???Sculpture of a Foil Hare??? by Kelly D??rer
March 4, 2010
How often have you wished you could draw? Or write, or sing, or whatever? You don’t have to be good to enjoy doing something. I fully embrace the notion of A for effort.
Take Albrecht Dürer’s Portrait of a Young Hare, for example. My former rabbit Bibi did a much better job of recreating it in the course of her daily life than I did this evening with aluminum foil and intention.
Here’s a question for those of you who live with freerange houserabbits. Have you ever noticed (if you ration their food and feed them at predictable times) that about forty-five minutes before mealtime, they start this whole stretching and yawning routine? Well, they do. At least four of my six rabbits have engaged in such activity.
Bibi was a master (mistress) stretcher-yawner. And one time, I managed fire up the camera quickly enough to capture this portrait. I think she did a far better job with her ownself than I did with foil. I entered her posthumously for the mission of standing in front of a portrait and making the same expression. How could I resist? Who doesn’t think their pet is the cutest ever? (p.s. They are!)
Later that same day, which was a Friday, I eschewed actual work work in order to create my own entry for the mission—a self-portrait in front of the artist’s self-portrait. I swear I could have kept doing it all day. And, it just happened I was wearing brown that day. Dürer’s hair is curlier, though.
It’s weird taking pictures of yourself when there are plenty of other people around who you wouldn’t mind not seeing you doing it. I managed to escaped scrutiny.
Going into the day, my plan was to make my 3D sculpture of the 2D painting with Fun Tak, because I could have worked on it discretely at my desk and nobody would have been any the wiser. But today, unlike that January Friday, work tasks conspired against me and I did not have the opportunity to goof off as much as I sometimes do. The trade-off? I am redesigning the Black & Decker DIY books that you will soon find in your local Menard’s, Home Depot, or Lowe’s. It’s the highest-profile thing I’ve ever worked on. I can live with that.
So I present you with this inadequate foil replica of a masterwork. But as I’ve declared on a few previous occasions, the fun part is that I’m doing something that I wouldn’t have, ordinarily. But I did today.
(For those of you paying attention and remembering my “What’s in a name?” entry, my D does not stand for Dürer. It’s merely a convenient coincidence.)
To-do list (2 March 2010)
March 3, 2010
The to-do list. It seems innocuous enough. Yet at the end of the day, you curse it. If you’re like me, your ambition always outweighs your actual accomplishment. Yet today, I did okay.
√ Items 1 and 2
Things to do to finish the fifth out of six manuscripts for a book series I’m writing about simple science activities. Topic number 5 is water. The little projects were written, but I had to organize the materials list, as well as write the two- to four-sentence long book specific introduction and conclusion.
(√) Item 3
I’m working on a new text design for a grammar-related series. The author is very organized. All of a sudden, about forty-five minutes before quitting time (which turned into an hour and a half and me leaving another forty-five minutes after quitting time, which isn’t any specific time as long as we get our eight hours in and the work done), I found my design muse. Yesterday I remarked that I wish my whole day could be shifted about four hours to the later, because that’s when I shift into being productive.
√ Item 4
These are tiny little pre-final changes. They didn’t take very long. No problem.
(-) Item 5
I’ll address that tomorrow evening. I try to write at the office, but I’m easily distracted and there’s usually plenty going on. I’m much more efficient if I bite the bullet and write at home.
(-) Item 6
Well, if Item 3 hadn’t been going so well, I would have gotten to Item 6. I have to arrive t my Curves by 6:00, so I have to leave the office by 5:45 at the latest. Tonight I did not. But I went last night, so it is not yet a big deal that I didn’t make it there today
√ Item 7
I had to pick up a few items for the photoshoot for the simple science book on water. On the list: marbles (displacement), rubber tubing (siphon), cheesecloth (surface tension), clear straws (density), and wooden matches (surface tension). Marbles are hard to find these days. I imagine that’s for two reasons: they are a choking hazard which today’s paranoid parent doesn’t want to deal with, and they are not a video game which today’s youngster does not know how to deal with.
So all in all, today was pretty productive. And I drank some tasty beer and wrote a couple of blog entries, which was personally satisfying. And the temperature reached 40°F for the first time in what seems like years. It’s probably just been since November.
