Did you ever notice that kids’ clothes are imprinted with all of these cute images — Elmo, trucks, cats…. But when the kid wearing the clothes looks at the images, they’re upside down. So, I decided to put some upside down trucks on some shirts that I bought for my grandson, since he likes trucks. Now he can enjoy looking at the trucks on his shirt, and everyone else can just enjoy looking at him.
Here’s one of the shirts with a truck that’s upside down to us but right side up to him.

So, when you see stuff like that coming out in stores, you now know where they stole the idea. You saw it here first.
Addendum/correction: [see comments below] — The idea for a Baby’s Eye View design of children’s clothes was, indeed, my daughter’s. I just had the time, materials, and machinery to make it sew. I forgot to remember to include that very important fact. ;-(

A few days ago, a friend of mine (who doesn’t use the Net) called and asked me to do her a favor. She had bought a fantasy painting at an antique store and wanted to find out if it’s an original. She asked me to track down the artist’s web site and send her an email and ask if the signed painting is, indeed, hers.
As a result, I had fun email conversation with Marianne Plumridge, the fantasy artist, who was almost positive that she never sold that painting and it was stored somewhere in her house. Finally, her husband (an award-winning fantasy illustrator, himself) remembered that she did sell the painting a while ago (when they were at a fantasy convention in Albany) when “a little old man of slightly timid aspect turned up at the last moment and bought it.” Which fit in with what the antique dealer told Joan about getting the painting as part of the estate sale of a man who collected fantasy paintings.
Here’s an image of “Kitnapped.”

Now, you have to understand that my friend Joan loves cats and has taken in several strays. She’s also a vocal feminist and has fun with the rituals that I do. Luckily, her live-in boyfriend is easy-going about Joan’s obsessions, although he’s not sure that Kitnapped is what he wants to look at all the time hanging over the mantle in the living room. Heh.
So, now I’m working on an unveiling ritual for the painting, which certainly will have to involve swords and fur. 🙂

Well, his name is anyway.
When my son b!X was about four years old, he decided that he was going to grow up to be a space moving van driver, and his interest in space exploration has not waned. Check out his new weblog, The One True b!X’s Mars or Bust, Wherein the one-time wannabe outer space moving van driver (helping to move families into orbit) engages in part-time obsessing over exploration of the Red Planet.
Man, I love my kids!! They’re just about the most interesting people I know.

It often starts with a email. Some reference to an idea or a happening or piece of writing I didn

In November, don’t forget: he knew. The following from near the end of a piece by William Pitt in Truthout.
George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another attack like the ones which took place on September 11. Yet the record to date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through policies they couldn’t have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history: Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to such excellent effect.
Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew.

Spirit and Opportunity. I think that

There’s a discussion ongoing at The Happy Tutor’s here that’s worth checking out. I just posted the 26th comment (which I’m repeating here — with added links and other info). Go on over and add your 2 cents. You don’t have to be a blogger to participate. Just click on Comments and go from there.
I’m not going to able to catch up with all of the great points of this discussion, but at least I want to say that my Dad sounds like he was very much like Debbie’s. My life would be very different today if my Mom had passed away first.
And Robert Bly has tried to give men a sense of how they might create an archetype that works for them like the “crone” works for older women — some model that incorporates the male version of the most inspiring and humane human traits. [Robert Moore did some interesting work on that too.]
Some of us older women latched onto the crone vision because it concisely captured the fact that we don’t have to be disempowered and disenfranchised as we get older. As men get older, there’s lots of support to continue reinforcing their Alpha Male daydreams (viagra et al). Unless they suffer some great catastrophe, those kinds of men continue to feel a certain level of empowerment. So there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason for those men to think that they would be better off somehow if they let go of that vision of empowerment and tried the other version, the one that many (some?) women have discovered works for them.
I was thinking last night about what kind of world this might have been if men (in general) had not had the advantage of size and strength and the added alpha male fuel of testosterone. Suppose those male-associated qualities never existed. Suppose the world had remained deferential to the life-giving, nurturing [and cthonic] capacities of the female.
Camille Paglia speculates about this in her books, and I don’t totally disagree with her. We might not have built skyscrapers, but we probably would have fewer wars. (She uses the way men and women pee as a great metaphor for pretty much all gender differences. Think about it.)
If “women’s ways” dominated the development of human culture, we might not have gone to the moon or out into space, but we probably would have fewer homeless, starving people. Or maybe not. Maybe we would have had it all. Maybe we still can.

