Sky after the storm for Sky Badge

Torrents of rain,
Saturated and flooding,
Many days of misery for many,
Sailing from homes.


Today awakes,
The world, my world,
Powder blue, almost October sky,
Dabs of white painted here.

On the hill, over the city,
Light of morning,
Cast shapes of gold and lemon,
Over sturdy skyscrapers.

Mist low in altitude,
Creates a pattern, a mosaic,
Exhaled air,
Against the vertical.


Thank you to Tim's pictures for the image.

Quiet watchfulness for Sky Badge

Buttermilk sky,
Layers over the morning sun,
The blue sky, almost October,
Shines a smiling light
So bright.


Life is shifting,
Calm and slow motion,
Of stillness and innerness,
Quiet watchfulness of Sophie and Dori,
Watching over the bed's foot,
Mac at the door.

Thanks to web shots for the image.

When individualism counts in music

I like to write about creativity and Adam Duritz has been one of my favorite artists since he came to national attention, and of course the musicians playing with him, too. I noticed an article today in the Baltimore Sun about members of Counting Crows and the mustic. If you are a fan, and appreciate how this music stands alone in the music world, read this article by Sam Sessa. Go to Crows Calling Magazine for the image by Sherri Johnson at Enigma Graphics.

He writes in the article, "That individualism and creativity would eventually help Duritz lead the Counting Crows to sell more than 20 million albums worldwide. From the runaway success of the band's first single, "Mr. Jones," to the Academy Award nomination of the 2004 song "Accidentally In Love," the Counting Crows charmed fans with their earnest, earthy songwriting. Their first album, "August And Everything After" was comfort music at a time when grunge and dance music dominated the radio. That feeling is still present on the band's latest studio album, "Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings." Released last year, the album is split between driving rock tunes and acoustic numbers."

I agree that the new album is fantastic. What about Come Around's "I'm one of the million pieces fallen on the ground ..." Go to Counting Crows.com. Or go to WSJ Cafe.

Artists talking online - following the blogs

I haven't posted for a while, but I am back on for some more frequent posting. I am going to stick mostly with art, poetry and innovation topics.

Searching the blogosphere today I was excited to find the blog called artists who blog. If you want to be inspired and you want to contemplate beauty, look to the dozens of interviews with artists and to plenty of artist blogs.

Since I am an artist without a lot of local contact with artists (gotta change this), the blogs are a way of connecting to conversations about art. I like it that many of the posts are about women artists, and many links are to women artists.

So, visit the site and enjoy. Try visiting Gypsy Girl's Guide. Thank you to Art Style Online for the image.

Art sales in a down economy

Watching art galleries close around the country and how the art auction houses are doing during the economy is reported carefully by those who would profit from a relationship with art sales. Some say art will continue to sell in this economy and it is the time to buy, but this may not be so true.

The Art Newspaper was straight on in its reporting on art sales by Sotheby and Christie recently. "Prices for 18th- to mid-20th-century American art plunged in May as Sotheby’s and Christie’s struggled to sell just 60% of their New York auctions, making $32.1m, down from $159.6m a year ago. 'There were fewer bidders than we’ve seen in a decade,” said Dara Mitchell, the head of Sotheby’s American painting department. 'People were cautious and really waiting to see where this market is going.'"

The NYT says: In Christie’s traditional early summer sale of Impressionist and Modern art held on Tuesday, desirable paintings were scarce. A desperate effort to pad the catalog with a sufficiently large number of works led to the inclusion of some mediocrities that never stood much chance to pull through. Inevitably eight of the 42 works that came on the block crashed unsold. Things could have been a lot worse if bidders had not been as ready as ever to pounce on any works, even modest ones, worth fighting over."

Thank you British Counsel for the image.

How Can We Measure Women's Happiness?

Russ Douthat writes in an op-ed in the NYT about a new study showing women are not as happy as they used to be.

