Weblog 225

May 30, 2010~ 12:00 am
From midweek on, all I did was try to get into my image host site- 'Snapdrive' --and failing over and over, I decided to contact a 'paid hosting' site and turn over some money. (I'm not cheap, not by any means) but I've had these places fail me before. This one looks legit so far, and the best sign is that the staff has responded via email almost immediately when I've had some questions. (That's a real plus. Dealing with Snapdrive was like trying to contact the Wizard of Oz.....I never did get to see just who, if anyone, was behind that particular curtain.) Good riddance.

I have a lot of work in front of me (3000+ pictures and re-coding) --but I've made a promising start. (Luckily this Memorial three day weekend will give me some extra time to get things in order as much as possible. The archived weeks will be coming back here slowly but surely, that I promise you.)

My green-thumbed boss brought the most marvelous, old fashioned looking bouquet into work this week, right out of her garden, and arranged a vase full of peonies and irises (and other flowers I don't know the names of) and those beauties graced us with their sweet perfume all week. On Friday she told me to take them home, so here they are



sitting right on my dining room table. WHAT A JOY! The fragrance is magnificent. Joyce told me that the yellow irises trimmed in the deep burgundy are 'old' flowers. That particular variety is hard to come by nowadays. I know what she means about it looking 'old'- in fact



I told her the whole arrangement looks like it should be sitting in a Victorian parlor. It's quaint. Genteel somehow. I LOVE IT!

And my little BLACKCAPPED CHICKADEES



definitely DO have a home in the tiny blue and white birdhouse that sits on my porch railing! Saturday evening as Wayne and I were talking on the porch just as he was leaving --a chickadee came and sat on the cyclone fence. (I think he was keeping an eye on that birdhouse, making sure no one messed with his little haven.) I pointed him out to Wayne, and as soon as he stepped off the porch, I said, "Look!" and the little bugger flew right into the front hole opening. Wayne gave a big grin and said, "I saw him!" Then as his car was pulling out, sure enough, another chickadee flew in, and the first one flew out- they must have eggs or babies in there! - and they're playing tag-team parenting. I'm thrilled. That bird house hung on the pine tree for at least five years, and never had a tenant. It looked cute, but sat vacant the whole time.

(That picture above is not of my chickadee) -it was taken by Doug Lloyd. He's a marvelous nature photographer. Go enjoy his breathtaking pictures- visit his site.

Saturday night, Wayne and I watched one of my rentals from Netflix. I've had it for over a month....LOL!! It's a looooooong documentary (4 hours, two parts) on the life of Leni Riefenstahl



a talented German silent film star, who would eventually become the world's best-known female director, at first, loved - then hated for the films she made for Hitler and the Reich. Her propagandist film "Triumph Of The Will" won awards all over Europe before the outbreak of World War II; before the monstrous aims of Naziism were known.



Because of its 4 hour daunting length, we chose just to view the first half and save the other two hours for next weekend. It's fascinating. Leni is interviewed at the age of 90 (though she looks almost 20 years younger) -her life terribly altered after the war, her reputation ruined. Riefenstahl approached her first, award-winning film not as propaganda, but as an art film. She repeatedly insists she had no political views or knowledge of what was going on in the upper eschelon of the Nazi party --though she became its chief media interpreter.

The woman was bold. She was a barefooted, no-rope mountain climber -(literally): an ambitious trail-blazer whose life was filled with physically and emotionally-challenging activity, though she never recovered her reputation or her peace of mind after the war.

From what I've watched so far, she both fascinates and scares me. (Her eyes are quite crazy at times)- an intimidating woman, and one whom I suspect lied very successfully to herself her whole life long.

Leni died in 2003 at the age of 101. Her life is a lesson in how terrifyingly seductive fame can be, and how blindly one can pursue art at the expense of so many other things of greater importance. Riefenstahl was a complicated, willful and obessed artist-- all too willing to pay a painfully high price for her initial breakthrough. 'Wonderful/Horrible' is a compelling documentary. If you're interested, you can read more about Leni in Wikipedia. She was one of a kind.




June 3, 2010~ 7:15pm
It's taken 5 days, but all 47 issues of The Blue House are back up WITH IMAGES. Whew....my hands feel all crippled up. LOL!!! Between constant typing at work, constant typing at home, I'm pooped. I haven't blogged, drawn a picture-- or written much new for the past week.

(I thought I'd wait it out with Snapdrive and maybe at least this blog and my other one would recover their images, but no dice.) Starting tomorrow I'll continue "filling in the blanks"...oh joy. At least imgboot is a WONDERFUL host...and that's a BIG plus.



(See? I'm still noodling around with stuff. That fella' CAN BE YOURS TOO...LOL!)....all you have to do is stop in at Laughing Quakerand fill in your own blank. I get such a big kick out of applications like that. (Oh, the things one will find as diversion when waiting for dial-up connections to upload.) I love 'em!





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