Plants depend on Pollination

The birds and the bees need help. Also, the butterflies, moths, wasps, beetles and bats. Without an international effort, a new report warns, increasing numbers of species that promote the growth of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of food each year face extinction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/27/science/decline-of-species-that-pollinate-poses-a-threat-to-global-food-supply-report-warns.html

This is NOT ABOUT TOAST

Amazing story of the World's Bravest Woman:
http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/toast-story-latest-artisanal-food-craze-72676

Loretta Lynn: Heartaches and High Notes

“Doo had told me he was going to take me somewhere on Saturday night,” Ms. Lynn said. “I had my hair all pin-curled up, and he came in, and he was drinking. And I knew he wasn’t going to take me nowhere. I set Ernest Ray down on the floor. And I started walking away from Doo, and he got me by one of my pin curls. I still had Cissy in my arms ’cause she was just a little tiny thing.

“And I came around with my fist to hit him on the shoulder, but I hit him in the mouth and knocked three teeth out. There was a hardwood floor, and, I’m telling you, the teeth broke into tiny little pieces and it seemed like they just kept falling. Click-clack-clack-clack. I thought: ‘I’m dead. I am dead. I am completely dead.’ But you know, he never said a word.”

“I wrote about my heartaches, I wrote about everything,” she said. “But when you get to hear the song, you just grin.”

“I wrote songs about how I was feeling at the time,” she said. “If I was in a fighting mood about some old gal trying to take my husband, I wrote about it. And she knew about it. The whole world knew about it then.”

Ms. Lynn added: “The more you hurt, the better the song is. You put your whole heart into a song when you’re hurting. You can’t be protected. I didn’t try to be protected. I didn’t want to be protected. When I wrote a song like that, I was mad, and somebody else needed protection, not me.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/arts/music/loretta-lynn-mines-a-legacy-of-heartaches-and-high-notes.html

Mr. Anderson wants his robot to do battle against other robots. That sounds like a superhero to me.

Often the robot just has a little fun. Using recorded lines spoken by Mr. Anderson, it may say the following to the telemarketer: “I just woke up from a nap, I took some medicine and I’m really groggy. Can you go a little slower?” Sometimes it interrupts the telemarketer to ask questions. “Do you drink coffee?” or “You sound like someone I went to high school with.”

The idea is to keep the telemarketer on the call for as long as possible. The longer the conversation goes on, the more eccentric the robot becomes. In one sequence, the robot tells the telemarketer that a bee landed on his arm, and asks the telemarketer to keep talking as he focuses on the bee.

After seeing that the service worked, Mr. Anderson made it freely available to anyone; it works with landlines (with conference call or three-way calling service) and cellphones. To send telemarketing calls to the robot, add the phone number 214-666-4321 to your address book. Then, the next time you get a call from a telemarketer, patch the number in, merge the calls and put your phone on mute while the robot does the talking.

For Mr. Anderson, this service isn’t just about wasting the time of people who want to waste our time. He sees his service as a way to help ordinary people, especially older Americans, from being defrauded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/fashion/a-robot-that-has-fun-at-telemarketers-expense.html

Guitar String Theory

I learned how to play the guitar about thirteen years ago, towards the end of high school, because I hypothesized that it would attract the ladies. Fortunately for me, it attracted one lady in particular, and I ended up marrying her. Although this case study was limited to one specimen, I think further investigation would lead to a strong correlation between guitars and ladies.

Over time, the guitar has become much more for me than a tool for garnering attention around a campfire. The six-stringed instrument has sat on my lap for countless hours, as I figure out songs that I enjoy, perform them live, or just sit alone strumming nothing in particular. It’s amazing what a wonderful diversion those twelve notes can provide.

More...
http://theengineerspulse.blogspot.com/2011/05/guitar-string-theory.html

Dream

I dreamed my studio adjoined a firehouse and we shared an interior window. In order to leave my studio I had to crawl through this window and go through the firehouse. In the dream I was dangling halfway into the firehouse when two helpful firemen I recognized as John Gage and Roy DeSoto* wearing blue shirts grabbed my arms and pulled me through the window. I woke up from the dream and noticed flashing blue lights against the building next door. I got out of bed and went to see what was happening. It was around 2:30 AM. There were no firetrucks or police cars instead I saw blue flashes of lightning illuminating the neighborhood like a gigantic camera flash. I must've registered the light in my dream. It made my eyes hurt and I got a severe headache. Then we heard rumbling that sounded like God was bowling in the heavens. In the morning my husband looked on the Wunderground weather charts graphs and he said the pressure had dropped an inordinate amount. Severe pressure drops cause severe headaches if you are a barometer head like me.

