Rapunzal: No Imperatives for this Gal

Rapunzal, Rapunzal, let down your hair!

You forgot the magic word, fella.

... Doesn’t bode well for our relationship. I think I’ll just go on living in my tower, getting food delivered and hanging out on facebook.

Cool Pad Fungus: Home for a Gnome

* * *

Please click on picture to see further beautiful details of this delightful home* *

1 Cap, 1 Stem $1485. Welcome to Basidiomycetes Creekside Apartments, a beautiful place to live. Located less than 30 miles from San Francisco, you won't be short of things to do!

Our property is conveniently located in a magnificent setting with three layouts to suit a variety of tastes and needs, all with beautiful exposed lamella ceilings.
 Dine in your Gourmet Kitchen on your own edible roof!

At Basidiomycetes Creekside you will be delighted to know that we offer many great amenities including: water features on property, Natural Mud Sauna Springs, A resort style stream, Fitness rock pool, Assigned gill covered parking. Call today and one of our friendly staff will be happy to fit you into one of our apartment homes.

Hurry, primordium are enlarging from the substrate now, and basidiospores are shooting off fast! To learn more please email BasidiomycetesLeasing.com or call toll free at (800)....Sorry, transcription error has occurred in remainder of this page

SLO Time

My daughter goes to school at Cal Poly Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, California. She's a student in the Agricultural College. A polytechnic is run a little different than a run-of-the-mill university. Lots of animal husbandry classes and close work with bees and buds. The university store sells a selection of university farm product, but I'm pretty sure they don't have their own milk. However, I think this bottle cap would be just great for a big glass of SLO SIP.

The beautiful SLO cow picture I used to create this cap was drawn by an unknown Cal Poly student. One of my daughter's housemates found it in their rental house, and I rescued it from the recyling bin. I'd love to know whose work this nice SLO MOO is!

Time Travel: Don't forget your ticket

My husband was down in the crawl space beneath our house, checking out a problem with the water heater, when he turned up a battered tin containing this vintage ticket.

Further evidence that time travel is nothing new.

Please click on the ticket above, to see the important travel details

Pirate Dreams

Please click on the picture above for the in-depth detail

Time Travel: A Primer, Lesson 8, Abundant Practice

Several students have requested more basic time traveling practice.

Period hopping in Walnut Canyon, near Flagstaff Arizona, is a straightforward exercise. A very short hike of twenty or thirty minutes down the main trail at this national monument, takes the dedicated student of space and time, on an inspiring visit with the cliff dwelling Sinagua people.

This activity is a simple exercise in century movement. Remember that’s seven HUNDRED years back. There’s been a bit too much casual attitude when it comes to zeros in this class. The professor will not be held responsible for those of you who have been ending up in the Neolithic Era. Nor will she hold students excused from required papers or exams.

Click on the picture above for a detailed preview of this time-traveling experience.

Dancin' with the Dinosaurs

My daughter and I were listening to her ipod, in the car driving down to San Luis Obispo on a recent there-and-back trip.

Me: "Oh I remember when the original version of this song came out."

Mollie : "Is that what the dinosaurs danced to, Mom?"

Community Standing on the Beach

No concern over who's got the most money, whose the prettiest or whose dog is cuter.

Everybody's got equal standing in this community.

Go ahead and click on the picture above to take a closer look at the beauty of diversity.

The Lady Vanishes -Today

The classic Alfred Hitchcock film, “The Lady Vanishes” is one of my favorite movies, but how long will it be, before our society doesn’t get it? We’ll need to make an updated version.

Challenges

1) Power Struggle: American and British people can no longer be the grand patrons in a tiny unknown Alpine country. No looking down on the locals and complaining about what a backwater the place is. Inhabitants, benefiting from the European Union, will be looking down on them, sneering at their disability to speak local and other European lingos.

Can you find the advertising slogan that represents the new world order, by clicking on my up-to-date teabag?

