When I look at this I see a wild boar. What do you see?
Today’s Wordless Wednesday post comes to you with a few words of explanation, because as you can see, this week’s image is actually not a photo. Today’s image is a page from The Coloring Book for the Super Intelligent by Brett Bender. It was sold to help raise funds for the AIDS Library of Philadelphia way back in 1992.
There is a quote from Bender on the last page of the book. It reads, “Together we can color our worlds in any way to make our dreams come true.” He’s speaking in reference to working together to cure AIDS but the quote always resonated with me.
In my memory this was given to me while I was sick with Mono but since I had Mono in September of 1991 I’m obviously mistaken. I definitely remember it being from Tower Books on South Street (RIP), but now I don’t know if I bought it myself or if in fact it was a gift from someone.
I still have a few pages that I haven’t colored in but the uncolored pages are dwindling. I wish someone would find Brett Bender and have him create another edition of The Coloring Book for the Super Intelligent. There aren’t enough coloring books for adults.
So there you have it kids, a Wordy Wordless Wednesday post showcasing art created in 2 steps; the semi blank canvas provided by the first artist with colors provided by the second artist, me.
Society just doesn’t get it. The headlines … NCAA Hammers Penn State • The ridiculous questions • Is it fair? The clothes rending, hand wringing grief because the NCAA wiped out the team’s wins and they’ve been banned from bowl games for 4 years.
Boys’ childhoods were wiped away by a monster that everyone saw fit to protect to save their precious football program. 4 years? 4 lifetimes won’t wipe away the harm done to those boys. And yet here we are rending our clothes and weeping tears of sorrow over an effing football program. I just don’t fucking get it. Those games that those players won. They can never be taken away from them. In reality it’s semantics, a statistic at best. Those victims’ childhoods can never be restored.
There is no self awareness here. There is no remorse. There is no acknowledgement that no game no matter how prestigious or important is worth the physical and emotional well being of another human being. Until the media and society in general stop focusing on the punishment of Penn State and instead the catastrophic harm done to those children there can be no change.
Take down as many statues as you want, void as many wins as you like, and miss as many bowl games as you want. Until the media and society and the Paterno family in particular take a good long look at themselves and realize what was lost, not for love of the game but for love of success and worldly riches you may as well let ’em keep their statue and their wins and their bowl games because right now no one’s learned a damn thing. Shameful.
mushrooms under my tree
I just read this amazing article on Mashable about using mushrooms as packing material. You can read it here http://mashable.com/2012/05/04/mushroom-packaging/
This, this is why I’m fascinated by science and engineering and the people who think outside the box to solve problems.
I’m inspired when I think about civil engineers who looked at dirt roads & thought, we’ll build highways or who saw mountains and thought, we’ll build tunnels to go through them. And I’m just as fascinated and inspired as I read this article about using mushrooms to create packing materials that can be planted back in the ground and used as composted fertilizer for gardens.
I can only dream of being this smart and this inspired. There’s a great quote by the fictional character of Sam Seaborn on The West Wing. He says,
These brave and brilliant explorers, engineers and scientists should be our folk heroes, our rock stars, our idols. Their achievements, their creations are every bit as inspiring as the works of Michelangelo and Picasso and Beethoven.
Imagine that, mushrooms as packaging. What’s next?
What subatomic particles look like in my mind
Hey! Good Sunday morning to you. I hope you’re all (all 6 or 7 of you) settled in and enjoying a peaceful Sunday morning with coffee, croissants, and the Sunday newspaper. I actually don’t have any of those things in house so here at Chez Soapboxville it’s leftover pizza, a glass of Coke, and my Twitter feed. If you have coffee, croissants, and the Sunday Times feel free to share, just hang a left at the corner of opinionated and caffeinated Soapboxville is one block over.
As I read my Twitter feed this morning I saw the following headline: Super-collider team discovers new subatomic particle with a link to a story on MSNBC. This is the kind of thing that I don’t quite fully comprehend but it fascinates and inspires me anyway. Now if only I had some physicists and quantum physicists in my stable of friends so they could explain it to me. Come to think of it I need to add quite a few folks to my circle of friends. Let’s see. Hmmmm …. I could use the aforementioned physicists, a few astronomers, a constitutional scholar or two and Leo McGarry (fictional character). That’s right folks I need smart, enlightened, patient folks to explain and regale me with stories about my two favorite subjects, science and politics. I love both but lack a deeper understanding of either.
Interested physicists, scholars, and political operatives may apply in the comments below. Happy Sunday folks, I hope you too find something to fascinate and inspire you today. I think I’ll look for my copy of The Elegant Universe and give reading it another go.
~ Carol Anne