I pray you are blessed, built up in your faith and Christian walk, and become an interactive participant in God's Morning. We are here as Christ's body, supporting and building each other up in all righteousness, in His name, awaiting His soon return. Maranatha!
mere words come to life
they have colors
they’re butterflies escaping their cocoons
shadows can feel
and fantasies are real
under a lovers’ moon
lovers embrace under night darkened skies
they trade kisses as sweet as wine
the trees standing near
seem to be caught in the spell
as their branches reach out
and entwine
under the glow of this yellow moon
every word written is gold
they speak of pyramids
of magical times
and of stories yet to be told
the eerie light of a lovers’ moon
conjurs up words never repeated while alone
and whispers that linger
on the breath of night
they seem to follow wherever you roam
so if the words in your soul must be spoken
with the eloquence of a musical tune
then arm yourselves with heart in hand
and search each night
for a lovers’ moon
My wife and I are paring down our personal library and we’re wondering if there are some local charities/schools/groups that could use these books. We’ve got a bunch of fiction and non-fiction, a large stack of language books (Japanese, French and Spanish, both written in that language and grammar books), and a huge pile of comic books in graphic-novel format (thicker volumes), there are some art books as well.
Could you post this to GMG and see if anyone out there can give us a good place to donate these to? We’d really appreciate it!
Did you know about Zazzle? This is a great site for visual artists looking for some additional revenue from their paintings, photographs or graphic designs. You can set up an account for free and upload as many images as you like, which you can then choose to have imprinted on as many products as you would like to offer (from t-shirts to mugs to mousepads, cards, prints and even skateboards!). I have had an account with Zazzle for some time now, and regularly receive checks from them. If you like, you can see my Zazzle shop at http://www.zazzle.com/khanstudio*.
It takes a little time to set up your shop, as you want to make sure you include good tags and descriptions so that people will find your products, and that your image files are high quality and the right size and resolution for the item(s) it will be printed on. I generally create PNG files of my images in Photoshop to upload, but you can upload JPEG, PDF, or Adobe Illustrator files as well.
You also decide what amount of royalty you want to receive for the sale of your artwork on a Zazzle product. I set my royalty at 25%, but you can set your’s higher or lower. They discourage people from setting their royalty any higher than 50%, as it increases the price of the item beyond what the market will bear. The great thing about Zazzle is that they do all the work, create the product, handle the sales and shipping (US, Canada and the UK), all you have to do is upload your images and spend a little time tagging and describing them. You can start with as few or as many images as you like, and their uploader is great, can handle up to 100 large files, and is really fast.
Zazzle is not just for artists. Anyone who has a great shot of the dog, grandkids, or whatever, that they would like on a T-shirt or mug for themself or to give as a gift, can upload the image and order whatever product they want it on.
Another similar site that I have had good success with is http://www.cafepress.com/ and its sister art site, http://www.imagekind.com/, although Zazzle has been the best performer, so I focused on them.
Probably the most important and challenging aspect of being successful with your artwork on the internet is creating a way for people to find you. Part of this is visual (we are artists, and people have to like what they see or they won’t buy it), but search engine robots can’t see, so a larger part is creating a niche for your work, and spending time developing unique search terms that will lead people to you. We’ll look at this in another post.
Whether you were at the 7th Annual Annisquam Village Church Talent Show and want to relive it a little, or you missed it and want to see some of what you missed, check out some video clips here. It was a jam-packed house, with a great potluck supper, some really good talent, and a successful benefit for the Haiti Project. A good time was had by all. I thought people might get a kick out of the “How to Speak Gloucester – Liquor Locker” skit. It was a great plug for the Liquor Locker, as I heard a number of people asking if it was a real place, which they will probably now check out. The kids in the first video are just so precious, especially the one in the yellow shirt.
Collage by E.J. Lefavour
That Gloucester’s motto in 1905 was “The place you come back to”? This was a summer hotel guide published in 1905 by the Gloucester Board of Trade. Many accommodations were highlighted, but I focused on the Brynmere on Cambridge Avenue. Looking at the then and now photos, it hasn’t changed much, although I’m sure they charge a lot more than $3.00 a day now, and you can unfortunately no longer get there by electric car and carriage.
Got Talent? Or just enjoy being part of the audience? Don’t miss the 7th Annual Annisquam Village Church Talent Show being held at the Annisquam Village Hall tomorrow evening.
