Some Experiments in Life

Tomorrow night begins Hanukkah. We're not Jewish, so we don't celebrate it ourselves. But we know a number of people who do.

One of them is my graduate advisor from college. I earned (earned?? WORKED MY A*S OFF is more like it!!) a masters degree in microbiology at Cal Poly, Pomona, CA in the mid-1980's. By the time I finished, I realized it wasn't all just about science. The experience changed me as a person as well.

I came from a family where making mistakes was not a good thing, especially when it came to my father and second-oldest brother (I'm the youngest of three), MORE so when the mistake/accident cost us money that we didn't really have. Growing up in an environment like that turns you into an extremely cautious person, sometimes paralyzed with fear at trying something new because ... heavens ... YOU MIGHT FAIL! And if you failed, you didn't hear the end of it. Of course, the gloom-and-doom sayers in the family always knew you WOULD fail because that's just how it is. Don't even bother reaching for the stars, because they're out of reach, anyway. Always and forever.

My advisor, "Dr. J," has a different attitude towards life and towards science. Life is more exciting when you learn new stuff. If you do an experiment and it turns out exactly as you expected, what have you really learned? On the other hand, if an experiment has unexpected results or if it simply doesn't work: NOW you've learned something, even if it involves nothing more than tweaking a procedure or making adjustments so you can move forward. Sometimes experiments can help you realize a particular study isn't worth doing -- but you wouldn't learn that if you hadn't tried it first.

I've found that when you learn through mistakes and failures, the lessons tend to stay with you. There's something about doing things the hard way, or even failing miserably at something, that makes permanent changes in you that can last a lifetime. Hopefully, those changes are positive (although for people who believe failure is negative, failing can make that person even more cynical and bitter).

In my case, accepting this attitude was a necessary step before I could even dream of launching a career in art. If one goes into an art career (or any other profession) with an expectation that it will fail, it will. Changing that expectation MUST be done. I've already endured mistakes, and I certainly have times when I feel pretty discouraged, especially during this economy when sales appear to be as far away as those stars we reach for. Thankfully, "Dr. J" and grad school did much to alter my expectations of myself. Since then, I've learned to avoid discussing chance-taking with the gloom-and-doom sayers.

I hope I can continue and, eventually, prosper, in art. But if it doesn't work out, at least I will have known that I tried. Whatever regrets I might have, THAT won't be one of them. It's been a learning process, and from what I hear from other artists, it will always be a learning process.

So, "Dr. J," Happy Hanukkah, and thanks for turning me into a scientist as well as giving me the attitude to pursue my dreams.


"Sail forth - steer for the deep waters only, Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee and thou with me, For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all." -- Walt Whitman

ANOTHER Future Painting

At least the storm has moved on, I've been taking lots of pictures, and I could see some paintings coming out of this.

(But I STILL think snow belongs in Colorado where we lived in the '90's, NOT in southern California!)

More Snow

Good grief!!! We knew it snows in the Mojave desert. But we moved from Colorado, in part, to get away from THIS much snow!

It started snowing in the early morning hours, it's snowed all day, and it won't stop until early tomorrow morning.

At least snow IS pretty. It's just a pain if you have to go out in it. I was outside today, knocking snow off of tree and bush branches before the weight of the snow could break them.

The picture on the right shows a Joshua tree with its north-facing side totally coated with snow. (Compare with the photo from Monday, 15 December). The lumpy snow on the ground is covering a forest of cholla cactus. The second picture is of a couple of house sparrows who don't seem to be bothered by the weather around them.

Wahttizzit???

Confused arrows trying to point the way???

Dinosaur footprints???

Mysterious symbols left by ancient extraterrestrials???

Abstract art???

Nah. These are just tracks left by some Gambels quail in the snow.

Desert Snow

It's been snowing here this morning, and continues to do so as I write. Snow in the desert is actually not that unusual. What would be unusual is if the snow sticks around for more than a day.

We get it all in the Mojave -- a little snow in the winter, and blazing heat in the summer.

I wonder if we'll have desert snow for Christmas??

Sonora

I visited the Living Desert again today, specifically for the purpose of getting photos of some of the critters in their "Wildlife Wonders" program. In case you've forgotten, the Living Desert is a combination desert botanical garden and zoo specializing in desert animals. "Wildlife Wonders" is a showcase where desert critters perform things they do in nature, only they perform them where we can see them.

The accompanying picture shows Sonora, a female Harris' hawk, silhouetted against the sky. Her "job" is to fly to an observation point (in this case, the skeleton of a saguaro cactus), then fly to the peak of a nearby hill to get and eat a tasty morsel (a thawed frozen mouse). Afterwards, she divebombs back into the amphitheater and exits through an opening in a fence. The divebomb can be hard to catch on a camera, since she can easily be traveling 80mph (129km/h). I have caught her in her dive, but so far, the resulting pictures aren't worth showing, 'tho' they may still be useful for paintings.

At this time, this is the best picture I have of Sonora who, I expect, will appear in a painting sooner or later. As a painter, I have the advantage of being able to refer to other pictures to fill in the silhouette with some color and details.

This silhouette would strike fear into the little hearts and minds of any mouse that saw it.

Yet ANOTHER Small Painting

Probably the last in a series of small (8" x 8"/20cm x 20cm) -- the last for a while, anyway.

This piece shows a beavertail cactus in bloom among some rocks in Joshua Tree National Park. I guess that's why I titled it "Beavertail on the Rocks"!