Day 5056: Digital Collage, Patricia & Floating Solar Panels.

 

"Landscape": photo, fabric, junk paper digital collage.

                                                                       

  

Want music?

   Click: Smokey Robinson, Just to See Her.

2GN2S

 

A step-by-step of a digital collage.

Just to push it, I used unusual components. 

  I started with an old photo of a package ...

step 1

and added another old starter jpg. on top.

..

step 2

a previously altered face photo, but had to rotate.

step 3

I added texture, originally I was going to change the hair, but didn't.

step 4

From there it was a  matter of combining layers with various filters. As so often happens, on my way to where I thought I was going, I stumbled on a combination that I liked and stayed with it.

This is Patricia.

     

Most people scrolled right past it. Floating solar, or floatovoltaics, is booming in Spain where drought and intense sun compete for land. Panels mounted on pontoons cover irrigation reservoirs, reducing evaporation by up to 60%. The water simultaneously cools the panels, boosting efficiency by 5–10% compared to ground-mounted systems. A single 50-megawatt floating plant can save hundreds of millions of liters of water annually while generating enough electricity for 25,000 homes. It's an elegant symbiosis: water protects the panels, panels protect the water. The same concept applies to hydroelectric dams, where floating solar can piggyback on existing transmission lines. In a country grappling with desertification, this isn't a luxury—it's an adaptation strategy. The sun and water, once rivals for scarce land, are now partners.

  

 

A 2+ minute video,  Heads Up, here.

 

 

Just because ...

Sword-billed hummingbird

Tuesday's Smiles ... 

 

Hoping you feel all the good things in your day.

  

 

Day 5055: Expected Death & Golden snub-nosed monkey.

"Torn", junk paper collages

                                                                       

  

Want music?

   Click: Marvin Gaye, Mercy, Mercy Me.

2GN2S

 

 

Expected Death ~ When someone dies, the first thing to do is nothing. Don't run out and call the nurse. Don't pick up the phone. Take a deep breath and be present to the magnitude of the moment. 

There's a grace to being at the bedside of someone you love as they make their transition out of this world. At the moment they take their last breath, there's an incredible sacredness in the space. The veil between the worlds opens.

We're so unprepared and untrained in how to deal with death that sometimes a kind of panic response kicks in. "They're dead!" 

We knew they were going to die, so their being dead is not a surprise. It's not a problem to be solved. It's very sad, but it's not cause to panic.

If anything, their death is cause to take a deep breath, to stop, and be really present to what's happening. If you're at home, maybe put on the kettle and make a cup of tea.

Sit at the bedside and just be present to the experience in the room. What's happening for you? What might be happening for them? What other presences are there that might be supporting them on their way? Tune into all the beauty and magic. 
Pausing gives your soul a chance to adjust, because no matter how prepared we are, a death is still a shock. If we kick right into "do" mode, and call 911, or call the hospice, we never get a chance to absorb the enormity of the event.

Give yourself five minutes or 10 minutes, or 15 minutes just to be. You'll never get that time back again if you don't take it now.

After that, do the smallest thing you can. Call the one person who needs to be called. Engage whatever systems need to be engaged, but engage them at the very most minimal level. Move really, really, really, slowly, because this is a period where it's easy for body and soul to get separated.

Our bodies can gallop forwards, but sometimes our souls haven't caught up. If you have an opportunity to be quiet and be present, take it. Accept and acclimatize and adjust to what's happening. Then, as the train starts rolling, and all the things that happen after a death kick in, you'll be better prepared.

You won't get a chance to catch your breath later on. You need to do it now. 

Being present in the moments after death is an incredible gift to yourself, it's a gift to the people you're with, and it's a gift to the person who's just died. They're just a hair's breath away. They're just starting their new journey in the world without a body. If you keep a calm space around their body, and in the room, they're launched in a more beautiful way. It's a service to both sides of the veil.

Credit for the beautiful words ~ Sarah Kerr, Ritual Healing Practitioner and Death Doula , Death doula

Beautiful art by Columbus Community Deathcare

It looks like a tiny golden teddy bear… but this little face belongs to one of China’s most distinctive mountain primates. This is a baby golden snub-nosed monkey, a species known for its thick golden-orange coat, unusual upturned nose and striking facial features.

And there’s something even more fascinating about where these monkeys live. They inhabit the mountain forests of southwestern China, often at elevations between roughly 1,600 and 4,000 meters above sea level — environments where temperatures can become extremely cold. Their dense coats help them cope with life in these harsh mountain forests.

As adorable as this baby looks, the species is part of a remarkable group of primates adapted to living in temperate mountain environments. Sometimes nature doesn’t need to look strange to be extraordinary. Sometimes… it simply looks impossibly cute.

#Wildlife #AnimalFacts #Nature #wildlifephotography

  

 

A 3+ minute video,  Noisy Capybara, here.

(watch till the end?)

