I heart

I'm too busy to do a Valetine's post. And why should I, when so many others have already done it so much better... Click through for the absolute finest in Valentine's Day photos.

Gnumoon says Love Hurts.

Dr Flowers says this wood's got heart.

And of course it's Valentine's every day at Farmgirl Fare.

Beanie the chicken is back, you know. Here is Beanie's Valentine note. (And if you missed Jim and Beanie's Chopsticks duet, you should really see that too.)

Sorry if I missed your wonderful Valentine photos. It's probably just because Bloglines was slow serving up your offering.

Eek

I made an offhand comment yesterday about the date of my upcoming craft show, and then learned that it was a week closer than what I'd thought. Eek!

So in lieu of fresh Rurality content, I'm phoning in a few links.

When I was a kid I went with a friend to church camp. One night a missionary spoke to us, and went around the campfire circle saying everyone's name in Spanish. Even though mine turned out to be just "Karen" pronounced with an accent, I was entranced. That's the exact moment I became interested in foreign cultures.

I like reading blogs from other countries, and especially those written by people who aren't natives. My old favorite blog My Blue House (Hispanic-American in France) may be gone, but here are two others I've been enjoying recently.

View From Iran - American in Iran

Tokyo Girl - Brit who was in Tokyo but who's recently moved to Australia

-----

And of course it's Friday so you should visit the Friday Ark.

Leunig again

An agent for Michael Leunig emailed me with new information, so I decided to update this entry. Justin Combs says, "www.leunig.com.au is a tribute site that should in time become Michael’s official site." He also notes that you can see Leunig's artwork at artloft.

Below is the original post from May 2005, with broken links fixed.

------

The worst thing about egg-eating snakes is that they are kind of difficult to top.

So today I'm just going to point at some other sites. They all have to do with Michael Leunig, an Australian cartoonist.

I have no idea how I found him originally... just one of those internet things.

His cartoons appear sporadically in the Melbourne newspaper The Age. (Click over to BugMeNot if any of the newspaper links below require registration and you don't have or want your own.)

At this point I would have liked to show you this picture of one of his cartoons, saying "reproduced with the kind permission of...", but I can't. To a huge Australian newspaper I'm an insignificant flea. An insignificant American flea. Oh well. Just click it. It's not titled but I call it Mysterious or Unusual.

Here are some other recent cartoons from The Age:
What has happened to your life?
Banana mules of suburbia

Leunig draws a lot of political cartoons, which you may or may not agree with. I have political views but have decided that Rurality the blog is apolitical so I'm not going to discuss them here.

His "everyday life" cartoons speak to everyone, regardless of politics. Many good ones, including The Guru (a personal favorite), are here on a site that reviews his book The Travelling Leunig. (Edited to remove broken link. You can find The Guru here and others here.)

More cartoons, including my other favorite, The Plodder.

Curly Flat has background info.

The list of his books, at amazon.com.

His artwork. Sadly, Rurality can't invite you up to see its Leunig etchings at this time, since they start at around US$500 and Rurality still has many unmet fencing needs.

Another place that sells his art.

Hope you like Leunig as much as I do.


Edited to add:
One more. This one has lots of Leunig's prayers.

You might guess that I enjoy the one that begins, "We rejoice and give thanks for earthworms, bees, ladybirds and broody hens"!

And also this, if it's not too mushy for a Friday:

God help us to live slowly:
To move simply:
To look softly:
To allow emptiness:
To let the heart create for us.

Blog-o-mercial

Click over RIGHT NOW to the Brittlestar site. Between now and August 18, you can preorder "Secrets" for only $7.50 plus shipping. Plus, you can preview the album online by clicking on the cover. And by preview I mean, listen to the whole thing. What a deal! So go now, and check it out. Tell the immensely talented Stewart that I said hi.

When you're done with that, make sure to visit the duffypedia, the brainchild of my friends Chris and Sabine. Because if you're not a Stephen Duffy/Lilac Time fan already, well you should be.

You can go here and click on the little mp3 beside "So Far Away" to hear my favorite SD song. (Just don't believe the part about an EP or live album being released anytime soon.)

