boxed baby

For 75 years, Finland's expectant mothers have been given a box by the state. It's like a starter kit of clothes, sheets and toys that can even be used as a bed. And some say it helped Finland achieve one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates.

It's a tradition that dates back to the 1930s and it's designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they're from, an equal start in life.

The maternity package - a gift from the government - is available to all expectant mothers.

It contains bodysuits, a sleeping bag, outdoor gear, bathing products for the baby, as well as nappies, bedding and a small mattress.

With the mattress in the bottom, the box becomes a baby's first bed. Many children, from all social backgrounds, have their first naps within the safety of the box's four cardboard walls.

If you'd like to read the rest of the story you can find it here, although I expect at least one person I know is already very familiar with the practice :)
Wouldn't it be nice if all new babies were given such a warm welcome? 
♡

winter weekend in Halifax

We're in the midst of a typical Halifax winter right now and that means the temperatures bounce back and forth between very cold and just above freezing with the addition of some often powerful winds. Considering there's usually some precipitation in the offing we can expect snow and rain in sometimes equal measure with the result that whatever hits the ground usually freezes. Icy patches and lumpy icy footprints make walking more a trial than an enjoyable outing to one's favorite haunts. Of course we're still going to the park as often as we can (barring storms and below zero windy days) but we've been avoiding the higher paths because whatever you walk up also has to be walked down - the same route the water has taken when the snow melted a bit. Ah well, at least we're almost a month past the shortest day so I won't complain.

Yesterday it was 5° and windy, so instead of the park, we decided to go and see a movie we'd been looking forward to - 'Inherent Vice'. The book written by Thomas Pynchon has become a favorite of ours, at least as far as normal size novels go. ('Against the Day' at 1100 pages is our real favorite and highly recommended if you haven't read Pynchon since 'Gravity's Rainbow'.) 'Inherent Vice' is a comedic hard-boiled novel about a hippie detective in late 60s LA. Numb, who lived there in those years, found the book very true to his memories of the time. I lived elsewhere back then but also remember the period and attitudes similarly - as probably do you. Anyway, the movie was very disappointing for both of us. The director and scriptwriter, Paul Thomas Anderson, born in 1970, seems to have missed the feeling of the book and the time entirely by turning the wild and joyous original into character studies of the detective, his ex-girlfriend (who hardly appears in the novel), and the policeman. He made such a wonderful job of portraying the early 20th century in 'There Will Be Blood' that we thought this would have been easy.  Instead, we didn't even get to see LA since almost everything was filmed inside. Anyway, I see it has a few good reviews but we gave it a one star.

We rarely go to movies these days anyway since it's much more pleasant to rent or stream them. 'Avatar' was great at the theater with our 3D glasses perched on our noses (^^). I have to say what made yesterday's experience bad before the start was having to watch commercials in 'surround sound' and then seeing previews for 'Hot Tub Time Machine 2' and some other silly overly frantic things neither of us can remember. No wonder 'The Interview' got made and released if those movies are typical of what audiences pay money for now.

Speaking of art of one kind or another, I've got myself stuck again in my attempt to illustrate the story a friend's daughter wrote many years ago. The problem is in keeping all the pictures at the same design and color levels. At this point I've just about come to the conclusion it doesn't really matter if they all look different since (for better or worse) my particular style is always going to be there even if the girl's shirt is pink in one picture and peach in another. Geez. What can I say, but I'm just not a comic book artist (a fine and worthy profession though it may be). This is a recent practice picture - still deciding on paper type and how much inking is the right amount.

Stay cozy.
♡

more news at 7

Does anyone remember news in the pre-internet, pre-tech age? Long ago there'd be specific times of day when people would tune into their radios or turn on their televisions to catch up on the latest developments in local and world affairs. Generally speaking, there was a 15 minute morning news program you'd listen to at breakfast if you had time before going to work. Then there was another of those at noon. But the biggest news time of the day happened in the evening between 6 and 7 o'clock. The local news was reported in the first half hour and after that it was time to find out the latest about what was going on in the country and the world at large.

