All In the Same Boat

"Women and children first" has gained a warped new meaning as congress snips and snipes away at the country's spending. And as much as I've been ignoring the media lately, I've not been able to ignore a certain gnawing unease, the feeling that all isn't right with the world, and it's only going to get worse.

The university where I work is holding RIF (Reduction in Force) information sessions as a lead up to what we are told are inevitable layoffs. While I've been assured that my own job is secure (oh, good), things don't look great for those who will be unemployed. (You can bet it isn't going to be any of the six-figure salaried coaches getting laid off, either.)

I sit back and wonder how I - and all those others whose wages have stagnated, if not disappeared entirely - will continue to afford buying gas and groceries as prices go higher. I worry about my self-employed friends and family whose livelihoods depend on regular folks having the disposable income to purchase the products and services they offer. I nudge my daughter to at least minor in a field where she'll acquire marketable skills and not just a diploma to hang on the wall when she finishes college in 2 years.(Especially if she wants that wall to be in Boston and not back here in Bubba County.)

Meanwhile I do catch sound bites wherein presidential aspirants affirm that they are going to do everything they can possibly do to see that more money keeps flowing to those poor deserving corporation-persons. They want us to believe that we the people owe it to the billionaires to see that their standard of living is preserved. Politicians, and a disturbing number of otherwise sane folks, tell them and us that's also the way to create jobs, revive the economy, and maybe even create a slice of heaven on earth, at least here in America.

"Bale" Out Scheme

And I have to remind myself to breathe . . .

But then I read Maggie's recent entry in Flying the Coop , and my whatever-it-is was suddenly put into words. Although Maggie is writing from (and most often about) the idyllic Tuscan countryside, she articulates the malaise I feel here in Appalachia. We seem to share a tentative yet tenacious hold on the good life as we know and define it, in regions geographically disparate yet equally beautiful, looking off to the distant other side of this mess the world is in.

"...[E]verywhere we go people are communicating their fear about where our world is heading. I mean, really, everyone is talking about this: in the butchers, the fruit and vegetable shop, the farmers and retirees on the streets of our village, in the towns and cities, at the dinners I recently spoke of and at Gianni' s house almost daily. We are all talking about the fragile state of the global economy, the dangerous state of global warming, and the pitiful state of government," Maggie writes. She also talks about "common sense" -- common in that it is something widely held -- and shares an e-mail that expresses what I struggle to bring to the forefront of my own consciousness: We can do something about this, and not let them paralyze us in fear of what's to come. We can insist that our elected representatives stop being corporate whores and instead legislate for the many, not the few.

The e-mail Maggie quotes goes so far as to propose a "Congressional Reform Act of 2011," which, realistically we cannot expect to be acted upon because, well, it would take an act of Congress. But I do acknowledge the need for more of us to get involved, to have our voices heard, and to expose the posers who try to come off as one of us during daytime campaign stumps while bedding down with their moneyed puppetmasters every night.

Regardless of what you believe, we are all in the same boat. And it's a big enough boat that it won't matter if there are more of us on the left or the right -- that won't make a difference in whether we sink or not. What matters, it seems, is all of us paying close attention to where we're heading...

(Cross-posted from post-raphaelite sisterhood)

Going to School On S&P/McGraw Hill

Short audio clip of David Beers, Standard and Poor's pompous BMOC. I was spitting nails.

Notice that they are a Division of McGraw-Hill, whose performance today looked a little different from the rest of the markets around the globe. Down for the day, but ticking up since the close today. 

click image to watch this stock

There's a little more to the story, but, still. 

Here's McGraw-Hill's CEO discussing earnings outlooks for the second half of the year in the transcript of a conference call published on July 28th, 2011:

Harold McGraw

Okay, thank you very much, Don. And good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's conference call. Besides Don, as Don mentioned, with me today is Jack Callahan, our Chief Financial Officer. He'll be providing a little bit more color to our financials in just a moment.

We have 2 objectives for today's call. First, we want to review our encouraging second quarter results and share our perspective on the positive outlook that we have for the second half of this year. Second, we want to update you on our important strategic portfolio review, which is intended to accelerate global growth and unlock shareholder value. 

There's something wrong with this picture. I hate boycotting any publisher, but I've already been practicing on Rupert Murdoch's Harper-Collins. Harper-Collins and McGraw-Hill are two of the biggest textbook publishers in the country.

Back to school.

