What am I seeing here? - Nevada, Mining History

Photo: D.A.John
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What am I seeing here? 

Nevada, Mining History

This is one of the areas that Mark Twain refers to in Roughing It, the vicinity were he and his comrades put off filing their claim just a tad too long to become millionaires. 

Bodie Hills, Nevada: Altered andocite with a vein of iron-stained quartz running through it. 

Prospectus Vein-- Aurora mining district--discovered in 1859?

This particular vein, just on the edge of the town site, was an early vein found here. The Old Esmerelda vein was the one that caused people to start mining gold and silver here.  

Mining Activity: 

Two Major Periods, with sporadic mining attempts between

1860 - 1870's - underground

Renewed mining mid 1980's, 1990's  - Open pit

Last mined around 2,000.

Art Journaling: Hey even Jane Austen needed to Perform!

If Jane Austen, were alive and kicking today, she’d be keeping a journal like this online, with light pieces of her own writing, snippets of parlor music, and illustrations created by herself and her family. She’d be reading excerpts of her stories out loud to Cassandra and Fanny in the evening, listening to her nieces play and sing at the pianoforte, and turning it all into a podcast. She’d take regular rambling walks and create illustrations in Photoshop. She’d be developing apps.

Daily life still has it’s own Romantic flavor.

from the iTunes Store podcast, "Unpolished Performances”

The Simple Romantic’s podcasts are now on iTunes!

 (yes, of course they are free)

* * *

Art Journaling 

Hey even Jane Austen needed to Perform!

I know people who can keep a private journal. 

I’m not one of them. 

Privacy is fine for times when I’m looking seedy, taking a nap or snuggling a dog. It’s not that all appealing when I’m creating a legacy. Art journaling, my little performance on the pianoforte of life, shows how I’m making sense of that life. I need to know that someone is looking at my pictures, reading my romantic notions and listening to my tunes. I need my journal to be public.

Who has not been inspired to keep a journal of some kind, and how many have I started since childhood? Eventually I ditched the decorative little volumes, begun with such determination, when the sight of the remaining intimidating white pages was just too much for me. I never quite knew who I was writing or illustrating for. But I always wanted to create a journal. I was inspired by the English novelist D.E. Stevenson (a niece of Robert Louis Stevenson) who turned her own journals into some of her early novels. I’ve been repeatedly checking Stevenson’s works out of the library since the 1980’s. They’re particularly good to re-read if I’m stuck in bed with a cold or getting over a root canal.

Her “Mrs. Time Christie” books are written in a journal style, which I would imagine follow the lines of her own memoirs. They tell the story of a regular woman’s life: including humorous anecdotes about her husband and children, hardships – many are set in wartime Britain, and her prejudices. The entries display her sense of humor and show how she enjoyed herself. They make the every-day life of a woman in 1930’s and 1940’s British Isles look romantic.

When I call Stevenson’s books, ‘romantic’, I’m not talking about an “I wuv you THIS much!” greeting card. I mean romantic in the sense of Jane Austen, the definitive Romantic era character. The definition of the character traits required for a good Romantic, are personified in the heroines of each of Jane’s novels, and in her letters to her sister, Cassandra. Early nineteenth century Romantics, like Jane, gloried in the beauty of the natural world, admired a simple close-knit family life style, and persued education for it’s own sake.  They read and wrote voluminously, developing their writing style in letters, journals and stories. They sketched and painted. They entertained themselves, their families and friends with musical performances, at whatever skill level the household inhabitants had achieved, using their own voices and whatever instruments the household possessed.

Evenings in the home, with no house-wide lighting system, television, radio, mp3 players, or dvd’s had an entirely different character in the Romantic era, than it has today. In typical middle class style, Jane’s family, focused their energy on lighting and heating one room, where they gathered together or, sometimes, entertained small gatherings of friends. Today we’d probably call it “green entertaining”, if we overlooked the carcinogenic, overabundant particulate matter spewing forth from those aromatic massive hydrocarbon emitting logs smoldering in the fireplace.

It was there, in the parlor, that Jane, her siblings, nieces, nephews, and parents, read aloud: family letters, journal entries (the idea that a journal is totally private is, of course, more modern), poetry, novels, and their own writing. It was, in the parlor, that the family played the pianoforte and sang. Romantics like Jane were motivated to create because they had a place to share their work.

