Is this a smart thing to say?

I realize the democratic party is worried about getting itself unified if a frontrunner is not clearly defined soon.  But should one of those running for the party’s nomination say that those who vote after March 4, 2008 don’t matter.

“Now we’ve got to campaign hard in Texas and Ohio. But after March 4th, I think the party’s going to have to take a look and see if it’s time for us to go ahead and move forward with a nomination,” he (Barack Obama) said on NBC television.

This statement means to me that he feels that a nomination does not take place at the party’s convention.  He is appearing arrogant and conceited by saying something like this.  I am sure that his opponent, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, is thinking the same thing concerning her campaign but she is, at least, smart enough, and possible humble enough, to not say it to a major news outlet.

MAAC Basketball

I went into my room last night to go to sleep but couldn’t manage to get to sleep so I turned on the television.  I was just flipping right through the channels when I hit MSG. Normally, I only stop here if there is hockey on but tonight it was MAAC basketball from the Arena at Harbor Yard in Fairfield, Connecticut.  Better than just MAAC round ball, it was overtime between Marist and Fairfield.

My oldest daughter attends Niagara University which is a MAAC school and I have attended several games, including a sell out at the TAPS Gallagher Center in January.  I have been to Fairfield University, though not for basketball for soccer.

The Fairfield-Marist game was important because Siena and Rider had been upset on Saturday so there was a four-way tie for first place, leaving the winner of this game in sole possession of second place until the log jam at first is resolved.  The game went into double overtime and was really a pretty good college game!

Northern Illinois University

I wrote extensively last year after the tragedy at Blacksburg, Virginia’s Virginia Tech campus.  It hit home with me as I knew children of friends who attended Virginia Tech.  I had been to the campus while in college.

Northern Illinois’s tragedy hits as hard but not because I know any of the students at the school.  It does not hit hard because I have ever been to the campus.

We are living in a society that does not value life.  I do not think that a revocation of the second amendment is the answer to all the shootings that take place in our society.  People who want to kill find a way regardless of the laws concerning gun ownership.

I do believe there are certain guns - assault rifles - that no one has any reason to own.  They are not used for sport, at least not by true sportsmen.  They are used to kill so should be kept away from the general public and kept in the military.

The tragedy in Northern Illinois hits close to home as I still have children - yes, they are adults but they will always be my children - in college.  A friend asked, in a public forum, if colleges were safe places.  I do believe that all colleges have taken steps to be even more safe and will again take additional steps to be safe in light of this tragedy.  I do not believe that colleges - as a whole, as a microcosm of our society - are any more dangerous than other places.

I also think that those who say that colleges should be closed areas, open only to those who work at, teach at or attend classes at, are incorrect.  Our colleges and universities are theoretically open areas.  They are places for the exchanges of ideas.  We cannot close off this venue in an open society.

Another Purple Eagle to NHL

I got a phone call, a totally unexpected one, from my 21 year old daughter last night.  I was in my room getting ready to settle in and wait for the new episode of “Brothers and Sisters” when she called.

She is currently a junior at Niagara University.  Until she left for college three years ago, she was not a huge hockey fan.  College has changed all that.  She loves Niagara Purple Eagles Hockey.  She loves college hockey.  She love Ottawa and Binghamton Senators hockey.

The reason she called was to let me know that Les Reaney had played his last game as a Purple Eagle.  He had signed a contract to play in the Edmonton Oilers farm system.  He is headed to Springfield, Massachusetts to play in the American Hockey League.

I have seen this year’s Purple Eagles men’s hockey team play three times in a week in January.  I like the way Reaney plays.  He is a big man, hard checking and good on his skates.  I am sure he will do well in the AHL and beyond.  The only shameful part of this is he didn’t finish college first.

Not Just Charms Challenge

This month at the Yahoo! group The Latest Trends in Mixed Media Arts the “Not Just Charms” challenge is to make charms out of game pieces.  Last month focused on buttons.  December was actual charms.

