Redbud is blooming

I've always thought my life list is pretty pathetic. I have no desire to climb a mountain, learn Italian or read Plato. (Although I would sort of like to learn Spanish lately. I think it's only fair to my students at the MLC to not be fluent in their language.)
But one item on my list is having my own Redbud tree. My KC family knows how crazy I am for them...I often try and time my visits to when the Redbud (and the Whitebud) are blooming. In Missouri they are so profuse that they are sold on the sidewalks of local hardware stores for $19. And now our own University of Minnesota has taken the tree and created a hybrid that can survive our more difficult winters.
The history of the back corner of my yard is a long one and not quite done yet, but last year I finally planted a Redbud. Last week, the branches showed lots of "bud" but no blooms. "At least it's alive," I thought. But this weekend, it's having its day in the sun (so to speak). I sort of want to throw a party for it. Welcome to spring, Redbud! Congratulations for making it through the longest winter of your life!
I'm not sure what else to on my life list to start working on, but this item has been very satisfying.

A good morning's work

It looks like we'll have 70 degrees for the first time this year. Out on the porch for lunch today, I can hardly imagine a more beautiful day. There is even a hint of lilac in the air.

Anne passes out hairnets for all of us.

Food tastes especially good to me after my morning experience at Feed My Starving Children. Together with about 50 students from the Minnesota Literacy Center and 10 teachers and volunteers, I spent the morning packing food for easy-to-prepare meals which will be sent to aid-relief organizations around the world for distribution to families. In just two hours, our group packed nearly 120 boxes of meals. The cost of the meal is just 17 cents to produce (although expected to go higher as the rice shortage becomes more severe) and has been designed to be easy and safe to transport, simple to make with only boiling water, and culturally acceptable worldwide.

Ali waits for everyone to get organized.

FMSC is located in an unremarkable office complex in the suburbs, but the facility is well-designed to get the job of food packing done quickly and economically. Each station is set up for 5 people: 2 people to hold the food pouch (taking turns), 1 to add a protein powder and dehydrated vegetables, 1 to add soy and rice, and 1 to seal the plastic and line them up to be boxed. Bags are weighed to be consistent (to hold down shipping costs) and spills on the table are swept right back into the rice bucket. We even did our own clean up at the end of the morning, washing utensils, tables and sweeping the floor so it was all ready for the next group.

Amah scoops up the rice.

We had a goal of 120 boxes for the morning..and just about met that goal (our bus was a little late). That was 4320 pouches of food that provided 25,920 meals or just about enough to feed 20 kids for a year.

Jorge tastes the meal after we're done.

Proof of Spring

My redbud is blooming.

A robin's egg discovered on the ground, but completely intact. No nest visible anywhere. The photo does not do its "turquoise-ness" credit.

Bleeding heart. I seem to have lost a peony bush in the front yard, which is a bit of a surprise. But its siblings should be blooming in a few weeks.

The Bee Box

I started way too late on my preparations for Craftstravaganza (CG), so I pretty much stuck with the box patterns that I did well and that had sold at the MCBA sale last Christmas. But a few days before CG, I decided I wanted to do a box with a divider on the inside, a "bi-valve" box as a friend said.

One of the divided boxes used a paper printed with a bee for creativity. The paper is not actually Asian and is difficult to glue, but I really liked the design and wanted to build a box that used it really well. (It looks good on the front of this box, but I wasn't happy with the other 3 sides.) So I've spent the last few days measuring the pattern to down to 1/32 of an inch and cutting board that will show the pattern particularly well. Usually the paper I use is either solid in color or has a broad enough pattern that it doesn't matter where I cut.
When I get into production mode for boxes, I will often cut all my paper at once and do each step on 10-15 boxes before going onto the next. But the Bee Box is all about slowing down and doing each step with great attention. In fact it almost uses a new technique in covering the box, as I want the bee stamp to be centered on each side of the box.

I had assembled the boxes yesterday (one step that I could do in production mode), but this morning, I cut the paper for only one box and worked out all of the problems in covering it as if this one was the only one that would ever be made (I actually hope to make 10). It was a new way of working for me: no pressure of an upcoming sale; no Christmas or birthday gifts. It was truly a step into what I most want: working on a design that I'm intrigued with for no other purpose than that I want to see what it looks like. And because of that, and the bee's own value of creativity (it says so on the box!), I think I have to keep the first one for myself.

