Alison Bechdel & Jack LaLanne

via Alison Bechdel’s blog

Alison writes: “I just heard that Jack LaLanne died. He was my fitness idol as a young child. If I was home sick from school, this wild muscle man was on tv, showing housewives how to tone & trim. He had the most amazing arms, the most amazing polyester jumpsuit, and the most amazing white dog. I was spellbound. I wanted to be strong like him.”

I remember his TV show as well; I think it came on some crazy hour like 6:30 in the morning. Visit Alison’s blog here to see her sketch of Jack LaLanne and his dog, named Happy.

Quote of the Day: Lee Krasner

via bobulate

Lee Krasner: “I think for every level you go higher, you slip down one or two levels, and then come back up again. When I say slip back, I don’t mean that detrimentally. I think it is like the swing of a pendulum rather than better or back, assuming that back means going down. If you think of it in terms of time, in relation to past, present, and future, and think of them all as one an oneness, you will find that you swing the pendulum constantly to be with now. Part of it becomes past and the other is projection but it has got to become one to be now. I think there is an order but it isn’t good, better, best.” —Art Talk: Conversations with 15 Women Artists.

Visit the bobulate site here for links on Kranser and the book Art Talk.

The Knight Life: Drive a Zamboni

via The Knight Life
Go to Keith Knight’s site, here.

Kokichi Sugihara’s Optical Illusions

via npr

“You have two eyes. Each eye sees a slightly different world. (Put a finger in front of your face, switch from one eye open to the other and that finger will shift, just a little bit.) But rather than walk around all day seeing in double vision, your brain pulls the world back into one-ness. Brains decide what we see. Kokichi Sugihara knows this better than anyone. He makes videos that trick your brain into seeing things that you know, you absolutely know, can't happen.”

Read the rest, and watch his videos, here.

Sunset Crows

The sun prepares himself to set

and fills the horizon with colors 

that would have delighted sailors of yore.

My friends fly off to join the local murder of crows 

dotting the top branches of the thin tree line.

Like tiny beads of thick black acrylic paint 

on the very tips of a paintbrush,

they are poised above 

a newly stretched canvas of sky.

Painting by Sara Rogers

The Three Private Graves In Manhattan

via Scouting NY

“If you’re ever up at Riverside Park around Grant’s Tomb, be sure to take a moment and visit a slightly smaller grave nearby. Consisting of a simple urn and pedestal surrounded by a small fence, it’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. But in a way, it’s a pretty important monument: this is one of only three private graves on public land on the entire island of Manhattan. The first is Grant’s tomb. The second, located in Worth Square north of the Flatiron Building, belongs to military General William Jenkins Worth, who fought during the Mexican American War. And the third…

…belongs to a five year old boy.”

Read the rest of this great blog, here.

Daily Drop Cap: P

via Jessica Hische’s Daily Drop Cap

Gutenberg and Wine

via delancey place

“In today’s excerpt—for Johannes Gutenberg, it was the ubiquity of winemakers nearby that helped lead to the invention of the printing press around 1440 CE . . . Sometime around the year 1440, a young Rhineland entrepreneur began tinkering with the design of the wine press. He was fresh from a disastrous business venture manufacturing small mirrors with supposedly magical healing powers, which he intended to sell to religious pilgrims. (The scheme got derailed, in part by bubonic plague, which dramatically curtailed the number of pilgrims.) The failure of the trinket business proved fortuitous, however, as it sent the entrepreneur down a much more ambitious path. He had immersed himself in the technology of Rhineland vintners, but Johannes Gutenberg was not interested in wine. He was interested in words.”

Read the entire post here.

A New Start

An afterimage or ghost image is “an optical illusion that refers to an image continuing to appear in one’s vision after the exposure to the original image has ceased.”

While trying to link applications at home and at work, the original version of my blog After Image was inadvertently deleted by me. So today I begin working on creating a new version, adapting it as I find time, which there never seems to be enough of. Much thanks for all of the love and support from my partner and best friend on this endeavor.