I have struggled with this idea.  I have set aside wooden dominoes to make charms out of.  I wonder if these are too large, although they are not as large as normal dominoes.  They are not shiny either - being black and white.

I then thought about poker chips.  The biggest problem with this was I only could scrounge up one poker chip that my boys would let me near.  This was one I had received in an collage bag swap.

Not only did it have writing on it, there was only one.  Now the rules do not say that each charm must be the same but they do state that the charm must be made from a game piece.

I started working on the domino charm in my mind.  I have a small stamp of a champagne flute I wanted to stamp on the all black side of the domino.  I wanted to stamp and then emboss in gold.  Then edge the sides in gold also.  So far I do not have any charm hooks (I am sure that is not the correct terminology) but here is a look see.

Now I just have to finish edging and manage to get a hook on it on it.

The Situation Room

Jack Cafferty, on CNN’s The Situation Room, just asked the following question:  “If you could choose any former U.S president to lead this country now, who would it be and why? “

I could not get to the computer fast enough to rattle off my thoughts to Jack on this question.  The answer came to me rather quickly and without much hesitation.  I would choose Jimmy Carter.  I can almost hear all the heckling from the peanut gallery.

No, I don’t think that Carter’s presidency was stellar.  I do, though, think that the progress he has made since his presidency for the betterment of humanity across the world have made him just the man for the United States during the turbulent times we are currently in and we are headed for in the future.

February Projects

In the two workshops I am participating in this year - Paper Transformed by Julia Andrus and Celebrate Your Creative Self by Mary Todd Beam - have some wonderful projects for the month of February.  Unfortunately, February is a very short month and very busy so I spent a day doing some paper transformation.

All of the colors in this are done on white cardstock.  The colors are watercolors that are manipulated.

I set up six half sheets of card stock on my art board.  I used masking tape to keep them from curling from the moisture associated with watercolors.  Each piece or part of a piece of cardstock has a different technique used on it.  Most, actually all but one, are from Paper Transformed.  The wax resist is from Celebrate Your Creative Self.

This particular technique involves putting Pearl Ex mica powder in the watercolor as I painted the cardstock.  I used a mahogany color watercolor and a antique gold Pearl Ex. The picture does not do the coloring justice.  It is much more gold looking than here.

Above are what will become two different plastic wrap altered watercolors.  Neither left the amount of design in the paint that I thought it would but I do like this technique and will continue with larger and smaller, tighter squeezed together and looser plastic wrap until I get what I am looking for the watercolor to look like once dried.  The finished products are below.

Another wonderful technique was the basic watercolor wash.

Next up was salt.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  I have two containers of sea salt - coarse for making bath salts and reminding me of the rock salt I put on the driveway here in upstate NY during winter.  I figured this was what I was going to use.  I guess I should have thought about it more so in the second art board full of techniques I used both the sea salt and table salt.

             

The first two of these have the coarse sea salt on them.  The right end has the table salt on it.  The results are below.

      

Another technique that I fell in love with was the watercolor with watercolor pencil shavings in the wet watercolor.  I did this with deep green pencil shavings in a yellow watercolor.

Finally, I utilized a wax resist from Celebrate Your Creative Self.  I have tried a wax resist before, using the wax from a dripping candle for wax and ironing off the was when done, and not been happy with the results.  I am not sure I liked the results this time either but below are two examples, one with a yellow crayon and one with a white crayon.

    

I am going to keep trying the wax resist.  I also still need to try the water removal of paint to reveal white space.  If it doesn’t get tried in the next week, it probably won’t as I have a big event coming up March 1 and need to work on that for a bit.

Simple Abundance - Feb 11 - 17

I realize I should do these second time through readings of the daily meditations in advance of the week, not in retrospect.  Anyone who is reading along may not come back to look now for the past week.  I am going to seriously try to do this for the upcoming week later today.