Playing God

Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist and kinetic sculptor who creates beach animals (or Strandbeest) that, over generations, are learning to take care of themselves. Not truly alive, of course, they are nonetheless beautiful as they walk the beach and learn to avoid the waves and to flap their paper wings to give them energy.

A book on his work is available and gives some insight into his inspiration:
Since 1990 Theo Jansen has been engaged in creating new forms of life: beach animals. These are not made of protein like the existing life-forms but from another basic stuff, yellow plastic tubing. Skeletons made from these tubes are able to walk. They get their energy from the wind, so they don't have to eat like regular animals. They evolved over many generations, becoming increasingly adept at surviving storms and water from the sea. Theo Jansen's ultimate wish is to release herds of these animals on the shore. In redoing the Creation, so to speak, he hopes to become wiser in his dealings with the existing nature by encountering problems the Real Creator had to face.
The Great Pretender is a testimonial to his experiences as God. It's not easy being God; there are plenty of disappointments along the way. But on the few occasions that things work out, being God is the most wonderful thing in the world.

Board shears karma

I'm lucky enough to be just five miles away from the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and not one but two full-size board shears. Cutting book board (the preferred material for boxes and most book covers) is incredibly hard by hand and nearly impossible to cut straight. (Right, Sarah?)
My teachers would all totally and completely disagree, but I think that there is a karma involved in cutting book board "square." Sometimes I almost want to burn some incense before I start. It's pretty simple to cut a few covers for books at the shears, but more complicated to cut, for example, 20 of the same boxes at one time. You do the best you can, pack up the cut pieces and take them home to see if you did it all right. If not, the best thing to do is sweep them into the trash can and call for some more time on the shears. (It would be great to assemble the boxes in the studio, but studio rental is a little pricey.)
I was lucky during the lead-up to Craftstravaganza...virtually everything I cut was usable. But the week after I booked an hour on the shears and came home to discover that everything was off just enough that my boxes looked like the homes in Ron's neighborhood in Harry Potter.
Yesterday I went back to do the boxes again. I took big deep breaths, and tried to pay attention to what I was doing. Clearly, though, my karma was having a coffee break: I came home with 2 sets of "Side A" and no sets at all of "Side B."

The Six Word Memoir

A friend told me about the concept of the six word memoir a few weeks ago. Begun as a project by SMITH, a story telling magazine, the responses have now been published as a book "Not Quite What I Was Planning."
If you sit down for a few minutes and think about what you'd like to say in exactly six words, it can be quite illuminating. Stephen Colbert's memoir is spot on: "Well, I thought it was funny." Daniel Pink's is "Pink. Yes. Just like the color."
More from SMITH's six word web site:
"I gave God credit. He demurred."
"It's ok. My dogs love me."
"Told to marry rich. Married Richard."
"English major. You do the math."
And mine?
"Full of wonder, full of pie."

Rent this fish

I'm living on the cheap these days, so one site I check often is the .99 cent movie of the week at iTunes. Every week iTunes offers up one movie for .99 and the beauty is that you can download it and watch it any time in the next 30 days.
This week it's the classic Fish Called Wanda, one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. (No. 1 is probably the slapstick What's Up Doc?)
Here's the plot description. If you only know Jamie Lee Curtis as the great mom in Freaky Friday, you really have to see this.
In A Fish Called Wanda, Jamie Lee Curtis plays an ambitious con artist who uses every ounce of her sexual wiles to obtain a fortune in jewels stolen by her gangster lover Tom Georgeson. First, she romances Georgeson’s dimwitted but deadly henchman Kevin Kline (who won an Academy Award for his performance). Then, to clear the path for her getaway with Kline, Jamie woos Georgeson’s starched-shirt attorney, John Cleese—and it’s Cleese whom she genuinely falls in love with. Michael Palin, Cleese’s former Monty Python cohort, plays a stuttering mob flunkey who continually messes up his one big assignment: killing a little old lady (it isn’t that he has any qualms about knocking off the old dear; it’s just that her pet dogs keep getting in the way). A Fish Called Wanda was scripted by star John Cleese.