Writing and Work The Lowell Offering as example

Writing and Work The Lowell Offering as example

Before I got into
graduate school, I worked at a glass factory. Pint glasses, beer mugs, wine
goblets, coffee cups—we made everything.
It was tough work that kept you moving. And at the end of the day, your
body ached so that when you got home, you craved simple comforts: a hoppy beer,
a plate of cheese fries, a hot bath. I did not like this
job. Two things (other than the money)
kept me coming back. 1. It was temporary. 2. It required little brain space.
The work was not mindless, no, I dont mean that. What I mean is that once you got into a
rhythm, a groove, it became rote: you could execute the tasks with minimal
thought. This meant you could think. About writing, about stories, imagined or
real. And at lunch you could read: that stack of neglected New Yorkers,
whatever short story collection youd plucked from the library. Reading and
thinking (and not the academic, scholarly kind thinking, but the fantastic,
imaginary sort of thinking) were luxuries I valued immensely. At the factory I
worked in Northern Kansas, not many people read. Not just at work, in the break
room, as I did, but at all. The stack of books I hauled around was an anomaly.
So when people saw me reading my tattered paperback of “Cannery Row” at
lunchtime, they commented. “Why are you reading?
School project?”This is not to say
that the people I worked with were illiterate. No, they were not that. They
were smart. They were smart but when they thought of reading they thought of
school work, of paper work, of something they didnt have to do anymore. This is not surprising. A fourth of the
country fails to read a book a year. And most Americans read on average four
books a year. And so it goes. Sometimes its hard to
imagine another America. Its hard to imagine, for instance, an America where
factory workers read voraciously. Its hard to imagine an America where factory
workers organize improvement circles
and literary societies where women talk about poetry and write essays on
weather, friendship, life and work. Im talking about the Industrial
Revolution. In particular, Im talking about Lowell Massachusetts: The City of Spindles. In 1840, American
factory life produced an odd thing: the Lowell Offering, a quasi literary
magazine that published poetry and prose written by workers, all of them women.
According to its own tagline, the Lowell Offering was “a repository of original articles written by females employed in the
mills.” The women
writers—the stitchers, doffers, spinners, spoolers and weavers ages
10 to 35—did not imagine themselves as great writers, or even, sometimes,
competent ones. But they wrote nonetheless, sometimes peppering their prose
with defense statements, such as the one Betsey Chamberlain gives us in her
article “A Letter About Old Maids:” “I shall care little what opinions are entertained or expressed in
relation to the style of the composition, if the moral be remembered and
regarded.” But careful perusal of the
publication shows us that the style of the composition was thoughtfully
rendered: precise word choice, skillful cadence. In an essay on the evolution of the Offering,
one of its writers, Harriet Farley, speaks of her own admiration of the journal—“They
appeared to us as good as anybodys writings. They sounded as if written by
people who had never worked at all,” she writes. And what strikes me about the
sentence is the mere assumption, perhaps a national lingering one, that workers
and writers are two different things. That those who write only do so because
their hands are free to pick up the pen. Every writer
dreams of getting away, of finally having time. Time to write, to think, to
read, to dream, to rewrite. But this assumption that you have to step out of
life in order to write well is a fallacious one. It ignores the fact that its out of life
that art emerges. One must isolate
to produce art, yes, but this isolation mustnt be prolonged. I think of Kafka,
who kept a job throughout his literary career. At times the job diminished the
frequency of his literary productions, but I cant help but think it also
fueled and shaped them in meaningful ways. Examples abound: Borges was a
librarian; Joseph Heller, wrote promotional copy for an ad agency, penning the
first chapter of “Catch 22” during downtime at work; William Carlos Williams
worked as a doctor and his best short story (essay), “The Use of Force” is
about his job.I do not mean to
glorify work or glamorize life at Lowell.
Factory standards were not ideal, I know: Women worked 12 hour days,
more than 70 hours a week with meager living conditions. And even the “Lowell
Offering” was not a purely harmless product; factory owners recognized its
potential as a PR tool, inspiring such articles as “The Pleasures of Factory
Life.” But its an interesting artifact nonetheless. Its notable for the
portrait it paints of America during the Industrial Revolution, and for the
window it gives us into the blossoming of feminist thought. But it also
provides a valuable glimpse into the lives of a group of workers who found the time
to write. I think some of
our best writing emerges from a place of yearning. And sometimes that yearning
is a product of wishing you were somewhere else. I think of “A Merrimack
Reverie,” a short burst of an essay that printed in volume two of the Lowell
Offering. In “Reverie” the narrator falls asleep at work and dreams of turning
into a mermaid—“I began to sail up the stream,” she writes. The journey takes
her into Lake Winnipisseogo, where she admires the beauty of the water and the
shores and the bay and harbors. After time, she knows she must return to work,
to the City of Spindles. She begins to “leisurely retrace (her) course.” We get
the sense that the narrator doesnt want to return.Knowing she must,
the narrator thrusts all of her energy into a meditation on the ocean: “…We see
the whole human race embarked on the restless stream of time, driving with
rapid current towards the vast ocean of eternity—now tossed by the billows of
passion and folly which threaten every moment to dash them against the rocks of
contention and strife, or to swallow them in the whirlpool of vice and
dissipation.”
The excitement
of the essay tamps down once the narrator realizes shes at work. The prose
loses steam. Everything becomes peaceful. The narrator had
imagined the entire reverie while at work, her location has not changed, but
her imagination is no longer aloft. Her
head fills with the sounds of the factory, which she tells herself are pleasant
noises—“the machinery in our room rattling away merrily as ever.” But the reader knows to distrust this: it was
the machinery and its “merrily” rattling that had sent her into fantasy, into
thought, about writing, about stories, imagined and real.Chansi Long is a former journalist who spent a stint working at a glass factory. She's an MFA candidate studying at the University of Iowa.

