Light and Truth

As of November 6, 2012 at 11:55 p.m. as a blogger, I am retiring Twheat'sCarousel pages and posts. Thank you for following along, for reading and commenting. I learned much in the process with google blogger, but I must move on to more purposeful life. Live in Light and Truth. Thank You, Toni Wheat

LeMars IA Chalk Festival 2012, 2013

A bucket of Tools and Chalks

Take your pick - bright colors or a nice place to watch

Some were Pro's, Some will be some day.

We tried to come up with the greatest design for the Chalk Art Festival in LeMars IA this past weekend, really forcing our blinking, flashing neurons, to bring forth the perfect idea - but, sad to say, we failed to arrive at the Best of the Best. Instead of chalking with the others, I wandered through the landscape, snapping iphone videos and quick pics. Max and Don kept cool in the car. The true artists are pictured here.

Next year I hope to participate in the LeMars annual Chalk Art Festival. In a year, (2013) we should be able to come up with at least one awesome idea. This year, I have to say I was truly inspired. All ages of artists, their supporters and observers became a living canvas upon a cement and brick background. Framed with music, sun, shade and chalk, participants who paid their $15 to $20 gathered to color. Next to the sounds from the stage, and with their friends and families everyone created a single mosaic masterpiece. Participants strummed, drummed, brushed, scribbled, lined and flourished, under a smiling sun. Flowers sprang up, wide eyed animals and blue, blue waters, full of fanciful creatures, came to live among orange, green and yellow stripes.  Cheetah dots and admonishing texts splayed and explained in pictures. Small hands dared to design. Strollers rolled through the this town's freedom Saturday. Adults on their knees offered their gifts, complete by Sunday's close. The rain will have the last word, and take away the offerings. This year, however, we are having an Iowa drought, so go take a look.  Then make your plan to play along next year.

Toni Wheat, Sioux City IA 2012

The Little People

The Little People

Do we mostly notice things that are much like ourselves? Do we mostly create things in our own image? Two eyes, one nose, one head. Eyes that see. Brains that imagine. Hands that create.

I went around the house and took a series of photos. It took me about an hour. One hour of looking and clicking photos. Little faces.  Am I simply making it up, they do look like faces right?

Do some of these remind you of yourself, your cousins, your boss, a board member, a movie character, or your dog, someone you met once upon a time. Anyway, had a creative summer. The little people are always watching. :-)

P.S. Please give attribution if you copy these images and use them elsewhere. Thanks.

1.  It all started with the TOAST

Which Star Wars Character am I?

I'm Tellin' MOM !!!

Take Me to Your Leader.

I am their Leader !!

I Love Other People's Toast

Jiminy's Cousin and His Hat

For Dic Morris's new book "SCREWED"

Barnyards have the BEST BUGS !

A blonde Icelandic Alien

No Way but UP

I'm sure she's very Soft Spoken

2nd Favorite Next Avatar

My 1st Favorite Next Avatar

They Said WHATTT ???? !!

OK I Cheated Here

Voted Most Cheerful by classmates

We all know Redi Kilowatt

Someone at Apple had fun that Day

Can't decide who to Vote for?

OH NO!! I Can't remember where I parked my car!!

Doesn't he know his NOSE is in my way?

The Swedish Professor

Stretch... You can see it.

Well... Try this then. See it?

2012 Greek Festival, Sioux City IA

Traditional Greek dancing costumes for the women. The men wore black slacks and longsleeved black shirts. Very striking! So sweet when the children were added to the circle of dancers. The black jackets had a beautiful gold braid on the back and sleeve. The white skirts were embroidered with a red design on the front. 

An ensemble of six dancing on a hot summer day. Energy needed! They had it!

The food pavillion behind the church. Wonderful aromas. Great Music too!

The streets were lined with cars, all sizes and makes of people going to the Festival. Food, music, dancing.