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That Canada geese usually start choosing mates and selecting a territory for nesting in late February to early March? The females start laying eggs anytime from mid-March to mid-May. Incubation by the female begins as soon as all her eggs are laid. The gander’s job during nesting season is to defend the female, their nesting territory, and eggs. If a person or another goose enters the territory, the gander will usually give a warning call to the intruder before chasing it away. Some geese can be highly aggressive and will only stop their attack when the intruder has left or the goose’s life is threatened.
Fortunately, these geese that I stumbled upon at Cambridge Beach were not mating or aggressive and decided to fly away. Keep this in mind as we reach the end of February going into March, and steer clear of geese that may be mating. I have been attacked by terns who were nesting on the abandoned piers next to the artist building in East Boston while trying to unlock the front door, and by gulls on an island when I unwittingly explored too close to their rookery. It can be painful and scary to have a bird intent on driving you away, and they will draw blood if you don’t move quick enough for their liking – a challenge if you’ve gotten yourself way out on the rocks before you realize you’re in the wrong place. That’s why Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was such a great horror film – it was not far fetched.
That the grandest of the boulders that Roger Babson hired unemployed stonecutters to carve inspiring messages on is Spiritual Power? Babson knew, as do many people, that spiritual power resides in nature. A walk through the woods or along a deserted beach can calm even the most stressed or distraught person. In truth, spiritual power resides in everything, but it is when we can remove ourselves from the “issues” of life and be in the quiet, that answers can be found. It is often easiest to do this surrounded by the power and quiet of nature. Since coming here, many people have told me that Dogtown is a place to avoid, that bad things happen there, and people get lost in the woods. My sister and I got lost when we went on our trek, but we found our way back to the trail. Bad things can happen anywhere, but you don’t avoid the sea because people have drowned or been attacked by sharks there, or avoid the highway because people have been killed or injured in accidents there. Fear of something can ultimately be more dangerous than the thing we fear, because it cripples us and keeps us from experiencing the very thing that could set us free or provide the answers we seek. I could have heeded people’s warnings, made their fear my own, and not gone to Dogtown. I would have missed the magic of the place, finding and photographing the boulders, creating the Dogtown and Babson Boulders calendar, and being invited to give a talk at Babson College on Founder’s Day and have my photos included in their permanent art collection. Spiritual power exists all around us and is just waiting for us to listen to its still small voice.
That Sunset or sundown is the daily disappearance of the Sun below the horizon as a result of Earth’s rotation.
The time of sunset is defined in astronomy as the moment the trailing edge of the Sun’s disk disappears below the horizon in the west. The ray path of light from the setting Sun is highly distorted near the horizon because of atmospheric refraction, making astronomical sunset occur when the Sun’s disk is already about one diameter below the horizon. Sunset is distinct from dusk, which is the moment at which darkness falls, which occurs when the Sun is approximately eighteen degrees below the horizon. The period between the astronomical sunset and dusk is called twilight.
Sunset creates unique atmospheric conditions such as the often intense orange and red colors of the Sun and the surrounding sky. (From Wikipedia).
These are a few captures of disappearances of the sun below the horizon, and the resulting unique atmospheric conditions, as viewed from Annisquam.
why pale blue paint is used on the porch ceilings of many older homes in New England? There are actually a number of possible reasons. The blue paint is said to reflect light. To anyone standing inside the house, the day would seem brighter, even if it were overcast. Some say it keeps the porch cooler in summer. Still others believe that blue chases away evil spirits. In the South, especially in South Carolina, the ceiling porch blue is called haint blue (haint being a spirit or ghost) and is used to ward off evil spirits. Some people also believe that the color discourages insects that mistake it for the open sky and avoid it for fear of being caught in the open and eaten by flying predators. Some just do it because it is pretty.
I know most everyone is sick and tired of all this snow, but we couldn’t experience these magical winter scenes without it. Just think how much more we will appreciate spring when it arrives this year.
That Goose Cove Reservation was conserved by a group of concerned Gloucester residents who cherished the natural scenic beauty of this woodland as seen from Route 127? The property features wooded upland, rocky shoreline, and tidal mudflats. The scenery is some of the most beautiful and tranquil of all Greenbelt properties, and provides an opportunity to study varied plant and animal life. A variety of estuarine and marine plants and algae exist in unusual proximity along the shoreline, and there is an abundance of shorebirds. Geologic features include Cape Ann granite, horenblended granite, glacial erratics, glacial outwash, and moraine. Great spot for Hiking, birding and nature study, cross country skiing & snow shoeing, fishing, and canoeing.
