Yvette McGee Brown

I met Governor Strickland's running mate Sunday. She is Yvette McGee Brown and she is wonderful. This short YouTube provides a brief glimpse to Yvette's sparkling character! Way to go Ohio!
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Just Say Yes To Drums!

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I am privileged to assist Wahru Cleveland teach a bucket drumming Summer Camp workshop at The Ohio State University today. Bucket Drumming Rocks.

Governors Mansion

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Yesterday I had the privilege of touring the Governor's mansion. Not only did I get to meet Ted and Francis Strickland, but I also got to tour the mansion, gardens, and grounds. Prior to being admitted to the grounds my girlfriend spotted this Sunflower Fiesta disc pitcher in the kitchen window. Thanks to Aunt Sue (Sue's News) for getting me an invitation to the Strickland residence and for talking the Dosent into allowing us access to this side of the mansion in order to get a close up of the disc pitcher that my girlfriend spotted and correctly identified over 50 yards away!

Balloons And Ponies

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This woman has witnessed the cost cutting tactics of BP's clean up plan. "Balloons and Ponies" is the slang terminology BP uses when an important official is coming to inspect the site and the appearance of taking action is employed!

Art Cars At Comfest

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Part of the spirit of Community Festival can be seen in the Art Cars. Here is my favorite one so far this year. It is made up mostly of bottle caps. As the weekend goes on I expect more Art Cars to make their appearance. I will be drumming today at Comfest with The Columbus Community Drummers at The Live Arts Stage in Goodale Park 6:20 pm. I hope to see you there.

Byzantium 25th Anniversary

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This month marks the 25th Anniversary of Byzantium probably the finest bead store in the country. They are having a sale the whole week of Comfest. Their ad is on page 14 of The Program Guide.
Byzantium was the feature story in this months Short North Gazette. And I am sad to report after 25 years of service to the Columbus community Byzantium is going out of business. So get your beads and artifacts now while you still can. Make use of this weekend's sale during Comfest.

Got Chips?

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Time to get ready for Community Festval. I still have chips from last year. You have to purchase these chips in order to buy food and beverage at Comfest. In case you are wondering if there is a difference in each of the chips the answer is yes. Comfest is run on volunteer power. Comfest treats their volunteers like gold. In order to score some of these white chips you have to volunteer.

August Doesn't Work For Me

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I snagged this poster from the Boycott BP Facebook page.

Comfest 2010

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Just 3 more days till Comfest. I will be at opening drum circle on Friday and I will be performing Saturday evening with The Columbus Community Drummers.

Who Is Diane Wilson?

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I thought that woman looked familiar when they arrested her for disrupting Tony Hayward's opening testimony at the Senate Subcommittee hearings on the Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill last week. She is Diane Wilson and deserving of our collective respect. She is a Fourth Generation Shrimper from Sea Drift Texas and author of the book Unreasonable Women.
Diane Wilson’s book Unreasonable Woman is about her fight as an environmental activist speaking out against deadly pollution in the Gulf Coast. Arrested numerous times for her protests, she is a poster child for Mother Earth who is hemorrhaging right now in The Gulf Of Mexico.

Looking Back On PRIDE

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I had a pretty good view of the PRIDE parade yesterday as Columbus Community Drummers was the very first float. This shot was taken in front of The Federal Building and Nationwide. Overall we were well received and I hope we do it again next year.

PRIDE

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I am drumming today in the Pride Parade with Columbus Community Drummers. Later I will be drumming with Rosemary Valentine and Columbus Womens Drum Chorus. I think we are going to be on The Santa Maria that is docked in the Sciota River. Hope to see you there.

Graven Image? Praying Mantis?

