Dinosaur Bone Puzzle Day and Some Work on the H/J Blog

I'd been waiting for these to fill an order for dinosaur skeleton puzzles (models), so I was very happy to see them arrive - but I also thought I was going to have a helper here to sort out the six different dinosaur types (Pteranodon, Stegosaurus, Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, and - oh, yes - that famous dinosaur, Woolly Mammoth). It's great when you get to do this stuff and call it "work." Anyway, as it turned out, I was able to get them sorted and re-boxed myself, although it took most of what I had to put into it today. The re-boxing is because I am only shipping out part of what came in, and they need to be specific quantities of each dino. It seemed like a lot more stuff than you see here, and actually several packed boxes are already outside the photo area. I didn't exactly need the fan today, as it poured for most of 12 hours or so.

The inflatable dinosaur (which is not part of this project) stayed around to help keep an eye on the process.

This is not quite as exciting an image, but it was also a lot of fun, and -YES! - I begin to feel like I'm accomplishing something on this new direction of the Hudson/Joy project. I spent a lot of time last week organizing the blog better, and tonight I spent a lot of time transferring journal entries and scans and also figuring out how to work with the 1800s dates in blog format so that it doesn't take forever to put the posts together. With the exception of one love letter and marriage proposal (which is truly amazing and romantic), most of the entries are not that much fun to read yet. Some aren't bad, but I had to start somewhere, and that was really hard to decide.

After posting some material from 1856 when Hudson was already in Iowa, I decided to go back and make my starting point the marriage proposal linked above. After that, without an answer, Hudson goes west to Iowa, and the history begins to get interesting, because the state was really just getting settled, and then also on the home front, his letters with Helen start heating up. This is a good place to begin a long stretch of the historic and romantic material, but I also love the earlier years. I really had to think about it, but there is a certain momentum that tells a story beginning in 1855. Eventually I'll go back and fill in, but much of that is already in the chapters I've had printed. After a certain point in 1856, it will all be new.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Posters from the Rock Club "The Bank" (Torrance, CA, 1968) in Last Hours of Online Auction

Photo copyright The HeART of Rock and Roll

Poster art by Robert A. Wilson

Six posters drawn by my first husband and tapir collaborator, Bob Wilson of Claremont, California (signature = the sign of the buffalo), are in their last hours at auction on The HeART of Rock and Roll. You'll have to type in the word "bank" in the search box at the top of the page. I've always liked the Moby Grape poster above with the drawing of the painting of Marat in the bathtub and the big, fat hippie lettering in the dark space above. Can you believe it? Some of the more famous posters are at $6,000.00 and $7,000.00 (not The Bank posters), but some of the others. This is a fun site to check out even if you're not bidding. P.S. The colors on the posters are vibrant and beautiful, not the washed-out colors you see in the photos.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Stuffed Baby Cheetah - Finally Online

I spent a chunk of the afternoon putting this little guy online in the gift shop. It all takes awhile, but I have finally had time and resources to get back to it. It's fun. I've loved web work since the day back in 1996 when Andy told me you can turn text into bold with a simple code (that I can't seem to render on the blog without it activating). That one spark of info really lit the fire. There's still so much to do here to get organized and things cleaned up and filed, but (Yay!) I am again having the time and energy for it. The cleared out space and ease of finding things is such a pleasure. Getting the stuff online in the gift shop that I've had around for awhile but have not put up yet is only part of it, and I'm on a roll. Over the past few days I've also put up the new cuttlefish and changed out the photo of the earthworm (do not ask me why they painted stupid white bands on it; it was nice when it was all one color with the bands being formed only by the change in texture). Before that, I put up the new larger plastic ammonite.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Helicopter Transfer

Even though the day was rainy and the photos don't look nice, there's something interesting going on here. Usually the ships are pretty quiet out on the water, but today I heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter as the ship was passing. I kept looking into the cloudy sky, so it took me a minute to realize that the Coast Guard 'copter was on top of the ship.

Here a Coast Guard boat is following in their wake.

The pilot boat was alongside but hanging back.

The camera didn't want to focus at this distance, but there is someone in the doorway.

It looks like one guy is still in the door of the helicopter and another guy is on the pole (or whatever you call it; are they still called masts even on a ship like this?) of the ship.

Speaking of poles, the name of this ship is Pole.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Without Paint

"Alfred Orders the Number 7 Entree"

by Sheryl Todd (tapirgal)

Collage on paper

September 13, 2010

I submitted my first collage to Scrapiteria. When I found the collabortative collage blog site many months (or years?) ago, I realized I had stumbled into a nest of kindred spirits. I understood the medium. I understood the humor. I laughed a lot. I added their link to my blog sidebar and visited often. I've been making collages since 1967 or 1968 (few are posted here, and that's another project for "when I have some time,") but mine are usually made with paint and often some kind of drawing or scribbling included. Scrapiteria's format is strictly cut and paste with paper. I thought of making one without paint or scribbles to submit, but I had also stopped making them for a number of years during this past decade while my business was growing and I was focused on other things. Too bad. I love making collages. So, with encouragement from several friends, I pitched back in. When, recently, I noticed that Scrapiteria was now open to guest submissions, I found a weekly theme I wanted to try and here is the result. My mother (why do I think of her at times like this?) would never understand Scrapitiria, but it's definitely my cup of oysters.