The Reward for Trusting (God) Again

The Reward for Trusting (God) Again


TRUSTING the untrustworthy we find is a
thing we learned as a harsh lesson. We wont go back there, or at least well
endeavour to avoid it. But there is collateral damage, sometimes, as we
consider the consequences of having had our trust smashed against the rocks of
life, because we were betrayed or revealed or not respected.
Trust and respect run hand in hand. If one
falls, the other must invariably stop and return to the other; to help it up.
Having been hurt because our trust wasnt
respected, we stood there before God thinking, “Argh, What is the point?”
Viscerally angry, yet so unsafe within ourselves out in the world, we learned
to close off and retreat for a time. We needed rest, and recovery was the
season – against our own wills – that we entered. But sense within us led us to
trust God at least in this.
Playing with Recovery Notions and Emerging
from the Cave
We know that, upon entering the cave of our
seclusion, we needed to, despite what others said. Sometimes its only when we
are by ourselves that God can actually say those things to us, silently and
without distraction, that we need to hear.
These things we hear from the still, small,
inaudible voice of the Spirit we learn to trust, for who are we if we cannot trust what comes from within us; that which
we know to be of our best interest.
This is the confirmation we need: that God
is in the voice.
Time taken away is, though it seems such a
waste, that we are missing out, is never a waste at all. Time taken out is the
recovery we need, that God knows we need – to find ourselves in the midst of
not only the hurt, but in the truth of his unfailing love.
Playing with recovery notions is the way to
prepare for emerging from the cave. At some healthy point we stop rummaging
through the hurt, the losses, the embarrassment, and the bitterness, and we
begin creating.
We begin to create our renaissance. We
begin to picture what resurrection looks like in our own skin.
***
Learning to trust again is initiated when
we trust God again. The Lord will lead us; his Spirit will guide. In the
meantime, we have learned a greater portion of awareness; we have grown in
wisdom regarding who is worthy of our trust. We have a newfound strength for
being assertive and a new passion for doing Gods will.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

SCIBERRAS, A. (2013) Fauna regarded as domestic pests in the Maltese islands - The Rodents

SCIBERRAS, A. (2013) Fauna regarded as domestic pests in the Maltese islands - The Rodents



