Gesso Italiano

On Sunday, my friend Patty and I, participated in Gesso Italiano in Little Italy. We had great fun and were pleased with our results. I am posting several pictures of the event for your enjoyment.

People came to visit us.

Guinea Pig

Here I am as Walter's guinea pig.



I had fun feeling objects with robot gloves on.

Ewaa

Last weekend, Liz and I went to the Laguna mountains and helped build an ewaa. It is a structure that the Kumeyaai Indians used to live in. We had a lot of fun.



This is the place where we stayed. It is called The Red Tail Roost.







Liz, Lori and Patty on a little walk.



My teacher Stan and the old ewaa.



Liz and Stan sewing the willow branches to the ewaa frame.







The finished ewaa and the people who helped build it, except Liz.

Winners

Meagan and Liz are the winners of the picture quiz of the week! Yay!!! It's an elephant's back. Meagan pointed out a major flaw in the quiz, if anyone has any ideas to fix this problem, please let me know.

Picture Quiz of the Week

What is it?

Father's Day at the Zoo

My New Car isn't so New Anymore

Well, my new car isn't so new anymore. Someone backed out of a parking space while I was driving by and hit the left rear panel of my car, so now I have a nice dent!

new car!

I got a new car!

It's a Toyota Camry Hybrid. I like it. It is dark gray. Um, it gets good gas mileage. I told george I'd never ever get a toyota, but I guess I lied. George needs to be capitalized. HaHa. That is all for now!

Fortunately for My Children, I Don't do This Anymore

Or do I?

Key to Happiness: Location, Location, Location

By Meredith F. Small, LiveScience's Human Nature Columnist

posted: 17 April 2009 09:23 am ET

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A San Diego sunset is not a cure for depression, but it can't hurt. Image credit: Dreamstime

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A San Diego sunset is not a cure for depression, but it can't hurt. Image credit: Dreamstime

I am boarding a plane headed to San Diego, Calif., from my home town of Ithaca, New York, and pondering the recent announcement that where one lives is connected to the incidence of Frequent Mental Distress (FMD).

As I take off my down coat (yes, it's April, but we just had snow), discard my galoshes, and roll up the sleeves of my flannel shirt, I am thinking hard about the researchers from San Diego who presumably averted their gaze from the pounding surf before their office windows long enough to analyze surveys on mental health from the Centers for Disease Control to discover that people who live on, say, Hawaiian beaches have fewer bouts of stress, depression and emotional problems than people who live in the misty hollows of Appalachia.

Big surprise.

I live in a town where, as I was told when I moved there, "the clouds go to die." Local legend claims Ithaca has more cloudy days than Seattle, and we certainly get more snow and ice than the Pacific Northwest. Relief from the snow and gray skies comes during the summer, when we are felled by heat and humidity. In fact, the weather stinks most of the time, and so I know full well how where you live affects how you feel. We have a huge county mental health building, and everyone in town is pale and irritable.

The researchers found that the adult prevalence of FMD was 9.4 percent overall. It ranged from 6.6 percent in Hawaii to 14.4 percent in Kentucky. The results will be published in the June issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The question is, then, why in the world would anyone live anywhere but San Diego or Hawaii?

Humans do, in fact, have a long history of choosing to live in nice places. World demographics show that populations are highest near water; we tend to put down roots along rivers, around lakes and close to oceans. And no wonder. The view is great from the shore, as those of us from Ithaca know when we rent our summer beach condos.

But there might be more at stake here than the view.

Nutritionist Michael Crawford of the Metropolitan University in London claims that ancestral humans were so connected to beach and lake life that they got most of their food from the water. More interesting, Crawford claims that all that fish eating was the engine behind human brain growth over evolutionary time. Fish contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids which encourage brain expansion and lift mood. It's well established that those who eat lots of ocean going fish suffer less from depression, and that people with low mood can be uplifted by taking fish oil capsules.

And so our ancestors not only chose to live in nice places, they derived real evolutionary benefits from doing so.

The idiots are the ones who picked up stakes and moved inland. But that was inevitable. There is only so much shoreline to go around, and someone had to walk into the interior and investigate another ecology.

In fact, humans tend to be really good at adapting to different environments, and that is both our advantage and our curse. It allows us to move up mountains, out on deserts, and into the snowy and humid Northeast, and survive and procreate even though we are really grumpy about it.

But tonight in San Diego, sitting in a bubbling hot tub with a class of crisp California Chardonnay in my hand, I'll wonder, certainly not for the first time, if that ability to adapt to less than pleasant environments was really such a great leap forward for humankind.

Kumeyaay Stuff

I am taking a class at the Sycuan Indian Reservation. We are learning to make
stuff that the Kumeyaay used back in the day. Here are some pictures of the things I have made.



This first picture is an Indian game made with Canyon Oak acorn caps, yucca fiber cordage and a willow stick. The object of the game is to get more acorn caps on your stick than your opponent after four tries. You do this by swinging your acorn caps onto your stick. Walter is the champion of this game.



This second picture is a rabbit stick made out of oak. The green wood is heated up in a fire so you can bend it and then tied with yucca fiber to hold its shape while it dries for a few days. You whittle down the sides so they are flat and then you can kill a rabbit with it, if you are so inclined.



This is a yucca fiber brush. To make yucca fiber you boil yucca leaves for about 4 hours and then you scrape off the green stuff with a shell and you are left with very sturdy fiber.



This is a yucca fiber sandal. I only made one, I'm too lazy to make the other.

Swine Flu Tip

Don't Do This:

Might as Well

Since Walter started this wonderful blog for me, I thought I might as well blog in it.
So, here is my first real blog entry:


Joy of the Month:

Babysitting Aurora!!!!