Ask a random person to draw for 10 seconds
March 2, 2010
I believe that quite a lot of people, though they profess otherwise, are secretly hams. I am a case in point. If you asked me whether I was shy, I would unhesitatingly answer with an emphatic YES! But anyone who has spent even the smallest amount of time around me would beg to differ. I inherited an odd combination of my mother’s effervescence and my father’s reserve. The bubbles often win.
But I digress.
The assignment was as stated in the title above. My first victim was our office mailman, Jim. Jim was our mailman when I started my job in March 1995. We are in our second office in the neighborhood and a couple of weeks ago, Jim started his third stint as our bearer of bills and junk mail. I know him pretty well. He is a bowler. I thrust my fluorescent green Post-It™ pad and brick red Sharpie® at him and said, “Draw for ten seconds, please!” Not surprisingly he asked, “Draw what?”
After clarifying that it could be anything, he put pen to paper for a good two and a half seconds. Not surprisingly, he drew a bowling ball. I also would have accepted an envelope or a stamp. I informed him that he still had seven and a half seconds left. “Would you like me to enhance it?” Please do. He added the brand name Hammer.
Back in college when I started bowling “for real” and throwing fingertip, my first urethane ball was a Pink Hammer. It was hard as a rock and is still my sentimental favorite, even though in technology terms, it would be like surfing the internet using a 256 baud modem.
But I digress.
I took my Post-It pad along to my bowling league in the evening, where I figured I could talk one or two other people into drawing for me. My first target was Brett. I know all of his team well, we were on neighboring lanes, and Brett and I were sharing space on the same table. It was inevitable.
At first, he blinked at me like a deer in headlights. Fortunately, I had to go take my next shot, so the performance pressure was lessened. When I came back, there was the upper right nice little drawing. I know Brett likes his tropical vacations so I was able to reassure him that it was was determinable as a palm tree and beach.
The team opposing Brett’s was the one of which the bowler Tom Kasper (of Tiny-bunny fame) is a member. I determined that Tom would be my next artist. That was when all hell broke loose and my ham hypothesis gained some traction.
Though it was to Tom to whom I next offered the Post-It pad and pen, he barely had time to make his nice little sketch of the target arrows on the bowling alley before the next and next and next people were clamoring for their chance to make a ten-second drawing.
Tom’s teammate Craig made a quite accurate caricature of their teammate Gary. From there, sometimes substitute bowler Randy confiscated the pad and pen and gave them to the youngster Jasmine, a five- or six-year-old who I assume was one of the bowlers’ daughter (must have been Craig’s? because I’m pretty familiar with everyone who was on that pair other than him, and nobody else has young children), who drew the second face of the evening. At least I assume it’s a face; otherwise, it’s a bowling ball with facial hair. After Jasmine, Randy made his own drawing, the hypnotizing swirl.
From there, I tapped my own teammate Ken, who was one of the brainstormers for the Tiny-bunny ideas. He produced the second tree of the evening along with what, at the time, made me think of telephone poles but which now I see more as silver dandelions in summer—a hopeful scene from the depths of a Minnesota winter.
Our final contestant was my friend Dick, Brett’s teammate (or vice versa, depending on how you look at it), who plaintively asked, “Can’t I draw, too?” Well, of course you can. His entry was this content-looking face. I see it as someone resting peacefully on a really comfy pillow.
I don’t think any of these people would say they can draw. Would you? I sure wouldn’t. I’m a graphic designer, and I get by because I can use a computer. When my hand is required to manipulate a drawing implement, I am stumped. But in the social situation, the lemmings raced each other to the cliff.
Prologue
Huh. Going in, I was thinking this would be one of my shorter entries but it turned out otherwise. Once again, interesting what happens when you do not choose the topic.
Rabbits and Pooh: it started when I was a baby
February 22, 2010
Well, of course it did, because I get it from my mother. She claims to have wheeled a bottle of Brer Rabbit Molasses around in a baby buggy when she was a girl. And she began indoctrinating me when I was just a baby. This is the earliest photo of myself that I have seen with regularity. It wasn’t enough for her to have her cute, happy baby in the middle of a giant bed. No, she posed a rabbit toy alongside. The osmosing of rabbit love began.
As I have gotten these photos together this week, I have remembered that when I was photographed as a child, these “candid” shots always included some prop to make the picture “more interesting.” If you think that stuffed rabbit just happens to be peeking out from behind the ottoman, you are mistaken.