My childhood journals had no purpose because they were private. I began keeping my online art-journal as an extension of conversations and illustrations I was posting on facebook. Social networking and blogging, gave me an audience, someone who’d stop by my digital parlor to read my thoughts on hiking or walking downtown, listen to my piano and voice pieces or look at my latest illustrations. 

The pages in my art-journal are filling up now, because I have a place to perform.

. . .

Please stop by the iTunes store and listen to Unpolished Performances, an extension of this art journal

Bug in the Works OR Butterfly Workin'

This Golden Gate Park butterfly doesn't appear to be troubled by problems in her code

Go ahead and click on the picture for a more in-depth view of her world

I've been working away with the Objective-C programming language and the piece of software called Interface Builder.  Those are, of course, the  tools used to write apps for ipads, ipods and iphones. In my case, I'm still learning to do that.

I was up against a particularly nasty little bug in my program and finally, huzzah!, I found it. It reminded me of the  story from the old days, I mean the REALLY old days, kids. It dates back to around World War II. It's the origin of why programmers call problems in the workings of their software, 'bugs'. You all know the old story, right? The engineers had been tussling with some problem that was keeping the huge machine from doing it's thing. My college professor, Harry Huskey remembered those days. He had worked on the EINIAC. "Those vacuum tubes",  Professor Huskey told us. "they were always blowing, and we had to run around that huge room, swapping them out."  

So the problem-solvers on this day had been swapping out vacuum tubes, scratching their heads and dismantling things. Finally after days? hours? (depends on who's telling the story), they found the problem. A dead bug was found deep within the recesses of the machine. The programmers were so happy to find the problem, that they pasted the dead bug into the big ledger in which they noted their progress on the project. "Bug in the works", someone noted.

And of course, ever since then, a programmer works to find the bugs in her works. Because surely the problem couldn't be something SHE did.

A Marigold Moment (Butterfly)

Click on the photo to get up an up close and personal view

Another Inhabitant of the Conservatory of Flowers 

Golden Gate Park

San Francisco

You might also enjoy Do Butterflies Dream?

Do butterflies dream?

Please click on the picture above for more dreamy detail

Do butterflies dream?

I wished that I was visiting with this lady today, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.


My friend, Judy wrote me to say,

"I'd call it 'Dining Out in Style'

There is an average life span of a butterfly - it is usually about one month.  Although the smallest butterflies that you can usually spot feasting on the flowers in your front yard will usually only live about one week.  Mourning Cloaks, some tropical Heliconians, and Monarchs are some of the only butterflies that have an average life span of about nine months. From the butterfly site, they don't sleep, I guess they only rest. "

I have been working on coding in C++ and Objective-C instead. Which can be as intense an experience as this butterfly is having- but, today,  not as colorful.

Sewing: Wearable Muslins – A Virtual Conversation with the Leader of the Movement

Oh -Yeahhhhh.... Listen In on  

My Pick-of-the-Month: The Simple Romantic singing a traditional American spiritual  

 Better than a Starbucks Pick-of-the-Week, cuz I brew it myself

Barbara’s Sewing on the Edge blog  yesterday , (her ‘fieldwork’ entry) inspired me to write a lengthy response, that I’ve added to, and included here. 

I first heard the term ‘wearable muslin’ in one of the ‘Grandma’s Sewing Cabinet’

podcasts.

Dr. Julie-Ann might have been talking about it in the ‘cast called, “Pardon me your muslin is showing’.

This is the quote from Barbara that I was responding to in particular. “Someone asked me recently what the purpose was in sewing so many white shirts, particularly when some may not be hits, as in misses.

Well there are many reasons, prime being because I feel like it, but in a sense they can be viewed as a series of muslins. I mean if I can come out of this with a couple of excellent shirt or blouse patterns and have nailed some techniques through practice, trail and error and more error, well I am ahead.”

. . .

What you said about muslins is what keeps me interested in the project that I keep starting to call “The Great White”  - yes like the  shark - project (it’s actually called the “Never too many white shirts project”). We’re making wearable muslins.

