Art School, Week 13

Hi All,

I published this yesterday, but forgot to put the link here. Sorry about that.

https://medium.com/@jrpstonecarver/art-school-week-13-3485971afc77

I strongly suggest you email me (or use this contact page) and ask me to add you to my email announcement list about future posts, or use an RSS reader and connect it to my feed on Medium, which I am told it supports. I say that because I will stop updating this blog one of these days, and if you're one who wants to keep reading what I am writing, those are the obvious ways to keep in contact.

Thank you!

Another new post on a different platform

So far the reaction to moving to Medium - instead of posting here - is positive. It will continue, at least for now.

Those wanting to find the latest post (as of today, Nov 11, 2017) can see it here:

https://medium.com/@jrpstonecarver/art-school-week-10-5a3a8a39b047

And those wanting to see all I have posted over there can try this link:

https://medium.com/@jrpstonecarver

If you use and RSS reader, I am told Medium supports that as well.

As always, comments are welcome, both on the post itself, and via email.

Comments Are On, I Think.

Not a lot of feedback to the previous unannounced post yet, but I did get some (thank you!) and I think I have comments turned on the way I want them.

With luck, all comments are moderated (to avoid spam and rude content, as judged by me) and you do not have to have a G+ account top post a comment.

If you see something different, please let me know!

Back to school

Today is Labour (Labor) Day, in celebration of which I do not labo(u)r.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. Tomorrow, I labo(u)r. Possibly a lot. Tomorrow, I begin a new chapter in life, and start to figure out what some of the decisions we made over the last six months really mean.

For the curious, I am taking five classes this semester:

• Ceramics Studio
• Design Studio
• Drawing Studio
• Painting Studio
• Visual Culture I

The first four are art classes. Each meets once a week for four hours, and I am told to expect four hours of homework from each per week (which will have to be done in the studio rooms themselves in most cases) except for ceramics, where I should expect eight hours of homework per week, all in the studio.

The last class is from the Art History department. I chose it as this sequence (Visual Culture I & II) looks more interesting to me than the traditional, chronological art history presentation, but I could be wrong. Additionally, the class has a new instructor, just hired into Langara College. It will - no doubt - involve extensive reading and writing papers, and thus add to the homework commitment.

It is my goal to post about art here, as well as other aspects of life. As I have previously mentioned, though, I don't yet know how much time I will have for anything other than course work, so time will tell. Please be patient as I adjust to the new schedule and get my life in order, again.

Thanks all!

New Adventure, New Purpose

As I write this, Anne and I are prepping for our next big life change: we're moving.

To Vancouver. Canada. Yes, really.

I know. We've lived in the same place forever. We have friends and roots and deep connections to the community, but we have decided it is time.

You can read some of the reasoning behind it over here.

With this change in our lives, I am repurposing this blog a bit. And yes, I know it has been a while since I posted here at all. Such is life.

But, while I may still ramble on about things that matter to me, or that interest me, I also intend to discuss the process of moving to Canada, my school work there, and so on.

Some of those reading this post will know me from my role as a moderator of a particular email list for Santa Cruz Mountain residents. In that role you'll know I really tried to keep my comments there on point and balanced. I avoided political topics and hot issues. And I will continue to do that within that list until I am no longer a moderator there.

But here, the rules are different. Here, I get to talk about whatever interests me. And I get to cross over into things that I would probably not say in the mailing list.

So beware. If you think you know me, or what I think about a given topic, you might find you are not correct within these pages.

Anyone wanting to is welcome to email me - assuming you have the email address - if you have comments on these posts. But you'll note that there are no comments here. That's because I find commenting on most sites to be a problem.

If you have something to tell me, email me, or call me, or find me on twitter, or (shudder) possibly on Facebook. Perhaps what you have to say will prompt a reply here.

Otherwise, please enjoy the site, and come back from time to time to see what (if anything) I have added.

Comments are hidden

I just hid all comments on this blog. If you want to reply to something, feel free to email me.

Why?

Because I have come to the conclusion that comment sections - in news media outlets, blogs, YouTube, and every other place I have seen them - can get absolutely repulsive. Yes, they can be fine if they are moderated well, but that's a pain for a big site and even I have hit questions about whether to delete a comment or not. So I'm getting rid of them entirely. Gone.

Now I know this is a small time blog, with only a few readers. I've rarely had a problem with comments, but it has happened. Nothing serious, but it has been a thing.

So I have decided to take a stand. Comments are hidden, and I will not display them.  If I could turn them off entirely I would.

This will do nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it makes me feel slightly better. And as always, if you want to reach me, there are ways. It's not like I hide on the Internet and make myself hard to reach.

Thanks for your understanding.

I think comments have disappeared from here

It looks like all comments on my posts here from the past month or two are gone.

Odd.  I certainly didn't delete them.

I wonder what has happened?

If you know you left a comment on a recent post, please let me know.  I may have to report the issue to Google.  Thanks!

How to Mess Up Your Life

This is simple... just remodel a kitchen.  Really.