He writes, "This is “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” the subject of a provocative paper from the economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. The paper is fascinating not only because of what it shows, but because the authors deliberately avoid floating an easy explanation for their data."

One comment Douthat makes really hit home with me: "Or perhaps the problem is political — maybe women prefer egalitarian, low-risk societies, and the cowboy capitalism of the Reagan era had an anxiety-inducing effect on the American female."

Crowdsourcing to Find Creative Ideas

I am always looking for interesting commentary on creativity and innovation, and I saw this blog by Garrick Schmick of Digital Next at AdAge on creativity and crowdsourcing. Let's see what he says. Thank you to GeoCities for the image.

He writes, "We typically think of "creativity" as a singular effort with the Steve Jobs or Lee Clows of the world -- the solitary individual known as much for their personality as their work -- at the helm. But creativity has always been a social activity. Today's creative agencies are supposed to be hothouses of ideas with charismatic leaders and collaborative teams. Fostering a creative culture counts -- after all, Warhol's factory wasn't just a live/work loft. But what happens when the technology behind crowdsourcing makes creativity a social activity that knows no geographic bounds? Where does the creative produced by the collective take us? Do we visit wild new frontiers or does a herd mentality take hold?"

NOLA Finds 10,000 Scientists Hitting the Streets

Today's photo: pretty much what the skies looked like yesterday as we flew in to New Orleans.

New Orleans is still quite the vivid place I remember pre-Katrina - at least from the view of streets in the Quarter. Driving in from the airport we viewed some of the devastation to houses, ones imprinted in memory from TV coverage of the days that followed. I could see the water to the rooftops and the people and dogs waiting for help on the remaining corners not yet submerged.

There is still wildness and hardscrabble in the streets - the French Quarter Festival has brought the street party people with beer spilling from cups. Scientists here for EB 2009 are meshed in among the revelers - dockers mixed with patched jeans, polo shirts mixed with leather motorcycle jackets. Like tourists everywhere, I am looking for the best local restaurant everyone tells you not to miss. My affluence among hardship feels awkward, but it is what it is.

Remember "Think Different"?

Visit thumbjockey to find an interesting story on creativity and innovation!

Thank you to bub.blicio.us for the image.

World Wide Web - Only 20 Years Back

I like to cover innovation in this blog, and there is no doubt that proposing the World Wide Web has had greater impact than just about anything in the past 20 years. Really, this marks the day the world changed. And, consider how technology has changed since this day and the impact it is having on culture now and what it holds for the future [visit Singularity at SciAm]. Thanks for the image from American Heritage.com.

Says Larry Greenemeier at Scientific American, "Twenty years ago this month, a software consultant named Tim Berners-Lee at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known as CERN) hatched a plan for an open computer network to keep track of research at the particle physics laboratory in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee's modestly titled "Information Management: A Proposal," which he submitted to get a CERN grant, would become the blueprint for the World Wide Web."

Read more on the web site! "What surprised Tim most is that for years people were so much more interested in simply browsing for and reading content rather than in creating it. His very first browser—WorldWideWeb—was actually both a browser and an editor. It let you write your own pages, post them online, and edit pages posted by others. But the commercial browsers didn't offer editing capabilities. This frustrated him for a number of years. The whole point of the Web, to him, was not to just see information but to publish it, too. This didn't really happen until blogs emerged, followed by sites like Facebook, where people can easily post content."

Karma and the Law of Physics

I am studying basic buddhist practice and decide to go back to the meaning of karma. I like the physics of the concept - and one book to try is The Tao of Physics. Thanks to Science Daily for the image.

An clear observation comes from BuddhaNet [note references were male, but I have changed this] where it says that karma the should not be confused with fate. Fate is the notion that a person's life is preplanned by an external power, and there is no control over destiny.

Karma on the other hand, can be changed. Because a woman is a conscious being she can be aware of her karma and thus strive to change the course of events.

Karma is a Sanskrit word from the root "Kri" to do or to make and simply means "action."

