City Hall Park

City Hall Park, originally uploaded by p0psharlow.

Mary, I only have a few minutes here to post something in explanation of why I've been away from the blog so long. It is a combination of several things: 1) my Dad, a lot of phone calls, research and unsettling contingent travel plans (he's responding well to hip replacement surgery and may be transferred from rehab to assisted living this week); work has me doing many fun things, but emphasis on many (I'm making one video a day of a sales rep -- very amateur, samples here) also, on mild weather days, I sit out in the park pictured above, using with my laptop connected thru the free WiFi, promoting our company's blog by submitting posts to the social news sites, like Digg & Reddit (the rules say the writer or publisher can't submit their own stories, so I go under another name, from a publicly connected, private computer so my submissions are not tied to the company -- this is shady, but a common practice aimed at gaining more visibility for our blog -- on harsh weather days, I do it from a nearby Irish pub -- so, I get a kick our of having part of my job being to hit the bar!); 3) on off-time, I'm trying to focus on publishing an illustrated book which I've been working on for 2 years with a friend, Mike Tolbert, it's in its last stage now and I'm having a very hard time keeping interested (just a few more hours); 4) with Ruth, I'm spending our Sunday painting time on our new painting project (in the drawing stage, but we're shooting video of it too and creating a bunch of editing work for me); 5) last, but really first in my attention is my complete addiction to Flickr (I spend every second I can sneak in and out of other activities all day everyday, making new images to upload, checking the uploads of my contacts, checking comments on my uploads and responses to my comments on other's uploads -- it is a community I can understand, because it is all about images -- I really understand how "the kids" get addicted to MySpace, FaceBook, bebo or whatever the hot new social site is now -- my myspace profile has been neglected for months and months because I just can't get a handle on the community and it's just so ugly, I can't spend time there). Of course, I'm doing other things, there's the CD trading site, lala, which takes too much time and there's our recreational DVD (we're into the third season of "The Wire" and find that series t be the best episodic cinema yet) & TV (we watch "Brothers & Sisters, "Medium" and even "Desperate Housewives" still) and we eat and clean house (a little). So, what am I saying? I have time to list all the stupid stuff I'm doing but don't have time to post to our blog? Something like that. If I can just get Mike Tolbert's book off my back, I'll have time to blog (actually, some of the comments on Flickr end up to be like blog posts -- it's just that Flickr's about pictures and I'm so oriented towards the visual). I hope you're doing well with your work. I'm very sorry to hear of the damage to Stanley Park -- I don't remember seeing it when we passed by in the Straight, but I have an idea of what a loss it is. What about David's play? Is it on about now? cheers & ciao, got to go to work -- weather looks good, it's been cold, finally, but not too cold today.

Comments

[JoEllen aka Jellin]

HEY THERE!
I saw some of your old SF punk stuff...
I'm from Petaluma. I remember the "Spot Girls" it was the mother Sharon, (she painted portraits of horses). Her daughter Suzi and her sister Shannon (I think).
They lived in Cotati. Suzi was my first real live punk rock friend, she used to play Franken Furter (Rocky Horror) at the Plaza in Petaluma...
I had TOTALLY forgotten that Sharon dated Dave. No idea where any of them are now.

[steve]

good to hear from you jellin. glad you commented here. i wonder, tho, did you try emailing from the punk pages and i never responded?

in any case, you got me here. i didn't know sharon and suzi long. my friend, niika and i met them a few months before we both moved to san francisco.

i did a punk rock radio show on kmls, santa rosa station, was a contributing editor and graphic artist for adverts magazine '79 - '80, before that, was co-director of lincoln gallery at the lincoln art center, santa rosa, before that, lived in penngrove.

i have fond memories of petaluma from the '70s

howz it going for you now?