I just found out this afternoon that Wildlife Art Journal is now up and running. Members of the Society of Animal Artists got a heads-up a few months ago and we were able to view a preview version, but the real thing is available now here. Todd Wilkinson, who many will remember from his excellent articles in the old Wildlife Art magazine, is the editor and co-publisher of this new online-only publication. The plan is to update the content on an on-going basis instead of using the old monthly print magazine model. There is a blog also. It’s obvious that a tremendous amount of work and care have gone into creating this, driven by a deep love of wildlife and animal art.

I personally want to wish them all the very best!

I may have found the perfect solution to safely heating water in a ger without a fire or electricity. Whoever designed this really backed up and asked themselves what problem they were trying to solve. And what they came up with was this:

Esbit Pocket Stove

This is obviously perfect for backpackers or anyone who might find themselves in a survival situation. The two upright ends fold down flat, so the dimensions are 3″x4″x 3/4″. It weighs 3.25 oz and is made in Germany, can you believe it. I haven’t tried it out yet, but it uses a solid fuel that is non-explosive. It burns about 13 minutes and is supposed to boil a pint of water in about 8 with no smoke. No kerosene bottles or other stuff that the airlines don’t like or allow.

I’ve thought of another use for it, too. Last winter around eight children died in Mongolia when they got caught out in an unexpected storm while herding animals and couldn’t get back home. What if they had had something like this to stay warm long enough for rescuers to find them? And the adults who also died in the cold too, of course. I’m going to see what I can find out about the issue when I’m there and see what might be done.

Plein Air Information Discovery!

I’ve been down with a cold since a week ago Saturday and it’s been a tenacious one. I’m almost over it, but still needing to take it easy. I’ve been doing a lot of resting and reading and decided to dive into the Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy Sayers. I’m not a mystery fan, but I love these because they are so delightfully and excruciatingly English. I just started “Five Red Herrings”, which takes place in the western borderlands of Scotland. The area is heavily populated with artists, one of whom doesn’t play well with others and is deceased by page 17. Wimsey visits the site where the body was found. It appears that the artist was painting on location, took one step too far back from the work in progress and fell off a cliff, the kind of thing that can be an occupational hazard for those working in the great outdoors. In any case, Wimsy thoroughly paws through all the artist’s things, possibly providing clues but absolutely recording what a plein air painter in Scotland circa 1930 would be hauling around.

“He gave his first attention to the picture. It was blocked in with a free and swift hand, and lacked the finishing touches, but it was even so a striking piece of work, bold in its masses and chiaroscuro, and strongly laid on with the knife.”

“Idly, Wimsey picked up the palette and painting-knife which lay on the stool. He noticed that —– used a simple palette of few colors, and this pleased him, for he liked to see economy of means allied with richness of result. (My emphasis. Wouldn’t we all?) On the ground was an aged satchel, which had evidently seen long service. Rather from habit than with any eye to deduction, he made an inventory of the contents.

In the main compartment he found a small flask of whiskey, half-full, a thick tumbler and a packet of bread and cheese, eight brushes, tied together with a dejected piece of linen which had once been a handkerchief but was now dragging out a dishonored existence as a paint-rag, a dozen loose brushes, two more painting-knives and a scraper. Cheek by jowl with these were a number of tubes of paint. Wimsey laid them out side by side on the granite, like a row of little corpses.

There was a half-pound of vermilion spectrum, new clean and almost unused, a studio-size tube of ultramarine No. 2, half-full, another of chrome yellow, nearly full and  another of the same, practically empty. Then came a half-pound tube of viridian, half-full, a studio-size cobalt three-quarters empty, and then an extremely dirty tube, with its label gone, which seemed to have survived much wear and tear without losing much of its contents. Wimsey removed the cap and diagnosed it as crimson lake. Finally, there was an almost empty studio-size tube of rose madder and a half-pound of lemon yellow, partly used and very dirty. The large compartment, however, yielded nothing further except some dried heather, a few shreds of tobacco and a quantity of crumbs, and he turned his attention to the two smaller compartments

In the first of these was, first, a small screw of grease-proof paper on which the brushes had been wiped; next, a repellent little tin, very sticky about the screw-cap, containing copal medium; and thirdly, a battered dipper, matching the one attached to the palette.