I was just the right age to get in at the beginning of Winnie-the-Pooh’s popularity. So there was often a Pooh in the photo. This is Rubber Pooh that you’ll see in a few shots. He was—wait for it—rubber and jointed. He was a friend for a long time. He would wave to my mom while she was snapping the photo or just generally be a bystander in the shot. We really liked those big boxes.
Rabbits were never out of it for long. I can remember riding that rabbit-horse around the house. I sort of remember that I wasn’t allowed to take it outside so as not to “ruin” it. I may be wrong, but that’s how I think it was.
We have the quintuple bonus picture for my sixth birthday—Poohs and a rabbit, and opening a Winnie-the-Pooh stencil kit. That was back in the day when things didn’t have to have a screen and beep and vibrate for a kid to be entertained. I wore out my Spirograph. I can’t quite tell from the photo if I had melted Rubber Pooh’s nose just a little yet or not. I was playing with matches.
When I was a youngster, we summered at Indiana University while my dad worked summers only on his PhD. The campus featured a cute little stream where my mom and I spent a lot of time playing Poohsticks.
The rabbit thing came to fruition with the first live rabbit that either my mom or I had lived with. I’d tell you her name, but then you’d be able to steal my identity. We came to have this rabbit, Rabbit C, because the neighborhood papergirl, Penny W, brought along a box of baby bunnies one day when she was delivering the news. My mom got suckered in.
I was eight in that picture. I’m trying to remember if Rabbit C made the cross-state move with us when I was almost fifteen. I know a couple of years after the move, we had a different rabbit. I’m kind of thinking—yes, now I remember. She did not make the move with us and was interred in the front flower bed where I always used to plant marigold seeds. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I still love marigolds.
But within a couple of years after we moved, there was a new rabbit, and there has been one in my life ever since, whether successors to Rabbit C with my mom or, beginning when I was, I’m going to say, about 25, a rabbit of my very own.
Kelly D: what???s in a name?
February 21, 2010
Who were you named after? Your grandmother? Your uncle? I was named after a cartoon opossum. Okay, not exactly. I was named after an opossum’s cartoonist. Walt Kelly, to be exact, author and artist of the Pogo strip.
Pogo ran during the 1950s and ’60s; my mom was quite a fan. I guess there was little debate about what my first name would be. For my middle name, it was between Ann and Lynn. I’m glad Lynn won. I think I remember hearing that if I had been a boy, they would have named me Paul.
My mother corresponded with Walt Kelly for a while. It was at least long enough for her to report that I had been named for him. In return, he sent us his original pen and ink artwork for the strip from my birth day, pictured above. (For those of you who know me, isn’t it fun that the character Bun Rab appeared on that day?) When I was a youth, I remember its hanging on the wall where the hall took a little jog to my bedroom. Now that I think about it, I can’t say that I remember that it’s up anywhere in my parents’ current house, to where we moved when I was 15. No doubt it’s in a box in the basement.
As for our last name, no one’s quite sure of its origins. Our bloodlines are very majorly German, with just a wee dab of Scottish and Irish (in this context do you say Scottish or Scotch?). As near as we have figured it’s Bohemian, which is the more romantic-sounding way of saying eastern Slavic. But as I understand it, the first namesake to come to America traveled from England.
Oh, the things you learn when you call your parents to quiz them for information about your blog topic. An hour later and I now know the following.
It turns out that we’re fairly sure our D last name is Welsh. Bohemian was just one of the theories bandied about. The original D namesake, John, son of Henry and Elizabeth, was English and lived from 1728 to 1808. But that’s not the interesting part. He didn’t just “travel” to America from England. No. Young Master John, it seems, was kidnaped at age fourteen from a wharf in England to work as a ship’s helper on a vessel that was sailing for the New World.
“You mean as a ‘swab’?” I asked.
“Well, you could dress it up a little more than that,” replied my mother.
The ship landed in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, where John met a girl and proceeded to father fourteen children. In 1804, they migrated to Belmont County, Ohio. I grew up in Hardin County, Ohio. I had no idea about the details of this part of family history. My Grandpa D was born in 1907, so figuring 30 years per generation, John was my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. Not a close enough relative to get me a British passport.