Why Does Lightning Appear Blue and Cause a Rumble?
Fans of the film Rocky are very familiar with the character played by Burgess Meredith. While Mickey, Rocky's lovable, old, grumbling boxing trainer has a lot of memorable lines, I particularly enjoy the one he uses to motivate Rocky during his training: "Kid...You're gonna eat lightning and you're gonna crap thunder!" This hilarious line, delivered ferociously by Meredith, is not without educational merit: the sound of thunder always follows a lightning event.

*Emergency! an American television series in the 70's The dedicated members of Squad 51 of the Los Angeles County Fire Department's newly created Paramedical Rescue Service take on a series of life-or-death challenges in this drama filmed in semi-documentary style. Partners John Gage and Roy DeSoto put their lives on the line to save people from all sorts of mishaps.

Zika Virus: Flying Syringes

CORPORATIONS are Greedy Robots Running the Country

Dorrie and the Blue Witch by Patricia Coombs

My favorite children's book turned out to be a predictor of my life. Dorrie a young witch and her pet Gink are home alone. Dorrie captures big bad witch, then shrinks her and puts her in a little bottle and places it inside the piano and stacks it with books. Big celebration.

Tell the Martians

As a child I always thought I would end up on another planet and I would be responsible for telling the Martians how everything worked here on earth. This meant I needed to know everything like how airplanes worked and explain the weather and what made cars go and all of the things I didn't know. Luckily I know a guy who can do this. My husband. I'll bring him!

Coffee Machine, Washing Machine, Police Radio

I'm not sure why but my coffee machine, washing machine and police radio make me feel comforted and cozy. Maybe it is because I can do other things while these things are happening.

Elias Telles: Be Kind to Your Mind

Fifteen years ago, Elias Telles woke up from a dream in which an angel holding a lit candle was descending a staircase. The next morning he tore some wood from a dilapidated fence and started painting angels on it.

Like many self-taught artists, Elias had already led an adventurous and colorful existence before embracing his calling as an artist. Born into a family of fourteen siblings in East Los Angeles, he joined the Marine Corps straight out of high school and served two years in Vietnam as a rifleman. Upon returning home, he experienced undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and could only subdue the demons by producing drawings that he would quickly destroy.

It wasn’t until he was in his late forties that he started painting. At a local flea market one of his early works caught the attention of a set designer who placed it in a Steve Martin movie; his paintings have subsequently appeared in a number of other productions and made him a sought-after artist in Hollywood, where his collectors include film directors Michael Mann and Chantal Ackerman. His work is part of the permanent collection at the House of Blues and he was one of the featured artists on the PBS series ‘Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations’.

http://brutforce.com/gallery-view/elias-telles/

Run Redhead, Run (There's No Ocean In Indiana)

Run Redhead, Run (There's No Ocean In Indiana) Collage,
byARTIST Lou Beach

A self described ‘sophisticated primitive’, Lou Beach (nee Andrzej Lubicz-Ledóchowski) was born in Göttingen, Germany in 1947, the son of Polish parents displaced by the Second World War. The family emigrated to Rochester, NY in 1951 where Lou attended public schools and junior college. He travelled to California in 1968 where he began his artistic career by making assemblage art and studying the Surrealists, visiting galleries and museums, and creating collages from pictures cut from old Life magazines. He worked during this time in bookstores, as a delivery man, moved furniture, and ran a punch press and forklift. A road trip across country, ostensibly to travel on to Europe from the East Coast, brought him to Boston where he lived from 1972 until 1979, much of the time as the sexton at the famous Arlington St. Church. There he created collages in earnest and had his first one man show at the newly established Boston Center For The Arts, as well as being hired for several illustration assignments.

Returning to L.A. he reacquainted himself with old friends, one of whom was prominent in the music business, and was asked to illustrate a record album cover. This was the beginning of a long and fruitful career as a record cover illustrator as well as an editorial illustrator, making pictures for magazines and newspapers. He continued making art, if not showing in galleries, by creating collages as gifts and for his personal enjoyment. Not until his grown children (Alpha and Sam), both fine artists, encouraged him to seriously concentrate on making art again did he embark on reestablishing himself in that realm. An nearly sold-out show at Billy Shire Fine Arts in 2009 saw the reemergence of Lou in the world of fine art along with subsequent showings at Nickelodeon, La Luz de Jesus, OffRamp Gallery (all in Los Angeles), Adventureland (Chicago), and Firecat Projects (Chicago) and a large representation of work at the Metro Show in NYC. A show is scheduled for 2016 at Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco.

http://brutforce.com/gallery-view/lou-beach/

Holly Wood, Artist

Artist from Santa Fe view art here
I love The Last Text and Goddess Lunch

Doing art woke up different parts of my brain.

http://brutforce.com/surreal-recovery-through-art-a-conversation-with-jon-and-melissa-meadows/

“He used to ask me, ‘Why did I make it back from Iraq?’” Melissa recalls. “I would tell him there was a reason. Now I know it is this art. It has a real impact on people. It creates a visceral reaction, not only for veterans but also for people who have never been in combat. Even they can feel it in their bodies. His art has been powerful for creating an emotional connection with other people.”