The third and last compartment of the satchel offered a more varied bag. There was a Swan vesta box, filled with charcoal, a cigarette-tin, also containing charcoal and a number of sticks of red chalk, a small sketchbook, heavily stained with oil, three or four canvas separators, on which Wimsey promptly pricked his fingers, some wine corks and a packet of Gold Flakes.”

“A wide cloak of a disagreeable check pattern lay beside the easel. He picked it up and went deliberately through the pockets. He found a pen-knife, with one blade broken, half a biscuit, another pack of cigarettes, a box of matches, a handkerchief, two trout-casts in a transparent envelope, and a piece of string.”

I find it interesting that the paint is measured in pounds. With variations for personal taste, however, I suspect that any regular plein air painter’s kit today would have a similar accumulation of odds and ends. But….Peter noticed that something was missing. And since I’m only on page 50, I haven’t the faintest idea what it is and wouldn’t say anyway.

Visit the AFC site here

It took about 48 hours, but a pretty satisfactory response has come from Zuckerberg and company. This was posted on one of the Groups that formed to fight the change. The Facebook-formed Group mentioned below has almost 30,000 members as of 7am PST.

I do believe they’ve got it:

OFFICIAL RESPONSE FROM FB SPOKESPERSON BARRY SCHNITT:

Hi everyone,

First, I want to apologize for the delay in response. It’s been a long day with lots of interesting and constructive discussions. Second, I want to thank you for your questions and concerns. As Mark expressed in his blog post on Monday, it was never our intention to confuse people or make them uneasy about sharing on Facebook. I also want to be very clear that Facebook does not, nor have we ever, claimed ownership over people’s content. Your content belongs to you.

We do need certain licenses in order to facilitate the sharing of your content through our service. That’s where the Terms of Use come in. The fact that you’ve raised the questions you have is proof that we haven’t done a good job explaining these licenses in the actual language of the document. In fact, as we were working to answer your questions, we realized the new version of the Terms might technically permit some of the hypothetical situations people have offered. I can assure you, however, that these hypotheticals aren’t ones we had in mind when writing the Terms, and that selling user information for profit or using it to advertise Facebook in some way was never part of our original intent. Assurances aren’t enough, though, and we plan to codify this in our revised Terms through simple language that defines Facebook’s rights much more specifically.

In the meantime, we’ve decided to revert to the old Terms as we work to address this. Mark has explained this in more detail in another blog post (http://blog.facebook.com), and we’ve created a group where people can provide input (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69048030774). We hope you’ll join this group and post comments. We promise to use these comments to help construct a new Terms of Use that reflects the principles around how people share and control their information, and that’s written clearly in language everyone can understand.

I hope you don’t think your participation in this discussion was a waste of time. Honestly, your questions were very helpful to us in arriving at what we believe is the right decision. Also, I think your questions will continue to be useful as we’re crafting a new Terms.

Again, thanks for the fruitful discussion and a special thanks to Anne Katherine and Julius for setting up this feedback forum. We hope you’ll all join our “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” ( http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69048030774 ) group and continue discussing these issues there.

Facebook recently changed its Terms of Service (TOS) in a way which explicitly gives them unlimited, forever rights to whatever content you post there. Three Groups have formed so far to fight this.

Read more about it here

Regardless of the fact that we all might as well accept that anything we put up on the Internet is there forever and can’t really be controlled, that does not give someone like Facebook the right to appropriate their user community’s intellectual and copyrighted property for their own possible future profit. That’s not sharing, it’s theft.

