well its taken over 8 months.. is a watercolor depiction of our little kitten's life an adjustment to the Merced home. It is painted in an extreme formatted East Indian paper watercolor book of watercolor paper that absorbs watercolor paints like crazy. The current page count  is 47. I think I will ended it at 49 or 50. Each page has been scanned and straightened in photoshop. I am pretty excited that it is almost done.  I think that last page will be a family portrait with Oliver in the middle. He has to share the spotlight with the two other older cats.

This 1 TB portable hard drive is the last piece of mind I have in making sure that the pages of Oliver the Kitten survive. Cammie and Mikie think that it might make a great e-book. 

It seems a little ironic that we were backing up our tiny files that we thought were so precious so many years ago, yet now many people that push so many pixels around the screen fail to back up to a couple of spots. Save those family photos in at least three places.

Take it from one with experience in these matters... hard drives fail. Don't let them be the end of your work!  I am just saying..... : ) Pat