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Yesterdays blog was about the giant Styrofoam and fiberglass Jesus that was struck by lightning June 14th and burnt to the ground. Here is what is left of the statue today. The Holy Bible is very specific on the subject of graven images. There are even stories in The Bible where supernatural events destroy such images. The story usually goes something like this. Leader of the people (God's Chosen One) warns the flock against constructing graven images with some lame excuse like "For I am a jealous God". Leader goes off into the mountains for some length of time...presumably to pray and meditate. While leader is gone the flock become complacent and construct forbidden graven image. Leader comes back and is dismayed by the disobedient flock and the graven image is destroyed and the flock is punished. Not surprisingly The Solid Rock Church of Monroe Ohio has vowed to rebuild the statue and the original artist is going to help with the project. It is amazing to me that Christians would continue to not understand their own scripture and continue to construct forbidden graven images. This Touchdown Jesus doubles as a cell phone tower. Perhaps the message about this act of God deserves one of those billboards...you know the ones that say "What Part Of Thou Shalt Not Do You Not Understand?". Only this time the giant sign would read:

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
--- GOD

Postscript
Apparently there has been some protest with regard to rebuilding the abomination.

Giant Jesus Made of Hummus

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This giant size Jesus was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground June 14th. It is located near Cincinnati and quite shocking if you are not expecting to see it. If you read the comments on YouTube you'll find that folks have wrecked their cars because of this eyesore. People come from all over the world to visit this statue made out of styrofoam. Ironically the tanker siphoning the oil from the Gulf spill was struck by lightning also the same night. Perhaps we have a tie game.

As Ohio Goes

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President Obama is coming to Columbus on Friday. I am going to be busy drumming for Pride and helping out with a float. It is doubtful that our paths will cross. But it would be great to run into him, so I am going to stick my copy of As Ohio Goes into my drum bag just in case I get near enough to get his autograph. Perhaps he is here to endorse Governor Strickland, or maybe he will be attending the Deutsche Bank 2010 Alternative Energy, Utilities and Power Conference. High speed rail could use The President's blessing. It would blow everyone away if he came to Pride. At this point his plans are not known. I know he is busy trying to troubleshoot the Gulf Of Mexico mess. It is surprising that he has any time at all for Ohio. I think he is doing a great job for someone who took office to a looted treasury and 2 wars. This beautiful book As Ohio Goes was discarded from the library. I feel lucky to have gotten a copy of it this early in his 1st office.

Beyond Mexicana

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Homer Laughlin made some dinnerware in the 50's called Conchita which is a form of my name Concha. One of my grandmothers called me Conchita when she was being playful with me. I have only seen the pattern in books, and antique malls. This photo came from a website that features a book called Beyond Mexicana by Melicety Wilcox Deatherage. Something that is unique about our local library is that they purchase many of the books that patrons order through interlibrary loan. I ordered this book from Columbus Metropolitan Library this morning. The Homer Laughlin collector books are very popular and so I have every confidence that Ms Deatherage's book will be part of CML's permanant collection.

Old Horseman's Blog Today

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There is this man that is a moderator at LATOC forum named Old Horseman. He really is an Old Horseman. He has his own blog. Today his blog is called Life In The Fast Lane.
They threw outrageous parties, they paid heavenly bills.

The Gulf oil disaster may not be the end of the world, but it ought to be plenty bad enough to make folks take stock...

Instead I hear people bitching about how any move to slow or stop the mad rush to get at every drop of oil on Earth will be detrimental to the "economy".

We've been up and down this highway. Haven't seen a goddamned thing!

You know... The economy based on people having "jobs" that don't really need to be done so that they can qualify for credit to buy crap they don't really want or need with "money" they don't really have.

They knew all the right people, they took all the right pills.

Yeah... We desperately need to protect a way of life that is so wonderful that, in order to tolerate it, everyone needs a combination of prescription mood-altering drugs, booze, and American Idol to numb their brains enough to tolerate it.

He was too tired to make it, she was too tired to fight about it.

Oh, our non-negotiable American Way of Life is so "beneficial" that even young men are having to resort to pharmaceutical aid just to get it up!
Not only did our fathers going back an unbroken line of a million generations not need little blue pills to make their junk work, their women didn't used to need fertility clinics. In fact, they were far more concerned with finding ways NOT to make more children than they were prepared to raise... A concern our wonderful, petroleum-fueled society has largely negated by making fertility treatments available to anyone with a womb, then removing responsibility for one's own offspring with welfare and other social programs.

There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face.
She pretended not to notice, she was caught up in the race.