Dear World:

We, the United States of America , your top quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced November 4th. Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional on January 20. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage. We look forward to resuming full service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

The United States of America

(from www.theartistscenter.com, going the rounds by email, apparently)

There’s some great marketing info. at the site here

With hope in my heart, I’ll be watching the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama tomorrow morning (Pacific time). The  Dark Ages are over. It’s a new day. Finally, we can together, as “one nation, indivisible”, move forward into the 21st century.

Andrew Sullivan, among other journalistic endeavors, writes a wonderful blog for The Atlantic Monthly. Here is the link to an article by him about Obama that just appeared in The Times of London. VERY highly recommended. Read it and thank the deity (or not) of your choice that this man will be the next President of the United States of America. We can be proud of our country again.

(All comments are moderated. If you wish to continue the vulgar, verbally violent public discourse of the past eight years, tell it to a mammal who cares. It won’t appear on this blog.)

One of my favorite quotes from the whole election cycle tonight on Larry KIng when Maher was asked what the election meant for the country.

I’m thrilled that Obama won and so pleased and impressed by John McCain’s concession speech.That’s the McCain this life-long Democrat always respected.

We Did It.

And now the work begins.

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to quite a few different countries. I’ve read a lot of history. And I can tell you with utter certainty that Americans are some of the luckiest people in the world and in history. Don’t take for granted your right to vote.

Eighteen year olds got the right to vote when I was in high school. I spent part of my senior year earning twenty-five cents for every person I registered (it was 1972; I’ll save you the trouble- I’ll be 54 one month from tomorrow). I have never missed an election, except for a couple of times when I was new to an area and couldn’t vote knowledgeably. So I can complain all I want.

I believe that tomorrow’s election will decide the future of our country for the next generation and, yes, I’m voting for the young black guy with the funny ears. But whether you agree with me or not- VOTE!

Before we are liberals or conservatives; before we are Americans; before we are men or women; we are fellow human beings living our unique lives on this big, beautiful blue planet. Whatever the outcome, let’s find common ground where we can work together “with malice towards none and charity for all”.

JUST RECEIVED WORD-“Morning Break”, below, has been accepted into the Mendocino Art Center Animal Art exhibit!  It will be on view there in Mendocino, California from Sept. 3-27.

AND…if you live in central Humboldt County, tonight is the opening reception for Wild Visions 2, a group show of nationally recognized nature and wildlife artists, including yours truly, at the Umqua Gallery, Arcata from 6-9pm. Lots of new work by all of us and some oldies, but goodies too. We snagged a great feature in the local paper this morning!

The other artists are Linda Parkinson, watercolor, who has done many commissions of birds and had her work published in American Falconry magazine; Shawn Gould, acrylic, who has done freelance art for National Geographic; Paula Golightly, oil and acrylic, whose day job is working as a biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service; John Wesa, well-known local serigrapher; and Derek Bond, egg tempera, who has recently had work accepted into the first Artists for Conservation juried show.

This is the first time all of us have shown together and we hope it won’t be the last.

BACKYARD BIRD WATCH

The two Allen’s hummers are showing up right around 1:30 every afternoon. How do they know? Can you imagine how tiny their wristwatches must be? Right now, if I only had room for one hummingbird friendly plant it would be Crocosmia “Lucifer”. If you have a little room for a truly red, red, red flower, you might buy a few bulbs.

WHAT ARE THESE? Answer on Monday

Cocorico

Ivory Triumph

Lichterlich

Lili Marlene

Mazeppa

Leaping Salmon

Oiellet Panachee

Hamburger Phoenix

GREAT QUOTE

“Am writing an essay on the life-history of insects and have abandoned the idea of writing on ‘How Cats Spend their Time’.”

W. N. P. Barbellion (Bruce Frederick Cummings) 1889-1919

Well, here’s some evidence:

Eowyn and Michiko

Peregrin

Persephone

Leopard at Berlin Zoo

Lion in the Masai Mara, Kenya

I think you get the idea.

(All photos copyright Susan Fox)

I’ve just changed the theme I’ve been using to one that allows RSS feeds. Let me know how it works. All these new ways of interconnecting things sometimes makes me want to just go get a glass of wine and sit by the pond.