Category: Bay area, Calif.

New Jersey

E and her sweetheart and Carol and I spent the morning in Lambertville, New Jersey, a town where people have front porches that come right to the edge of the sidewalk. Some of the porches feature interesting decorations; one porch featured a collection of plastic dinosaur and dragon toys.

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Above: Lambertville, New Jersey

Then we went to Grounds for Sculpture, a sculpture park in Hamilton, N.J. Not only did we see some very fine work by a wide range of contemporary artists, but I felt the grounds were particularly well-designed to display sculpture.

Grounds for Sculpture

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Above two photographs: Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, N.J.

We were also able to get a brief tour of the Johnson Atelier, a sculpture foundry next door to Grounds for Sculpture. I once worked for a sculptor who cast work at the Johnson Atelier, but I wasn’t part of the in-crowd so I never got to go along when he was casting work there. The Johnson Atelier no longer pours molten metal, but they do everything else involved in the founding process: enlarging, mold-making, chasing and finishing, applying patina, etc.

The Johnson Atelier leases part of their space to the Digital Atelier. They do highly accurate laser scans of three dimensional objects, modify the scans as necessary in CAD software (enlarging, fixing problems, etc.), then produce a 3-D product in foam (which can then be cast in bronze or another metal) or wood using a CNC milling machine. I asked the man who gave us the tour of the Digital Atelier about 3D printing, and he said 3D printers could not yet work at the large scale they needed, he was watching the technology closely.

The technology of sculpture has come a long way since I worked for the sculptor.

Flower

A couple of years ago, Carol discovered the Really, Really Free Market which meets on the first Sunday of the month in Redwood City. The first time she went there, she got some rubber stamps and a couple of potted succulents which bloom at the tail end of the winter wet season. The plants produce small vividly pink flowers on astonishingly long stalks — the plant is all of ten inches high, the stalk extends twenty-four inches from the nearest leaf to the farthest blossom, and each blossom is an inch to an inch and a half in diameter. The flower in the photo is one of sixteen buds or blossoms or seed pods on one of the stalks. Each blossom seems to last a day or two before it fades, and then another bud near it comes into bloom.

Close-up of flower

Today, the day after Mother’s Day, would have been my mother’s ninetieth birthday; I’m pretty sure the flower I photographed was in bloom yesterday, so its blooming will cover both these days.

Sutra

The headlines on today’s newspaper screamed: “U.S.CLIMATE HAS ALREADY CHANGED, STUDY FINDS, CITING HEAT AND FLOODS” [New York Times, 7 May 2014, p. A1]. This is news because we didn’t already know what this report, the National Climate Assessment, is telling us. A related story tells us that “Polls Find Americans Skeptical On Climate” [ibid., p. A13]. And why? “Scientists predict that climate change will cause larger problems for poor countries than rich ones….” And the U.S. is way ahead of all other countries in per person emissions of climate-changing gasses.

Smokey the BearThis is human nature: the ones who are causing the problem are least likely to be affected by the problem, so they believe they are not causing the problem. The minority of U.S. citizens who are aware of the magnitude of the problem attempt to convince other U.S. citizens of the truth with rational arguments, but since when did humans change their behavior as a result of rational argument?

No, it is time to call on a higher power. One of the growing problems caused by climate change is the increased incidence of forest fires, and so we immediately know on whom we must call. We will follow the example set by poet Gary Snyder in 1969. Both Buddhists and non-Buddhists, both those who follow the circumpolar Bear cult and those who don’t, should call on the Boddhisattva of Compassion Avalokitesvara — who is also Kamui Kimun of the Ainu — who is also a consort of She Who Saves, Boddhisattva Tara, Mother of Liberation — who is he who carries the vajra-shovel.

Abandon rational argument, and chant together:

Smokey the Bear Sutra

Once in the Jurassic, about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings—even grasses, to the number of thirteen billions, each one born from a seed—assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

   “In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth, and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature.”

   “The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form, to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger, and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it.”

   And he showed himself in his true form of

         SMOKEY THE BEAR.

Continue reading “Sutra”

Better easy bubble juice recipe

Back in 2012, I posted an easy bubble juice recipe for making soap bubbles 9-12″ in diameter. Here’s a better easy bubble juice recipe, which uses easily obtainable ingredients, and features a superior mixing procedure for the lubricating jelly. With this mixture, I’ve made bubbles that start out at 4-5 feet long tubes, then stabilize into two or more spheroids up to 30 inches in diameter. The glycerin isn’t absolutely necessary, but it does seem to make the bubbles last a bit longer, an important point in our dry Bay area climate.

Ingredients:
4 oz. tube of personal lubricating jelly (store brand is fine)
2 oz. container of glycerin
12 oz. of Dawn Ultra dishwashing liquid (do not substitute another brand)
water to make up about 1 gallon
Total cost: $12-15

Method:

Put 3 quarts of water in a gallon container. Continue reading “Better easy bubble juice recipe”

Processional

It’s a warm day, the windows are open, and I heard some sort of chanting or singing somewhere outside. Some kind of religious chanting is what it sounded like, but I didn’t really pay any attention. It kept getting closer. I went to the front window. Several young people wearing blaze orange safety vests and carrying stop signs were standing at the crosswalks, ushering a long stream of people. The first people were singing something doleful. Then came — yes, it was a man dressed in an white ankle-length robe, with a big wooden cross on his shoulder. He was being escorted by a dozen or so angry-looking men in uniforms of short red robes and gold-colored helmets with plumes; one of these men periodically hit the man carrying the cross with a whip. It was a Good Friday procession passing right in front of our house.

At one level, I couldn’t help but see that this was just acting: the angry men were wearing Roman soldier costumes that I had purchased for Sunday school; the white robe worn by the one man was far too pristinely white and unwrinkled; the flogging was too gentle to be real. And not everyone was fully engaged: a happy toddler smiled and laughed in its stroller; a young woman seemed to be paying more attention to the sweet coffee drink she held; the priest in his Roman collar looked a little tired and distracted and I imagined that he was thinking ahead to what came next.

At a deeper level, this wasn’t acting at all. These people were serious enough about their religion to spend an evening re-enacting an important religious moment; perhaps they left work early to do so, certainly they were going to have a late dinner. They were serious enough to go to the trouble of purchasing costumes, organizing safety wardens, and showing up for the procession. A processional like this inhabits both the mundane and the sacred realms; and I was glad that these people brought something of the sacred to our busy street, sharing with their neighborhood a little bit of what’s important to them.

Another eclipse photo

Carol took this photo of last night’s lunar eclipse, just as the earth’s shadow had covered all but the tiniest sliver of the full moon. The moon was partly obscured by the faintest of cloud cover — the clouds obscure some of the detail, but they also cast a romantic halo at the bright edge of the moon.

Lunar eclipse, April 14, 2014

Lunar eclipses are just so amazing; photos cannot do them justice. Watching the progress of the eclipse is like watching mathematics happen in front of your eyes; it’s as good as listening to music.

Photo copyright (c) 2014 Carol Steinfeld. Used by permission.

More on Multimedia Era curriculum kits

I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve grown so interested in the multimedia curriculum kits produced by the Unitarian Universalist Association from 1964 to about 1990. I was first attracted by the integration of texts, audio recordings, and visual materials. But I realized I am also attracted by the existential educational philosophy. And I am attracted by the experimental nature of many of the curriculum kits.

First, some historical background: Continue reading “More on Multimedia Era curriculum kits”