Think for yourself / Question everything
I know I have put the above photo here before but I just think it deserves a Saturday artsy posting all by itself. It was taken in Montreal Canada in 2011. There was a second one just down the block. Yes, it is a real house but not an x-ray view. 🙂
I am definitely a SciFi guy. I love watching almost anything in that genre. The Mad Max movies and that type of doomsday stuff is neat but I really get off on the things that show humanity on a positive note. I guess that maybe started with “Robbie the Robot” in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. By the time the Jetsons cartoon series rolled around I was totally hooked. I just love thinking about future possibilities.
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Just a simple picture for a dewey/foggy Friday morning. It was taken looking out my Study window. The maple tree on the right has definitely seen it better days. When we came here twenty years ago I thought of cutting it down. But I have since grown to appreciate her in her mature years. She is full of holes where large branches once resided that have now morphed into homes for many of the neighborhood squirrels. She is missing her leaves on top, but so am I.
RJsCorner is meant to be a very diverse place. I cover many topics because I am a guy with many labels. One label I haven’t shown you here is my chef side. I spent five years in college working in a dormitory cafeteria serving about 600 people three meals a day. I started that time washing pots and pans and ended up running the entire student waiter staff of about fifty people. I learned many things about cooking and such in addition to how to be an engineer during those years.
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One of the things in my life that is very puzzling to me is how I got in the mode of spending time daily with this activity. It is not as if I have nothing else to do with my time. My wife has been doing this activity for the past three decades but I never had much of an interest in it. It’s puzzling how all this got started.
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No I am not talking about the Los Angeles freeway, I am talking about the GoodGuys Car show in Des Moines Iowa I recently attended. I think you know by now that I am a car guy. The shelves of the study are lined with 1/32 scale models of them. When I’m too lazy to do anything else I am usually watching a car show on the Motor Trend channel. I am a car guy.
Read moreAugmented Realitiesis a new category for me here at RJsCorner. It is meant to allow my creative side a little more leeway in my life. Most of the posts in this category will be where I take some of my favorite photos and expose them to artistic apps to turn them into “art”. Of course art is in the eye of the beholder, so I will wait for your judgement on whether I am doing a good job.
The first installment is a picture of me taken at a cafe attached to the Westside Market in Cleveland. It was taken last year during our trip to see Punxsutawney Phil. A full post on that soon. 🙂
I have always been fascinated by poetry. But in my early years I was taught that poetry was for sissies and no young boy wants to be a sissy. As typical with many young people, I was introduced to poetry by Edger Allan Poe and particularly “The Raven”. The words of that poem certainly painted a vivid picture. Most of Poe’s works were dark in nature, but as I learned that is not what poetry is necessarily all about.
It’s hard to put a definition on poetry. It seems there are about as many definitions as there are poets. Some want to put strict rules for writing, and some say you make your own rules. There are also a myriad of types of poems. Some rely on cadence, some on rhyme, some by just content.
If you want to give me your idea of what a poem is I will certainly welcome it. But to me “The rules of poetry are in the eye of the beholder”. So, here are my general rules:
A Poem
At least getting started, I am trying to live by my rules. The type of poetry I will primarily be attempting is called “free verse”. That means it doesn’t necessarily rhyme.
My first, and only poem so far here on RJsCorner brought on some concerns about my level of depression. That was exactly the picture I wanted to paint, so I guess I was successful. The poem was meant to be depressing, but not necessarily at my current my depth.
What I mainly like about writing poetry is that it demands a greater level of thought. At least starting out, I am going to use a photo from my portfolio as the focus. The poem will paint in words what I give you in that corresponding picture.
I don’t know how successful I will be but I am going to give it a serious try. Of course, you will be the judge of my accomplishments in the new endeavor.
Poetry is painting a picture in words
I hope that there is no American over 8 year old that doesn’t know where the title words come from. For this Artsy Saturday I give you the words in shoe laces! They were found at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville Arkansas.
I am one of those people who doesn’t particularly like looking at pictures of myself. But for this artsy Saturday that is just what I am going to do. We were in a restaurant in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia acting silly. That month-long trip to our northern neighbors was one of my most memorable.
For this artsy Saturday I give you the Avanti. It was a radical design by the Studebaker car company in the 1960s. I am a car guy and I am proud to have one in my collection. My 1/32nd scale model collection that is. 🙂 This real one was found in the Auburn Auto Museum in Ft. Wayne Indiana a few years ago.
For this Artsy Saturday I give you “Red Knobs”.
I’m sure that all the red knobs in this pictured weren’t placed there to be artsy, but in my opinion, they are. This picture of a steam locomotive was taken at a railroad museum in Greenbay Wisconsin.
For this artsy Saturday, I bring you pure creativity. I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting Laster’s Art Shack but from the looks of the company car, I imagine it is one creative place.
For this Artsy Saturday, I bring you raw beauty. I am constantly in awe of the beauty I find in nature. This one was taken in the mountains of Colorado in 2012. Very simple, but very beautiful.
