Virtual Brush Box

Awareness of the outside world. By the time this is posted, hurricane Helene will have landed and be passing thru the southeast US. NOAA: #Helene resources: The latest storm forecasts, maps, imagery and more.

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Staircase to Nowhere
ArtPlay
Birmingham AL, USA
September 2024

Technical Details

Phone camera.

Wanted to use the time before class to look for photos. Didn’t want to haul around big camera, nor leaving it in truck. So, I went with best camera, i.e. the one you have with you. [Thoughts Before A Class]

The lesson I learned. Stairs assume a destination. The idea was to show how these stairs are a dead-end. Took several photos from straight ahead, concentrating on displaying the upper landing. Thought that was the answer. Took only this one photo from the side. It shows what I was after way better than the others. Take! all! the! angles!

Or I should say, lesson I learned, again. “Once downloaded, the clear winner was … of which I have one exposure.” [Hot Summer]

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Starting tomorrow, Flights of Foundry, a speculative fiction convention. Interdisciplinary | Virtual | Global. Also free. Hat tip Cislyn Smith & shout out to co-convention chair Jessica Eanes / Anaea Lay (IRL/pen name).

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Photo of Rose because Jas gets all the press.

We have changed Jasmine’s water dish from a standard dog dish to a square cooking pan. Easier for her to get into. Less likely to get tipped over.

Well, less likely to get tipped over by the dog.

Jas has taken up residence in the middle of things. That’s fine. She stays involved. We walk around her. Her water dish needs to be near here. For a year and half, this was not a problem.

The new dish style is not good at avoiding my feet.

I kick it with my foot. I catch the edge with my toe. I step directly in it. I have even stepped on the edge & flipped the fool thing over. I never did this with the other dish.

The other word-using member of the household has started calling me Bigfoot. I’m having no luck coming up with a counterargument.

I don’t have this trouble with Rose’s water dish. Since she doesn’t like to share, her dish is down the hall.

Dog posts [archive]

Onwards!
Katherine

🐎🐎🐎

Awareness of the outside world. St. Louis National Charity Horse Show Saddlebred Week starts tomorrow. Per program, no Jumpers? No Working Hunter? Sad face. Even if I have no way of doing it, it’s nice to see it being done.

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Walking continues. [The Conversation]

Feet continue to be good. Seven weeks again. [Circulation Considerations]

Rodney appreciates predictability. [The Routine]

Milton insists on it.

Milton has been know to go along, by himself, in the lead, if the rest of us get disarranged. He is obviously muttering to himself, ‘I’m the only one here doing this right’. Stomp. Mutter. Stomp. Mutter.

Regroup at the turn-around. On we go.

Not a bad way to start the day.

St. Louis Posts

I may never have ridden there, but that doesn’t keep me from blogging about it. Came close one year. Was gonna ride Sam. They cancelled Academy. More sad face.

[Saddlebred Versatility, Jumpers] 2019

“Would I drive all the way to St. Louis for the chance at one jumper class? In a heartbeat.” [Picking Classes For My Imaginary Horse] 2020

[Helmet Watch and Show Stalking, St. Louis 2021] 2021

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Yes, it’s amusing. It’s also important. “It also means we’re allocating the wrong amounts of money to plan hospitals to take care of old people in the future. Your insurance premiums are based on this stuff.” The Conversation: ‘The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out’ – Ig Nobel winner Saul Justin Newman. Newman, September 13, 2024. Hat tip to V.

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You are looking at a bucket with 30 pounds of salt, that’s 8 months for one horse, or 4 months for two.

Remember when I said that the mail order process left us without supplement Y? [Subscription Service Surplus]

It was electrolytes, i.e. salt.

We bought more from a brick-and-mortar location.

Then, our online order arrived.

Milton is big on salt. No harm, no foul

However.

Our standing order is a five-pound bucket.

When I picked that up, I also picked up the above bucket.

I thought the ordering algorithm had scrambled its code.