Wooden Ships in Chelsea

http://brutforce.com/wooden-ships-in-chelsea/

Esoteric Art of Secret Societies in Early America

http://brutforce.com/masonic-and-odd-fellow-exhibition-shows-the-esoteric-history-of-secret-societies-in-early-america/

Embroidery Felon

Ray Materson was in prison for an armed robbery he committed with a toy gun to support his cocaine habit. He spent the first year of his seven and a half-year prison sentence being mad at the world and angry with himself for what he had done. And then he found a kind of redemption...in a pair of socks. Includes interviews with the artist Ray Materson, and Sanford Smith, the producer of the Outsider Art Show in New York. PLEASE NOTE: I've posted two versions of this piece, one version that runs 3:42, and a longer version that runs 5:28. The short version originally aired on Studio 360 in March, 2003. It has also appeared on the Third Coast Festival website. The long version has not aired. https://beta.prx.org/stories/3268/details

Embroidery on a Tightrope
Article by http://brutforce.com/embroidering-on-a-tightrope/
Kaitlyn Wittig Menguc

Ray Materson has had, by many metrics, a successful career in the art world. Materson has received national and international press coverage, his embroidery work has been purchased by notable collectors and has been on display in prominent museums, he has had steady gallery representation, and he has received numerous commissions.

Radio is my Roomate

Love to Write Letters

My friend Anita Long is turning 100 next month. We regularly write letters although recently her letters have been hard to read. She needs glasses and her script is running all over the page. We visited her in Norwich one June Saturday a few years ago when she first moved to Sheltering Arms. I made pizzelles and she loved them. We hung out in her room and looked at the big green-leafed maple tree and we told stories and laughed.

I sat on her bed and spotted an empty glass vintage milk bottle under her dresser and climbed under to get it for her. We laughed. I met Anita years ago when we swam together at the Y. I just loved her as everyone did. We became friends and occasionally we'd have coffee together and she'd tell me stories about her childhood growing up in my neighborhood during the Great Depression. She told me that as a young girl she'd pull rags out of the trash and sew them into dresses. She had a mean mother who kept her home and two sisters, just like Cinderella. Her father was a drunk and so was her husband. "He was drunk on my wedding day," she said. Anita wanted to be a teacher at a normal school* but her mother said "no, you must stay home and take care of me!" She would've been an amazing teacher. She ended up getting a job at a car dealership driving a red Volvo. "I loved that car! Freedom!" She told me she had half of her stomach removed from ulcers. So we ate very slowly when we had lunch together. The more we talked the more we realized we shared a lot in common. She even knew Dora Fleurant the woman who owned my house.
"There was a bar on every corner and lots of gambling back then," she told me.
"The day I saw George I knew I was in big trouble," she said. "He was tall dark and a handsome devil, biiiiig trouble," she said laughing. It sounded like love at first sight at the car dealership.

Anita you are so amazing, I say. "I work at it," she says. And she does. "I have my morning time, and I have my crossword puzzles." Everyone loves her. All of those years of swimming served her well. She took up swimming at age 40 and swam for 45 years. She loved to drive but had to give that up after a few fender benders. She used to drive to the prison every Sunday to see her grand niece Paulette at the ACI. "If you knew how she was raised," she said.


"How did you escape your family in New York" she asked me. "I just got up and left," I said.
"Oh I wish I could've done that," she said.
"Why did you pick the Social District of Woonsocket of all places?" she asked.
"I could afford it and I love Wonsocket's gritty urban personality."

One day Anita came over for lunch. "We used to pull the curtains and drink," she said admiring the pink drapes.
"I think this was a speakeasy in the cellar," I said. "There's a bar and bar stools and two ovens"
"They'd have secret parties down there in the 20's," she said. "Everyone did back then."



*
According to the 1988 edition of the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins:

Normal Schools derive their name from the French phrase ecole normale. These teacher-training institutions, the first of which was established in France by the Brothers of the Christian Schools in 1685, were intended to set a pattern, establish a “norm” after which all other schools would be modeled. The first normal school in America was established in Vermont in 1823. The name fell out of favor toward the end of the 1920s, when the influence of Columbia University’s Teachers College became paramount in the field of public education. Most such institutions changed their names to “teachers colleges” during the 1930s. Now that the “progressive education” teachings of the Columbia group have been discredited, the Progressive Education Association itself has disbanded and most colleges have dropped “teachers” from their names. Thus we find that the normal school of grandfather’s day became a “state teachers college” during father’s youth, but today’s sprouts are attending “state colleges.”