Special editions

It's been a busy week. I didn't mean to stop posting, it just sort of happened. While I was gone, here's what you might have missed:

The lovely young Leigh of Alis Volat Propiis hosted a summery summary: a vacation version of I and the Bird.

Pablo of Roundrock Journal delivered potent quotes while hosting the second Festival of the Trees. (I kept looking for the thong quotes but there weren't any!)

Roger of Words and Pictures, whose beautiful landscape photos I always want to step into, hosted an elegant edition of Circus of the Spineless.

The Scratching Post hosted The Carnival of the Cats, which was organized around a cat's day - sleeping, purring, eating... where was the part about world domination, though?

And of course there was the Friday Ark.

Quotidian

My everyday lemon pie (awaiting topping)

During the news, I sometimes can't resist telling my husband, "I read about that on a blog already!" Although they are obviously just one person's viewpoint, I do enjoy having the opportunity that blogs provide, of getting some news unfiltered. Directly from the source. So I spent some time over the weekend looking at blogs from Israel and Lebanon.

The majority of Middle Eastern blogs are about politics. You can find any number of round-ups of what people there think about this outrage or that. But that's the same stuff that's on tv.

What I was really curious about was how the everyday lives of everyday people were changing. If you are too, you might want to read about...

Haifa's lost dogs

Sightseeing the war

Cleaning out the bomb shelter

Watching them watch you

and of course, there's always time for pizza.

Cannot be measured

There's a line from the beginning of the movie Dances with Wolves in which the lead character says, "The strangeness of this life cannot be measured..."

I think about that whenever something good happens that is just so far out of the blue that it could never be predicted.

Like when your chicken takes you to Hollywood.

What a fun story! And it couldn't happen to a nicer family. Congrats to the Millers of Sugar Creek Farm.

You can click here to see the results of the contest, or here to see all of the pictures.

In which I am a bad influence

Bwa-ha-ha! If it were a crime, I'd be guilty of aiding and abetting. Two of my friends have new blogs.

My friend Annie is a potter, among other things. Many other things. I've never met anyone so capable. (She comments here sometimes as "weldergirl" so that's one clue.) If you're familiar with Oneonta, Alabama, you've probably visited her downtown shop, where she sells her own beautiful creations as well as other Alabama handcrafts. Including some lovely handmade soap, wink, wink.

She and her husband are building what promises to be an extremely cool passive solar house - with a dogtrot! She's started a blog called Edifice Rex to document it.



My friend Grace is a fellow soapmaker who lives a little north of Birmingham. If you wandered the Pepper Place farmer's market last summer, you may have tried some of her scrumptious-smelling soap.

She's a fellow chicken lover, who's good at keeping me up to date on the antics of Sam - the Rhode Island Red bantam game hen who turned out to be a rooster - and his girls. She has started a blog called Roosterhen Diaries, in which she's committing her hilarious paper journals to the blogosphere.



Go say hi!

-----

Updated: Oops. I was thinking about my own Big Red when I was writing about Sam and called him a Rhode Island Red. Sorry!

More recommendations

There is always a Friday Ark over at The Modulator - go there for links to critter pictures of the week. And if you've got a blog, be sure to submit your photos too.

And then there's Caturday, a newish blog about - cats, what else! They were nice enough to include one of my recent pictures.

I know, I know, I need to update my blogroll! In the meantime be sure to check out the Firefly Forest Blog. Besides the great nature pics, I enjoyed the recent Light Trail Photographs:



And thanks so much to Gnumoon for letting me know about Pandora. You can create your own online radio stations, and "train" them to play what you like, based on your own recommendations. I'm currently building:

Karen's Alternative
Karen's Folk
Karen's Bluesy
Karen's Minimalism
Karen's Alt Country

and several more. You can build a station based on just one artist or song, or list several for an interesting mix.

The Toymaker

There is a blog you should visit.


It's full of beautiful drawings.

By a very nice person


who is so creative.

Marilyn is The Toymaker. I absolutely love her drawings/paintings and think that at least 75% of all children's books should be illustrated by her.



Did I say children's books? I mean all books.


Plus, she has the cutest kid!



