I received a great little story from Seventh Generation, the cleaning company, about bats, and the author suggested we think about putting up our bat houses earlier than usual this year, especially since the winter has been so mild.
When I was young, I was terrified of bats because of silly vampire stories. Ugh. But as I learned more about them, I became a big fan. Watching them head out on their evening hunts is one of our favorite past times during the summer months. Their flight is so awkward and funny. We also know that each bat can eat around 3,000 mosquitoes, and that is a really good thing. Then there is bat guano, which I could talk about for hours. It is an amazing fertilizer and is known to break down bacteria in fantastic ways. It is being investigated as a method for cleaning landfills. Check out this great story on Bat Conservation International (BCI).
To help bring these furry critters into your neighborhood so that they can start their feast on mosquitoes (what is not to love about that?), both BCI and the National Wildlife Federation have plans to help you make and install your bat home.
It has been quite some time since I’ve written on this blog. I have been a bit busy with 3 graduate courses, work, family, life….
And it will be some time – at least another 3 weeks – before I can post here. I’m supposed to be writing a paper right now, but, well…
Instead, I wanted to share a very exciting guerilla art project that my sister is conducting? performing? What do you say for guerilla art? As a reminder to us all that hope always exists even when times seem the darkest, most chaotic, or bleak, Stacie is placing her ceramic bluebird creations around Ventura. The migration of bluebirds will spread each day.
I no longer live in California but I can follow her progress through her blog. If we all join together, these bluebirds of happiness can spread through the cyberworld as well. Have a blog? Follow her and post about hope. A Tweeter, G+er, or Facebook Fanatic? Tweet, share, update your status about hope and the bluebirds. Let’s help the bluebirds spread their wings and fly beyond the limits of Ventura.
A friend of mine posted this picture on Facebook and I just had to share it.
Who knew that punctuation could save lives?
And who knew that a debate on comma usage is raging among grammarians of the world? Yes, the Oxford Comma Debate is just that. One camp says – Don’t Use that Comma in a Series! while the other camps screams back – Use it! Use it! If you don’t, meaning will be lost! The Oxford Comma (also called the Harvard Comma – not sure if the name is used on different sides of the pond) will use a comma before the conjunction in a series. We wouldn’t want to lump those last items like they belong together… unless it is peanut butter and jelly, of course. What is so funny is that it is Oxford, itself, or rather the Oxford University Press (OUP) in the Style Guide that suggested that the comma be omitted.
But why? My guess is in this time of Twitter and texting, where we have to count every last character be it letter, number, punctuation or space, that comma could really add up. One comma, becomes two, then three – oh the horrors of not being able to fit that message into the character limit! Ambiguity be damned!
So the next time you go to use a comma, remember, it is not a simple matter, and it could just save Grandma’s life!
Today I opened Google to do a quick search to see this:
Today’s Google Doodle is an interactive celebration of Art Clokey’s 90th birthday– the creator of Gumby. I found myself clicking balls of clay to watch them bounce and form into the many characters I have loved since my childhood. Who needs to search information when there is Gumby, Pokey, Goo and Prickle with two arch-nemeses, the Blockheads! How many times have I wanted to walk into any book like Gumby and his pony-pal Pokey, too? Just about every time I read a novel!
As I poked the clay balls I remembered all the early mornings my sister and I sat in front of the tv eating technocolored Pop Tarts (I liked Strawberry with the freakish colored specks, my sister preferred chocolate) and watching the Adventures of Gumby. Hours and hours we spent ingesting food and images. Those shows have left a strong imprint on my psyche; on my visual of life. Episodes and images from Clokey’s masterpieces have followed me, interjecting themselves into my mind’s eye. Some of the images are frightening, like ovens going out of control spitting out more and more pastries, becoming monstrous in size – or the ice cycle people on the moon chasing Gumby around who is saved by his firefighter dad on a really long ladder
But most of the stories are silly and fun: Prickle building a super-humongous crate for the parsnips he knows will come (build it and they will come… )
Or the adventures in the Hopi Nation teaching us about rain spirits, maize, the sun, and Hopi symbolism
Many may not know this about me, but Clokey is huge in the formation of me. As an adult, I went to a retrospective on his work and was blown away – again – by his more art-oriented pieces. Psychedelic kaleidoscopes of shapes morphing into new shapes. Object d’Arts (pronounced object dart if you are a true Gumby fan) moving to music. I sat in that theatre realizing, wow, this is why I think the way I do!
Do yourself a favor. Celebrate Clokey’s birthday by watching an episode or two of Gumby. If you have a child, sit down with him, her, them, and let your minds be blown by the power of art. Truly mind-expanding stuff. Just a small caveat – just watch the Gumby episodes. There are interviews of Clokey talking about his drug use and other “hippy” experiences. Not quite kid-fair.
Thank you, Google, for reminding me of this great man!
For more on Art Clokey, see the official website: http://www.gumbyworld.com/
You can find several episodes on YouTube.
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