A Gift To The US From Across The Pond

While doing my usual blog crawl this morning, visiting my kind, smart, sassy, funny, irreverent and much loved blogging buddies, I came across this from my friend across the pond at Friko's World. Let me simply tell you I cried with gratitude.

If you're longing for a reason to be proud of America today, to feel good about our country, read this. Just do it. Thank her back.

Click on the Care Package 

Friko, dear, you could not have done a kinder or more helpful thing for us today.

Chicken In The Bedroom

[Off Topic Alert! Will return to our regularly suggested topic for this cycle in another post]

With a hat-tip to our reader Ahab at Republic of Gilead, I just had to bring this HuffPo article to your attention, my feathered friends.

LGBT Activists Respond To Chick-Fil-A's Downtown Chicago Debut

Joseph Erbentraut, June 17 Huffington Post

According to a report published by LGBT advocacy group Equality Matters in March, the company has provided more than $1.1 million of support to organizations who oppose gay marriage and other pro-LGBT provisions, such as Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defense Fund and Family Research Council -- a group which, in 2010, earned the Southern Poverty Law Center's "hate group" designation for its anti-LGBT messaging.

--and--

Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy in January stated his company has 'no agenda against anyone' but acknowledged they have 'a long history of trying to encourage and strengthen marriages and families, both within our Chick-fil-A system and with our customers.'

I fear your Loulou has her tailfeathers in a twist about this one. (You'll forgive me for the convoluted self-image issues inherent in this next part.) My response? Get your chicken sandwich out of our bedrooms, you pin-feathered poultry mongers! It's SANDWICHES, people! 


I'm tired of being moralized to by chicken pluckers and anyone else with a business. Time to clip some wings.

Boycott call! And spread the word.

Survivor, Texas Style

[New Topic:  Survival Tips]

It is soooo dry here in Central Texas.

How dry is it, you say?

Here’s the sad evidence:

And it’s sooo bad that Gov. “Goodhair” Rick Perry has called on the populace to pray for rain—while he’s out campaigning for the job of President which, of course, he says he’s not seeking.

Hold the Phone

[Current topic:  Technology--Love it or Leave it]

A lot has been written about cellphone etiquette lately, but that’s not going to stop me from adding my two cents’ worth to the discussion. It has become a pet peeve of mine, coming in a close second to people who like to rant about their pet peeves.

I’m not the only one who’s exasperated with the increase in “techno-rudeness” encountered every day by folks all across the social strata.

Schizophonic Thrills

From ratsinthebelfry

Last night, on Rachel Maddow, I heard Larry Flynt gasp out that old chestnut, "Next to survival, humans are driven by sexual needs." I would put the drive to learn higher, just beneath survival; we can't seem to help doing it and, universally, we really seem to get off on it. Very little tops the bang I get out of a new idea and, these days, thanks to the blessings of the technological age, I can arrange it so my little head explodes as often as I can stand. You could say I'm idea addicted.

Just a thought...

(The topic turns to "Technology: Love It or Leave It")

I for one appreciate the enhancements that technology has brought to our lives. The advances in communication alone have brought millions of people information that would've been impossible to get even a few decades ago.

And contrary to what many might believe, I'm of the opinion that most of technology will serve to better mankind. We've already seen how this has brought politics to the people, and the digital public square has the potential to get everyone involved in the betterment of their communities and countries.

Why, just imagine, if Thomas Jefferson had been able to avail himself of the latest in digital communications, poor Sally Hemings wouldn't have had to settle for something like this:

Much Ado About Nothing (Much)

Some might call my current obsession sinful, immoral, unAmerican, even selfish and lazy, but I prefer to think of it as a lifestyle choice.

My obsession: mono-tasking (as in the opposite of multi-tasking), and it is my attempt to take back some of the time, energy, and focus that work and other distractions relentlessly bleed from me.

Scent Dement

Waterhouse

An unexpected, bemusing byproduct of aging in me has been the emergence--or should I say, the blossoming--of curious serial obsessions.

The tendency has probably always been there. Come to think of it, I recall the All Patrick O'Brian, All The Time stage. And there was the Homegrown Herbs Drying All Over The Kitchen mode, both within the last decade before retirement. And, of course, there's been the Blog Your Brains Out cycle, which keeps trying to wane on me and has to be flogged from time to time. But I think I must have been too busy with work heretofore to have fully experienced my capacity for a groove.

