first Collage-o-holic meeting

left: my mom; bottom: my brothers John and Bennett at the Acropolis; right: my grandma's illustration in World Book encyclopedia; middle: old books of my dad's and a French clock I bought Don in Paris

My name is Ruth, and I'm a collage-o-holic.

I'm a normal person, really. I never realized this could happen to me. I am learning not to be in denial about it. Please help me. That's why I'm here.

I was looking for a little fun. I had seen a nice collage at someone else's blog as a header, so I Googled collage software, and found Picasa's site. I've downloaded Picasa before, and got rid of it without realizing its seductive pleasures. I should have left well enough alone.

After downloading the free software, I made my first collage, the one on my header. I was pleased. And then my friends started telling me they liked it, and that made it even more fun.

I decided I could have a different collage header for each season. So I pulled in my favorite winter photos to start creating the next one. Five sample winter collages later, I began to think what other collages I could make. That's when I made this one, of old photos and things.

My arm and wrist are killing me from so much mouse clicking. My arm is about to fall off actually. Yet I go on. My husband doesn't recognize me without the glow of the laptop on my face. We eat American cheese sandwiches, un-grilled. My mind is ever filled with new combinations. I don't read, I don't care about who wins the election. I cancelled dinner with friends this evening to make collages.

Don and the roosters finally had an intervention with me. Bob the Crèvecœur rooster attacked me, and I kicked back, my clog flying and missing him completely. They made me come to this meeting.

(By the way, if anyone is interested, here is the 12 Step Program for making a collage:

1. Download Picasa
2. Let it load all the photos from your computer
3. Organize photos into an album you want to draw from for the collage. Add more photos than you'll need since you have to play with them to see which look best together. I found it easier to organize an album into a file first in My Documents.
4. Find that album in Picasa, which will show you thumbnails of all the photos on the right.
5. Click on the little collage icon at the top to start a collage (next to Play - oh so exciting!). It will select all the photos in the album.
6. Now, Select All at the top, highlighting all the photos.
7. Click on Remove, sending the photos to the left side in a tab called "Clips."
8. Now click on the "Settings" tab and see the various patterns, grid spacing, layouts, etc., choose what you wish. You can change this any time, so don't worry.
9. Go back to "Clips" and start choosing photos and adding them to the work area on the right by clicking "Add." You can select and remove them any time.
10. You can go back and adjust your settings any time, and shuffle the photos until the arrangement pleases you. You'll notice that it tends to crop the photos in unpleasing ways at times, so just re-shuffle.
11. In "Settings" you can choose grid spacing, which creates borders around each photo, at whatever width you want, and you can choose any color you want! Wow!
12. Play with it until you love it, then click on "Create Collage" in the lower left, and voila! You have a collage of your favorite photos.)

Assistir Filme »

first awakening

Detroit's skyline from Windsor, Ontario (yeah, I know it isn't perfect with this post, but I don't have my own photo of Chicago or NYC at night)

When I was a young girl I was highly romantic. After watching movies I would act out the role of lead actress in front of the dresser mirror in my bedroom.

I didn't think the small Michigan town where I grew up was worthy of romance. My fantasies were in cities like Chicago or New York. In old movies I watched, everyone was rich, so city life took place in vast, glamorous apartments or penthouses, with skyline views through floor-to-ceiling walls of glass. Men wore tuxedoes and women wore evening gowns, even at home. And when they went out to clubs, the men wrapped mink coats around the women's shoulders.

Since my mom was from metro New York City, I also fantasized about her life before marrying my dad, the Baptist preacher, and wished she had played piano in a black satin dress at Carnegie instead of in a polyester dress at the Baptist church.

So when my oldest sister got married and lived in "Chicago" (it was really Skokie) in "an apartment" (I had never seen an apartment except in movies), you know what I was thinking: She had been transformed from an ordinary sister who wore simple straight skirts and cat-eye glasses, into Rita Hayworth (redhead, like my sister) in an evening gown; their apartment had a big, shiny, black grand piano, and there was a wall of easy-gliding drapes that opened with the push of a button looking out onto a fabulous Chicago skyline. And guess what, we were going to visit!