 I've worked on some sketches today of the Greek Festival in Sioux City, June 9th, 2012. I could only pop in for about 20 minutes, but was able to watch the dancers and see the food booths. Awesome fun!! This was my 4th year, to go for the dinner, but the first to see the dancers. So sweet, were the children in their traditional costumes. I might post some more drawings including the kids later.

Where the Wi-Fi Lives

Where the WI-Fi Lives

by Toni Wheat, May, 2012  Sioux City IA

Can you imagine being almost forty years old, an American citizen, having gone through twelve plus years of school, and never having learned to R-E-A-D a paragraph?

This morning, on my computer, I read two new book reviews: one about Anna Quindlen's son interviewing the author about her new book, "Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake", and the other about a new book called "God's Hotel". The second review, is about the Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, California and a new doctor and what she learned about the hospital, it's history and herself in her twenty years serving humanity there. The review and the preview of the book are fascinating, drawing me into the author student's discoveries and thoughts. "God's Hotel" is written by Victoria Sweet. I can hardly wait to read both books.

I have the ability to read reviews and I am able, also to buy books at a bookstore or online, after a quick review, or check them out at the library. I can sit down, turn on the light, open the page, immediately gather what the prologue says, get the feel for the story, settle in for many hours of quiet enjoyment, then discuss it with other people who have read the same book. I feel gifted because my brain traces letter and word characters into silent words and sounds in the language side inside my head. My almost forty friend does not have that kind of a brain or that relationship with words and writing, or with other people who read. Most letters sequenced into words escape her understanding and are nothing but shapes and confusion on paper or community billboards, posters and signs. When ventured, most guesses are close but hardly hit the mark.

The two books that I am interested in are two that I'll also recommend to several people. I will type and send emails, with copied links to the reviews, because I can type and I know they can read what I send. The words in the reviews on http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Interview/Anna-Quindlen-An-Interview-with-Mom/ba-p/7729 and http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/The-Long-List/God-s-Hotel/ba-p/7065 connect me instantly to people who are not with me, at the moment, who live far away, but who I sense are close, when I read something I could share.

I cannot, however, send an email or gift the books to my forty year old friend who cannot read. I can talk about the reviews and show her the book covers; but such a life as hers, has not the slightest whisper of recognition from the text or subjects mentioned, and will never understand the intricate guts of these stories, from the black and white symbols, in the form presented on bound papers. There is no life reference for enjoying such books, for her, or for discussing them with friends.

When a brain doesn't get wired for reading at birth, will it ever really dance with words like a reader brought to maturity throughout twelve school years? Does she/he have to stay in the 3 to 7 year old "Read to Me" section on their Nook or Kindle or IPad?  Where are the grown up books with good illustrative pictures and photos, that aren't crap or porn, that grown up minds seek? Is anyone making interesting good books for twenties, thirties, forty year old grown-ups to read in "Read to Me" format?

I will do my best to find them. If you find some, please let me know. If they aren't out there, I will write them, and I will read them outloud, and I will make the pictures.  My first attempt to solve this issue was almost forty years ago, with a tape recorder gifted to a five year old, a library card at seven, stories with music throughout her teen years.  My newest attempt is the gift of a Christmas E-Reader, and lots of hours together at book stores where the WI-FI lives. For five days I've typed the letters, in proper sequence to form the words asked for, into the URL space in the Web Apps, on the e-reader. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I heard the question from my friend, "How do you SPELL _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _" (the name of a movie, of course).

We've begun again. With J-O-Y.

More on KNITTING and WISDOM

More about KNITTING and WISDOM

by Toni Wheat, Feb 27, Sioux City IA 2012.

I sat knitting, and marvelled that the back of the new sweater I was making was going very slowly but it was beginning to look like a sweater finally. The process of knitting likens a life. We begin with just one stitch on the needle, cast on, not by the yarn or by the needle, but by the knitter.  The yarn cannot knit itself into a sweater, a sock or a jacket. The first stitch is cast on, others are added, from the same thread, from a source the knitter chooses: a choice from myriads available. Growing and growing from colored string, twisted, wrapped and slipped, the needle finally holds a textured shape, almost a map, a tapestry of knots all combined into that one special purposeful object. Beautiful.