The RodentsBy Arnold SciberrasThe Europeans only associations with these creatures are generally negative. For instance, "Rats!" is used as a substitute for various vulgar interjections in the English language. These associations are not drawn, per se, from any biological or behavioural trait of these animals, but possibly from the association of rats (and fleas) with the 14th-century medieval plague called the Black Death. Rats for example are seen as vicious, unclean, parasitic animals that steal food and spread disease. Folklore, especially the local one, has also played its part. However, on the other side of the world, in Indian tradition, rats are recognized as the vehicle of Lord Ganesh and a rat's statue is always found in a temple of Ganesh. In the north-western Indian city of Deshnoke, the rats at the Karni Mata Temple are held to be destined for reincarnation as Sadhus (Hindu holy men). The attending priests feed milk and grain to the rats, the pilgrims of which also partake. Eating food that has been touched by rats is considered a blessing from god. The indigenous rats are allowed to run freely throughout the Karni Mata temple.Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents, characterized by two continuously growing incisors (front teeth), two on the upper and lower jaws respectively, which must be kept short by gnawing. This is the origin of the name, from the Latin word rodere, which means to gnaw. These teeth are used for cutting wood, biting through the skin of fruit, or for defence. The teeth have enamel on the outside and exposed dentine on the inside, so they self-sharpen during gnawing. Rodents lack canines, and have a space between their incisors and premolars. Forty percent of mammal species world-wide are rodents (around 2,277 species). They are found in vast numbers present nearly on all continents and islands, and in all habitats except oceans and Antarctica. Their success is probably due to their small size, short breeding cycle, and ability to gnaw and eat a wide variety of foods. (Lambert, 2000). Common rodents include mice, rats, squirrels, porcupines, beavers, chipmunks, guinea pigs, and voles. Rodents have sharp incisors that they use to gnaw wood, break into food, and bite predators. Most eat seeds or plants, though some have more varied diets. Many rodents are small; the tiny African pygmy mouse (Mus minutoides) can be as little as 6 cm in length and 7 g in weight at maturity. On the other hand, the Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) can weigh up to 80 kg, and it is in fact the largest known rodent present today. The extinct One tonne- Rat (Josephoartigasia monesi), is estimated to have weighed about 1,000 kg, and possibly up to between 1,534 kg or 2,586 kg.Nearly all rodents feed on plants, seeds in particular, but there are a few exceptions which eat insects or fish. Some squirrel species are known to eat passerine birds like cardinals and blue jays.Rodents are important in many ecosystems because they reproduce rapidly, and can function as food sources for predators, mechanisms for seed dispersal, and as disease vectors. Humans use rodents as a source of fur, as pets, as model organisms in animal testing, for food, and even for detecting landmines.The fossil record of rodent-like mammals begins shortly after the extinction of the non-birdlike dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Some molecular clock data, however, suggests that modern rodents had already appeared around 90 million years ago, although other molecular divergence estimations are in agreement with the fossil record.In the Maltese Islands four species of rodents are known to occur. These are later divided in 2 species of rats and 2 species of mice. Rats are typically distinguished from mice by their size; rats are generally large rodents, while mice are generally small rodents. The best-known rat species (and these are what we have in our islands) are the Black Rat (Rattus rattus) and the Brown Rat (Rattus norvegicus). The group is generally known as the Old World rats or true rats, and originated in Asia. Rats are bigger than most Old World mice, which are their relatives, but seldom weigh over 500 grams in the wild. Male rats are generally called bucks, unmated females are called does, pregnant or parent females are called dams, and infants are called kittens or pups. A group of rats is either referred to as a pack or a mischief.In some developed countries, many people keep domesticated rats and mice as pets. Regarding rats, these are of the Brown Rat species which originated in the grasslands of China and have spread to Europe and eventually, in 1775, to the New World. Pet rats are Brown Rats descended from those bred for research, and are often called "fancy rats", but are the same species as the common city "sewer" rat. Domesticated rats tend to be both more docile than their wild ancestors and more disease prone, presumably due to inbreeding.These common species are opportunistic survivors and often live with and near humans, therefore they are known as commensals. They may cause substantial food losses, especially in developing countries. Wild rats and mice can carry many different "zoonotic" pathogens, such as Leptospira, Toxoplasma gondii and Campylobacter, and may transfer them to other species, for example to humans. The Black Death is traditionally believed to have been caused by the micro-organism Yersinia pestis, carried by the Tropical Rat Flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) which parasitized on Black Rat living in European cities during the epidemic outbreaks of the Middle Ages; these rats were used as transport hosts. Today, this cycle still exists in many countries of the world and plague outbreaks still occur every year. Besides transmitting zoonotic pathogens, rats are also linked to the spread of contagious animal pathogens that may result in livestock diseases such as Classical Swine Fever and Foot-and-mouth disease. The normal lifespan of rats ranges from two to five years, and is typically three years.Although mice may live up to two and a half years in captivity, the average mouse in the wild lives only about four months or so primarily owing to heavy predation. Cats, dogs, birds of prey, snakes and even certain kinds of arthropods have been known to prey heavily upon mice. Nevertheless, due to its remarkable adaptability to almost any environment, the mouse is one of the most successful mammalian genera living on Earth today.Taking a closer look at our local mice the most common and the most regarded as a nuisance is the House Mouse (Mus musculus). This species has an adult body length (nose to base of tail) of 7.5–10 cm and a tail length of 5–10 cm. The weight is typically not more than 10–25 g. They vary in colour from grey to light brown (wild form). They have short hair and a light belly. The ears and tail have little hair. The hind feet are short yet they can jump up to 45 cm at one go. The droppings are blackish, about 3 mm long and have a strong musty smell. There are 5 subspecies scientifically recognised.

