afterSonoma

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.

Stanely Park and other losses

This may not be the type of blog that can easily be referenced or linked, or whatever the right term is, but, this year anyway, it's serving as a good record of climate change on the east and west coasts. Must indeed be strange to be walking around in shirtsleeves in January, and even uncomfortable, given your feelings about NYC in the summer. Here we've moved on from the wind and rain, to snow and ice. Because of our varied topography, the weather hits different elevations, etc, differently. Last Wednesday's snowstorm closed the College, for example, so many accidents virtually just outside the doors of the place that people were trapped in the underground parking lot, had to abandon their cars and get home some other way, or spend the night in local hotels. But in downtown Vancouver, which I reached by Skytrain easily enough, snow had been light and didn't prevent me from taking a friend to see a play for her birthday. Later that night the temperature dropped and it has remained below freezing for several days now. But it's sunny! We've had a couple of full days of sunshine!
   I'm looking forward to your comments on the book you're reading, The Singularity is Near.  Good that someone is tracking positive changes, as I think he must be to come up with a hopeful outcome of the technological changes that may be causing climatic havoc as well as ease in electronic communication.  So I'll wait for that, and also more images from your camera and your brush. Did the NYC skyline painting sell on e-Bay? I forgot to check.
   Sorry about the troubles in California, and the sickness that followed your trip there.  So many of my friends are dealing with aged parents. I just got off he phone with one friend whose mother died last week. Mine both died in their early 70's; Dad in the early 80's, Mom in 1990, which means I don't have the burden of caring for them now, but have missed their presence in the world for some time. If genetics are everything, I should hurry to complete the work I want to do, for only my paternal grandmother lived past 80.
   That reality actually does lend some urgency to my plans, but not so much that I haven't been progressing very slowly on the new play idea. This week I hope to do some interviewing and watch some old film about the place I'll be basing the play on, the former school for what are now called developmentally disabled people. It's going to be a challenge. Classes started, and I the initial impression of my students in play writing and fiction writing is good. This is the honeymoon period, before assignments come in. Sounds like you've set yourself a demanding task, at your job. But your bosses must be impressed with your creativity and ingenuity. Could you send me an example, so that I know what the pieces look like?
   One subject that could have relevance for blog readers other than ourselves is Stanley Park. I don't think you ever visited it, but you may have seen its green elbow sticking out when you passed on the ship. Or maybe not. But it has been the centre of the city much the way Central Park is the centre of Manhattan. The wind storms hit the park head on, from the west, and the first storm knocked over an estimated three thousand trees, some of them old growth cedar, fir and hemlock. Subsequent storms continued pounding the more vulnerable areas and we've now lost so many trees, particularly on the west side, that people say it looks like a clearcut. A local news station has been taking donations towards park restoration, not that money can make trees grow faster. But the seawall that runs right around the park was damaged, too, and that can be repaired for the thousands of walkers, runners and cyclists who use it on a regular basis. The causeway to the Lions Gate Bridge runs right through a section of the park and had to be closed three separate days to allow Park crews to clear fallen trees off the road after various storms had moved through. Some trees have been completely uprooted, others broken off and looking as if someone snapped their trunks, leaving a jagged break line, much as you'd see if you snapped a toothpick or a chopstick. Homeless people camp out in the Park, and luckily none of them were hurt, though it had to be pretty scary to be inside the forst among all the crashing trees. One fellow was trapped, and it was only because his cancelled cell phone still had enough juice to get him to the 911 operator that he could be rescued, by a policeman on horseback!

Hot January

Kraemer & Imperial, originally uploaded by p0psharlow.

The weather is a big story here, too. It's too warm! Pseudo-son, Cam, was in town this weekend, we went to an art opening in Chelsea, walking through the January evening in shirtsleeves. The day-time temps so warm, we've had to close up the windows in our apartment to run the A/C like it was July. Too weird!

Of course, the freakiest thing about it is the unpredictable character. No history of weather patterns applies and the changes could be in any direction. And extreme. Our earth's atmosphere cares little for our comfort or even our viability, it could suddenly be 900F as easily as 90F or - 90F.

New York City flooded with rising ocean levels, that's a given -- whether it's next century, next decade or next year, who can say?

People doubting industrial man's development having an influence, crack me up. "Just a natural cycle". I'm like, "Yeah, as long as you consider human development as an act of nature."

Nature, man, industry, agriculture... I don't have time to do a real review of the book I'm enjoying for a few minutes each work day on my 10 minute commutes, but, it is Ray Kurzweil's, "The Singularity is Near". I will do a thoughtful reaction to the tome when I get through it -- it's big and I read very little. But, for now, I'll just say that the evidence he calls to support his future predictions in nano-technology, genetics and robotics creates a hopeful, if radical, vision of our future. I love that he has an expansive defination of what is human, so that when we soon, as he sees it, "transcend biology", we will expand, not limit human consciousness. We'll make nanobots from excess carbon which will create our energy, clean our environment and even our bloodstreams.

