February 4

The town I grew up in used to be the "Glass Bottle Manufacturing Capitol of the World".  There were even signs as you came into town that said so.  This was before the aluminum beverage can.  My great-grandfather (my father's mother's father) was a glass blower in one of the factories.  Twice a year, the glass furnaces would be shut down so they could clean out the glass that had accumulated.  When they did this, the glass blowers were allowed to use this glass to make anything they wanted.  They made glass canes, chains, paper weights.  Most of these items were broken, discarded, lost.  (There are some in the town's historical museum.)  Thankfully my father saved one of his grandfather's paper weights which I now have....  Mary

February 3

Create every day even if it's messy, even if it's down right bad. 

The beaded icon is my "regular" art.  It's been awhile since I began a new piece.  Seems like it's time....  Mary

February 2

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the higher than usual temperatures and minimal snow, but I really don't want my jonquils blooming in February.  A little snow cover wouldn't be amiss...  Mary

February 1

It doesn't matter what the calendar says, February is the longest month of the year.  And this year there's even an extra day.  I have high hopes for this February since we're in the middle of the winter that wasn't.  Perhaps we'll get through it quickly and painlessly.

I got to flip the calendar in my office this morning.  This month's image is tulips.  I just have to remember to breathe whenever I look at the image....  Mary

January 31

I really love books.  Growing up we lived a block and a half from the local public library.  It was (is) a Carnegie Endowment library: deep brown brick, wide front steps, beautiful domed lobby, old polished wood counter.  Much of my childhood was spent in there reading, sitting on a leather hassock with my feet up on a cast iron radiator in the winter.

Since I've never used an ereader I have no idea if I'd even want to read a book on one.  Anne has a Nook so I should borrow it and give  it a try.  That said, the coolest tool I've ever seen is the Apple iPad.  I don't own one yet because I cannot think of a good reason that I need an iPad only lots of reasons why I want one.  In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyer talk about computers as they were in 1986.  The technology has gotten smaller, lighter, and more elegant, but the mystery of it still holds.

MOYERS:  Machines help us to fulfill the idea that we want the world to be made in our image, and we want it to be what we think it ought to be.

CAMPBELL:  Yes. But then there comes a time when the machine begins to dictate to you. For example; I have bought this wonderful machine -- a computer. Now I am rather an authority on gods, so I identified the machine -- it seems to me to be an Old Testament god with a lot of rules and no mercy.

MOYERS:  There is a fetching story about President Eisenhower and the first computers --

CAMPBELL:  -- Eisenhower went into a room full of computers. And he put the question to these machines, "Is there a God?" And they all start up, and the lights flash, and the wheels turn, and after a while a voice says, "Now there is."

MOYERS:  But isn't it possible to develop toward your computer the same attitude of the chieftain who said that all things speak of God? If it isn't a special, privileged revelation, God is everywhere in his work, including the computer.

CAMPBELL:  Indeed so. It's a miracle, what happens on that screen. Have you ever looked inside one of those things?

MOYERS:  No, and I don't intend to.

CAMPBELL:  You can't believe it. It's a whole hierarchy of angels -- all on slats. And those little tubes -- those are miracles.

January 30

One of the candidates for the new chair of my department gave a seminar today.  He used the most amazing graphic of a synaptic vesicle (see below).  After googling it, I learned that a synaptic vesicle averages 40 nanometers across.  I then googled a nanometer to make sure I knew exactly what that was.  If I understood it correctly, a nanometer is 1/1000 of a micron which is 1/1000 of a millimeter.  The blue dot in the corner, next to the number 30 is two millimeters across.  The entire square is 1.25 inches across.  Forty nanometers is really, really small, and yet there are things much smaller making up the vesicle itself.  It just boggles the mind.

While I was making my little calendar square for today, I watched a program on PBS called The Music Instinct: Science and Song.  It's all about the neuroscience of music.  When we listen to a piece of music that is very meaningful to us, our entire brain lights up.  And that is just one small bit of what they discussed in the program.  If you have the chance, definitely watch it....  Mary

A synaptic vesicle, up close and personal:  Takamori and Elsevier

January 29

Eileen is having a dinner party tonight.  She's making roast chicken with roasted root vegetables.  The house smells wonderful.  The iris are in a cobalt blue vase next to the table.  Rick and I are banished from the house for a couple of hours, so we're going out for a bite to eat, then going to Anne's house so I can watch Downton Abbey....  Mary