---

P.S. She's got a website too. Lots of free downloadable paper toys.

And there's a Merchandise area... I just ordered the bunny t-shirt!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a calendar in store for next year.

Create your own Einstein scribbles here.

(Thanks to BeetleCat for the link.)

The blog year in review, Part II

I decided to make a "favorite blog posts" list for 2005. Not my posts, but others I've read. My husband told me that I shouldn't. The alienate-everybody-who's-not-on-it potential is enormous. There are so many blogs I love that are not represented here. Blogs that make me smile or laugh or cry on a daily basis. But these are the posts that I remembered off the top of my head. The ones that I've gone back to read more than once.

Nuthatch at Bootstrap Analysis writes very knowledgeably about nature and ecology issues and most of all, birds. But the one that really made me grin was about musical ear-worms.

Danny Miller of Jew Eat Yet? has a passion for classic movies, and an impressive collection of personal letters from 1970s celebrities. But in this hilarious post, it's Jennifer Aniston who's trying to control his brain.

Dave Bonta writes one of my favorite blogs, Via Negativa. For me he's got the perfect mixture of poetry and nature and levity and "hmm let me think about that for a while" and "hold on where's my dictionary". Here is Dave channeling the original Nittany Lion. (Language alert here... that's one angry lion.)

Lorianne of Hoarded Ordinaries (love that title) keeps a wonderful illustrated blog of her life in New Hampshire. She wrote very movingly about hunger early in the year.

If you have yet to read Somewhere on the Masthead, you're in for a treat. Magazine Man is the father of Art Lad, who's been mentioned here before. MM can be somewhat of a klutz... (who else has so many head injuries?) but gives such good story.

Jenni of Chanticleer is a poet of many facets, whose lighthearted side often shows through on her blog. She normally removes her work from her blog after a short time, but agreed to put this post back up so I could show you her poem that I love, titled Thirst.

One thing I love about reading A WhipPoorWill is that I so often feel as though I'm right there with Trix. On a hike together I have a feeling that we'd take 3 hours to cover the first 100 feet or so (and be perfectly satisfied). Here she is with her father.

Chris Clarke writes so beautifully. I suspect that most people read his blog Creek Running North for the political information, but I confess that I visit for the nature, the wildlife, and the critters. Tissue warning.

It's fascinating to read about Clare's corner of the world over at The House & Other Arctic Musings... so different from here. His description of Halloween in the far north was especially captivating. (And where else are you going to see a costume involving "a narwhal tusk, a muskox horn, a tea pot, a dress, two different shoes, a caribou parka, and another 'person' attached to the a**"?)

Anne, aka Yellowstone Wolf, over at Inscribed on the Forest Floor, takes the most breathtaking nature photos you'd ever hope to see. So why do I keep going back to this one of her journals? Because they're just so wonderfully made - because I love her handwriting - because I want to read them too!

And finally, from Maktaaq, probably my favorite blog post ever written: Of monkeys, lightbulbs, and factory life.

Have a merry one

OK I'm a scrooge. I'm Scrooge McScrooge. Bah. And oh yeah, humbug.

I'm not sure what came over me, or exactly when. I used to love all things Christmasy. I could happily shop for ornaments in the middle of July. Now I never want to decorate. My husband finally decided that he'd have to put up a tiny tree himself, or we'd have no decorations at all. I didn't get a single Christmas card sent. (I normally do though - I was just busy filling orders this year. Now it's too late.)

Even though I'm scroogy, I'm wishing everyone a merry Christmas. I haven't had time to go out and take pictures lately. So as your gift, I'm sending you to see someone else's.

This great photo of Western Australia mistletoe was taken by John Dolphin, a fellow wildflower nut. (Also see Maximum Depth of Field.)

If you have bizarro-brain like me, the name John Dolphin makes you think of the Buckaroo Banzai movie. (Sorry John!)

All the Lectroids are named John. Some have normal names, like John Parker or John O'Connor. But others are obviously made up, like John YaYa and John Smallberries. My favorite is John Bigboote, who keeps getting called Bigbooty. ("It's BigbooTAY!")