 

 

Just because ...

Brahminy kite (Haliastur indus)

Monday's Smiles ... 

 

Hoping you feel all the good things in your day.

  

 

 

  

Day 5054: Practice of Mail Art & Minnie Pearl.

"Minnie": ink brush, watercolor, junk collage, digital.

                                                                       

  

Want music?

   Click: Deniece Williams, Gonna Take A Miracle.

2GN2S

*I used to do mail art and have a full shoe box of really great mail art. So when good friend, Lynn (aka RadNana) from Colorado sent me the link to this Instagram post I had to share. To get mine out and photograph is more work than I would like, but let me know if you enjoy this? I would have liked to credit the artists,

 

The lost practice of mail art.

Long before social media made sharing art instant, artists were building international creative networks with nothing more than envelopes, stamps, and the postal system.

Mail art emerged as a recognizable practice in the 1960s, turning postcards, drawings, photographs, collages, poems, stamps, and ordinary correspondence into art meant to travel. American artist Ray Johnson became a central figure, exchanging handmade works from the 1950s onward and establishing the New York Correspondance School in 1962. Some pieces even asked recipients to alter the artwork and send it onward.

  History

She walked onto stages for fifty years wearing a costume built entirely out of a joke.

A worn straw hat. A plain country dress. A price tag dangling in plain sight, reading $1.98. Audiences howled every single time. But almost nobody watching her ever knew the woman underneath that hat. Her real name was Sarah Ophelia Colley. And she never planned on becoming a comedian at all. She trained seriously in theater and dance in Nashville, dreaming of a life on the legitimate stage. Instead, her work took her down back roads through small Southern towns, directing local plays for a traveling production company. Somewhere along those roads, she met people whose voices and mannerisms she couldn't stop thinking about.

Out of those memories, she built a character. An exaggerated country woman. A little too eager. A little too proud to be there. In November of 1940, she brought that character to the Grand Ole Opry stage for the first time. The audience response was immediate. Within days, hundreds of letters and telegrams poured in for the strange new performer nobody had heard of a week earlier. Minnie Pearl was no longer an experiment. She was a phenomenon.

For the next fifty years, she barely left that stage. Then television found her too, and "Hee Haw" carried her hat, her greeting, and her price tag into millions of homes every week. People felt like they knew her personally. But the woman behind Minnie Pearl was almost nothing like her. Offstage, Sarah Cannon was educated, well-read, and moved easily through Nashville's social and cultural circles. Minnie was a costume. Sarah wore it brilliantly.

Then in 1985, something happened that no costume could protect her from. Doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer. She underwent radiation, and then a double mastectomy. For a woman who had spent her entire life in the public eye, silence would have been the easy choice. She didn't take it. Sarah spoke openly about her diagnosis, at a time when many women were still too frightened to say the word out loud. She became a spokesperson for the Nashville cancer center that treated her, and threw her name and her energy behind cancer research and patient support. In 1987, the American Cancer Society recognized her with its Courage Award. She understood something most celebrities never think to use. Millions of people had trusted Minnie Pearl for decades. They had laughed at her jokes and taken her into their homes every week.

Sarah decided to spend that trust on something that mattered more than laughter. She talked about surgery. About treatment. About fear, and about surviving it. She wanted women listening to know they didn't have to face any of it in silence. Her name eventually became attached to a cancer center that grew far beyond Nashville, reaching hospitals across several states. The woman who had spent a lifetime helping people forget their troubles for a few minutes was now helping them face one of the hardest ones directly.

Then, in 1991, life struck again. Sarah suffered a serious stroke. This time, there was no coming back from it the way she had with cancer. Her performing career, which had spanned more than half a century, was effectively over. The voice that had filled the Opry and television screens for generations grew quiet. She spent her final years largely out of the public eye.

On March 4, 1996, Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon died in Nashville. She was 83. By then, Minnie Pearl had become something bigger than a comedian. People remembered the greeting. The jokes. The Opry. "Hee Haw." And of course, that ridiculous little price tag, still hanging from the hat in everyone's memory. $1.98. But Sarah's real legacy ran deeper than the punchline.

She had once dreamed of becoming a serious dramatic actress, and instead built a character who made generations of Americans laugh without even trying.

Then cancer entered her own life, uninvited, the way it does for millions of people. And instead of hiding from it, she turned toward it. She survived major surgery. She returned to the stage. She told the truth about what had happened to her body. She spent the trust that Minnie Pearl had earned over decades helping frightened women take their own health seriously. And when a stroke finally took the stage away from her for good, that work remained standing long after she couldn't perform anymore. America knew her because she made people laugh. But the woman underneath the hat showed people something else entirely, once life stopped being funny

  

 

A 6 minute video, Mail Mix Up, here.

 

 

Just because ...

Indian Paradise Flycatcher

Sunday's Smiles ... 

 

Hoping you feel all the good things in your day.