2) Environmental Correctness: The bowl of trash, which includes the clue of the Harriman’s HERBal tea bag, cannot be thrown out the open train window to the four winds. How will Michael Redgrave ever realize that Margaret Lockwood isn’t just flying along on a drug-induced experience, when she describes meeting Miss Froy?

3) Women’s Position in Society: Iris Henderson can be fresh from traveling around the world, but she can no longer depend on her parent’s money to send her there. She must have a job. In the Internet age, she can’t depend on being a journalist or a photographer, those careers are valid only up through the end of the 20’th century. A European fund-manager, perhaps? Or might she be promoting that American jam that represents her family business?

The evil doctor can no longer get away with implying that women are just a bundle of nerves when explaining away her condition. That’s ok because no doctor is going to be offering free health care to her nowadays anyway.

Iris would not be preparing to marry “the blue-blooded check chaser”. She might have a little flat with him in London though, and be considering marriage.

4) Gay Friendly: Charters and Caldicott , the two cricket-crazy friends are still trying to get back in time for the cricket finals. Instead of a dearth of Birtish sporting information in the newspaper, they will need to complain about lack of wifi reception or problems charging their hand-held electronic devices.

Very little updating needs to take place when it comes to the humor involved in their sharing the maid’s bed, and her frequent, and unexpected, access to her “wardrobe”.

5) Cute Meet: Gilbert and Iris’s classical love-hate, aggravated-meeting romantic comedy relationship can stand. Guess some things haven’t changed in nearly eighty years.

Unquestionably Native Americans, Wild Turkeys

Please click on this picture to see deeper beautiful details.

It's only been in the last few years that I've started to see flocks of wild turkeys in California. At first I was unsure if I was seeing the real deal, but they look just like the ones in the picture on the whiskey bottle.

Wild turkeys have the sort of native standing that I have. Once we lived in another part of the country now we think of ourselves as real Californians. I came here in the 60's. They were brought across, as game animals, in the 30's.

Wild turkeys and I are also both partial to forests, like the one into which, this flock I spotted in San Luis Obispo county is retreating.

Visit Book Blogs

Time Travel: A Primer, Lesson 7, Future Travel and Talk

I stumble on the remnants of the work of women who came before me, laying around in drawers, stores and flea markets. On a recent there-and-back-in-a-day trip to San Luis Obispo , I found 4 small embroidered napkins in an antique store for $1.50. I am not the person who will save the challenged economy with my spending habits.

I took the original photo of the street sign that I used to create this picture, in Madrid. (Go ahead and CLICK ON IT to enjoy the full beauty) It reminds me how much committed, work time hand embroidery takes. Even when I sit down to a spot of machine embroidery, it takes a good bit of labor.

These have definitely been well-used by a generation or more of mouth wipers, which was why they were priced so kindly. Who embroidered them? Did she enjoy herself, sitting out under the orchard on her farm in S.L.O. working away with that orange, yellow and red floss?

The napkins will work to line the inside top of a grocery carry bag I plan to sew . The embroidery can peep out and the stains will be down inside under the head of lettuce and can of beans. Somebody’s careful labor will live on for another generation or so and a San Luis Obispan farm woman, will travel forward in time to accompany me on my walk home.

She ought to be good for telling me a story.

Just Say No

Time Travel: A Primer, Lesson 6, Music Man- Time Out for a Field Trip,

Please click on this blossom to better enjoy it's stripey beauty.

If You Don't Mind Me Sayin' So, this peppermint striped amaryllis sent me spinning straight back to the year 1912 in River City, Iowa. Suddenly I find myself there in the middle of the train station, a looker-on to the arrival in town of The Music Man. Is it the huge striped-candy blossom that makes me think about the barbershop quartet rehearsing in their shirtsleeves ? Perhaps it's the memory of Winthrop's heartbreaking lisp when he is forced to greet his elder sister, Marian's, piano student who's named after this belladona lily, that sent me tumbling back in time.