I thought of my new grandson, having lived not quite two stitches yet, as compared to my own sixty plus. I began counting at the left end of the knitting needle and counted each stitch, imagining years, sliding stitch by stitch, from left slightly to the right, first five then seventeen. How few stitches we are a child at home with our parents or caregivers. Not so many more and we are in school.

When my grandson arrives at the seventeen stitches, or eighteen count points, highschool graduation, I will probably be on my way out, sliding off the end. I slid four more stitches over a bit and again thought what a short time we are in college or elswhere as young folks after highschool, training for our lives. Then fourteen more slid over, for that first marriage with children, then ten for a single life of sorting out purposes, priorities and perspectives that hadn't been thought through enough in those first stitches. Finally counting off almost twenty more, to the total number of my years, I think I've been gazing backwards too much, reviewing mis-knits, shortcomings and what-ifs.  I should rather be getting on with the knitting, adding some colorful threads for interest.

All held together with those knots and knits, gathered together by that knitting needle, our years are really part of one long line of thread. It's ok, and it's really alright - really... relax, pray, forgive.

Those first sixty cast on stitches still sit waiting on that knitting needle for me to continue. I am formulating the pattern. It will be really super when I start and really beautiful when the Spirit finishes it. The round ball of flesh toned yarn I chose sits next to the two rows I put on the knitting needle. Nothing moves though, unless I make it do so. Right now, before I knit any more, I'm contemplating being almost two, wondering what that feels like again: to learn to stand up and walk after scooting around the floor for about one whole stitch. I am wondering about spoken language, about attitudes and taking lots of naps and what apple slices feel like in my fingers as compared to applesauce when I don't want to use a spoon. It might not be a really long time before those cast on stitches that I am, start to be cast off; unravelled. I hope I meet my grandson at least somewhere in the middle of that process and he can teach me some of what he learned along the way. I do pray for, and wish his parents WISDOM.

Rosebuds on Debate Nights

Her knitting began again in earnest when her husband started a new job. I mean he started his own new job by buying a restaurant that took all his time and attention. Even the dog didn't mean quite as much as the restaurant for quite some time, and she realized, the familiar pattern of this man's project building would last for a while; probably a real long while.

So she dragged out the shopping bag of sky blue yarn that she'd picked up when the town's yarn store decided to shut down. Yarns and books were more than half off so how could she NOT buy a whole bagfull of the beautiful soft threads, in a rainbow of gorgeous colors, plus the book with that drop dead beautiful model sporting that soft skinny little knitted top revealing her belly button on the cover?

The store closed over two years ago. Until now, it didn't seem important to knit. Knitting is so slow. So contemplative. So old fashioned. Though, when the nights grew a bit long and lonely and TV talkingheads sounded so much different than they did when he was in the other chair, she wound all the colors into miniature little ball copies of themselves, and began the task of re-learning to decipher knit lingo and charts. "Knitters code can't too much different than computer programers codes" she muttered inside her head. Of course, if he was home, she could say it outloud and they'd discuss the yes and no of it. He'd get to be the expert because at one time understanding code and programming were part his jobs. But he wasn't, either home or a coder/programmer any more, so with lifesize newsies begging for attention from the screen, she took to the remote.

The remote turned to FOXnews almost automatically, from habit droned into it by it's prior master.  The Republican presidential debates and New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida primary results took shape, an earthlight away. A new winter blue sweater was born.

The sweater took on "friend" role, to her. During the day, she'd stop her homework, take a lunch break or rest her aging back, and pick up where she'd left off in knit-life. Ribbed seed stitch formed the lower back edge. Stockinette and woven intarsia the body of the garment. Charts led her through rosebuds and tiny leaf shapes, columned next to a kind of lace line she'd not seen or knitted before. Sleeves, armholes, buttonbands. The flowers lay upon a bed of blue that was supposed to be hissop, in hue, but looked luscious anyway. Countings. pulled out and corrected purls, yarn overs, and knit-two-togethers, occupied her brain. Good company, good practice. 

