ionosphere

What a wonderful way to come into the world

Being born is a sudden jolt — being thrust into the cold, bright and noisy atmos­phere of reality and having no say in the matter. Mothers are a great thing. Nobody will give you a better deal than your Mom. Soft warm hugs as a baby. The comfort needed when a knee was skinned. Encouragement about our abilities as children (drawing and painting in my case) no matter how meager they may actually have been. Always a kind word. When things look grim a Mother is someone that you can count on to find the needle in the haystack, the miniscule thread of a positive thought. A Mother gives you hope and confi­dence about the future when you are uncertain. I honor all Motherhood this Sunday. It is your day. One day could never begin to balance the sacrifice that a Mother makes bringing a child to adulthood. Women, Mothers in particular, are the guardians of  humanity. the glue that holds human civilization together.

I miss my Mother so much. Oh but to have a few hours of the wasted time used in growing up to talk with my Mom today. To share parental obser­vation that I was far too immature to notice earlier in my life. More than anything else though — an oppor­tunity to say Thank You again. I watch my Sue and see the love. Such apparent love. The girls are very lucky. Sue is a smart, creative and gentle person that I admire and respect. But first, foremost — most of all — she’s a Mom.

And Sue — She’s a good Mom. I get to see her thought process and watch input versus output. A Mother briefly glances at  the imper­fec­tions in life and her love sands them smooth and you end up with a point of view (filter) that compen­sates for any short­comings. Adapts to virtually any situation. It truly is amazing. Each and every day. Take good care of your Mom. She deserves it. Don’t make it all commercial. Motherhood isn’t about a nice arrangement of flowers. It is about respect and your ability to tell your Mom that you appre­ciate and recognize what she did and still does for you. Even the way that you hold that memory when one day she is no longer physi­cally with you. But yes, she is still with you in your thoughts and even as the standard that many aspects of your life are measured by.  Forever.

To all Mothers out there — past, present and future — Thank you so much. God bless you.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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We are just about to miss another snowstorm or oppor­tunity for one here in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It would have been hard to believe that the passing snow last Fall around Halloween was the snow of the season. We had a couple snow squalls move through last Saturday morning and that was it. Now they are looking at storm potential from State College, PA right on up through Maine.

Even those with Seasonal Affective Disorder have been better off this winter. I can’t remember so many nice Blue Black skies in the cold months. That has made it easier to get around and easier to get out and draw. Weekend before last was nice and Sue and I were out in the woods and there­abouts with me shooting some new reference of Sycamore trees. I drew and then painted last week.

Sue has just started a new job as of this morning and we mostly had stuff around the house to do this past weekend. Lots of new things, new art and new inspi­ration happening.

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I sure hope that you have some good fun on your Birthday — Wednesday December 14, 2011. I’m looking forward to it also. Time to draw. And paint. And write about things. Been reading some books by Betty Edwards and the two hemispheres of the brain offer up some inter­esting reading. I will be discussing my obser­va­tions in the next couple of weeks.

2011-12-13     22:34:28

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We just don’t have a match with the Canada Geese. Parts and size do look similar…

and the Hybrid flew in with the other Geese soon after we arrived in Yardley to try and get some more shots of the relatively rare bird. Canadas have black feet. Canadas have a white chest… Canada Geese have that graphic facial and neck band that lets you know that it is none other than a Canada Goose. This bird does not. Even had orange colored legs. This bird had a chest that matched its feathers, and unusual head markings.

My Wife, Sue, was first to spot this goose and shot many of our images both still and video. I was concen­trating on the Historic Library Building and the way the sun was going down around it. I came up to see the goose and get a couple of shots. We did okay but decided to come back on the weekend to see if the Honker was still there. If we had been earlier the goose would not have been there as the gaggle all came in and landed right in front of us. Good timing.

Seems that whatever kind of migratory bird that you are inter­ested in… All are on the move right now. Red Tailed Hawks as well as Falcons are being seen daily and they are making our Crows act up. I guess that we just have to accept the fact that it actually will be quite cold soon.

Any feedback on the species or lack thereof is welcomed and enjoyed. There  is a mail link and the comment area will inform all as to what we are seeing. I do get a lot of spam so hopefully all will go through without being grabbed by the robots on the server. Hope that you had a great Thanksgiving and are headed into smooth holidays with lots of thoughtful people around you. Best wishes to all.

Bill       2011-11-28    17:10:07

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I just noticed that my weather feed on the blog had gone away. I had partnered with Weather​.com and was a regis­tered user, etc. So for whatever reason — Weather​.com has ceased this practice and I went hunting for other sources of data. Located and placed that last night and I actually like Yahoo’s infor­mation stream a little better than what I’d been using. How about that? Good.

I also had lost my really excellent mp3 player called “WPaudio” by Todd Iceton. I went into the WordPress Plugin forums and a young lady “Ursula (WP Gal)” had resolved the problem with a very minor change to the javascript in one of the files. All that I had to do was pull out a period before mp3 and the entire plugin came back to life. I’d forgotten just how good that audio was sounding in WordPress. Excellent. It’s back and doing just fine. Yes indeed.

