Drawing with Gunpowder by Cai Guo-Qiang - The Artist's Studio - MOCAtv

This video shows the process Cai Guo-Qiang used to produce his drawings with the medium of gunpowder instead of graphite at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2012. I was very pleased to have been able to assist as on eof the volunteers who cut out the stencils and assisted with the cardboard grids that were laid over the gunpowder laiden stencils to control the explosion and then stamp out the little fires.  

What If We Stopped Using Electronics?

Imagine how much money we would save if we didn't pay for cable TV, internet service, multiple phone and cell lines; and if we didn't purchase computers and big screen TVs and mobile devices?

What if we didn't spend $15 to go see a movie or $50+ to go to dinner and have drinks?

What if we didn't drive so far to go to work everyday and spend so much time in the car burning gas?

Wouldn't the environment be better off without burning gas and producing all those plastics with toxic materials?

Imagine if we read books, played musical instruments and sang, wrote stories and songs, visited each other, gardened (organically, of course), went hiking with our pets, rode and groomed horses, sewed some of our own clothes, cooked at home, made preserves and canned produce.


It seems that instead of learning from the past and improving and living more easily based on the knowledge that has accrued, we are being pacified into numbness by bad entertainment with false social interactions and unreality. Goals fade further into the distance as we play computer games and waste time getting places we don't really want to be. Time passes without you realizing it because you have been staring at a screen.

Shut down the electronics. Transition to the now. Listen to the birds outside your home. See how much you can do without and how much more reality you can add into your life. Practice a musical instrument and learn a song, then share it with friends. Read a book and write a short story about something that happened to you this week.

Electronics are useful, I just want them to stop directing my life. They take up so much money and time. I'm ready to redirect my energies.

Imagine an Ideal Community

Imagining what our future could be. What do you need in a community? How would I build an ideal town?

There would be an organic farm to provide vegetables and fruit. A ranch for beef, free range chicken for eggs and poultry; a hog farm; a small herd of sheep. A spring fed lake with fish and bullfrogs.

An architect to design houses, businesses and public buildings. Builders and workmen to build from the plans. Using efficient energy products including solar panels and incorporating recycled wood and reclaimed architectural building materials.

New homes could be prefab modern.

Older homes could be remodeled while preserving the architecture and solid original materials.
Landscape architects to design and oversee appropriate plantings as well as incorporate outside hardscapes that would have proper drainage. LA's would also provide privacy and boundaries between properties using hedges. A plant nursery to provide native plants and trees that will properly tolerate the climate and work well with the local insect population. Gardeners to tend the larger gardens and arborists to keep the trees healthy. Insect experts to continue to keep the decorate plants and vegetable farms healthy and disease free.

LA would design outdoor community spaces like parks and pubic plazas and areas to enjoy lunch outside of businesses providing sun and shade.

Areas between buildings could be beautifully designed for taking breaks.

There would be a reflecting pool outside of the library.

Yes, there would be a public library and a liberal arts college with its own terrific library, music hall, art gallery, film program.

An art museum with a good small collection of blue chip 20th century work to keep us in touch with civilization and an alternative art space for contemporary work by local and excellent artists from other locations.

A performing arts space that is not too large with wonderful acoustics so that non-electronic music, i.e. acoustic instruments, do not need to be amplified if the score does not specifically require it.

A grimy looking club for rock and roll with room for dancing in front of the stage and a pool table at the opposite end of the room from the stage so you have something to do when you don't really care for the band....

and a sophisticated jazz club that serves alcohol and has small tables which might be in the hotel.

Review of "Boomerang" by Michael Lewis

Just finished listening to the audio version of Boomerang by Michael Lewis. Checked it out of the library and listened to all 6 discs in one day.


Recommend it to everyone. He gives his subjective take on how the cultures of Iceland, Greece, Ireland and Germany encouraged them to follow their paths to economic explosion.

You can see the US in each of these scenarios. Then, he takes on the US and specifically California as being the worst state of all by pointing to overly optimistic attitudes that agree to fund incredible pensions for city workers and refuse to acknowledge the reality of reducing budgets.
  How Schwarzenneger ran for office on a whim and apparently governed that way as well; then left to his life of luxury leaving the state in his wake a nightmare of debt.

Looks like it may be time to move out the state as there is no light at the end of this tunnel.

The only solution offered by Lewis is that unseen unusual things happen when people are optimistic so maybe everything will work out.

Don't Think Twice

When you come

to a fork in the road,

Take It!

stated by Yogi Berra

and cited by Nora Ephron