Meanwhile back in the life of little Steve Harlow, I've had a family emergency. The day before Christmas my Dad, who's 87, fell, broke his hip. I flew out to SoCal, saw him through hip-replacement surgery and his transferal to a "Skilled Nursing Facility".

My sister and I did what we could, I got deathly ill for days, stomach virus I thought was food poisoning. Really out of it at an inconvenient time. Recovered enough to make a rough trip back to NYC. Ruth is doing the financial arrangements. My Dad suffers from dementia, is considered incompetent. He's comfortable, responding well to physical therepy, getting good care. We will, most likely, be selling his house so he can afford an extended stay in an assisted living faciality.

My Mother died three years ago on the day before Christmas. Our family is small and dispersed. There's just my sister, who lives near our Dad, her two grown boys, one is out here in NYC and my Nathan in SF.

Meanwhile, I've picked up a new, fun responsibility at work, I'm doing a daily video blog, interviewing our salesmen about what interesting products are available in their departments. Two minutes of talking head video, which I've got to shoot, edit, upload, create linking blog posts and ads -- getting it all done before noon each day. That's my goal, if I can do it, I'll be able to continue this fun and still do my old job in the afternoons. So, far, I've run way late, but, I'm hopeful.

And at home, with Ruth, we're trying to fit into our old art-making schedule, we drew today, preparing our new collaborative painting. She's got a lot of exciting new work at her job and some recent recognition as well. I'm trying to wrap up my dip into the street art scene with a post, Who Owns Public Art? on p0ps blog.

I have lamb shanks braising in the oven, what should be a good winter's dinner seems a little out of place after this sunny day, an hour after sunset, we have the windows open wide, the air is soft, the temp says 47F, but seems warmer. So, that's it, no good blog links, too many subjects -- bad blogger.

Flowing

Such different worlds! While you have been immersing yourself in street art, I have been immersed in water these last few days. Almost literally. The weather news continues from B.C., with this latest report, about rain this time. I noticed  a leak in my ceiling about a week ago, on the opposite the side of the house from where a similar leak occurred a couple of years ago. Although this house was rennovated before I bought it, the former owner was an enthusiastic do-it-yourself-er, with pretty good taste but mediocre skills. An itinerant handyman who resembles Willie Nelson, though without the kerchief, tracked down the problem and fixed it, and now I'm hoping he'll agree to come over and do the same with the new problem. It rained over a hundred mm in Vancouver between New Year's day and the 2nd. On New Year's day, David and Annie and I spent an hour and a half in the parking lot of the ferry terminal, waiting to board the 2:30 ferry over to the Mainland. Annie text messaged behind the fogged windowsof my 88 Toyota Corolla, while David and I forded major puddles to reach the more spacious waiting room. One puddle was so deep he had to piggy-back me, because I wasn't wearing boots. By 4am on the 2nd, when Annie and I had to wake to get out to the airport, the rain still had not stopped. When I drove out to Horseshoe Bay later in the morning, for the return trip to Gibsons, it was almost frightening to see the amount of water pouring off the mountains. Think of bathtub taps fully opened, the gates of hydro dams releasing whole rivers. The torrents poured through cracks in rust-coloured rocks and tested barriers erected on the mountain side of the ferry terminal at H.B. There have been landslides further along the highway I drove and it's easy to see why the land would just give way under the pressure of all that water. Miraculously, as the ferry crossed Howe Sound, I noticed threads of blue in the sky, and by the time I drove off and up the hill to Lizzie's, to pick up my dog, the sky had fully cleared and the kids were stomping around in the flooded sections of the property, in unseasonably warm and brilliant sunshine. Crazy. At home, I found that my kitchen ceiling leak had spread and water covered part of the floor. The fridge seemed to be leaking, too, and when I tried to track down the source of moisture in my car, I found the spare tire compartment full as a washtub, actually floating the tire!
   Now that it has been dry for more than 24 hours I'm thinking that the fluidity of the first days of the new year may be auspicious. After several good times over the holidays, mostly with Annie, Lis and family and David, I'm getting back to work. School starts next week and I have the usual prep to complete, but I've already contacted the artistic directors who claimed to be interested in reading Casting the Angel, and have started some serious research on the new play I'm being commissioned, by my College, to write. Did I mention it? About the now-closed down "school" for disabled and mentally ill children and teens? I'm thinking of themes, images, and eager for the challenge of putting together a piece that will relate a particular story while addressing the larger issue of how we, as a culture, deal with "difference". At least that's what I'm thinking now. I did visit the novel I started last summer, but I'm saving it for the summer of 2007. It's easier for me to work on a play during the school year, because I seem to be able to go at it in pieces, much as you solve the lack of time problem by working in your patchwork style. Here's to a rewarding year of work ahead, for us both --cheers!