Back then it wasn't the least bit unusual that people everywhere would spend days wondering if little Timmy had been rescued from the well. There was never a question about whether rescuing Timmy from the well was the right thing to do. We may not have had electronic social media but everyone was certain you couldn't leave a little kid at the bottom of a hole in the ground. That was before the 24/7 news cycle.

Now all is confusion. Depending upon the opinions of whoever it is we choose to listen to, or watch, or read, we learn there may be many good reasons for leaving little Timmy in the well. Who is that dog anyway and can she be trusted? Getting Timmy out of the well is sure to be expensive and I'd prefer that money not to come out of my hard earned tax money. The people of Timmy's ethnic group are untrustworthy so why should we help one of them? Timmy's probably dead, so why bother?

So we go on to other things that are more horrific or more entertaining. The news cycle that never stops pushes and pulls our attention from one thing to another - never leaving us time for reflection. We think we're being informed when what's really happening is that we're being manipulated into feeling anxious and unsure about what is right.

I don't mean to oversimplify important events by appearing to wish we could go back to quieter times in the news cycle. Then again, the world has always been a wild and crazy place and I do believe there's a way of learning about events that doesn't force us into hastily made opinions forged by those who may not have our best interests at heart.

I wonder how little Timmy is doing?

♡

beached and other mysteries

Here at the start of a whole other year my friends have made it safely ashore. It was touch and go for a while what with the oars having been lost in the maelstrom - which you may remember, but if not:

Anyway, we'll have to wait to see what happens next to our intrepid pair and those who pay such close attention to them. What could they all be up to?

Speaking of ongoing mysteries, there's an intriguing case across the street where a small apartment building has appeared to be largely uninhabited for all of the past few years we've lived here. From the end room of our place we can see the long side of the building where there are never any lights on any of its three floors. Rarely, there'll be a window lit in one room or another at the streetfront, although never for long. In winter the sidewalk is cleared and a little smoke sometimes rises from a chimney. We've never seen a 'for rent' sign or evidence of tenants. With no further evidence than this (and our active imaginations) we've come to conclusion the place is inhabited by a wealthy recluse.

At least one mystery that's confounded a number of us in the online community does seem to have a solution as described in this fascinating excerpt from an article called Ai Weiwei is Living in Our Future:

Very recently I found another way in which Google appropriates my pattern recognition abilities to further its own cause. I had to fill in a ‘CAPTCHA’.

CAPTCHA’s are used to battle spambots. By recognizing a pattern that isn’t easy to read for a computer, you are proving that you are a human. Millions of CAPTCHA’s are filled in every hour. Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist, didn’t want to waste this cognitive capacity and invented the ‘reCAPTCHA’.

Through typing in hard to read words you helped to digitize newspaper archives and books. You always had to type in two words: one that the computer would already know and another which the computer would be a bit uncertain about. Google bought reCAPTCHA in 2009.

A short while ago I noticed that you didn’t have to type in book texts anymore when filling in a reCAPTCHA. Nowadays you type in house numbers helping Google, without them asking you, to further digitize the physical world.

Perhaps there is information about that place across the street, but personally, I prefer it remains a mystery. I stopped using Google for general searches in favor of DuckDuckGo several years ago, but Blogger is Google based so there's no getting around that. However, as you'll see if you read the article, our ideas about personal privacy have already been superseded. George Orwell could never have imagined people would eventually line up willingly to pay Big Brother.


Of course, it amused me too when we watched a couple of episodes of 'Walking Dead' and I realized the 'zombies' likely performed for free. Humans are strange creatures as Crow has remarked at every opportunity.
♡

faded

This particular unfinished (and since trashed) picture pretty much sums up where my creative process spent December. Stuck in limbo between one project and another I'd decided to relax by redrawing and painting an image I'd done many years ago. The only record I have of the long gone original is a small and faded photograph. This time I thought I might replace the main figures in a magical wintry landscape as the whole idea of polar bears in spring seems anathema to me now. What could I have been thinking? Quite obviously, from all we've learned about the problems of human assisted global climate change, I knew nothing back then. Anyway, there were several versions of this that I tried - each one worse than the last - and none worth keeping.