I must have seen this movie at least a dozen times. I love John Lithgow as the fiendish Lord John Whorfin/Dr. Emilio Lizardo. ("Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!") His expressions while giving a speech to the evil but listless Red Lectroids make it among my favorite movie scenes. ("History is made at night. Character is what you are in the dark!") I guess you could call the film a cheesy, over-the-top, low-budget spoof. The special goggles they use to watch a holographic message are clearly made from bubble wrap. But if you like that sort of thing, come on over. Bring the popcorn!

Toronto Calling

My e-pal Stewart Reynolds has a dilemma. His band, Brittlestar (fantastic, by the way) wants to play the legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto.

They have an opportunity, but the only catch is that it's on a Monday night (Nov 21st). And they need to be able to draw at least 50 people. (Which is 38 more than Sting played to, when The Police played their first Toronto show there, according to Stewart.)

I think I have a few readers in the Toronto area, so if you think you might be interested in going, let me know and I can pass along the info.

End of blog-o-mercial!

---

P.S. I saw The Police during the Synchronicity tour on 8 November 1983. They played a note so low that I felt it vibrating in my bones. I went to the concert with the man who is now my husband. (There were a few more than 12 people there.)

---
Update:
Brittlestar is now booked to play the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto on Nov 21st at 9:30pm. Go see 'em!

Wandering

Lots on the schedule today so instead of anything original I'm going to send you to visit the Ontario Wanderer, who has just started a blog.

Besides showing me up on my false tree ID two posts ago, the Wanderer has added insult to injury by posting a photo of a hummingbird... on the nest! If you're a nature nut like me, you'll want to bookmark the site.

Also check out his excellent wildflower page. (I'm assuming that the Wanderer is Dean, but it's possibly one of his partners in crime.)

Su Doku

Sorry if it seems a bit like "Rurality Lite" lately. This is the week of 5 million appointments and projects.

Too much going on today so I'm just leaving this link for an addictive puzzle.

It's called Su Doku, which in Japanese means "number place". (Don't worry, you won't have to perform mathmatics.)

The newspaper (The Times from the UK) posts a new puzzle each day, increasing in difficulty as the week progresses.

We got hooked in a hurry. We downloaded the Su Doku program so we could play on the computer too.

Highly recommended!

Plug week continues

After recently recommending some Canadian "e" friends, I thought I'd better plug some real-life Alabama friends, before they beat me up.


Ron Dometrovich is a local musician and co-founder of the "soap for CDs" program. I'm a big fan of his music, which is sort of folk, sort of country, sort of singer-songwritery. Two of his earlier CDs, A Good Mechanic (is Hard to Find) and A Place With No Name, are available at CDBaby. He has three others that you'll have to buy at one of his shows, or email him for. Of them all, I think The Grander Scheme of Things is my favorite. It should be on CDBaby as well, hint hint Ron.

Ron's lovely wife Kim has just started Sewing By Kim. The site is still under construction - I think she only has her About Me page up at this point, so check back soon. She's done costume work for the Alabama Ballet and several local theater groups, and is a real sweetie who also knows a lot about plants. I think Kim was one of the first people we met when we started doing craft shows. Of course we like her because she always praises our soap to potential customers when she's in our booth. But she was also nice enough not to get mad when I let slip about something that she had bought Ron for Christmas. (Oops.)


Marcus Lusk is the artist and creator of the comic book Tales from the Bog. You may notice that his web site is woefully out of date... yes I'm hoping to shame him into updating it. To buy back issues of Tales (and other comic book and art things), visit his EBay store.

"Every penny you spend will help bring the Bog back sooner," says Marcus, "And it helps feed my two kids, too!" (I'm sure I hear violin music playing somewhere in the background.) But really, they are astonishingly cute kids.


If you need a decorative mailbox, Debbie at All for Katie is who you need to see. She has lots of other pretty painted things too, but I'm partial to the mailboxes. (We have one with pansies.)

She's very talented and in person, is what you'd call a hoot and a half. That's her daughter Katie pictured on the website. She's even more of a stunner nowdays; I'm sure her mother is having to beat the boys off with a stick. Order a lot, because as Debbie says, "Teenage girls are very expensive."