I’m thinking of these shirts as something beyond the next thing I plan to sew. They are a whole sewing concept in progress. They are figuring out what styles of shirt fit well and suit the way I actually wear clothes. They are a way to improve my sewing techniques. They are a way to make my sewing even more creative because they give me a new focus when I’m making notes or making a rough sketch while I'm waiting to do something else.

The project has also gotten me to fit in just a little more sewing in an unusually busy period in my life, because I'm doing more design thinking and planning than normal. It’s got me wanting to clear the decks of a final few projects so that I can be up to my elbows in (literally) white muslin. I already have (stash!) enough muslin for at least the first two shirts, and what is prettier and more delicate than a simple white muslin shirt.

Since I began to focus on this, the notes apps on my ipod is full of entries that start out ‘sewing’. Right now I’m focusing on sleeves. What do I really do with the sleeves on my shirts? I ROLL THEM UP, either ¾ length or to the elbow, depending on my activity.

So for my first shirt I’m going to try gathering a ¾ length sleeve to an open elastic inserted cuff with two buttons – one for each length. If it doesn’t work, then I either cut the sleeve shorter or try a plain cuff band. Hey – it’s MUSLIN. I could even cut the cuff out of some other material entirely – say that’s a fun idea!

Just need to finish the red toile (stash!) vest, lined with a red plaid (stash !) leftover , and long straight apron (remainder of the toile), the ipod bag (more stash!) and some other small project I can’t quite place… currently on the machine.

That muslin is coming out sooooo soon.

Time Travel Trip, The Winter Palace: Russia Bound (part 3)

Please, click on the picture to fully enjoy it's Russianesque roots

Judy Дорогая моя,

I'm not quite sure where I left off writing you in my last letter. That Period Pilots trip I took to past times Russia was so different than what I expected, that it's really been hard trying to put all the pieces together.

I remember telling you about the initials I saw when I was starting to heat up that old samovar. It was just about the time I first made the letters out, that the portal started to do it's thing. You know how rough leaping a few decades or centuries can be, even in the smoothest forms of transport. And traveling by samovar, is definitely not the easiest way I've ever blasted through to the past. I'm still turning stray Keemun tea leaves out of my pockets. From the smell of it, I think it's that mix they call Russian Caravan.

I stopped writing and put down my fountain pen,  leaned my head against the edge of the window frame and let my thoughts drift dreamily back to the events following my crazy journey back through time to, a certain palace in Russia in the year 1896.

The redheaded woman had been sitting beside me on the garden bench, where I found myself once the world stopped spinning. The fact that she was totally nonplussed by the sight of me in my nylon jacket, tee shirt and kahki trousers told me something about her right away. Do-it-yourself time travel is all well and good for some people, and in some situations, but there are services that are really worth paying for. Tour guides are one of the nicest features about Period Pilots. She introduced herself as 'Alina' and told me that I had arrived safely in 1896 St. Petersburg.

That news coupled with an impression of luxurious surroundings, helped me emerge from my time-lag lethargy. The last days of Imperial Russia, and the last of the Romanovs aren't a travel itinerary that's easy to achieve. I might get a chance to see Nicholas and Alexandra at the height of their reign!

"You're ready to go now?" her voice had a lilt that told me she might be a native.

I nodded, unsure as to whether or not my vocal chords were fully functional yet.

" Xорошо, good. You need to change quickly. People will be coming through here soon. Put this over your clothes in case anyone sees you."

"This" was a long cape of midnight blue velvet that covered me from head to toe. Securely wrapped in this confection, I stumbled after Alina through a small side door off the courtyard and into a maze of dimly lit halls that seemed to go on forever. I took in none of the details of the palace around me, other than the fact that the ceilings were high and the lighting was poor. And then we opened another door and found ourselves in an intricately decorated rococo marvel. A domed ceiling was lit by a dusky light that filtered in through the windows that students of architecture call 'lunettes'. Saintly images were highlighted in their half-moon glass and the light  of the setting sun, that passed through them, made the gold embossed plaster walls beneath them glitter.

"You'll need to change in here." Before I had a chance to protest that I wanted to spend more time enjoying the scenery, Alina pulled me into a tiny chamber of much more plebian origin than the Grand Church of the Winter Palace.