My Grandpa D’s parents were D and Emery. My Grandma D’s were Zimmerman and something else German which I didn’t note quickly enough to pass on here. As I mentioned in the tale of my cuckoo clock, my mom’s side of the family is exclusively German. But yay, I have more English in me than I’ve been under the impression all these years. Instead of one-sixteen Scotch-Irish, I am one-eighth so. But still not enough to get me a British passport.
After I had all the D facts straightened out, I went back to my name. I asked my mom if she really liked Pogo that much or if it just makes a good story to say that they named me after Walt Kelly. She said, “Oh no, I was a big fan when I was younger! I wanted to name you Kelly, so your dad chose your middle name.” The boy name would have been Bruce Allen, my dad’s middle name and my maternal grandfather’s name.
I’m just glad they didn’t name me Pogo.
Well, someone had to say it, it might as well be me.
Pogo cartoon from this source. Check out page 27 for all the comics. It was a different time.
Perform a good deed
February 18, 2010
I am not a generous person. I have a hard time giving up my time, and an even harder time giving up my money. So when it came time to perform a good deed last week, my cavalier side came to the forefront. I noted that February is Pet Dental Health Month and that Robbin Rabbit was at the vet’s to have his teeth trimmed.
Rabbits’ teeth tend to overgrow, and it turns out that Robbin had a couple of doozies. For a while (like, a couple of years), I had seen that his one cheek seemed a little puffier than the other. He has had a chronically watering left eye as well. A few months ago, it began to occur to me that maybe these two things were a result of renegade teeth.
Due to a scratch in his right eye, I finally took Robbin in for a checkup (he’s an active, ridiculously healthy rabbit otherwise). The vet agreed that he needed to have his teeth done, which we scheduled after the course of antibiotics and ointment to treat the scratch.
Early in the day, I interpreted this as my good deed, as it was for a creature other than myself and it would make him feel significantly better.
It didn’t take long for me to begin feeling kind of shallow and frivolous presenting Robbin’s dental work as some sort of altruistic achievement. Maybe I would feel more fulfilled in life if I volunteered and did more good. Yet I don’t get around to it.
So inspired by someone else, I took a rare action and donated to Doctors Without Borders. It was a little baby donation of $20, less than the smallest amount that’s given a radio button on their online form. I could afford to give more, or to give similar small amounts to a number of causes.
I don’t want it to seem like I’m looking for congratulations or pats on the back, but at least I did a little something, and that’s way out of character for me.
[Note: because I haven’t figured out how to replace a photo on an entry, this is a repost with a larger image.]
1000 Paces: home to office
February 16, 2010
Here is an unprecedented look at my morning commute! The assignment was to walk 500 paces from your home and take a picture. That’s the big one in the middle. But I learned something unexpected—it is exactly 1000 paces from my home to my office coffee pot.
100 paces: I’m almost to the sidewalk along Cedar Avenue. That’s neighborhood institution Palmer’s Bar across the street and the Riverside Plaza highrises in the distance. (Pop culture note: In the Mary Tyler Moore Show, those highrises were where Mary moved to from her first apartment in the large house.)
200 paces: I’ve crossed the street and am walking along Cedar Avenue. On my right out of frame is the blue side door to one of the neighborhood mosques.
300 paces: Cutting through a parking lot at the edge of the highrises on my way to the light rail station.
400 paces: Taking a short cut through the driveway and between two other apartment buildings. (Pop culture note: some tiny indy movie was filmed here because these buildings were deemed to look like European apartment blocks. It’s more striking when you’re close-up, and I don’t know the name of the movie.)
500 paces: On the other side of the apartment building. There isn’t usually a truck blocking my way.
600 paces: About to cross onto the Cedar-Riverside Station light rail platform.
700 paces: I’m on the train!
800 paces: I’ve just left Nicollet Mall Station downtown and crossed the street.
900 paces: Approaching my work building which is out of frame on the right. I purposely looked to the left a little so that I could include the Shubert Theater in the frame. You may remember the Shubert Theater as a character in one of my early posts.
1000 paces: In the building, up the elevator to the 11th storey, into my office, and through to the kitchen. My coffee pot is the little one. In the almost fifteen years that I’ve worked for my company, I remain the only person who drinks decaf. But that’s in the morning. I enjoy regular coffee after lunch.
