West Coast Family

Noah and Jeffrey! Those look like some pretty serious pumpkins!

Thanks to my sister Kim for the picture!

Illusion

My friend Jeff Nelson of Hudson River Inlay, creates wonderful marquetry on furniture. He has even created wonderful inlay for Steinway.

Just for fun, he likes to lay actual leaves and other items on his tables to fool the eye. For just a moment, you want to reach out and touch the leaf to be sure... your eye says it is a real leaf, but your mind just isn't exactly sure! Here on the web, you can "touch" by clicking on the pictures for a larger view.

Not sure why I'm doing this!

This one will be sans pictures. My friend Salena over at The Daily Rant, sent along a challenge to write about 7 "weird and random" things about myself. Part of the deal is that I'm also supposed to link to Highway Hags ..... that I'm willing to do because I love their blog too. Both of these blogs are written by women truckers, and both are very interesting. The next part of the deal is to "tag" 7 other bloggers with the same challenge. That part I'm not going to do, for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that I don't really read 7 other blogs, and secondarily, I hate anything that smacks of "chain letter".

I'll make an attempt at the 7 "weird and random" things. My first thought is that my neice Maeve and nephew Wyatt would immediately say --- "only 7 Uncle Don?" Second thought is that they both read my blog, so I have to be somewhat circumspect?

1. While our business - Louise's Daughter - was started by my wife Cheryl, she and I are both very much involved in the design, making, selling, schlepping, booth setting upping, etc. However, since the figures are pretty much all women, and they have an ethnic sensibility, pretty much everyone thinks Cheryl does all of it, and I just sort of tag along to do the heavy lifting! At shows I get very annoyed at the "what's this white man doing in what is obviously a black woman's booth?" looks that I get. I often get told that it is just proper payback for us white males getting all the credit for all those years, but I still get annoyed! (see the comment on the Wedding Day entry below --- I'm still not absolutely sure she is joking?) On the other hand, I very much understand my woman woodworker friends who complain about folks asking when their husband will be back!

2. My right ear works a lot better than the left one. After finally getting my hearing evaluated professionally - which was a lot of fun by the way --- the audiologist told me that my left ear does not work as well as the right one. DUH! My regular doctor called it "old ear".... Maeve and Wyatt will love that!

3. My daughter-in-law and I share this one. We are both a bit annoyed that Maya (her daughter and my granddaughter) seems to like Casey - her Dad and Cheryl - her grandmother - better!

4. This one sort of relates to the driving theme from Salena ---- I'm often struck that it is pretty amazing that we rely on two things when driving. One - that the other folks on the road will usually follow the rules, like staying on their side of that flimsy little line down the middle of the road at 70 miles an hour! Two, -especially in the dark --- the world does not end just a bit ahead of the reach of our headlights, and that bridge that I drove over last time down this road, will still be there tonight! Though once I learned that a bridge I had driven over a few hours earlier, had since dropped into the river below ---- to this day I "gun" it over the replacement bridge!

5 . My right wrist does not bend very well because I went through it with a radial arm saw about 30 years ago.

6. I own about the 4th or 5th largest collection of spinning tops in the world, and I do a great spinning top show for kids of all ages!

7. I'm allergic to wheat.... I don't swell up or anything like that, but I just feel better if I don't eat it. Thus I relate to Salena's description of eating the cheese n stuff off the slice..... I just don't eat the rest of it later. To substitute, I make a mean oatmeal pizza!

This is sort of fun, but I'll stick to the rules and stop at 7. Check out Salena's Blog...... don't become her friend though, or she may stick you with a project ;-)

Thanks Salena!

Wedding Day

Jennifer and Steve got married yesterday! A great day! Dave (my brother and her Dad) would have been very happy! Believe it or not, I left my camera home ---- Ouch! Anne bailed me out ---- Thanks Anne. I love this picture... Jen and Steve in a rare moment alone on a busy day. Moment's later he had her up on his shoulder threatening to throw her in the lake! These two have got a good thing going!

Another satisfied customer

This young lady was very excited to get one of our dancers at a recent show, but became quite uphappy when Cheryl neatly wrapped it in tissue, put it in a bag, and presented it to her. As often happens, the adults were slow to figure out the problem. Taking off the tissue so she could see it through the clear bag didn't help much --- like no help at all? The final solution of taking it out of the bag and letting her carry it like a doll, was perfect.

The family rolled away happily, with Don's assurance to Mom that we would be glad to repair it if broken! I suspect this one won't be hanging on the wall, but will be a bit banged up from much loving play!

Wedding pics coming up tomorrow!

Post # 300!

As always, I love it when folks send us pics of our work in their home.

O Bam A

Another collection of miscellaneous Obama Pins. I couldn't get the couple with the McCain/Palin baseball caps to stop for a picture? That one would have been cool because the woman also had on a floor length coat covered with colorful elephants! Oddly, both the woman above, and the one immediately below asked me if I was photographing their politics or their chest? Seemed like an oddly liberal thing to say?

Glowing for Obama

The woman below with her daughter, gave us a Glow In The Dark Obama button!