It operates in the universe as the continuous chain reaction of cause and effect. It is not only confined to causation in the physical sense but also it has moral implications.

Now human beings are constantly giving off physical and spiritual forces in all directions. In physics we learn that no energy is ever lost; only that it changes form. This is the common law of conservation of energy.

Similarly, spiritual and mental action is never lost. It is transformed. Thus Karma is the law of the conservation of moral energy.

With each action-influence she sends out and at the same time, receives, she is changing. This changing personality and the world she lives in, constitute the totality of her karma.

To learn more visit BuddhaNet.

Innovation - Tangled up in Green

Sometimes I cover innovation on this blog, and usually more from a creativity side of things. Today I am sharing this business story because it is really a wake-up call for how complicated the legal side of innovation is becoming.

Photo credit: Cristian Andrei Matei from this web site.
Here is the scoop:

Newsweek's Michael Heller covers the troubles in "Innovation Gridlock- Today's inventors need to put together many bits of intellectual property. Too bad they are all patented."

Newsweek writes, the first decade of the 21st Century has seen startling advances in biology. Scientists have cracked the genomes of humans and many plants, animals and microbes. They've uncovered new cellular processes affecting inheritance of diseases. Likewise, investment in biotech research and development has been steadily increasing. So what happened to all the lifesaving cures that were supposed to come our way as a result?
Read this story.

Savantism - What Can We Learn about Creativity?

Scientific American is providing an interesting read this week with an interview with Daniel Tammet, a person SA says is an autistic savant. He talks some about creativity so I was interested in his take. The whole area of savantism is facinating so I have provided some links below.

One interesting statement Tammet makes that I can relate to since I have a fairly good visual recall of places I have been to - enough to drive somewhere in a city I have not been in for 20-30 years.

He says: "Here is another tip from my book. Researchers have found that you are more likely to remember something if the place or situation in which you are trying to recall the information bears some resemblance—color or smell, for example—to where you originally learned it. A greater awareness therefore of the context in which we acquire a particular piece of information can help improve our ability to remember it later on."

Read more. Also, while looking I came across this doctor who studies savants: Darold Treffert. He discusses Tammet here and many savants here. Photo credit. Evidently the world has been aware of Tammet since 2004 when he one the Pi contest -Tammet's web site.

Good quote: "My brain has developed a little differently from most other people’s. Aside from my high-functioning autism, I also suffered from epileptic seizures as a young child. In my book, I propose a link between my brain’s functioning and my creative abilities based on the property of ‘hyper-connectivity’. "

Daniel Tammet is the author of two books, Born on a Blue Day and Embracing the Wide Sky, which comes out this month. He’s also a linguist and holds the European record for reciting the first 22,514 decimal points of the mathematical constant Pi. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Tammet about how his memory works, why the IQ test is overrated, and a possible explanation for extraordinary feats of creativity.

LEHRER: Your recent memoir, Born on a Blue Day, documented your life as an autistic savant. You describe, for example, how you are able to quickly learn new languages, and remember scenes from years earlier in cinematic detail. Are you ever surprised by your own abilities?

TAMMET: I have always thought of abstract information—numbers for example—in visual, dynamic form. Numbers assume complex, multi-dimensional shapes in my head that I manipulate to form the solution to sums, or compare when determining whether they are prime or not. For languages, I do something similar in terms of thinking of words as belonging to clusters of meaning so that each piece of vocabulary makes sense according to its place in my mental architecture for that language. In this way I can easily discern relationships between words, which helps me to remember them. In my mind, numbers and words are far more than squiggles of ink on a page. They have form, color, texture and so on. They come alive to me, which is why as a young child I thought of them as my “friends.” I think this is why my memory is very deep, because the information is not static. I say in my book that I do not crunch numbers (like a computer). Rather, I dance with them. None of this is particularly surprising for me. I have always thought in this way so it seems entirely natural. What I do find surprising is that other people do not think in the same way. I find it hard to imagine a world where numbers and words are not how I experience them!