Through a glass, darkly

[bellatrys]

-in this case, the glass of a camera lens-Firstly I want to say "thank you" for all the moral support and otherwise; being part of the wider world via the internet is what keeps me going these many years now (zounds, was it really back in aught-ninety-seven that I discovered Usenet, and was able to use polysyllabic words in conversation for the

Comments

No, no, no, no, no! No freebies!

[deiseach]

"If anyone would like higher-resolution versions, let me know and I'll put them on my website for download

Shows cost money to enter, unfortunately

[bellatrys]

I considered trying to show at regional cons, and then I "sat down and calculated the cost" and figured that I would have to spend several hundred to a thousand dollars just to rent the booth, pay the entry fee, and even before that, to produce/mat/mount enough artworks to display to have a hope of even breaking even let alone a profit, all of it a gamble, with no guarantee of making any of it back, and which I didn't have. Same thing goes for local art shows - Mounting and framing and insuring pieces is not cheap. There is a reason why nearly all the local professional artists in the Artist's Association which displays in the Library (& which also costs money to join) are not living on it - they're mostly all housewives with husbands who have good jobs, or men who had good jobs and have retired to paint/photograph, with the exception of a few art teachers whose husbands/wives also have good jobs that pay the regular bills. The physical art world gobbles up huge sums of money very, very fast, with slow or no return for most artists

wanted posters

[nenya_kanadka]

Huh, haven't you see the ring-bound flip-notebook things with names & pictures of wanted persons? Or is that just in Tennessee? It's not posters, exactly, but it's like a large clipboard, with a couple of dozen sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 paper with all the same information on it.

They probably have missing children posters, too, but actually I think I've seen more of those in Wal-Mart lately...

[sartorias]

Oh, those are lovely.

Especially the Merrimac one--seeing as we have had two inches of rain since March 2006, I can never get enough of rivers, lakes, and especially waterfalls.

Yikes

[bellatrys]

We've had two disastrous floods in the last year, and the river is worryingly high still - too little water is not generally a problem here, although we have had some bad droughty summers, and people are growing more water-usage conscious gradually. The ground here is a strange combination of sand that holds no water, bedrock that catches and funnels it everywhichwhere from underneath, and a kind of loam mostly made of (I think) decayed pine needles and maple leaves, which gets very soggy and sticky and stays that way for a long, long time - aka "mud season" in the spring, but fall is almost as bad, and summer rainstorms can have very messy results. A lot of houses here in New England, seasonal basement flooding is simply par for the course

Re: Yikes

[sartorias]

I remember learning about frost heaves when I first went back east as a teen, summer of /69. We really thought it was the winter stomach flu until someone pointed out the constant road repair. (We get that too, but after earthquakes and the inevitable wear and tear of a bazillion cars a day. Rush hour lasting from five thirty a.m. to nine or so at night.)

I also remember my utter astonishment at the idea of summer rain. We were quite disoriented--to us, greenery and rain and temperate weather (that means under 100) means February. Even in a "good" rain year, it seldom rains a drop from april to December. The idea of rain storms in July, well, only Arizona gets that! We just get the humidity.

More unsolicited advice (or, Bossy? Moi?)

[deiseach]

Speaking of local craft fairs, I see there was one on 20th May in the Radisson Hotel in Manchester: http://www.jaminmark.com/eventinfo/events/30821.html... )

[fledgist]

Those are all lovely photos, especially the last which would make an excellent post-card.

[violaswamp]

Oh, very nice. I especially like the shots of the ladybugs and the forget-me-nots.