For this “Outside the Box” Saturday I give you a picture of when I was attacked by a giant spider! Well, not really, but it was a 30 ft or should I say a 10-meter high sculpture of a spider. This photo was taken in Ottawa Canada when we visited there a few years ago. The sculpture is called Maman and is located at the National Gallery of Canada. There are so many sites in Ottawa to see. We spent four days there but that really wasn’t enough.
Crystal Bridges is an art museum in Bentonville Arkansas created by the Walton Foundation. It gets 3 million visitors a year and is free admissions. It is a celebration of American artists including significant contributions from Native Americans.
For this Artsy Saturday, I want to give you some photos of the buildings themselves. They are works of art and deserve their own accolades. If you visit the musuem I suggest you do so during a weekday. The crowds on the weekends are almost insufferable, at least to a guy with some Aspie traits. 🤣
For this Artsy Saturday, I want to present to you the tag banner that will be used for future Artsy Saturday posts. I have had an artistic tsunami this week so I now have graphics for each type of post going forward. 🙂
My header above shows the seven daily topics going forward here at RJsCorner. I am trying to diversify my neighborhood so it doesn’t fixate on all the madness inside the beltway. I made a promise to you that I would do more to offer hope in these trying times and that is what this new diversification is meant to provide. I hope it works and if it doesn’t I will make more changes. Embrace change is one of my 10 pillars of life and I certainly live up to it here.
Next week I will be rolling out all the tag banners for your perusal. Closing out, no, I didn’t totally create the picture above but I did “enhance” it and added to it.
Last Saturday’s “Artsy” post gave you a snapshot of our trip to Cleveland earlier this year. This post will put some flesh on those bones. 🙂
Our first extended visit to Cleveland was in 2013. We were visiting a couple of my high school classmates of fifty years ago. We took in the downtown area and most of the usual tourist places during that trip. The trip this Spring was a two-day pass-through one and I was determined to see a different view of the city. As mentioned Saturday, we stayed at the Aloft Hotel on the Cuyahoga River a short distance from Lake Erie. It was a very different place than we usually stay and that is exactly what I was hoping for. Since I didn’t get any internal shots of the hotel I took some from their website, I’m sure they won’t mind the free advertising. (Oh, by the way, click on any of these groups of pictures to see larger and captioned versions.)
The backside of the hotel where our room was was literally abutted up to the commuter train tracks. The views were amazing. This is a slideshow of my pictures.
As you likely know, I am a planner so I had checked out the Westside Market as the place to go for the next day which was a Tuesday. We got to the market plenty early so there wouldn’t be too many people but found out they are closed on Tuesday! We did eat at the local cafe attached to the market and had a humongous breakfast. Finally here are some pictures of that.
It was an enjoyable experience, even if we were disappointed about the market. From Cleveland, we went to Punxsutawney PA to see Phil. More on that in a future Tuesday post.
For the first “Artsy Saturday” post at the reformatted RJsCorner, I chose the Coastal Taco in downtown Cleveland Ohio. The picture was taken just after sunset from our room at the very eclectic Aloft Hotel. As you can see the restaurant was under a very large bridge going across the Cuyahoga River near Lake Erie. The food was pretty good and the inside atmosphere was delicious. 🙂
I need more balance in my life and especially in my blogging. Part of my base character that is associated with my Asperger’s traits is I tend to become obsessively focused on something and everything else just falls by the wayside. The day-to-day insanity coming from the Oval Office along with the now weekly mass killings is putting me over the edge. I have to force myself to greatly diminish my attention to these subjects.
To do that I am now going to try to broaden the scope of coverage here at RJsCorner. As you can see from the header above I plan on giving my attention to seven different areas, one day at a time. Another change is that I am bringing back my photo activity back to RJsCorner. After 3+ months of attempting to move it off to a dedicated site, it is clear that there just isn’t enough interest for it to stand alone.
Here are the topics for each day of the week:
Monday – Government/Politics
Monday is reserved for “Inside The Beltway” issues. You likely know where I come from on these issues.Â
Tuesday – This Land Is Your Land
This topic will primarily encompass a photo journal of my travels across America.
Wednesday – Having My Say
This one is a potpourri of topics that just don’t fit anywhere else but I have something to say about it. Some of that will include stories from my life, some about my lessons learned, and some just about things I have been thinking about or just plain bug me.
Thursday – American Heroes
The principal person in this category is Will Rogers. I already have an abundance of posts of Will’s quotes in the archives. Jefferson and other founding fathers will also be prominent here. Many current day people who inspire me in one area or another will also share this space. Â
Friday – Why?? (Question Everything)
I have lived with the “why” word all my life. Many seem to outgrow it after childhood but not me. Questioning Everything is at my core! I am just not one to accept “that is the way it is..” and this category will illustrate that. A big part of Friday posts will be busting long-established myths.
Saturday – Artsy/Creative/Surreal
This category is where my creativity and craziness is unleashed on you. 🙂Â
Sunday – God/Religion/Spiritual
After my rather intense spiritual studies of about a decade ago, I have come to have I have come to develop several different views on this broad subject matter. Â
I don’t necessarily plan on posting every day here but I will stick this agenda schedule for when I do post. I hope you like the new directions for RJsCorner. If you have any ideas for new topics and such let me know. I welcome any input you might want to provide and look forward to delving into my more complete view of the world with you.