Polar Bear Spring - original

Still in the midst of being deeply sad about things I can't change I visited the blog of one of my favorite modern scientific philosophers, Bernardo Kastrup. His most recent book called 'Why Materialism is Baloney' will be  on it's way here soon. Here is the poem he posted a few days ago that I hope you will like too:

 The Legacy of a Truth-Seeker

    Having trodden the path for cycles uncountable,
    Having crossed the ocean of mind from end to end,
    Through all veils, its fountainhead have I finally seen.
    To you, honest truth-seeker treading the path behind me,
    I grant the gift of my legacy.

    I have learned thus:

    Only untruths can be experienced.
    Hence, only untruths can exist.
    Truth is fundamentally incompatible with existence
    For it is that which gives rise to existence,
    Like a loudspeaker gives rise to sound.

    Experiences are self-referential tricks:
    They arise from nothing and are made of nothing.
    If you dig deep enough within yourself,
    You shall always find the layer of self-deception
    Upon which any one of your convictions ultimately rests.

    One's reality sprouts from the first layer of self-deception
    That escapes one's field of critical awareness.
    The deeper this field, the more subtle the self-deception.
    Those with little critical awareness thus live more colorful lives:
    Their fiction is fancier.

    The honest search for truth annihilates its own subject
    Slowly, recursively, from within.
    Having peeled away every layer of self-deception within me,
    I have found myself to be like an onion:
    Nothing is left.

    Only nothing is true.
    No external references exist, no outside arbiters.
    We are self-created fictions and so is the cosmos.
    Truth-seeking is the path to self-annihilation
    And thus to liberation.

    Rejoice, for your pains, fears, frustrations and regrets
    Are all untrue.
    There is nothing to fear, nothing to strive for, nothing to regret.
    You have no soul; that's just self-deception.
    And you won't die; that's just self-deception.

    But beware!
    As a dream allegorically portrays the inner state of the dreamer,
    As a novel insinuates the aspirations of the writer,
    As a lie betrays the insecurities of the liar,
    So the fiction you call reality reveals something about truth.

    Thus pay attention to life,
    For truth expresses itself only through its own fictions.
    To discern truth in fiction: here is the cosmic conundrum!
    To engage wholeheartedly without being taken in: here is the ultimate challenge!
    To find meaning in nothingness: here is the epic demand of nature!

    Watch reality as you watch a theatrical play:
    With inquisitiveness and curiosity.
    But watch it as audience, never as character.
    Characters spend their lives chasing their own shadows,
    Whereas audiences attain subtle insight.

    May my legacy serve you as a warning, but also as encouragement.
    The prize at the end of the path is handsome:
    The freedom to make the deliberate, guiltless choice
    Of which untruth to live.
    Exercising this choice wisely is the art of life.

This is a message I need to remember. Happily, in the past few days my creative abilities (such as they are) seem to have returned, making it likely the next picture installment of the girl, her dog, and the two weird dragons will appear next time.

Best wishes for the New Year.
♡

having cast off

Sometimes these things take longer than I expect they will but now I can show you the latest illustration from the annals of my unwritten story. If it's any help at all, I'll also mention the pictures are in no particular order. You may remember the boat from 'Turbulence' - this is before that :). For the time being this one will be the last of them as I'm planning to get serious about a different story - one with a girl but no dog and no dragons either. Well, in actuality there is a dragon in the story I'm thinking of, but rather than being a smallish, curious dragon like one of these, he's a much larger and more ferocious member of his species. Don't worry, you'll see the pictures as they develop and likely a picture or two of Crow as well. He starts to feel neglected if I wait too long between portraits.

Now we're in those last days of the year leading to the shortest one - in this hemisphere anyway. I don't know about you, but I always feel much more relaxed once it's all over and we can begin looking forward to longer days and shorter nights even if it is freezing cold outside.

I won't bother mentioning the bad news of the past week or so (call me a coward if you like), but the good news I read a few days ago is that the Masai people of Tanzania won't have to move off their land after all. I was shocked to read a few weeks ago that the that the Tanzanian government had reintroduced plans to forcibly relocate 40,000 pastoralists to make way for a luxury hunting and safari company based in the United Arab Emirates. Unbelievable. We can only hope that the next step will be to give the Masai permanent rights to their land.

We are a strange species, but one that's capable of extraordinarily beautiful achievements too.