My Latest Little Obsession

Yep, that's the new theme. Mine is an obsession like putting your tongue into the hole left by a missing filling. I'm generally too lazy to be obsessed. And yet....

Am I the only one aggravated by the amount of time it takes to go shopping these days? We've got shopping centers and supermarkets galore, but it is more time-consuming than ever because of the plethora of products out there. I don't mean browsing for shoes or books. I'm talking basic groceries. Even a bottle of catsup offers a headache's worth of options.

Yeah, yeah, I know... move to Russia where there are fewer choices.

Cover Your Ears! It's My Granny!

I don't often talk about my grandmother. She wasn't the sweet southern grandmother who baked cookies and played games with you. But she did teach me things--much of which, she probably shouldn't have.

Briefly, my grandmother taught me a different language: blue.

There She Goes Again...

Here's what my grandmother taught me:

I guess I first heard it when I was only nine or ten years old: During Thanksgiving dinner at my maternal grandmother's house, while the last crumbs of pie crust were being forked into our happy mouths, Gram would say, "This might be my last Thanksgiving..." As the years went by, this declaration wouldn't be cause for somber reflection, but rather some good-natured speculation as to what Gram might want for Christmas that year -- A cruise? Pearl earrings? Every year we knew "it" was coming, and it seems that the saying of "it" kept the actual possibility at bay year, after year, after year...

Gram went on to make that same "last Thanksgiving" proclamation for another thirty years or so, surviving cancer but living what could be considered a healthy life well into her eighties, and sharing Thanksgiving and other holidays with great-grandchildren and even great-great-grandchildren. She finally had her last Thanksgiving at age 89.

Her life was surely full of challenges -- two World Wars; raising children through Depression, flu and polio breakouts; and widowhood. Those events and influences can color a person's perspective. But Gram didn't behave as though she was waiting for the next disaster to happen, at least not while I knew her. It's taken me a while, but I think I finally figured out that my grandmother had her own way of saying we should make the most of every day. I am still perfecting that knowledge, but the lesson has stuck with me. With practice, I think I'll get it right, before my own last Thanksgiving.

She Never Had Nothing

[Topic for this cycle: What My Grandmother Taught Me]

Ethel

There were lots of mothers in my life, including this doll-like creature, all 4'11" of her: my maternal grandmother, Ethel, the toughest woman I've ever met. I don't have a date for this picture, but I think she was about eighteen, so that would have been 1918...just about the time she'd been declared Miss Draper, NC.  Ethel taught me how to have nothing.

Draper is a town that no longer exists except in the memories of people my age who were there before it was eventually folded with Leaksville and Spray into the larger town of Eden. She might have been Miss Eden, then, but for a matter of timing. There's so much irony in that, it hurts my mind; a girl who was named Miss Eden should have a charmed life. Instead, she had a third grade education, a twin sister who died at the age of thirteen (of scarlet fever, I believe), and a life that our generation would think of as impossible.

Ethel, on right

Think with me about her life. Shortly before this picture was made, my grandmother was courted by a handsome young baseball player for Elon College--my grandfather, Clark, of Greensboro, NC, and they soon married on the heels of Armistice Day and into the teeth of that great pandemic, The Spanish Influenza. The virus attacked the body by taking the immune system hostage, so healthier young adults were hit hardest because their immune systems were most robust. By the time the flu reached their small town, Ethel and Clark had one baby girl, Ruth.

Clark was working part-time delivering drugs for a local pharmacy to the victims of the influenza, when he felt suddenly exhausted and sought the nearest bed in a friend's room in a boarding house that was emptying for the summer. No one knew where he was, so he lay untended and dehydrating for days. He barely survived, but shortly thereafter he suffered a massive blood clot that rendered him paralyzed from the neck down. With the help of Clark's parents to provide housing and tend to the child, Ethel was able to go to work at the textile mill. She fed and tended to her quadraplegic husband in the morning, walked to the mill for work, came home to feed and turn her husband at lunchtime, walked back to the mill, then back home again in the evening to cook, nurse Clark, and care for their daughter. 

There were trips to specialists in Maryland and physical therapy for Clark to carry on at home with his wife's help. If there was one thing Ethel could do it was follow instructions. One day Clark move his own big toe. From there, over a long and unbelievably hard time, he eventually regained enough movement to walk with crutches and braces. Eventually, Clark inherited the small corner grocery his father owned and the couple lived in a house on the family's large property. Five more children followed Ruth.