Well, after the five-hour drive, after Chicago skyscrapers and giant red neon Magikist lips, and on into the bland northern suburb of Skokie, when we walked up the short stairway and through the door to the modest, neat apartment with tweed furniture and four-foot windows with short insulating curtains looking out at a blonde brick neighborhood, as a shy nine-year-old you know I didn't give voice to my inner scream, "WHERE IS THE GRAND PIANO, WHERE ARE THE VASES OF ROSES, WHERE IS THE SEA OF TWINKLING CITY LIGHTS, AND WHERE THE HELL IS MY SISTER'S EVENING GOWN!"

Assistir Filme »

the "ruthie method"

Fourteen of us prepped the family cottage for winter Saturday.

We cleaned . . .


. . . repaired . . .


. . . washed windows and replaced the screens on the porch with them . . .




. . . and took in the dock (I wanted you to see how chilly it was for the poor men who had to bare their legs and get into the 40°-something water, that would be around 7° celsius).

So what's the "ruthie method"? That's when you work for 30 minutes, then break for 30 minutes. That's about how it went, eating doughnuts and drinking coffee along the way.

























I wiped down a lot of knick knacks. These Indian paintings were given to my parents by some MSU students back in the day.

Lydia is showing you the tree that got hit by lightning a month or so ago, taking out the television and computer modem. We think the electrity went up the guide wire there up to the power line pole and through the cottage.








In case you didn't already get the idea that I am lazy after describing the "ruthie method" above, I have another confession. My second confession is that up to now I have used the "auto" setting on my DSLR camera for 99% of my photographs. I am determined to learn the manual settings. Rather ignorantly I experimented at the cottage and had my f-stop and shutter speed set wrong, so that most shots were over-exposed and/or blurry.

Assistir Filme »

space

I need it, don't you? Today I am quietly listening.

Assistir Filme »

sumac

Days shorten.
Hours pour out of the cup of light.


Before snow-blue evenings,
before indoor candles remind me
I am born of old centuries


the sumac ignites flames
like pleas
to the abating Sun.


For just a few weeks
it rebels in one last effort
to warm the meadow.


Then it cools its fire
and yields.

Assistir Filme »

Barefoot College

photos from BBC photographic gallery and Barefoot College's web site

You might think a person has to be able to read to go to college. You might assume students need to understand the language of the teacher, or of fellow students, to succeed in school. You might envision that children who herd cattle by day would be too tired to learn how to build water pumps at night. You might just think that a woman who didn't finish primary school could not possibly become an engineer in six months, or teach someone else to become one, and you might be wrong.

When Don and I watched a piece about India's Barefoot College on the PBS Lehrer Report the other night, we sat dumbstruck. (Please, if you have 9 minutes, click on "a piece" in the previous sentence and watch the streaming video.) Maybe you've already heard about it. All notions about illiteracy and education are turned on their head in the 20 Barefoot College field centres around India started by Sanjit "Bunker" Roy.

-

Bunker Roy himself was born in what is now West Bengal and schooled at Doon School and St. Stephen's College in Delhi. He has won several awards for Barefoot College, including the Schwab (for social entrepeneurship) and the St. Andrew's Prize (Britain's largest prize for the environment).

-

photo of Bunker Roy, right, from Unesco site

-

He was influenced by Gandhi's philosophy of sustainable development. Roy said:

There is a mistaken belief that illiteracy is a barrier to the rural poor developing themselves with skills of their own. In other words a rural poor farmer, weaver, potter, leather worker, blacksmith and other artisans, because they have never been through a formal education system are not capable of producing high quality products with a marvelous eye for aesthetics and form. In the rural areas of India today, for instance, there are endless examples of rainwater harvesting structures for drinking water and sanitation still being used today that are hundreds of years old - constructed when there were no architects and engineers.