I Heart Canada

These days I'm not as likely to know pop stars as, well, to know their mothers.

But an up and coming Canadian artist whose music I love is Stewart Reynolds of Brittlestar.

His song The Long Weekend has been flirting with #1 for the Amazon.com pop/rock downloads for a few weeks now. Click here to download it yourself and help push it to the top.

(I think Gasoline is actually my favorite song on the album... and you can download that from the Amazon site too.)

I met Stewart because he's a fellow Lilac Time fan.

Another Canadian I like is the very funny Doug Gordon, a producer for Wisconsin Public Radio. He works for one of my favorite radio shows, To the Best of our Knowledge.

He created the three-part New Audio Showroom, my favorite part of which is This Canadian Existance.

As you might suspect, it's similar to one of my other favorite radio shows, This American Life, except... it's about Canada.

I met Doug because he's a fellow John Wesley Harding fan.

My other favorite Canadians are a trio of bloggers.

Maktaaq writes some of my favorite blog entries ever, even when she's feeling low. There's no use trying to write the best blog entry ever... Maktaaq has already written it. I have to keep checking back in, I never know what Crenguţă the hamster might be up to next. (Maktaaq is possibly not technically a Canadian - I'm not sure - but she lives there now and that's good enough for me.)

The irrepressibly funny Happy and Blue 2 almost gave up on blogging because of the many recent Blogger troubles, but was persuaded to continue by the pleading comments of his many fans.

The impossibly tall, handsome young FORMS, well known in Starbucks throughout the land, has been busy, traveling to Russia, going undercover at the Canada's Next Top Face auditions, and playing water polo.

I met the bloggers because of their blogs, or because of this one. I don't even know any of their real names. It doesn't matter.

Geez I love the internet.

I don't really know any of these people, except in an online sort of way, an "exchanged a few emails or blog comments" kind of way.

As for experiences in "real life" with Canadians - my husband and I went on an extended driving vacation north of the border a few years ago. We loved it. We ate a lot of lobster and poutine.

Oddly, we felt at home there, in a way that we hadn't at our other stops in Washington D.C. and Maine.

Are Canadians more like people from the southern US than the northern US? Or do Canadians just make everyone feel at home?

We also happened to catch the entire run of Twitch City while in Nova Scotia. Since that time I have loved Don McKellar in particular and all other Canadians in general.

John Wesley Harding (not the Dylan album)

I got a real big puffy head for a few seconds when I saw that John Wesley Harding had included my blog site address in one of his web forum posts recently. And under the words, "I would recommend the following blogs," no less!

Then I realized that he had written a line for everybody that had signed up (and included a web address) for the new forum so far.

So rather than being wonderfully interesting or wickedly amusing or devastatingly clever, I was merely... early.

The fleeting illusion of fame was nice while it lasted.

I've got a postcard that I need to find, to show the other JWH-aholics.

It's the result of the last fan letter I wrote. The last one on paper anyway - I've probably sent a lot of little "like what you do" emails to various people over the years.

Actually the letter to JWH wasn't exactly a fan letter as such... As I recall it was more along the lines of a complaint about the (then recent) lack of witty liner notes.

To me, liner notes are half the fun of music sometimes. All of his had previously been witty and then all of the sudden they were... not so much. Just regular liner notes, like everybody else's, and geez didn't he know how good the previous ones had been?

I don't know what I was thinking though - musicians are always getting fan mail so they probably need some complaint mail...?! Believe it or not I was well past my teens.

He was nice about it though, and sent me back a witty postcard.

I'll try to get a picture of it soon, to show the other JWH fans who might end up here.

This was all back in the early to mid-90s, so I can't say if letters of complaint to JWH will still get you postcards.
He's probably a lot busier nowdays, what with the upcoming book, and preparing to be a major literary figure and all that.

If you are not a JWH fan already, you should be! He always has some free MP3s on his website, so go there to check him out. Or just listen to the Amazon.com snippets.

He has also written a book that's due out in April, called Misfortune. Since he writes the best Tour Diaries in the universe, I'm sure the book will be good too. It'll be under his real, non-Dylan inspired name, Wesley Stace.