"I studied the small barren room. Not much in comparison, is it?"

"Well, Princes Alixi primped here before she married the Tsar two years ago. How many women can say they’ve shared a dressing room with an empress?"

I agreed that there was something to be said for that, and we got down to business.

Luckily for both of us, I have the kind of long, thickly curling hair that's a natural for pompadour-type styling. I might not be able to compete with more elaborate courtly coiffures, but I'd pass muster.

"So what are the plans? Some kind of court function tonight I take it? And then what?"

Alina was expertly wielding a wet brush. She spoke through a mouthful of hairpins. "A court function, yes, evening tea here in the Winter Palace. Their imperial highnesses are at home in the Alexander Palace, so we were able to accommodate you. You will have a chance to visit with some of the locals and take in the atmosphere. But after that, you must go on. We have arranged another portal for-"

"That sounds like a cruise ship stopping in port for five hours! I want to spend more time here and really see something of the place."

She poked a hairpin into my scalp and turned me around to face a small, dark mirror. "Things are unsettled even at this time. We can't be assured of your safety."

"But the revolution's not for twenty-one years."

She shrugged again. "Now it is time to deal with your underpinnings."

The batiste lingerie with it's delicate blue ribbons and fine Brussels lace insertions was a delight to slide into. It was followed, however, by pure torture. Corsets are one of the nastier aspects of past times. I'll take fully functioning ribs and organs over a narrow waist any day. The laces were every bit as horrid as I'd imagined and I emerged gasping for air. My tour-guide laughed.

"I always forget that you twentieth century women have no skills when it comes to boning. Don't gulp and don't move too quickly. You don't want to hyper-ventilate when you're wearing stays," she advised.

And then there was the dress and it made everything that had gone before worthwhile.

"Is this Worth?"

She shrugged. "No, but it's a good copy. We've got a seamstress who can mimic anybody. She's been doing very well for herself back in the Renaissance, and she's about to start working on a contract with, oh I always forget her name-," she snapped her fingers, "-you know, she was Tutmose II's wife. I went back and drew up the terms for her myself."

"Oh, I know just who you mean. And now I can't think of her name either! What a great job you have. It must be wonderful to travel so much."

"The travel is good, but it makes it hard to have a relationship and a life in my own time. But for a few years I am doing it while I save for my dowry. The money is very good."

"I imagine it's not easy for Period Pilots to find people with the right skill set. Have you- Oh I remember the wife's name now, Hatshepsut!"

"That's it! Talk about palace intrigue. Those Egyptians have the Romanovs beat." She was clearly conversant in the English of more than one era.

"Have you spent some time in twentieth century America, Alina?"

"Mostly the sixties. I love the colors and the mini skirts. So much prettier, and more flattering than what comes afterwards."

"I know. The skirts look like feed sacks."

She nodded seriously and pulled the gown all the way out of the armoire.

The gown that emerged was a delectable rose-colored silk confection with a low square neckline and a detachable train. The bodice and sleeves were embroidered with bouquets of lilies set with tiny pearls.

I fingered the jeweled embroidery. "Are these real?"

"Yes. And to answer your next question," she smiled showing a lovely full set of teeth, "you do have to give it back at the end of the evening." Now let's get you into it.

Getting into the dress was more work than I'd imagined. There was more boning to fight with in the bodice and layers where layers shouldn't be. The slippery silk bunched up and needed to be coaxed down over the unfamiliar underpinnings. These duds were clearly a job for more than one woman.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the edges of the rose pink skirts were finally settled just above the floor. "And now we have only to hook you up behind." Alina had just bent to begin this task when the door rattled. I froze but she jumped to her feet quickly. "It's probably Sergei. This is the time when he comes to light the evening candles. He doesn't know about you though, so I will just slip-"

The door opened then and a dark form came in, shutting the door cautiously behind him. When he turned to face us, I saw an extremely tall man with dark, hair curling against a long neck. He seemed unsurprised to see two women, one in a state of deshabille. I put up one hand to the gaping bodice of my Worth-like costume, in almost a parody of feminine modesty, feeling suddenly breathless, and not only from the corset. It was as though an electric current had passed through me with the entrance of this man.

To Be Continued