House mice thrive under a variety of conditions: they are found in and around homes and commercial outlets as well as in open fields and agricultural lands. House mice consume and contaminate food meant for humans, pets, livestock, or other animals. In addition, they often cause considerable damage to structures and property. They can transmit pathogens that cause diseases such as salmonellosis, a form of food poisoning. Young males and females are not easily distinguished: females have a significantly smaller distance between their anus and genital opening. Females have 5 pairs of mammary glands and nipples; males have no nipples. When sexually mature the most striking and obvious difference is the presence of testicles on the males. These are large compared to the rest of the body and can be retracted into the body. House mice usually run, walk or stand on all fours; but when eating, fighting or orienting themselves, they stand only on the hind legs, supported by the tail. When running the horizontal tail serves for balance; the end stands up vertically, unless the mouse is frightened. Mice are good jumpers, climbers, and swimmers.Primarily nocturnal animals, mice compensate for their poor eyesight with a keen sense of hearing, and rely especially on their sense of smell to locate food and avoid predators. They live in a wide variety of hidden places that are near food sources and construct nests from various soft materials. Mice are territorial and one dominant male usually lives together with several females and young. Dominant males respect each other's territory and normally enter another's territory only if it is vacant. House mice primarily feed on plant matter, but they will also accept meat and dairy products. Although they are generally known to like fruits, they are repelled by the scent of many varieties of artificial fruit scent, for example strawberry or vanilla-scented candles. The reason for this is unknown, although it dates back to antiquity when Roman Senators used candles scented with strawberry oils to keep mice out of their sleeping chambers. They drink water but require little of it, relying mainly on the moisture present in their food. They sometimes eat their droppings to acquire nutrients produced by bacteria in their intestines. House mice, like other rodents, do not vomit.Mice are afraid of rats, which often kill and (partially) eat them. This rat behaviour is known as muricide. Despite this behaviour, free-living populations of rats and mice do exist together locally. House mice are generally poor competitors and in most areas cannot survive away from human settlements in areas where other small mammals, such as wood mice, are present] Female house mice have an oestrous cycle that is 4–6 days long, with oestrus itself lasting less than a day. If several females are held together under crowded conditions they will often not have an oestrus at all. If they are then exposed to male urine, they will have an oestrus after 72 hours. Following copulation, female mice will normally develop a vaginal plug which prevents further copulation. This plug stays in place for some 24 hours. The gestation period is about 19–21 days, and they give birth to a litter of 3-14 young (average 6-8). One female can have some 5-10 litters per year, so their population can increase very quickly. Breeding occurs throughout the year (however, animals living in the wild do not reproduce in the colder months, even though they do not hibernate). The newborn are blind and without fur. Fur starts to grow some three days after birth and the eyes open one to two weeks after birth. Females reach sexual maturity at about 6 weeks and males at about 8 weeks, but both can breed as early as five weeks.The Wood Mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), is an uncommon species locally and tends to be much harder to locate. If a wood mouse is caught by its tail, it can quickly shed the end of it, which may never re-grow. .In spite of its name, it prefers hedgerows to woodland. Wood mice inhabit wood, grasslands, and cultivated fields. Almost entirely nocturnal and terrestrial, Wood Mice burrow extensively, build nests of plants and live in buildings during harsh seasons. The latter are primarily seed eaters, particularly seeds of trees. If there is a plentiful amount of seeds on the ground, they carry them back to their nests/burrows for storage. They may eat small invertebrates such as snails and insects, particularly in late spring and early summer when seeds are least available. They also consume berries, fruits and roots. They do not hibernate, however during severe winter seasons they fall into a sort of torpor – a decrease in physiological activity. They are mainly active during the night, and are very good climbers. While foraging, the Wood Mice pick up and distribute visually conspicuous objects, such as leaves and twigs, which they then use as landmarks during exploration. The gestation period of wood mice is of 25–26 days and each female produces, on average, 5 young. The offspring become independent after about three weeks and become sexually active after two months. It is often confused with the House Mouse and although it is not that much of a pest, since its status is still much unknown locally, it usually ends up with the same fate.Not to be mistaken as rodent pests, local beneficial species not related to rodents, such as the Pygmy White Toothed Shrew (Suncus etruscus) (regarded as the smallest mammal in the world) and the Sicilian Shrew (Crocidura sicula) (endemic to Sicily and Gozo), usually also end up with the same fate. These are more closely related to hedgehogs rather than to rats and mice and are beneficial to us as they keep pest insects at bay. They are also protected by law.