Happy December
♡

character studies

So far as my own work is concerned, you can see I've been doing more sketching than finishing these past few weeks as I try to image(ine) the characters for a story written a number of years ago by the now grown daughter of a friend. It's a challenge, but kind of fun for all that.

In the meantime it keeps getting colder here as we count down to the shortest daylight hours of the year. There's been rain aplenty and cloudy skies too, but happily we've had no snow to spoil our walks in the park. A long stretch of that walk is by a channel in the bay where the woodland rises to a height on the left and the sea is at the bottom of a steep drop to the right. One recent day we'd fed some crows at one of the spots where we drop peanuts for them on our way to the point of land that faces right out to sea. The crows were following when we noticed a flock of chickadees flitting around in the brush to our left. Usually what happens when we see them is I scatter some nuts and wait to let them eat while we keep the greedy crows at bay. This time I still had the food in my hand when a hungry chickadee landed on one of my fingers and took a nut. Before I had time to react the little birds came one after another to take their share of peanuts from my hand. It was the sweetest feeling ever to be that trusted. Now that we know they'll often come if we wait a bit, feeding them has become one of those little events to treasure.

I know this is a small thing, perhaps even an ordinary occurrence. If so, I hope a connection with the wild world is something routine in your life. For me, it's an example (one I can hold in my hand) of real magic in the world. It's funny to think that until the final triumph of the scientific revolution at the start of the eighteenth century, magic and a great many things connected with it were treated as everyday matters in Western cultures. The sense of life, mind, and meaning in the cosmos is something that we as individuals put into the mix in the process of constructing our worlds.

Experiencing the world as a community of existent thinking beings leads us to understand that every living thing has an equal part to play in the great web of life. The opposite is to experience the world as a dead and mindless mass of raw material that has only whatever meaning and value certain human beings choose to give it. Which of those behaviors is more useful in the present predicament of industrial society is another point worth considering.

For something extra (and finished in this case) I did find a great short video you might enjoy watching as much as I did:



♡

deviant friends part 2 - patriartis

One of my favorite new acquaintances at Deviant Art is Patriartis, a digital artist from Finland. While Patrik's art is uniquely attractive in many ways, what has made him a delight for me to follow is his Journey series wherein we get to accompany the twin aliens, Linus and Linnéa, on their adventure of discovery around an equally alien world. The written exploits are compelling and just mysterious enough to keep the story moving. If you look closely at the pictures you can (occasionally) just about see the brightly attentive eyes of the two protagonists. Next you can read the paragraph describing the opening picture with two more samples to follow.

They had walked the main street countless times before, although never so confident and proud as on this day. Every event in their young lives had built up to this moment, and at the end of the path awaited a new chapter in their lives; a small but magnificent spacecraft that would take them away from the planet and into history. They were proud to be twins. Proud to be chosen.

This is a prequel to the Journey series. A rare opportunity to see Linus and Linnéa in spacesuits which aren't covered in dirt and/or scratches..

By now, the damp jungle was nothing more than a fresh memory as the trees and berry-bushes started to become replaced by even stranger plants. These plants, however, seemed more watchful than the others, even to the point of Linus convincing his travel companion that leaving them alone without further examination would probably be the best course of action. Not only did the plants look largely suspicious, argued Linus, but angering or saddening them would be especially unfortunate considering their excellent shelter-properties in case of a nasty bit of hard rain, sour rain, or whatever-kind-of-rain this world was accustomed to. However, the travellers' curiosity was quickly redirected as they noticed purple egg-shaped things sticking out of the grass...

Much to their delight, the dreaded rain was postponed. However, Linus knew quite well that these twists were simply temporary; nature was probably far to busy elsewhere to suddenly change its mind in such small matters. Needless to say there was only a matter of time, and so they had to produce some food before the rain made it impossible later on. Although they had procured plenty of nutrients from their crashed vessel to store in their spacebags, Linus seconded his travel companion's suggestion that they should be kept for a rainy day, quite literally. Being the masterprocurer of fish, as Linus convincingly illustrated through eager arm-movements, he explained how they would find excellent food without much effort in a nearby lake. His companion tried to oppose on account of the lake seeming a bit cryptic, even for this world. Nevertheless, resistance was futile as Linus had already found highly motivated baitworms for the task at hand. What could possibly go wrong?