One evening a vision, almost as real as life, popped into that little vignette space in her brain where she replays personal color videos of happenings long gone away. Her dad, tired after work, but still in his nice shirt, sans tie, after dinner. Her mom, sporting those yellow stretch pants with the loop at the bottom where you put your foot, like a stirrup, inside your shoes; knitting covers her lap, needles click away like a tiny keyboard somewhere. Strings and bobbins of colored thread dangle arranged in careful order. The black and white little square TV, in the sparse living room with the aura of a family meal dinner past, mixing with that tincan sound, directed their attention away from each other, to the far wall, by the doorway. There in gray and white inside 20 inches were John F. Kennedy and Richard (what was his middle initial?) Nixon going at it in much the same way, as those on her own lifesize living color flat screen: Gingrich, Romney, Santorum and Ron Paul. Arguing and haranguing and lying like rugs. She missed her old friends Bachman, Cain and Perry at their podiums these dark eves. Now those three are missing from the clamor. At least until she changes the channel.

In the tiny mind vignette, every now and then a newsman (never a newswoman) offered curt sometimes friendly, sometimes surprising comments, and always, "we'll be right back after this station break". It probably seemed like another part of the family way back then, to them, not to me as a child. As a child they seemed like intruders. I rather think Rosebuds are truly beautiful with their vine tendrils dropping against the light colored leaves like that. I haven't seen one thorn in this pattern.

She can NOT believe she sits in a similar chair 25 feet from the monitor, as those nightly visitors blab away, about politics, while she wraps blue yarn behind red needles. She forms the stitchs and slips them off the needle, adding hundreds to the carpet of days already laid out. If you would have told her so, she could not have heard you say, "Life is like a sweater", "some days are like that", or "I think "the American People" should learn to knit, understand patterns; learn to stick with it, learn to code or knit code, rest a bit, see rosebuds."

------------------------- 

PS - the pattern for "her" sweater is called Rosebud, from Sasha Kagan's book, Knitwear, first published 2008 by Guild of Mastercraftsman Publications Ltd., Lewes East Sussex, England. 

The Sioux City store mentioned was a wonderful spot, "Susan's Yarn Garden", proprietor was Susan Adkins. Thank you Susan and Sasha.

copyright 2012 Toni Wheat, Sioux City IA

FWING the Fifth Season

The Fifth Season

The season is new - Fwing.  In real time, it is winter. It is sunny and the sky is clear blue. Buds form more fully every day on tree branches and bushes, like in spring. Our dryish lawn remains green rather than being covered with the normal two feet of cold snow. Piles of brittle rust colored leaves cluster in lines of autumn character against the base of the woodpile and shrubs. The neighbor's lawns look straw colored, like fall. Our dog continually gathers shreds of leaves and twigs in his long black winter coat on tummy and legs and brings them into the house, where throughout the day, crispy reminders of his walks in the yard drop on carpets and kitchen floor. My least favorite constant companions of this new season are broom and vacuum - five months, about six times a day, as compared to the usual one month.

No children in our midwest neighborhood wear snowboots or snowsuits this January. The older kids, shortsleeved, collect in driveways and play, mostly basketball.  A nearby park, yesterday, hosted bands of elementary age pals, out for laughter filled hide-and-go-seek games, and races down sloped lawns to the grandstand at the bottom of the hill. Sleds they received for Christmas gifts remained home with their mittens.

Though a sparkly frost crunched underfoot this morning, as I walked with the dog, and two inches of water in our garden pond appeared frozen, sparrows twittered to the morning sun knowing they would bathe very soon. Cold ground, warm face, FWING it is then, the fifth season in Iowa, USA - Fall, Winter, and Spring, all in one.

This is my first FWING. I like it. I'll rake leaves today, put Christmas lights away, and sip lemonade from a tall glass that sports a tiny paper umbrella, outside, on my Iowa porch.

Toni Wheat, copyright, Jan 10, 2011Sioux City IA