As subjects of scientific research, rats and mice have been used in all possible ways and are model organisms for scientific research. The more they are studied, the more we see that their psychology and homology, in many ways, seem to be similar to humans more than we could even imagine. For more info: http://arnoldsciberras.blogspot.com/ and www.fortpestcontrol.com

Nixon Reconsidered 6

Nixon Reconsidered 6


In my blog post today about Joan Hoff's Nixon Reconsidered, I
will talk about detente. Detente literally means a "relaxing or easing
of tensions between nations" (page 183). Under President Richard
Nixon, detente included agreements with the Soviet Union on arms control
and trade, and also the linkage together of different issues so that the
United States could encourage the Soviets to do what the U.S. wanted in
exchange for the Soviets receiving certain benefits and concessions.

I have three items on detente.

1. On page 183, Hoff states that Nixon aimed "to seek sufficiency rather than superiority"
in arms-control deals (Hoff's words). The United States would not try
to be superior to the U.S.S.R. by having more weapons, in short, but the
United States would take care to have enough weapons to do the job of
protecting itself and of being able to retaliate if the U.S.S.R.
attacked it (and the threat of retaliation would hopefully discourage
the U.S.S.R. from attacking in the first place). I've read that Ronald
Reagan criticized detente because it was the United States negotiating
itself into a position of being number-two behind the Soviet Union. I
wonder if Reagan there was expressing his problems with the "sufficiency rather than superiority" aspect of detente.

2. As I said in my post here,
the concept of linkage seems to me to be common sense: the U.S. tells
the Soviets that it will agree to something that the Soviets want, if
the Soviets agree to do something that the U.S. wants. That sounds to
me like negotiation! But the linkage of different issues in U.S.
negotiations with the Soviets was actually pretty controversial. In my
post here,
I discussed and linked to a YouTube video of a 1988 Presidential debate
among the Democratic primary candidates, and also the Republican ones.
In the Republican debate, Alexander Haig was criticizing Ronald
Reagan's arms-control negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev (which George
Bush was defending) because they did not seem to have any linkage.
Meanwhile, other Republican candidates were critical of the U.S. dealing
with the Soviet Union when the Soviets still had a poor human rights
record and were helping to export Communism to other countries. These
Republican candidates may or may not have supported linkage, as Al Haig did,
but they probably agreed that the U.S. should not just think about arms
control when it was deliberating on how to deal with the Soviet Union,
for the U.S. should also consider such issues as human rights and
curbing Soviet interventionism.