The story so far can be viewed by going to The Journey gallery and opening the pictures in order from bottom right to top left. Along with a number of others at dA I'm always looking forward to the next episode of this fine adventure. Patrik doesn't have a web page but can also be reached at his Facebook page under pbjorkstromillustration
♡

deviant friends part 1

This painting is from a drawing I did for a proposed Wizard of Oz prequel. My main objective was to illustrate the drawing in a style similar to Arthur Rackham. It was a good learning experiment.

Inked with crow quill and brush, colored with watercolor. On stretched 2-ply Bristol paper, plate finish reverse side.

 ~ Colby Bluth

In the past week I've realized it's come to a choice between illustrating blog posts and spending some time working on a special project that's caught my interest. While I could, instead, post photographs of what I see outside, I'm no photographer and, besides that, what's outside is late autumn in Halifax with its overcast grey skies. It's been mostly raining here for weeks and the leaves, rather than blowing off the trees and bushes, are actually dripping off them.

You may recall I re-joined Deviant Art last summer and, oddly enough, within a week I'd been invited to be a moderator of one of their super groups (that's like a gallery with lots of members inside the larger website). While I was nervous about moderator responsibilities at first it's turned out to be easier than I'd expected and I've been introduced to some very talented artists whose work I might not have seen otherwise. Our group specializes in watercolors and the very talented Colby Bluth is one of our members. He kindly agreed when I asked to show you some of his work.

Colby is a professional artist who lives in Los Angeles:

Hello, and thanks for checking out my artwork. I’m an artist that’s been working in the fields of illustration and animation for over 15 years.

Some of the projects I’ve worked on include Fox’s Anastasia, Disney’s The Tigger Movie, and the Adam Sandler movie Bedtime Stories. I’ve also done flash animation and illustration for the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific since 2001.

Feel free to contact me for your project or to commission an art piece.

While Colby doesn't paint only in watercolors, it's those I tend to like the most, probably because of my own long-term interest in the medium and the fact he's also very accomplished at fantasy painting in a turn of the century style I've long admired. He's also been very generous in presenting his unfinished work so that we can see examples of his process.

Lastly, I was delighted (and a little envious) when I found some animated 2D cartoons made entirely by Colby Bluth in the old-fashioned Disney and Miazaki style. Here's a sample you may enjoy too:




You can see more of his work here and here.

I'll be back soon.

♡

the consultation

According to a report by Oxfam which warned that inequality between rich and poor is spiraling out of control, the number of dollar billionaires in the world has more than doubled to 1,645 since the financial crisis of 2008.

Despite the austerity affecting ordinary people around the globe in the wake of the recession, the richest 85 billionaires saw their fortunes increase by a total of around $240bn over the past year. Research earlier this year found these 85 people had access to wealth equal to that of half the world’s population.

If the world’s billionaires were taxed at a rate of just 1.5% on their wealth over $1bn, it would raise $74bn a year - enough to get every child into school and deliver health services in all of the world’s poorest countries. The report is titled, Even it Up: Time To End Extreme Inequality.

Oxfam’s chief executive Mark Goldring said: “Inequality is one of the defining problems of our age. In a world where hundreds of millions of people are living without access to clean drinking water and without enough food to feed their families, a small elite have more money than they could spend in several lifetimes. The consequences of extreme inequality are harmful to everyone. It robs millions of people of better life chances and fuels crime, corruption and even violent conflict. Put simply, it is holding back efforts to end poverty."

Oxfam challenged governments to follow a seven-point plan to rein in inequality:

1. Clamp down on tax dodging.
2. Invest in universal free healthcare and education.
3. Introduce equal pay legislation.
4. Agree to a global goal to tackle inequality.
5. Introduce minimum wages and move towards a living wage for all workers.
6. Shift the burden of taxation from labor and consumption towards capital and wealth.
7. Provide adequate safety nets for the poor, including a minimum income guarantee.

While I prefer not to be skeptical..
Do you think we have leaders capable of introducing these ideas?

Meanwhile I hope you like the new illustration. Any suggestions for captions or story ideas are welcome.
♡