Seems like the least desirable and responsible people in America are encouraged to make the babies, and just look at the kids this society is producing! Sure, every decade looks a bit weird in retrospect. But previous generations could put away the tie-dye, bell-bottoms, and get a haircut when the time came. The current generation is literally mutilating themselves! Getting lost in androgynous vampire fantasies can't be a sign of solid mental health.

Clicke here for the rest of Old Horsemans blog.

The Fix: Robert Redford Reflects on the Gulf Oil Disaster

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Bonnaroo Music Festival

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The Avett Brothers are playing at Bonnaroo this afternoon. I have been listening to the live stream on NPR. Last night I heard Damian Marley before going to bed. This is a picture of the Avett Brothers last year at Bonnaroo.
The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is a massive production: an unrelenting marathon of live music and culture. This year, NPR Music, WFUV, The Current and KUT offer the most complete coverage of the sprawling event with a live webcast from the main stages.
For the complete lineup of artists and information on attending the 2010 Bonnaroo Music And Arts Festival visit www.bonnaroo.com.

Peak Moment

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Strange Maps This Week

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If you look over to the right of my daily blog post you will see a list of the blogs I follow. I will be featuring each of these individually in the next few months (blog about the blogs). But the one I am blogging about today is called Strange Maps.

In order for us to understand the magnitude of the gulf spill it is helpfull to superimpose the spill over the area where you live. I have friends and family in California so I chose this one from the several that are posted over at Strange Maps. "Nothing is real unless it is happening to you". - Melanie Safka

Marbling

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I have always wanted to learn the technique of marbling. It involves oily ink being manipulated (stirred and mixed) on the surface of the water and carefully submerging your object just below the surface and capturing the floating ink onto the object (usually paper or fabric). Today I am just experimenting with my new camera a Kodak point and shoot about the size of a pack of cigarettes. I am looking for picture clarity, which is why my eye settled on the marbling cover of my magic book. This is a book that I keep my important codes and passwords for my computer and digital work. It also contains phone numbers and addresses that I might need to have in the car with me when I travel. Also, if I have a original thought that I want to share later I write it into this book. The most recent being "denial is the new black". You can quote me on that.

It is hard to imagine that I minored in photography in college. Everything I learned then is now obsolete. F stops have been converted into simple symbols that someone in a 3rd world country thought might look like a tulip, or a mountain. I will be doing a camera review on my new gizmo as soon as I master the basics and learn what the cartoon symbols stand for. The marbling effect sort of looks like an oil slick or plume doesn't it? How pretty the waters of the gulf must look today...just a giant marbling project in the works.

Columbus Skyline Mural

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This mural is located at Clintonville Elementary School. It is done in Mosaic style with colored tiles. The artist was Jim Marshal. Jim recently received some tiles I was gifted to, from my friend Judith Z. And I took the remainder of the tiles to my sister this past weekend. There is a mural in our future...I can just picture it.

Future Monarch

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We found this little worm in my sisters flower bed this weekend. I got home and looked him up. It turns out this worm may be lucky enough to grow up to be a Monarch butterfly. Blogger was down for almost the whole day Monday. So I am going to carry this post over to Tuesday.

Family Heirlooms

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I was visiting my Aunt the other day and she showed me her kitchen table which turns out to be from The Patton Farm. That would be my Great Grandparents Gary and Helen Patton's kitchen table. I can remember eating at that same table on Fiestaware when I was just a wee one. The older I get the more important these heirlooms become.

More Denver Art

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James Howard Kunstler posts an eyesore of the month each month. This one for June is particularly revolting to me. Maybe the folks in Denver need to recruit some artists that are not trying for the The New World Order themes. Maybe when same day shipping becomes a thing of the past the old shipping containers can be converted to art like this.

Denver Airport

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This morning on NPR there was a story about the "art" at Denver Airport. Not a word about conspiracy or controversial or New World Order which seems to be at the heart of the subject mater of the art. It would be nice to know more about who is behind the veil of secrecy.

Tree Damage

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We had a bad storm last evening. It took the middle of our big maple. Lots to clean up today. It won't be as shady in the back yard as it has been. On the other hand the less shade we have the more options for our garden.

Wasting Away In Petroleumville ♫♪♫♪♪

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♫ ♫ ♪♫♪♪

Gallows Humor

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