If it goes smashingly well - as ours has so far - you will still find yourself out of your kitchen and with strange people crashing around in your home for a minimum of 5 or 6 weeks.  Add a dog or three that cannot be allowed near the construction area because there are always doors that are left open and distracted workers there, and suddenly you have a routine of doing nothing but making sure progress continues unimpaired because anything else is impossible.

In other words, I am still here, just distracted.  For a while longer.  Whee.

Long time gone

Boy have I been away for a while.  Busy is too polite a word for it, but whatever the name it's not been much fun.

At the moment, though, things appear to be settling down a bit.  The next couple of weeks will be rocky as a result of visitors in town, but after that things may be calmer, which means I might have time to write more.  (And even as I say that the phone across the room warbles to tell me that a new text message has arrived.  Yay.)

In any case I have a new toy that may make writing a bit more interesting, or possible.  A new Chromebook has arrived, and it has a few interesting features that I am starting to figure out.   Hopefully the next month or three will see it getting substantial use, and this blog - and other things - will benefit.

That said, the next two weeks will not be filled with posts, so give me a little time to get past other commitments first.

Have a great summer!

Blog News...

The next bit of news... I've got twins.  Well, not really, but it sounded good.

What is going on is that I've decided to create a second blog.  It will focus solely on my artwork (when I have any time to do any artwork) and related things.  Anyone who's subscribed to The Powell Triangle (or just winds up here on occasion) specifically for news about art can now look here instead: http://jrpstonecarver.blogspot.com/.  There you'll find whatever I have to say about art - my own (mostly) - as it comes up.  It's still very much in its infancy - it's not even formatted properly yet, and my website doesn't even link to it at this point - but it is coming.

The Powell Triangle will continue in the same way it has, with me telling you about fires in my area, announcing weather events that seem out of place, spouting off half baked opinions about things political (and non-political), and generally chewing up disk space and Internet bandwidth to little or no gain.

You may want to revise your RSS subscriptions accordingly, depending on exactly what you do and do not want to hear from me.

Finally, both of these blogs have comments enabled but moderated.  In the past it has been the case that I didn't moderate comments in this blog, but I've decided I should do so.  It's not like I'm so popular that I get many spam comments, but it seems better to avoid them up front than to delete them after the fact.  So now your comments have to be read and approved by me before they're posted.  I apologize now for any delays and/or mistakes on my part in dealing with your input.

That's the blog news this time around.  Thanks for your attention!

Nothing is simple...

The title says it all.

I wanted to replace the filters in my reverse osmosis unit, but what I got from the store wasn't the right ones. Another trip back tomorrow.

And now I am going through moving my website to a new hosting service. So far it's going just fine, but I expect there will be a lot of rework as part of the move. Whee.

For the moment I am moving my blog back to to publishing directly on google, just to get make the migration to a new host easier. I might move it to my new host later, but then again maybe not.

In any event, you can be sure - since I am doing it - that nothing will go smoothly during all of this. Not much has gone smoothly at all lately, which partly explains why posts have been so few and far between here. Something will have to give at some point, but for now I just cover my head and try to hold on.

In the meantime, it's back to the old hosting provider where I will attempt to put redirects into place for my old blog so it can still be found by anyone searching for it. Then, once that is done, I can try moving the site to the new host.

Fun. Or something vaguely like it.

Today I am a Follower

Yesterday Steve added my blog to the published list of blogs he reads. I'm honored. A bit scared - for the reasons I mentioned in yesterday's post - but definitely honored.

But it was that action on his part that got me to thinking about blog etiquette and whether or not I was doing things properly. I wasn't.

There are about 20 things in my RSS reader at this point. Some are just silly, some I am more seriously interested in, some are from businesses, and others - the most important ones to me - are written by people I know.

I feel no obligation to give regular link space to the business blogs I follow. They may get mentioned from time to time, as appropriate, but the nature of my relationship with them isn't one that requires me to advertise for them.

Nor do I feel obliged to provide regular link space to those blogs that are written by people I don't know. There are several of those, mostly artists writing about their experiences. These are valuable to me, but since the writers don't know me from anyone, there seems to be no obligation on my part to advertise for them. (I might choose give them links, though, and as with business blogs, I may mention them where appropriate.)

The last category - and the one where I realized I was falling down on the job - is blogs of people I know. I had a few listed on my site, but the full list I follow wasn't up there. That, I decided, needed to change.

These are my friends, and through the web of connections that is the Internet it is entirely possible that someone who finds me will realize they also know someone whose blog I follow. By not giving them links, I was actively doing them a disservice.

So this morning I revised the link list. I added four blogs written by people I know to the sidebar. I also added the blog of one person I don't know, but whose work I admire so much I felt that the chance of exposing others to him was worthwhile.

So once again, thanks Steve. It appears that getting in touch with you was good for me in several ways.

And for anyone else out there whom I know and who keeps a blog, consider sending me a link. If you're not on the list I probably don't know about it, and that's no good. I want to keep up to date on my friends.

I'm Home

Vacation is over and the long drive back from Chicago is done. That means there will be posts here again. I've got a couple lined up in my head, but right now I am digging out from beneath the email blizzard. I'll be back here soon. No, that's not a threat. I hope.