Shortly after I was married, an elderly neighbor giggled when she told me that the amaryllis is also called a "naked lady", because of the way that the foliage dies down before it comes into bloom. Surely Mayor Shinn's wife and her righteous cohorts in River City would have been just as shocked by that, as they were when they found that Marian Paroo allowed the town youth to check out library books by Chaucer, Raelais and BaaaaaaaaalZAC! Quick, who else knows the ladies part in "Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little" to counter against the barbershop quartet's "Good Night Ladies"?

Extra credit to all students who return from the trip with a shiny new instrument delivered by the Wells Fargo Wagon. Band rehearsal on Seventy-Six Trombones (which I indeed once played in band at the age of 10) will commence on Saturday. Until then, remember to practice the professor's "Think System".

Goodnight my Someone.

Innocence is the Keeper

Please CLICK ON THE PICTURE above to enjoy the details

Innocence is the Keeper

Innocence is not shy

Grand Canyon Compositae

Please click on the picture above to enjoy the details

Innocence is not shy about taking her stand in the world

Innocence es M'hija

Please click on this picture to enjoy the details

Innocence es m'hija

Innocence is every woman's daughter, determined to understand.

Some Days

Please CLICK ON THIS PICTURE to see the details

Some days are more challenging than others. Above is an altered photo from a trip we took to Alcatraz. No matter how hard my own projects may be or how much slower they go than I wish they would, it's good to remember how good I've got it!

Time Travel: A Primer, Lesson 5, CLIMB ABOARD

Please CLICK ON THIS PICTURE to see the lovely details

Simply Execute the Code and CLIMB ABOARD

Dear Class,

A few students have contacted me in regards to challenges following up on yesterday's simple class assignment found in the online class journal. A few simple steps backwards in time shouldn't be that all difficult a task. I think a few of you have not been paying strict attention to the details of this class. Facebook is fine for use at home, but you should not have it running on your laptop during the lecture. However, the Dean of the Time and Space Department, has directed me to provide remedial instruction to those of you dullard- err, I mean those of you well-educated students who cannot complete this simple assignment.

The C language code is, of course, intuitively obvious. Perhaps the hints in the console output below will help you. Remember the fees your parents are paying to send you to college and stay abreast of your reading and homework from now on.

Expecting better results,

Your Professor - The Simple Romantic

..... Assignment Hints..............

simple-romantics-imac:ch03 simpleRomantic$ gcc CalculateTimeTravel2.c -o Travel

simple-romantics-imac:ch03 simpleRomantic$ ./Travel

After 0 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 2009

After 1 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 2008

After 2 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 2007

After 3 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 2006

After 4 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 2005

After 5 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 2004

After 6 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 2003

After 7 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 2002

After 8 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 2001

After 9 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 2000

After 10 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1999

After 11 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1998

After 12 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1997

After 13 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1996

After 14 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1995

After 15 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1994

After 16 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1993

After 17 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1992

After 18 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1991

After 19 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1990

After 20 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1989

After 21 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1988

After 22 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1987

After 23 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1986

After 24 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1985

After 25 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1984

After 26 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1983

After 27 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1982

After 28 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1981

After 29 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1980

After 30 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1979

After 31 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1978

After 32 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1977

After 33 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1976

After 34 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1975

After 35 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1974

After 36 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1973

After 37 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1972

After 38 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1971

After 39 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1970

After 40 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1969

After 41 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1968

After 42 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1967

After 43 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1966

After 44 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1965

After 45 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1964

After 46 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1963

After 47 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1962

After 48 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1961

After 49 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1960

After 50 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1959

After 51 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1958

After 52 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1957

After 53 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1956

After 54 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1955

After 55 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1954

After 56 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1953

After 57 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1952

After 58 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1951

After 59 minutes traveling through time from 2010 you are currently in the year 1950

simple-romantics-imac:ch03 simpleRomantic$

Get the idea now?

Good. Please hop in the carriage and let's get moving

Time Travel: A Primer, Lesson 4, Resources

This clock is from the Clock Link Gallery

Time Travel: A Primer, Lesson 3, Time To Go Back

Please CLICK ON THIS PICTURE to see the lovely detail

Chapter 3: Travel Methods

Since this journal has been covering, extensively, various methods of time travel, this simple exercise is left to the reader.