(photo by Shelley Powers) Burningbird: Borders, Boundaries, and Birds
I love this photo and what Shelley wrote about taking it.

Over on Wealth Bondage, The Happy Tutor picks up on some things I said in my previous post and starts what I would love to see become a lively discussion over there. So, go on over and stick it to someone. Or at least stick in some good sense with your two cents.

Like just about everyone else, at the end of each old year I make resolutions that, of course, I don’t keep. This year I ended the old year a step ahead of the game and began keeping my most important resolution: to go out and get a life. (Note, for those who don’t know: being responsible for the health and well-being of my 87-year old mother and living across the hall from her has been more of a drain on my energies than I expected.)
So, on the afternoon of the last day of the old year I accepted an invitation from the publisher to gather with his staff of the NY Dance Scene magazine, for which I was the editor and primary feature writer when I was still ballroom dancing. The magazine is almost finished moving from print to web format, and I think it looks great online. My name is still listed in the “About Us” section (although misspelled; I’ve got to remind them to correct that) because I condense and provide the condensed chapters of a mystery novel set at a ballroom dance weekend in the Catskills that a former SO of mine wrote (and I edited — and inspired, btw!) It’s a good story, I think, and the magazine intends to eventually get the entire (condensed version) novel online.
The point is that I got my sorry self dressed and coiffed and out of the house and thoroughly enjoyed the company of these interesting people. (I even got to explain to them about weblogging, since, although net-literate, most are not blog-literate.) I might even join some of them in a Quick Step dance class that recently started. I’m not bad at basic Quick Step, and maybe I’ll give it a shot and see how my herniated disc problem (much relieved because of Core Physical Therapy) stands up to the challenge.
After that, I made dinner for my mom and two long-time (also divorced) women friends and the three of us set out to see a movie. I should have remembered how packed the movie theaters are on New Year’s Eve. The only movie we wanted to see that wasn’t sold out was Cold Mountain, and I’m glad we were forced into that option. While I wanted to see a comedy so that I could laugh through the end of the old, battered year, instead I found myself wrapped in a stunning reminder that human life, indeed, is often more tragedy than comedy BUT — and that’s a very big BUT — it’s also what we make of it despite the pain and longing and frequent unfairness of it all. A reminder that families are both blood and brotherhood (and sisterhood, of course, but that didn’t alliterate or assonate).
Nicole Kidman’s character makes a statement that I wished I had thought to write down (one of my friends has the book and is going to try to find it for me). It has something to do with weather and rain and men making it and then complaining about it.
When I got back from the movies, I got online and discovered that The Happy Tutor had gone and really ended my year on the best note I could have hoped for. Please do go read the really neat stuff he said about me. When the great glittering Times Square ball slid down into a new year, I felt on top of the world.
Feeling a little bad about the trouncing I gave Rage Boy, I emailed him a carefully composed collage/image wishing him a Happy New Year to “the revered resident dickhead of Blogdom.”
Despite the fact that much of what Chris Locke posts leaves me completely disinterested, the fact also is that usually, somewhere in all the crap, are ideas that get me thinking. As he continues to weave himself (and his readers) into the Gordian knot of psychobabble R&D, he currently is attaching himself to some theories of “Attachment” — something I’m interested in because my daughter has read all the stuff on Attachment Parenting and is following that child-rearing approach. I wish I could make some sense of Locke’s post on the Attachment theory because I’m not sure I understand if the research shows that it’s good or bad in the long run. I suppose I could track down and read a copy of the book he recommends, The Handbook of Attachment, but I’m really not in the mood to wade through that kind of academic tome. I wish that Chris’ efforts to make sense of it all were written in a way that makes sense to less brilliant (but equally eager) minds like mine.
It’s the first day of the New Year, and I’m following through on my second resolution: to write. (Remember, the first was to go out and get a life; I suppose they’re related.) My third is not to spend any money on new clothes but to re-make the ones I have to better suit my mood and lifestyle. (I LOVE clothes — colors, textures, lines; to me they’re wearable art.)
That’s what I’m off to start doing now, after I remove all the odds and ends of clothes that are piled on top of my dusty sewing machine.
Happy New Year, everyone of my blood and brotherhood (and sisterhood, but that doesn’t alliterate or assonate. Heh.)