Hoff herself does not seem to think that linkage worked. She notes
that Henry Kissinger was a major proponent of linkage, and I'm noticing a
trend in Hoff's book that, in her eyes, most of what Henry Kissinger
said and did was bad. But what are her specific objections to linkage?
On page 158, Hoff states: "First and foremost, it never worked with
respect to the Soviet Union in negotiations with Vietnam or the SALT I
talks, and it made Nixinger policy look indifferent to Third World
concerns, except insofar as they could be linked to relationships
between major powers." For Hoff (as I understand her), linkage did not
enable the U.S. to get the Soviets to do everything that the U.S. wanted
in the areas of Vietnam and SALT I, and, on some of the occasions when
the Soviets did do what the U.S. wanted, it wasn't because of some
convoluted linkage, but rather for other reasons. I also want to say
that Hoff's discussion of linkage and the Third World stood out to me because
Nixon himself in some of his foreign policy books criticizes treating
the Third World primarily as a battleground for the Cold War. But
Hoff's contention appears to be that Nixon as President did precisely
that.

I may not be grasping the totality of the concept of linkage, or Hoff's arguments against it. See the wikipedia article
on linkage. Something that the wikipedia article says (for what it's
worth) is that "The Nixon-Kissinger approach did not link foreign and
domestic arenas." That would mean that human rights was not a part of
linkage, at least not for Nixon and Kissinger----that the U.S. did not
grant the Soviets advantages in (say) trade in exchange for an improved
human rights record. Still, Nixon in his memoirs does argue that the
U.S. used its relationship with the Soviet Union to encourage it to
allow Soviet Jews to leave the U.S.S.R.

3.
On pages 203-207, Hoff talks about the decline of detente. Certain
arms control agreements were slow in coming, and there was also concern
that some of the arms control agreements already negotiated were
disadvantageous to the U.S. The Jackson-Vanik amendment to the Trade
Reform Bill was challenging trade with the Soviet Union. And a grain
deal with the U.S.S.R. was resulting in an increase in domestic grain
prices. Later, President Jimmy Carter would emphasize human rights,
specifically the provision about human rights of the Commission on
Security and Cooperation in Europe, and that was "a bone of contention
between the United States and the Soviet Union" (page 207).

Late night open thread

Late night open thread


It's the Saturday Night Scoreboard Show!

Michigan State 30
Northwestern 6
Sparty gets the extreme pleasure of booking rooms in Indianapolis in December with...

Ohio State 42
Indiana 14
...The Buckeyes who will join MSU for the Big Ten title game and hours of shopping in scenic downtown Indy.

Florida State 80
Idaho 14
Pay no attention to the sexual assault charges being laid at our star QB's feet, look, 80 points!

Arizona 42
Oregon 16
When the Ducks flame out man they go all the way.

Oklahoma State 49
Baylor 17
You know that dream that ends where you're falling a great distance? Baylor is about to live that feeling in the polls.

Stanford 63
California 13
Take that you stupid Bears, still think that band play was funny?

Wisconsin 20
Minnesota 7
On one play in this game Johnny saw Wisconsin fumbled and there was a huge pileup to recover the ball. When they unpiled they saw how bad the damage Badgers and Gophers burrowing for something can be and had to stop the game for 30 minutes to fill in a big hole and replace a chunk of turf.

Harvard 34
Yale 7
The Crimson rolled up the newspaper on the Bulldogs for the 7th straight year in clinching the Ivy League's coveted Thurston Howell III Trophy.

Tulane 45
UTEP 3
Well it's getting late in the Scoreboard Show season and Johnny's pretty sure we hadn't had a Tulane sighting yet this year.

Nebraska 23
Penn State 20 OT
OK, these two schools are done being hazed by the more established Big Ten teams when Rutgers and Maryland arrive next year and become the noobs.

Jersey City Desk Game of the Week®
Georgia Southern 26
Florida 20
Only one thing to say really. This is a BAD loss for Florida. When Michigan lost to Appalachian State the case could be made Appy State was a top tier 1-AA team. Georgia Southern? Yeah, no, they are middling. Know what else? GEORGIA SOUTHERN THREW THREE PASSES ALL DAY, COMPLETED NONE AND STILL WON. They also ran for 429 yards. Har har har, couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of probationers.