For review, the Reader may wish to refer to Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series

American House Spiders Unite - No Sacrifice Required!

Please click on each picture to see the lovely details.

A female American House Spider, Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Apparently, she is still alive and kicking

Identified at Spider Identification Org, by Bug Eric,

a.k.a. Eric Eaton author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America.

Having read too many articles about how to be a good parent, I thought she had left her poor decayed body behind to feed her offspring, but Eric says that she looks alive. I guess she is simply hanging around waiting to see what kind of peanut butter the kids want to go with their flies.

In the photo below, she is waiting for her kids to emerge. I guess this is the equivalent of reading a magazine in the parking lot.

The London Loaf, For Anna

Laurel's London Loaf

Inspired by my ancestor, Anna Sherman

For more about making bread using a combination of a bread machine and traditional oven, see my previous entry, The Mystery of Trenta

Bread Machine Dough Cycle

2 loaves (if making half recipe use 2 and ¼ t yeast)

Wet Stuff

1.5 c buttermilk (low-fat if possible)

1 c water

pinch salt (put in w/ wet, isolate from yeast area)

Dry Stuff

Grated outer peel of one or two lemons

4 3/4 c BREAD flour

3/4 c oatmeal

Nestle on top of Dry Stuff

1/3 c brown sugar (first)

1T plus 1 t good fresh yeast (on the very top) (if making half recipe use 2 and ¼ t)

200 degrees 20 minutes (re-raising)

350 degrees, 30 minutes

The Heart of The Music

Please CLICK ON the picture to see the glorious details

It’s been a tremendous pleasure singing right in the 'midst of the Junge Kammerphilharmonie Freiburg I’ve sung with instrumentalists and orchestras before, but they were separated from the chorus, and usually seem to be uninterested in the singers. Here, we are cheek by jowl with a chance to nearly touch each other’s music as it emerges.

The concert master, from my point of view in the middle of the stage, takes on a new role. He doesn’t just lead the strings, he encompasses them. His body and violin lean back toward his section, eyes and bow sweeping back and directing the form for a sea of moving wands.

I’m close enough to watch the blond wind player switch from her clarinet to her piccolo. The first notes tremble out bird-like. Then I eye the French horns as they take their shimmering brass bells in hand. The first mellow notes of their part, resonate in my own body as the notes rise up from my diaphragm into my own instrument.

Wunderbar.

The Concert Master In Rehearsal

Any Bugs in the Bell?

Please CLICK ON THE PICTURE ABOVE to see all the great details

After 14 hours on a plane from Frankfurt, Wolfgang figures perhaps, there COULD be bugs in his horn bell. I played French Horn up through the end of middle school. Which made my position on the stage in Memorial Church, just behind the brass section from the Junge Kammerphilharmonie Freiburg even more enjoyable.

In my case, the drummers sat off to the right of us. Being the third french horn, lowest in the pecking order, I was the target of their happy-go-lucky juvenile male behavior. The only instruments with more time on their hands than horns are drums Though the french horns had a lot of rests to count, the drums had even more, and so they needed something to do to occupy their time, while waiting their time to play.

We practiced in the school cafeteria before school. These resourceful fellas would gather up old pieces of stale food and, when I leaned on my horn, counting, or was otherwise distracted by my best friend, the second french horn, they would toss old french fries and stale pieces of hamburger buns into my horn bell. Then when it was my turn to blow, out would come a fusillade of ancient bits of lunch.

At the age of twelve and thirteen, it didn't seem funny to me at all, but it sure does now.

Concert Details and

my other art-journal entries about this performance can be found at

* On Stage

* Playing Beethoven

Playing Beethoven

Please CLICK ON THE PICTURE ABOVE for more beautiful detail

The Junge Kammerphilharmonie Freiburg playing Beethoven in Stanford Memorial Church