Bill   2011-11-14  13:31:12

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Sue seemed pretty pleased with her Ear Wrap. Looked good. Here is one of the sketches from that process. I like the buildings that the Craftsmen inhabit there in Tyler and I’ve made some assem­blies that I’m drawing. I think that I prefer the somewhat unique archi­tecture of the barns there. More to follow. - Bill  2011-11-11  05:54:40.

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Sue and I enjoyed a walk through the Craft Fair at  Tyler Park on the weekend of the Twenty Third. One of the intriguing things that we enjoyed was a set of small pens with miniature piglets up for adoption. They were really cute and ate tiny pellets of chow. I love watching Sue enjoy those animals. We also stopped at a couple of the handmade jewelry booths and located some items of interest. That was a good thing. I like those Art and Craft shows. I guess last year about this time we were in a couple of the Craft Shows. I think so…

While there, I grabbed a bunch of images to draw from later — and unfor­tu­nately I got sick right afterward. I started a couple of drawings of what I saw and will show them here when I finish. Leg is still hurting pretty much today and I just got back from another blood test. These physical jolts of late are getting to me. Seemed like that show was a long time ago. Not so much really. Before I had too much more time go by…  I wanted to show a couple piggies.  2011-11-10,  15:09:53

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Spent some time last night going through the forums on the Artisteer website and I’m liking what I’m seeing. For those who don’t know — Artisteer 3 is a new web building software that makes it easy to create and modify your own blog/CMS/webpage format and post it to the web. Ionosphere has become an Artisteer affiliate and will be showing you how to get to their website to try on this software yourself. A myriad of elements that go into page building arrive on your screen and navigation between those elements is easy, familiar and even friendly. I will be showing some of what you can do with these elements and how they can help you. This entire blog was done in Artisteer with some help from Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Corel Painter. It was a nice change to start making what I’d wanted rather than having to look for someone else’s gener­ously shared theme. I had done that for a while. Artisteer lets you easily do your own design and bring your own images into what you are doing, etc. It is just a better fit. Much more on this topic to follow.

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All kinds of a tough time last week. I’d heard that Remicade may provide “flu-like” symptoms… From the patient stand­point, just how far do you let it go? I’m still here so I suppose that means that I haven’t gone too far — yet I think another two days would have been pushing my luck. I guess that I have gone far enough that I wonder about some things that regular people in their everyday just don’t have on their minds. I missed the early Nor’easter Snowstorm that we had. I “came to”.… seeing a pile in the gutter here or there. I remember it really snowing sideways at one point.

My latest infusion was a week ago last Wednesday. By Wednesday night I was sinking. Peak temper­ature got to around 104 degrees and I was delirious. Usually you cough and have an idea that something bad is coming. I just had some serious side and back pain and then I was up in a repeti­tious sequence — shivering with the fever till I’d lay down long enough to overheat and sweat… It was a miniature Hell. All of it framed by deep black muffled sleep…

The past week contained paranormal occur­rences. I saw my Dad in my hospital room as a Minister spoke to me. I swear the eyes coming through those glasses were no longer the Minister’s but those of my own father. I was warmed by the event and I’ve been reflecting on religious things and activ­ities since. All very serious business.

One day, totally out of the blue, two very kind women came forward and had bought me balloons at the Hospital Gift Shop. This was because they had the same last name as me. That surprised me very much as I don’t run into people named Beauchamp… ever. I had been running a very high fever and had been aware only remotely of their presence. Out there lost in the fog with people moving around and talking like a bunch of radios in the distance. I’m glad that their loved one seemed to do well and went home that very same day.

Been working on my leg wound the “PG” Pyoderma Gangrenosum on the right. It is hurting really quite bad even tonight. I was intrigued to find out that there are medical profes­sionals that actually can enjoy another’s suffering. I’d had a little experience in that area almost ten years ago and now it’s out of my life. There is no room for that to come back in any way shape or form. Evil walks on two legs in Langhorne.

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I arrived on time at St. Mary’s Cancer Center — where they do the precise infusion of chemotherapy drugs on a regular basis.  To help avoid allergic reactions to the medicine, I’d taken 50 mgs of Benadryl which made my focus softer and just sort of took the edge off. It was easy to doze and I stayed in a semi dream-state thinking of paintings and drawings I’d like to do. I had my Watercolor Solutions Book by Charles Reid with me and I read between naps. Those thoughts were good and let my mind drift away from the bank of 6 or 8 special Lazy-Boy reclining chairs with a shelf on the left side for the pillow under your arm which is equipped with an intra­venous port. My medicine is not chemo as I don’t have cancer and hope that I won’t. The medicine is called a “Biological” and is very potent. It has to be admin­is­tered just right — so these are the correct people to do that. They got me all set up and soon my IV Bag of Remicade arrived so that my system can work on a reversal of the Pyoderma Gangrenosum that is hurting so bad as it destroys tissue on my right leg. Truly different in its nature everyday,  it is a sore reality with sharp pain on a daily basis. Nerve pain feels very much like being burned or an electric shock. Supposed to get better after a second dose of Remicade… If this doesn’t work — Humira is also a consid­er­ation. Yep, this is a whole new ball game. Speaking of which… My Phillies had some bad luck last night. So very close…

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