Time for Jersey City, After Dark

Generic Central or South Americans

Generic Central or South Americans


Wow… I finished these up over a
week ago now (I think) and I took some hasty pictures at dusk that didnt turn
out all that awesome so I left off posting anything thinking Id get around to
taking some better pics. That hasnt happened. I dont know that it ever will.
So here are the pics I originally took. Im not sure when, but some time in the last year I got it
in my head that it might be fun to have a force that could be used as a
generic, American-backed South or Central American country… Or perhaps even a
mercenary force or the private army of some drug lord…? Anyway I picked up a
couple of West
Wind Productionss Vietnam Special forces packs and then just added a
few other odds and ends (mostly more spare Vietnam Americans and Australians
from The Assault
Group). Im not sure who exactly they were supposed to oppose?! I
guess if they were the private army of some drug lord I could use some sort of
western special forces or something involved in a anti-drug operation. I suppose I could pick up some
forces that I could use as some Marxist rebel forces? Perhaps Eureka
Miniatures/Kriegspeils “Musorians” – theres two packs with soft
hats that could pass as South or Central American anti-government rebels…? Id thought of using them in
some sort of “imagi-nation” – like San
Theodoros (from the Tintin comics) and maybe I could pass my
Argentines off as soldiers of Nuevo Rico (a hostile neighboring country)...? (Remember: click on the pictures
for a bigger version):
Here is the entire force. A larger platoon worth (or two understrength platoons) with some mortars for support. I could probably make use of some of my Vietnam equipment with these (tank, APCs, etc).
Id tried to break them down
into squads and take pictures of each, but the only one that was even remotely
in focus was the mortar team. I have no strong urge to add
anything to this force at any time in the near future (other than to come up
with some opposing force) Coming soon on Tims Miniature Wargaming Blog:More Ronin!

CSI case file 100 - Happiness

CSI case file 100 - Happiness

Hello! This week we have come to case file #100 at CSI:Color, Stories, Inspiration. It is pretty cool to think of all the layouts that have been created for the challenge during these 100 case files. Here's this week's case file:
And my layout:

I always enjoy this colour combo and it works great with black and white photos. From the evidence items I used: stripes, Glossy Accents, numbers, stars, bricks, lightbulb, and borders. And from the testimony, I was inspired both by the Journal Sparks(I got journal about someone who makes you happy) and I also stamped a borderon my journaling block.

I used watercolour paper for my base and painted stripes with watercolours, similar to the carpet on the inspiration photo. To make the yellow stripes, I adhered masking tape to the background, with even space in between, painted the yellow stripes and removed the masking tape. The grey stripes were done with the two different shades of grey in the case file and simply using a ruler. I wasn't aiming for perfection. Just remember to wipe the edge of the ruler off in between.


The background was stamped with different stamps using Archival Jet Black and Watering Can inks. I used mainly stamps by Tim Holtz and Darkroom Door. The stars were die cut from mat board, inked with DistressInk, stamped withalphabet and number background and coated with Glossy Accents.


More stamping and a strip of tissue tape.


I love this Film frame stamp by Darkroom Door and it was the perfect size for the Tim Holtz sentiment stamp I wanted to use. The frame was stamped with Jet Black ink and the sentiment with Watering Can.


I used a mix of photography related stamps. The photo block needed a bit of yellow too, so I die cut a heart from the paper I had used to try out different shades of yellow paint.

Journaling: This is one of my favourite photos of the two of us, taken at a restaurant, during a very cosy winter holiday at the sea. You were almost one year old and crawled around everywhere having fun with your cousin. I love you.

Thank you for looking! I hope you can join us in our hundredth challenge!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:
Surfaces: Daler Rowney watercolour paper; Tim Holtz Idea-ology French Industrial Paper Stash; Sizzix Little Sizzles White Mat Board 6 x 13
Dies: Sizzix: Stacked Stars, Mini Hearts
Stamps: Darkroom Door: Film Frame Stamp, Photography Set; Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz: Psychedelic Grunge, At the Movies, Ultimate Grunge, School Desk, Words for Thought; Graphic 45 Typewriter Letters
Ink: Ranger Archival Ink: Jet Black, Watering Can; Distress Ink: Iced Spruce, Black Soot
Paint: Daler Rowney Watercolours
Embellishments: Tim Holtz Idea-ology: Laboratorie Tissue Tape; Prima: Small Typo Bulbs