Ethel and Clark, approximately 1918

So, Ethel spent the 1920's caring for her husband, working at the mill, living under the wing of her in-laws, and having child after child. Eventually, they moved into the large farmhouse next door to the grocery store.Those must have been the good years. 

My grandfather's job was, ironically, secure when The Great Depression occurred in 1929, but his neighbors' jobs in the mills were not, so the little corner grocery fed not only a family of eight, but at times, the members of its small community. 

Just as the oldest of the children were finishing high school and starting their first jobs, World War II turned Greensboro, NC into an Army base. Soldiers marched and drilled on the family's small street, waving to the pretty daughters and taking the first son with them. Ethel got letters from her son in Patton's Third Army. She watched her daughters start their lives in wartime.

And, shortly after the war ended, the grandchildren appeared. In the booming post-war economy, Ethel's married daughters and daughters-in-law went to work and Ethel provided childcare. Her weight had crept up, making her almost as round as she was tall, and she suffered from varicose veins, but she couldn't move less so she moved more slowly. The polio epidemic threatened those grandchildren and Ethel was not one to take the threat lightly, so she fussed us into health and safety.

As the oldest of Ethel's grandchildren, I don't remember the sweetness I see in this picture. My cousins and I were a handful for her. I see her sweeping, sweeping, mopping, cooking (rather badly), planting zinnias, chatting too briefly with the neighbor women. Ethel, Ada, Oneida...they were born into an era of ugly names for baby girls. They were born into lives that history treated so badly, you'd think there was a grudge at work.

At Granny's house, we weren't allowed to play cards or play with the neighborhood boys. When my rowdy cousins and I galloped through her living room to launch ourselves hard at her beleaguered sofa, vying for who could get closest to the bad picture of The Little Rascals or Annette Funicello on the Mickey Mouse Club on her her unreliable little black and white television, my granny would admonish us by announcing flatly, "I just can't have nothing." It wasn't so much a complaint as a fact, observed.

She wasn't a fun grandmother, although she had a wry sense of humor when she wasn't too tired to indulge in it. She was brisk and dogged and determined, most of the sweetness knocked off by the early fifties, but she knew children should have fun without getting under foot. She provided a wonderful big box of dress-up clothes from her own children's old clothes. And she had a wealth of soft, ragged old quilts to spread under the big oaks in her yard for hot days or to throw over the clothes line for tents. There were my grandfather's Readers Digest Condensed books that we devoured and kite string to weave between trees to make "rooms" for playing house. There were kittens. And Red Chief note books to journal in. She taught us old songs from her childhood: "Froggy Went A-Courtin'" and "Playmate" and "Barbry Allen"...not exactly cheerful songs, but dear to her. If we napped properly every day from 1:00-3:00 p.m.--a habit I could never fully break--we were given a nickel to spend at my grandfather's store for ice cream, a Pepsi, or penny candy.

Clark died suddenly from a heart attack in 1957 while driving his jeep into town; that clotting disorder struck again. Granny continued to care for us and a neighbor's child after school and in summers. She taught us to iron by having us press the huge box of real ribbons collected from the wreaths at her husband's funeral. She said she'd make a quilt with them someday. We'd twist off the cruel florist wire and take turns standing at the ironing board telling stories about our idolized grandfather, turning the bows into shimmering falls of wide satin that folded themselves back into the box. There's a smell I'll never forget...hot iron on satin.

Until she went to a nursing home following her own stroke, to my knowledge Granny "never had nothing" but dogged determination to plow ahead no matter what. She was known for perseverance and a a fierce commitment to taking care of the people she loved. She taught me that resignation is not the same thing as giving up.

She taught me to recognize the sheer good luck we think of as a normal life.

I Blame Freud, Ford, Mom, And The DOD

[Topic for this cycle: Location, Location, Location]

Home, Sweet Home

Lately I begin to wonder if I might be stuck forever in my present location, unable to sell and unwilling to walk away from a home of twenty years. Disabled by the economy to buy before I've sold, and without a feckin' clue where to go from here. It's a situation that recalls the first joke I learned as a child: "If we had some eggs, we could have bacon and eggs, if we had some bacon."