Turns out the barn minion in charge of online ordering had gotten tired of running out of salt and decided to fix the problem.

So now we are well-supplied for electrolytes.

It’s salt. We’ll use it. It won’t spoil.

Onwards!
Katherine

Art of the outside world. The Guardian: Lace-inspired murals celebrating European folk traditions – in pictures, Ahmed 2023.

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Addendum to a previous post. [Repeating Nine Patch]

Original image.

When I saw the published post, I realized that this one was missing some of the internal lines. While it was not consistent with the other images, I didn’t hate the way it looked. Decided to keep this and show the alternative rather than replace the original. At first, this was going to be an update on the original post. I thought the differences were interesting enough for separate post.

Much quiltier looking. Wait, still missing a set of internal lines.

Nine patch all the way down.

Fascinating.

Onwards!
Katherine

Books of the outside world. Reading is “bringing ink to life in your imagination.” Full Speed to a Crash Landing, by Beth Revis, (Daw 2024). The author is thanking the reader. Full quote, “I truly appreciate your magic in bringing ink to life in your imagination.” Acknowledgements.

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I signed up for a class.

First Person: Personal Narrative Writing
UAB Art, ArtPlay
Teaching Artist – Javacia Harris Bowser
six 1-&-1/2-hour weekly sessions

Description, “First Person: Personal Narrative Writing Workshop for adults will cover the basics of creative non-fiction with a focus on memoir. Participants will learn how to turn their life experiences into captivating stories and we’ll cover how to get the narratives published.” UAB: First Person

What Is Personal Narrative

Aptitude #1. Reading. I read a lot of non-fiction books written in the first person. A lot. Are these personal narrative? I tend to prefer ones that emphasize narrative over personal. People in weird or notable or exotic (to me) places doing interesting things. Either they do the thing & then write about it, example Raven Master by Skaife (Farrar 2018) [Surrounded By Stories, GWSE Logo], OR they do the thing in order to write about it, example most travel writing. But I digress.

TRAVEL

Road Fever, by Tim Cahill (Random House 1991)

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer (Villard 1997)

Crusader: By Horse to Jerusalem, Tim Severin (Hutchinson 1989)

[Have You Read This? Travel]

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players, by Stephan Fatsis (Houghton Mifflin 2001) [Writing Rules, Which Ones?]

Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City by Robin Nagle (Farrar 2013) [Have You Read This? Graphic Novel Edition]

All the Beauty in the World, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, by Patrick Bringley (‎Simon & Schuster 2023) [Fractal Alphabet S]

And so on.

Concern (limitation, opportunity, teachable moment, lack of Venn diagram intersection, whatever) #1. I don’t have a repertoire of newsworthy activities of the sort I like to read about. Quotidian experience can make for riveting stories, but not ones I want to read.

Aptitude #2. Writing, POV. I can write in the first person. Points to blog.

Concern #2. Personal narrative is probably more than rambly blog posts.

Aptitude #3 Writing, content. I know my strengths. “You come here for horses and entertainment and shared schaudenfreude and celebration and other reasons that are your own.” [Speaking Out]. “If I have a gift to give the Internet, it is to be witty and amusing.” [Awareness of the Outside World]

Concern #3. Will there be an emphasis on portraying a meaningful interior life? I’m sure I have one. Not sure where it is.

Specific Aims

What I hope to accomplish.

1) Go somewhere, do something. Get out among the three-dimensional people. Success is simply showing up. As with photography & art classes. [In Which I Make Bad Art]

2) Generate blog posts. Off to a good start.

3) Professional development. Working on one aspect of my writing should improve my professional writing, even if personal narrative is not directly involved in an assignment. No direct metric for this.

4) Write a full-blown story. Note to self. This one is way down in the order for a reason.

5) Submit same. Not a problem. If I write something, I can submit it. Marketing chops, I got. I’m not saying I can convince someone to publish it, just that I can send it out.

Coda

Those are my thoughts beforehand. We’ll see what changes over time.

Onwards!
Katherine