 I truly love our search through ourselves for our authentic selves.  The discussion of “spiritual electricity” resonates with me.  I have been trying to create some varying backgrounds and works of art but have seemed to feel there was nothing there.  I did not work on Friday of this week as my son had a sectional diving event and, then, decided not to play catch up on Saturday.  Instead, I flipped the switch of my “spritual electricity” on and did some painting and creating.   My first creation was three and a half dozen ginger cookies for my visiting 21 year old daughter to take back to college with her.  Then, the work from Julia Andrus’s Paper Transformed began.  That is another post altogether, though.

And, that 10 year old girl…. oh my!  I do not have this picture but I can see it in my mind.  It was on my father’s desk in his office, when the office was behind an old barber shop.  I had hair about mid-back, straight as a board and pulled back in a partial ponytail.  The chestnut colored hair is a color I yearn for these days but it is not the hair color that speaks to my authentic self.  I was wearing a high necked green plaid dress.  This dress does not speak to my authentic self either.  It is my face that speaks of who I really am.  I had the remnants of two black eyes.  I had spent the summer camping with my grandmother and tripped over a wagon tongue.  In the process, I fell - hitting my forehead in a very precarious spot.  The doctors said I could have been blinded had the point of impact been a fraction of an inch in any direction.  The blood from the huge egg on my head drained the only place it could - into the whites of my eyes.  Then, the bruising came.  I had these huge black eyes for weeks.  But getting them was fun!  I was playing with the boys, a tomboy at her best.  And, that is truly me.

Wanderlust and travel are also explored in ways now that could not be previously.  Do you dream of travel?  I have done the travel in a small part.  I spent one fall travelling up and down the eastern seaboard.  I went 13,000 miles from August until November.  I saw many wonderful places and beautiful people but I loved it most when I came back home.  I don’t think this is where home will always be but it where it is now and I love it!

Political Musings

I must be psychic.  Just this morning I was thinking I should be - instead of blogging about my youngest child going south for the weekend - blogging about my thoughts on which party is going to get wise first.  I truly believe this is going to be the telltale sign of who will end up winning the general election in November.

The infighting and sniping at each other has become continuous in both the democratic and the republican primaries now that both are down to two people.  The democrats, as the race seems so much closer by the numbers, are getting nastier quicker but the republicans - and that should be read the frontrunner, John McCain, as Mike Huckabee seems to be running a fairly clean campaign - are also getting in on it.

Does either party not realize this is not what voters want?  I don’t think the voters mind a candidate - even one extremely behind like Huckabee - appealing a primary result when there may have been some irregularities.  I do think that voters mind the constant personal picking that goes on between those whose policies are close to the same so there is little to differentiate between them.

It currently looks like the GOP is going to pull it together.  Mitt Romney is going to endorse John McCain.  He is going to tell the party to pull together behind the presumptive nominee.  He is going to free his delegates to go to McCain.  This is not something that a suspended campaign does.  It is what an ended campaign does. 

I find this particularly disturbing in that Romney had many problems with McCain when they were opponents.  Is it necessary to endorse someone that you have already told the public that you don’t agree with?  Is it necessary to back someone with him you disagree?  Could Romney not just ask that his delegates be freed from their allegiance to him?

Whether I agree with Romney’s endorsement or not, I do agree that the GOP needs to rally behind one candidate and not have a conservative break when that candidate is not a true conservative.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I admit I don’t get “into” Valentine’s day much.  It is the celebration of a martyr - St. Valentine.  It is also the day when flowers and good chocolate are extremely overpriced.

I did buy each of the three kids who were here this morning a small heart with chocolate in it.  I also sent the two girls each a valentine doorhanger.  That is about the extent of my valentines.  I made about a dozen cards to sent to troops overseas.  These were being sent out through Nellis AFB.

That doesn’t mean I am heartless.  My oldest daughter is home from college for a five day weekend.  We are going to rent “No Reservations” tonight and watch it.  I am sure this will make the 17 year old male in the house thrilled!