Once upon a time, families lived within a buggy ride, at most, from each other because they had an undiluted awareness of the necessity of those primary ties. They probably did not want to be in each other's back pockets at all times, but they knew intimately and intuitively the cycles of need and longing for family that we all experience, and they were practical. Then, as a nation, we graduated from an agrarian society where we worked for ourselves and each other to a mechanized industrial society--first the precursors and then the progeny of Ford's assembly lines--where nobody really had our backs anymore.

Ford's Mother's couch, lovingly recreated to
his specifications to satisfy his yearnings for home.

In the same era, Freud introduced the family as the source of all our neuroses, a concept that took a generation to reach blanket acceptance in the US, to color all our thoughts about who we are and what could be wrong with us. And world wars taught us that our lives and our closest ties were subject to disruption at the command of our national leaders, lawmakers and the ironically named Department of Defense.

Freud's London Couch from Wisdom Quarterly

 Since then, we have all watched helplessly as the pursuit of education and a living wage has pulled our loved ones and ourselves all over the continent. Right up to 2008, Americans thought nothing of relocating to gain a promotion and then doing it again in two years for the next promotion. As a military family, we moved, bought houses, sold houses from one end of America to the other, averaging a move every three years whether we needed to or not and we thought nothing of it. It was adventure. We simply took to the roads and the airways to maintain our ties to family, to the extent we still had them. Whether at the whim of corporations or the military or whatever, we all moved and moved and moved again, a nation in constant motion.

I marvel to realize that I actually believed that I got along with my mother best when I lived in Alaska and she still lived at home in NC. I thought I needed to get away. From a perfectly nice lady, if a tad intrusive...very informed, fun, interesting, adored my kids...a good mother by almost any measure. Thanks to Freud and an out-of-town educational immersion in all things Freudian, I learned to focus negatively and almost exclusively on my mother's intrusiveness. When I met my husband, not the least of his many charms was that he had joined the Air Force and was seeing the world. I was so moved!--until retirement twenty years ago, when we bought what we thought of as a temporary house, where we've lived ever since. From here, we've watched our children move and move and move.

Shockingly, almost instantly, in 2008 the revealed whimsies of the big investment banks brought all our moving to a screeching halt. As if someone on the playground had yelled, "FREEZE!" We found ourselves frozen far from each other, unable to sell and buy, unable to take the time off for long driving trips (or, in my case, unable to tolerate them physically), and increasingly unable to afford airline prices. I speak for myself, here, and for at least two generations of middle class Americans. Many of us found ourselves longing for and needing family just when we could no longer get to them readily.

Now all those Twentieth Century ideals and philosophies of loyalty to the corporation, mobility in the service of self-interest, Freudian splitting of generations, and the never-ending demands of war begin to mean exactly squat-all to us. Those cultural icons are presently starting to smell, as all dying things do. And we are caught in the throes of massive cultural change and international recession, immobilized and puzzled at our loneliness. We are physically grounded, but psychologically and emotionally displaced.

Designs By Mom

For my part, I couldn't be more confused. I want to sell my house, but, when people ask me where I'm going, I feel stupid saying I don't know. Should I move to Nashville to be closer to my son? Will my daughter's Navy family be mandated to stay in San Diego or will they head toward Norfolk? Should I shoot for some spot somewhere in between Some Place and Some Place Else? Should I stay put in this All Sphincters Red State just because I know where my doctors are and how to get to Steinmart? Kind friends say try Tucson, try Wilmington, and I love them for it. Other kind friends wonder why we'd ever leave this spot. And we wonder if, in terms of our abilities to cope with stress, we might have just shot past our window for moving at all.

Listen to this. Tourism has been picking up locally this week and we had two--count 'em!--scheduled house showings all of a sudden--one for yesterday and one for May 1st. The storms that now regularly try to stamp out the South were threatening again yesterday, and ya'll know how I am about tornadoes. I'd been watching the news about my old sweet home in Alabama and grieving for beautiful Birmingham. I could make that Wundermap on weatherunderground.com prophesy in lurid color. So we called the realtor's scheduler and cancelled that first showing, which was set for just about the time all hell was due to break loose. We asked optimistically that the viewing be re-scheduled for the next day.

Thompson living room, Birmingham, AL, strangely untouched by the
tornado, despite extensive damage to nearby rooms in the house.

Somehow--by black magic, perhaps--the storm surrounded us, loomed at us, huffed and puffed but never actually threatened to blow our house down. Our little town might have had a teflon canopy. When we called the viewers to follow up on the re-schedule, we were told that they had settled on another house in our neighborhood! While I was preparing for tornadoes! What kind of people look at houses in the middle of killer storms? This house is used to careful people, thoughtful and prudent people, not impulsive vacationers who pay no attention to the news. Kismet? Karma? Shit happens? An unconscious resistance to change? Undeserved luck?