Direction from Route 128, at Grant Circle in Gloucester: Drive north on Washington Street, Route 127, toward Lanesville for 1.9 miles. Landmarks you will pass are: the hospital on your left, the Ralph O’Malley Middle School on your right, you will drive over a causeway, and pass The Grange on your right, and a sign for the Beeman School. The Goose Cove parking area is on the right. This is a blind right turn that could be easy to miss. If you pass a small municipal building on the right, you have gone to far. Visit http://www.ecga.org/properties/goosecove.html for more info.
This painting is of an egret feeding in the shallows at low tide in Goose Cove.
Do you know what this house is called, or any of its history? I have loved this house and its beautiful setting since the first time I saw it many years ago. I would love to know its story, but don’t know how to identify it. Can anyone out there help?
That a salt marsh is an environment in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and salty or brackish water, which is dominated by dense stands of halophytic (salt-tolerant) plants such as herbs, grasses, or low shrubs? These plants are terrestrial in origin and are essential to the stability of the salt marsh in trapping and binding sediments. Salt marshes play a large role in the aquatic food web and the exporting of nutrients to coastal waters. They also provide support to terrestrial animals such as migrating birds as well as providing coastal protection. (From Wikipedia)
Salt marshes are also beautiful any time of year, and are often photographed and painted, wherever they are found. This particular salt marsh is on Plum Island, looking toward the refuge, which hosts and supports an amazing array of migrating birds.
A full moon is often thought of as an event of a full night’s duration. This is somewhat misleading, as the Moon seen from Earth is continuously becoming larger or smaller (though much too slowly to notice with the naked eye). Its absolute maximum size occurs at the moment expansion has stopped, and when graphed, its tangent slope is zero. For any given location, about half of these absolute maximum full moons will be potentially visible, as the other half occur during the day, when the full moon is below the horizon. Many almanacs list full moons not just by date, but by their exact time as well, usually in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)). Typical monthly calendars that include phases of the moon may be off by one day if intended for use in a different time zone.
Full Moons are traditionally associated with temporal insomnia, insanity (hence the terms lunacy and lunatic) and various “magical phenomena” such as lycanthropy. Psychologists, however, have found that there is no strong evidence for effects on human behavior around the time of a full moon. They find that studies are generally not consistent, with some showing a positive effect and others showing a negative effect. In one instance, the 23 December 2000 issue of the British Medical Journal published two studies on dog bite admissions to hospitals in England and Australia. The study of the Bradford Royal Infirmary found that dog bites were twice as common during a full moon, whereas the study conducted by the public hospitals in Australia found that they were less likely. (from Wikipedia)
This full moon was rising at sunset and was an unexpected bonus as I walked home from photographing the sunset at Cambridge Beach one evening. Then, just as I zoomed in on the moon for a closup shot, this seagull flew in front of it. I was not bitten by any dogs, nor did I encounter any werewolves or lunatics.
That Rocky Neck Art Colony is the oldest working art colony in the country, and has been luring artists to its picturesque shores for more than 150 years. Among others, these artists include Fitz Henry Lane in the 1840s, Emile Gruppe, who made The Neck his home and painted into the 1970s, as well as Childe Hassam, Milton Avery, Maurice Prendergast, Cecilia Beaux, John Sloan, Stuart Davis, Frank Duveneck, Nell Blaine, and Jane Peterson. Leonard Craske created “The Man at the Wheel,” Gloucester’s famous landmark sculpture, in his studio on the pier on Rocky Neck in the 1920s. Writers Louisa May Alcott, Rudyard Kipling, and others frequented The Neck.
Today the area is still home to many working artists and to galleries showing paintings in all media, as well as batik, photography, jewelry, prints, sculpture, ceramics, and fine gifts. In addition to viewing the arts, one may snack or dine at unique restaurants that feature fine food and fabulous views.
The fish house in the top photo, taken in the early 1900’s on what was then called Curve Road, is the same location as in the bottom photo, now called River Road. The shack is gone, but the granite pier and house remain.
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