Bunker Roy started the first Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan, in 1972 after the 1966-67 famine killed thousands in Bihar state. Since then his colleges have trained villagers without paper qualifications to install and maintain solar electrical systems, hand pumps and tanks for drinking water. I could not believe my eyes as I watched village women work on intricate solar panels, taking meticulous detailed notes to study the codes and tiny parts, simply by watching their teacher do it and communicate with hand gestures.

Barefoot solar engineers have installed solar photovoltaic (SPV) home lighting systems and fabricated produced solar lanterns across 10 states of India. The results include:

• Solar electrifying 870 schools across the country.
• 3530 solar lanterns manufactured at the College.
• 28 remote and inaccessible villages in Ladakh have 40 Kws of solar panels that provide three hours of light in the bleakest winter to 1530 families.
• In Leh and Kargil districts, solar energy initiatives have saved a total of 97,000 litres of kerosene.
• 392 rural youth including women trained as barefoot solar engineers with absolutely no aid from urban professionals.
• 350 villages and hamlets(clusters) have been covered where a total number of 12000 households have been solar electrified.
• 195,000 litres of kersoene saved, by replacing generators and oil lanterns with solar power.
• All solar panels have been installed, maintained and repaired by the village people without the assistance of any paper qualified engineer.

The college has also instigated vibrant health care centers administering biochemic medicines (developed out of, but different from, homeopathy):

Since 1986, the Barefoot College has been using biochemic medicines. Many village men and women, most of whom have just a primary education, have been trained to administer biochemic medicines. This is fairly easy and does not need advanced academic qualifications. And since biochemic medicines have no side effects, these medicines are also quite safe.

in Tilonia, it is the children’s parliament, an elected body of girls and boys between 10 and 14 years of age that is responsible for making sure that schools are run properly—an ingenious way of giving children a hold on their own lives—and that of their villages.

Women have been empowered to participate in the local economy and infrastructure, and to lead other women.

Women are very active in the college. Here women gather in a village square to raise their voices in protest against cases of rape. Girls heavily outnumber boys in the night schools and many of the engineers trained in the college are women. One of the most successful solar lamps in use in villages in the area was designed by a woman using local material going to waste. Women have been going from village to village to gather support for developmental measures such as building local dams.

I am deeply impressed with Roy and his vision for helping people help themselves, including setting up rain water harvesting systems in many Indian villages. But I am flabergasted - and humbled - by the women, children and men themselves who learn and build the mechanics of these and solar electrical systems, and serve each other in order to strengthen themselves, their families, their communities - and the environment!

Assistir Filme »

the frost is on the pumpkin

pumpkin pie made with molasses


Some folks think all James Taylor songs sound alike. Could be, could be. Much of my musical taste was established as a teen while I did household ironing in the dining room listening to my eight-year-older brother Bennett's albums on the turntable behind me. While ironing my dad's handkerchiefs and t-shirts I listened to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sing "Suite Judy Blue Eyes." With the pillow cases and table cloths (including the very one in the pie photo, above) I was on to Leon Russell singing "A Song for You", and Dad's boxer shorts got smoothed out to the Beatles White album. To this day, the smell of steaming hot cotton under an iron evokes the warm chords of 1970s folk-rock. Too bad Dad had his dress shirts professionally laundered. Hey, I should have made a deal to launder, iron and starch his shirts, and with what he paid me I could have started my own musical library. I must have worn out my brother's albums, including multiples of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, but Bennett never complained. And I never complained about ironing.

-

Whenever the first frost sparkles up the pumpkins, I think of one of my favorite JT tunes:

from James Taylor's "Walking Man" -

. . . Well, the leaves have come to turning
And the goose has gone to fly
And bridges are for burning
So don't you let that yearning
Pass you by

Walking man, walking man walks
Well, any other man stops and talks
But the walking man walks

Well the frost is on the pumpkin
And the hay is in the barn
An pappys come to rambling on
Stumbling around drunk
Down on the farm . . .

Have a listen:

Assistir Filme »