Originally I intended to caption the collage, "Alfred concluded that what the menu lacked in refinement, it made up for in attention to the particular sensibilities of the saurischian palate," but I think the short title is just fine.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

A Blast from the Past: Posters for Auction from "The Bank" Rock Club in Torrance

Photo credit: The HeART of Rock and Roll

It's a blast from the past because my first husband, Robert A. Wilson, drew this poster along with a number of others in 1968. They have now become collectors' items and there is an auction running right this minute that includes six of the posters. (Just type "bank" in the keyword search.) The photo is not great, but the seller probably doesn't want anyone making excellent prints from it. Five other posters from The Bank are also in this auction. I don't have the typing capacity at the moment to rattle on about experiences from The Bank when we'd go each week to take the posters and see the shows, but I've typed them to several people in the past, and there are some web sites around that have included my input or comments. Here's one TAPIR STORY on my web site that includes Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead from those crazy times at The Bank!

Other sites:

. Rock Prosopography 101 (1)
. Rock Prosopography 101 (2)
. Rock Prosopography 101 (3)

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

About My Blogs, and Fun with Stats

From my Animal Photos blog (now merged)

Both of these pix have appeared on my other blogs, but today I combined two blogs and wanted to mention it. I wasn't enjoying the animal photos blog very much. I'm not sure if it's because 1) I don't have that many good animal photos, or 2) they felt like the needed to be integrated rather than separate, or 3) I was making it too boring and too much like work by feeling responsible for figuring out the species and linking it to good information, or 4) all of the above. Anyway, the animals seemed like they needed to be integrated with Tapirgal's Daily Image, so that's what I did. Blogs should either be fun or part of my job, and the animal one turned out to be neither, exactly.

From my Tapirgal's Daily Image blog

After messing around with individual transfers, I realized I could just export the whole animal pix blog and import it into Tapirgal's Daily. Wow! Too cool! And fast.

So now I have 8 blogs, and I'm considering starting two more. It's really not insane. OK, it is addicting, but not insane. Beyond the "different subjects" reason and the "search engine optimization (SEO) for business" reasons, it's just a fun way to work with photos and the occasional thought.

I don't know if the stats on Blogger are new or if I just found them, but I was astonished at the hits some of my blogs are getting. Here they are, the brief justification for their existence, and the number of hits they each got in August. In no particular order:

. My Personal Journal in Pictures: (The one you're reading.) A lot of pix, but not that personal. Although the name keeps changing, it's the same blog I started with: my first, and I consider it my "basic" blog. It's a long chronology and fun, but is never up to date, and never will be as long as I keep taking photos and have things to do besides sitting a the computer (868 hits in August, which is not bad considering I haven't worked on it lately, but it does have a lot of subjects).

. Tapirgal's Daily Image: A random image each day from my archives. Very satisfying for some reason (561 hits in August).

. On the Pavement: I realized I was taking a lot of photos of things we walk on every day. It turns out, it's fun to see them in one place (254 hits in August, pretty good for a new blog without much PR and an esoteric topic).

. Animal Art Along the Way: Fun, and long overdue. I realized I take pictures of animal art everywhere I go without really thinking about it (386 hits in August, still pretty new; many more than I expected from the few Facebook fans it has).

. Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo: Just what it says. Part of the City Daily Photo family (4,253 hits in August, quite a surprise; even though there are 880 fans on Facebook as of today, this number was beyond expectations).

. Tapir and Friends Animal Store: The offical blog for the Tapir Preservation Fund's animal-themed online store (4,588 hits in August, another big surprise; this blog lies fallow a lot of the time, but Lee has been helping with daily posts lately, showing real animals and not just the toys and replicas I usually blog about).

. Tapir Preservation Fund (TPF): The official blog of the Tapir Preservation Fund (491 hits in August; this surprised me as being on the low side, but I have not done much with the blog in any consistent way; I intend to fix that now that I feel like I have more time and focus for it, and some other things have become organized).

. Hudson and Joy: A History in Letters: This is specifically for posting letters, documents and information found in an attic and a basement. I haven't done much besides setting up the format and posting a few letters. This will become a really interesting resource as time permits - hopefully soon (82 hits in August; actually, more than I expected).

And what are the two upcoming new blogs? Stay tuned :) One is about rainforest conservation and one is a fun thing about tapirs and travel.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.