I blame Freud.

In a State!

If it's true that as Maine goes, so goes the nation, I think it's time to toss some underwear into the old handbasket.

It used to be that the South had dibs on outlandish politicians. Now that crazy has gone viral, whoever is in charge of The Crazy Rankings is going to have a tough job. Heck, it's hard to even know what IS crazy any longer. One doesn't even know where to start...!

How about Maine and Gov. Paul LePage?

You may recognize Gov. LePage's name because he removed a labor mural from a Maine Department of Labor office because it depicted... um... labor. (He was overruled--it's going back up.) Or maybe you heard when he wanted to relax some of the state environmental laws and chose to have the chemical industry write them for him.

The History of Map Making

[a poetess' take on "Location, Location, Location..."]

How simple navigation was
back in the day when all the known world
could be contained on a disc of clay
impressed with images to show
our house and the neighbor's field,
the river before it flooded,
and the smoking mountain on the horizon;
guardian dragons forbade us to roam beyond.
We always knew just where we stood.

Then measurements were made and
all around the land was round;
Eratosthenes observed the shadow of the sun
and was the first to tell how many football fields
it took to gird the world. Sailors journeyed
far across the sea, failed to be consumed
by monsters, and so, the horizon
disappeared.

Today the moon and stars are charted --
and beyond, destinations pinpointed,
never to be reached. Yet sometimes
I don't know just where I'm headed,
even though I've been around;
left my backyard, even been to hell and back.
But there, off in the distance, I see dragons
and they just won't let me pass.

Image: OnlineWebLibrary

The Wind Began To Switch...

GLINDA

She brings you good news. Or haven't you heard?
When she fell out of Kansas, a miracle occurred.

DOROTHY 
It really was no miracle. What happened was
just this: The wind began to switch -- the house to pitch
And suddenly the hinges started to unhitch.
Just then, the witch -- to satisfy an itch --
Went flying on her broomstick thumbing for a hitch.

When Dorothy and Toto landed in Munchkinland squarely on top of the Wicked Witch of the East, the Munchkins naturally were curious as to how she happened to navigate her house to make such a strategic landing. Good Witch Glinda calls it a miracle but Dorothy explains that it was just happenstance due to a switching wind and the Wicked Witch's unfortunate decision to take her broomstick out for a spin at that precise moment. Last Saturday, the wind in Raleigh definitely switched but I was lucky and my house didn't pitch and no witches were harmed.

One Special, Hold the Henna, Please

Location, location, location, and this little building in the middle of a big cement island at a busy intersection makes me smile whenever I see it.

YASS! This is, indeed, a strange spot and it sends the imagination into overdrive. I can't help but think of advertising slogans which may apply here.

"Does she or doesn't she? " Maybe it isn't only her hairdresser who knows for sure. That's a pretty darned big window.

Brylcream says "a little dab'll do you" and that good, because there's no room for big dabs.

When women entreat Calgon to "take me away," is this be the location they have in mind?

Suppose making one feel special inside that small building takes some time... is there an inside facility for... um... squeezing the Charmin, should the need arise?

Our ever-sassy hen, Ima June Pullet, wants to know if they have a drive-thru window.

Streetwise with Streetview

 [Current topic:  Location, Location, Location!]

Artists have always enjoyed traveling the world to find new places for inspiration.  I'm not one of them, unfortunately. 

I'm a white-knuckle flyer and I love my own bed (and bathroom) too much.  Our six cats and one decrepit Toy Fox Terrier need me. 

And did I mention the 60 hummingbirds who come to our feeders every day?

So it was a real joy to discover the website Virtual Paintout, created by artist Bill Guffey.  Each month he chooses some spot in the world where artists can meet and paint or draw and then submit their artwork to the site. 

But it's all done virtually by way of Google's "Streetview"---which enables you to virtually drive or walk around cities almost anywhere in the world.

Here are a few of my past entries.  These are all scenes and people as they appeared on Streetview.

Click on images for enlarged view.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go let my little dog out.

Mexico City

Mexico City

Corsica

Sausalito, California

New York City

New York City  (the "Out-of-Towners")

Belfast, Northern Ireland