And there you have my ten minute journey. That was fun. I might have to do a series of these 1000 pace walks.
Collection: tasty beverage photos
February 15, 2010
My interest in taking photos of the beers and wines that I’ve sampled began in the summer of 2008. I’m trying to remember what the catalyst was, because I’ve liked better beers for a long time. I think I simply realized that it was an easy way to keep track of what I’ve tried.
So the first time I have something, I make a photographic record. You will notice a lot of five brands of beer—Lagunitas, Bell’s, Sierra Nevada, Summit, and Surly—because those are my favorites and there are many regular varieties of each, plus a steady output of seasonals and limited editions. And as I acquired the branded glassware for each of those breweries, I have retaken some of the photos so that the beer can be pictured in its native glass. I usually take three shots, so that if the focus is off, I have others to choose from. The top half of this photo are the ones that are already posted to my Flickr set. The bottom half is the unsorted backlog of new photos.Minnesot-ah: summer hoorah!
February 14, 2010
These photos sum up a lot about Minnesota. There is my Minnesota Twins baseball cap. There is a large fiberglass golden gopher (the state rodent). There is Summit Beer. There is Summit Beer on a stick. It is a gorgeous, sunny day at my perfect temperature of about 75°F/24°C. And all of this is happening at the Great Minnesota Get Together, otherwise known as the Minnesota State Fair.
If the temperature doesn’t go above 80°F, I love summer. If the relative humidity stays reasonable, I’m great. The Twin Cities are full of bike trails, golf courses, festivals, lakes, outdoor bar and restaurant seating, and everything else that takes advantage of our three week summer.
But the climax of the summer that everyone looks forward to is the State Fair. Probably the first thing anyone with experience would tell you is that at the State Fair, you can find just about anything on a stick. Sure, it’s mostly food items, but some non-solids find their way to stickdom, too—just look at my flight of little Summits (that’s Oktoberfest Red Ale, Extra Pale Ale, and Red Ale for those of you keeping track). There is a wide variety of music, exhibits, a sizable midway, and other entertainment. There is a grandstand. There are animals and agriculture. One wing of a building is dedicated to seed art. The Aquatennial Queen (a midsummer festival revolving around the Mississippi River and the many area lakes) has her head carved in butter. Or is that Princess Kay of the Milky Way? The downside to the State Fair is that it also signals the end of summer. It finishes its nearly two-week run on Labor Day (the first Monday in September here in the US). Summer work hours end, the kids go back to school, and you pack away your white clothing. Fortunately, winter doesn’t hit until at least the end of the month.Minnesot-ah: winter blah
February 12, 2010
I have said for a long time that winter is my favorite season. And this was after I moved to Minnesota. But this year, winter’s buggin’ me. Just take a look at my front yard.
I don’t know when I began actively liking winter. I remember enjoying snow as a kid in Ohio, especially that one year when there were snowdrifts up to the eaves and I burrowed out a snow cave in one of them. That was back in the days when parents still let their kids do stuff and didn’t freak out about safety or germs or whatever.
From Ohio, I went to Wisconsin, then to Minneapolis for a few years, back to a different part of Wisconsin, and then back to Minneapolis, where I’ve been since fall 1994 (my word, where does the time go?).
It must have been in the last ten years or so that I decided winter was my favorite. This probably coincides with aging and generally getting overheated more easily, so the summer heat became less appealing and easy cooling more so. I know it’s not because I adore winter sports such as ice fishing and snowmobiling.
A lot does go on during the Minnesota winter, as people try to embrace this thing that happens for half the year. St Paul has a perfectly nice Winter Carnival with activities such as an ice castle and medallion treasure hunt.
I think what’s annoying me this year is the below average temperatures that are keeping everything crusty. We haven’t had any more snow than usual, and certainly not even close to what has happened on the East Coast this year. But we have been suffering with those well-below-freezing temperatures. I’m sick of bundling up (though I’m quite fond of my sleeping bag-esque down coat that makes it more bearable by about 10°F; in other words, I can wait ten more degrees before I have to add the long underwear), I’m sick of slipping on icy patches created by 24-hour “warm-ups” followed by immediate freeze-downs, I’m sick of darkness, and I miss sitting on my front step for Home Happy Hour.
Summer, where are you?
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 