It really does glow, and my camera actually got the picture!

Glow Barack!

Mirror, Mirror

The image below is the one that is actually right side up!
Mirror from an old movie theatre projector.

Good Housekeeping!

The engineering of maximum space usage can be quite intriguing!

Maya Wednesday

Maya and Cheryl - heading off into the future! More pics of Maya Wednesday here, and then click on the Maya Album.

Scene around the campus 2

Another scene from the swamp - another clickable to get a closer view one.

Scene around the campus 1

A small swampy area near the show provided a number of cool shots. A good one to click for a closer view.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Massachusetts is definitely Obama country. I could have filled the camera with images of pins, yard signs, bumper stickers, etc. I'm hoping my birthday present arrives on Nov. 4!
My old friend Peter Handler.
Seen on the bag of one of our customers.
Laser cut from plastic by a student at the Rhode Island School of Design.

One of my favorite signs

I've taken pictures of this sign before, but it was before my blogging days. The Northampton Paradise City shows are held at the fairgrounds. In a different time, temporary home to lots of animals, and the production of lots of valuable waste. As a farm boy, I recognize the value of manure.... a great source of organic nutrients for crops, but surely diminished in value if mixed with candy wrappers, styrofoam cups, plastic bottles, etc.

Still, a great odd sign with quite a bit of chuckle value!

I'll leave you with this for a few days?

Scene over our neighborhood a few evenings ago.

Away from the computer for a few days, but I will be capturing some scenes to share I'm sure!

Scroll down for lots of good stuff from the past including the Great Pine Hill Mazda Cremation!

Family

What more can I say?

If you're new here, that's my daughter-in-law Deanna, my son Casey, and my granddaughter Maya.

I may need to seek out more fires? Got 68 hits in two days on that one.

Don't ignore smoke coming out from under your hood!

You might remember my previous entry about the wind turbines on Pine Hill over Cohocton, Atlanta, and Naples. I mentioned something about there not being any smoke plume involved in the generation of electricity from these energy sources. Click here for some pictures on a more auspicious day?

My sister-in-law sent me these pics tonight. She and her friend Buck had gone up on Pine Hill for a closer view of these magnificent things...... she had called me earlier this morning for directions for getting there. While stopped to take some pictures, they became the subject of these pictures. What started as a little smoke from under the hood quickly turned into a raging inferno that consumed pretty much everything except the metal. Even the paint is gone - the car used to be dark green? The several year old Merlefest bumper sticker appears to be gone too.


Thanks to Buck and Anne for these pics! If you see smoke coming out of your car, it is probably a good plan to step away! I guess I'll tag this one "Thank You" because everyone is just fine thank you!

Audio of Cheryl and Don

When we were in the paper the other day, there was supposed to be an audio link too, but I couldn't find it until tonight. Click on the link below and then click on our picture toward the middle of the row of pictures near the top of the page between Barack Obama on the left, and John McCain on the right. We come across OK, and there are three nice pictures. If you missed the newspaper article, just click on the "Read More" link under our name, or click here.

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20080909/MULTIMEDIA/309100003/-1/MULTIMEDIA

There are 4 McCain supporter interviews, and 4 Obama supporter interviews. All 8 seem thoughtful and reasoned.

I've got a nice link to the Obama web site over to the right below the Flickr pictures.

Postcard

We recently needed to do a postcard for a cooperative mailing with some craftspeople friends, and created the above postcard. It came out very well, thanks to Modern Postcard. After getting our package of cards, we got a promo for their Simple Cards. You've seen the image below, but I had it made into a small - about 4x6 greeting card! $29 for 25 cards with envelopes post paid! Seems like a great thing for all you folks who like to take pictures!

We do better under Democrats!

A friend sent along this chart he worked up from statistics on growth in family income under Republican Presidents and under Democratic Presidents. The top 5 percent seem to do about the same under both, though even they do a bit better under Democrats. The rest of us are a lot better off under Democrats.
Source: Alan S. Blinder’s “Economic View” (NY Times, 8/31/08), derived from Census Bureau data by Larry M. Bartels, author of Unequal Democracy. Two major points emerge: Over these 58 years, (1) Income inequality has widened substantially under Republican Presidents, and (2) Under Democratic Presidents, all groups have done better, on average, than any group has done under Republican Presidents. The implications of the effectiveness of each party’s economic policies should be clear to most, though surprising to many. Similarly, differences emerge in annual real GNP growth per capita (1948-2007) of 1.64% under Republican presidents vs. 2.78% under Democratic presidents.

Maya Wednesday

Maya loves her little backyard playhouse. She opened and closed that window about 20 times. The amazing thing is that I got inside to get this shot. I should have given Cheryl the camera to document that! It was a lot harder getting out than it was getting in!

Newspaper Article

I think I'll just let an article in our local newspaper - The Democrat and Chronicle - serve as today's entry. Nice picture, but I'd better not copy it?

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008810010325

Thanks to Kate Perry - writer, and Jay Capers - photographer

And in the interest of fairness, one of our neighbors supports McCain.