Saturday Painting Palooza Vol.99

Welcome back.

This week we'll be continuing with our 5x7 painting of the new Gehry building in New York City. It is seen in the photo directly below.



When last we were together, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.



Since that time I have continued working on the painting.

I have urther refined the bands of windows, adjusting the width and spacing. Note that the shadowed window portions appear darker than the lit sections. Also, the lit orange surfaces now have changed shade slightly.

I've also carefully reshaped the extreme right upper side of the structure. It now more faithfully reflects the shape of the building. I still need to adjust the extreme right lower side a bit.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.



That's about it for now. Please join me next week for our 100th anniversary edition. See you next week.

Cool It

Sitting here inside while the thunderstorms rage on outside, after a day of high 90's temperatures, the following photo seems like a distant memory. And yet it was taken in front of my house less than 6 months ago.



What a difference a few months make. And a few months from now I'll be recalling the wonderful warm weather as the snowflakes pile up outside. Some people are never happy.

Agency Failure?

When should Federal agencies intervene on behalf of the public?  Given yesterday's remarks by former EPA head Christie Todd Whitman regarding air quality near ground zero, perhaps a review of that agency's protocols is needed.  And perhaps officials at NHTSA should intervene now.

Link

Federal officials have told a small New Jersey importer to recall 450,000 radial tires for pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans after the company disclosed that its Chinese manufacturer had stopped including a safety feature that prevented the tires from separating.

Tread separation is the same defect that led to the recall of millions of Firestone tires in 2000. At the time, tire failure was linked to an increased risk of rollover of light trucks and S.U.V.'s.

The importing company, Foreign Tire Sales of Union, N.J., had asked for federal
assistance in the recall, but was denied any help.

The company, Foreign Tire Sales of Union, N.J., had originally sought the federal government's help with a recall, saying it did not have enough money to recall all the tires itself. Typically, importers are responsible for the cost of recalling defective foreign products.

But officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it remained the responsibility of Foreign Tire Sales to pay for the costs of the recall, said Heather Hopkins, a spokeswoman for the agency. She said the agency wanted "a full tire recall" by the company.

Such a decision might be appropriate in other circumstances, but apparently not for a company such as this.

Foreign Tire Sales, which has just seven employees, buys foreign tires, imports them and then resells them to domestic distributors. Mr. Lavigne said the company did not physically handle the tires.

There has already been possibly 2 accidents involving vehicles with tires from the same manufacturer.  Shouldn't the agency act to protect the public to the extent that it can, or at least attempt to verify FTS' inability to handle the recall?

"We don't really know where to start," he said. "There's no way F.T.S. can recall this universe of tires. It will have to go belly up."

Saturday Painting Palooza Vol.98

Welcome back.

This week we'll be continuing with our 5x7 painting of the new Gehry building in New York City. It is seen in the photo directly below.



When last we were together, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.



Since that time I have continued working on the painting.

I have added the bands of windows and painted the shadowed areas in the same shade.
I've also adjusted the lit orange areas. Looking at the painting now, I will need to adjust the shapes of the shadows a bit. I'll also carry the bands of windows around to the shadowed areas in a darker blue.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.



That's about it for now, see you next week.

Wiring The National Parks

Picture in your minds eye a scenic vista in one of our national parks.  Mountains, trees and perhaps a river, all pristine as far as the eye can see.  Signs of human intervention are sparse, if they are seen at all.

Now, picture the same scene with power lines strung overhead, cutting a dark slash across the wooded countryside.  That is potentially the view that will be seen if DOE-proposed energy corridors become a reality.

ENS link

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, June 18, 2007 (ENS) - Newly proposed energy corridors could damage national parks and their scenic views, and worsen air pollution, a nonprofit conservation organization said today.

The National Parks Conservation Association, NPCA, testified against the proposed siting of new electricity transmission lines in or near parks at the public meeting hosted by the Department of Energy, DOE.

The DOE is considering the designation of two new energy corridors, which would allow construction of power lines and other facilities across public and private lands in multiple states.

In the east, the proposal covers numerous contiguous states, creating the potential for a large impact.

The proposed Mid-Atlantic Area National Corridor includes counties in Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Virginia, and all of New Jersey, Delaware, and the District of Columbia.

Cinda Walbuesser of the NCPA:

As proposed, the New York Regional Interconnect, part of the Mid-Atlantic Area National Corridor, would pass through 73 miles of the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River and impair the resources the park was established to protect, said Waldbuesser. "National parks and other protected lands should be considered off-limits."

More specifically:

The construction of new electricity corridors is proposed within the scenic viewsheds of Gettysburg National Military Park, Antietam National Battlefield, Monocacy National Battlefield, Shenandoah National Park, Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park, Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, and the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.

In the southwest, the proposal includes parts of California, Arizona and Nevada.  Perhaps wires accross the Grand Canyon?

Public comments will be accepted through July 6, 2007. Visit: http://nietc.anl.gov/

 

Saturday Painting Palooza Vol.97

Welcome back.

This week we'll be continuing with our 5x7 painting of the new Gehry building in New York City. It is seen in the photo directly below.



When last we were together, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.



Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have spent some time going over the orange areas. The color seemed a bit too bright so I've painted over it with a semi-transparent layer of white paint. The orange still shows but greatly faded. It now has the quality of orange sherbert. Hopefully that shows through in the image below.

I've also gone over the shadowed or blue surfaces. Before moving on to other aspects of the painting I will even out the blue a bit. Right now it appears a bit streaky.

Now I can't wait to move on to the building's details which will be the subject of next week's installment.

The current state of the painting appears in the photo directly below.



That's it for now, see you next week.

Of Staggering Importance

Yes, here at SLB we truly have our priorities in order. As such, I set forth an important inquiry to our many readers. It is as follows.

Do you see our logo above centered? Is our mission statement centered?

Set forth your eagerly awaited responses in the comments below. One final note, for me Firefox seems to center properly, IE does not.

Familiarity Bleeds Comtempt

This sounds, umm, vaguely familiar. The unitary decider, that is.

http://www.onelocalnews.com/pioneertimesjournal/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=121709

WASHINGTON - President Bush , honoring the memories of those killed in communist regimes, said Tuesday that their deaths should remind the American public that "evil is real and must be confronted."

"Like the Communists, the terrorists and radicals who attacked our nation are followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has expansionist ambitions and pursues totalitarian aims," Bush said. "Like the Communists, our new enemies believe the innocent can be murdered to serve a radical vision."

Gasp!!! Murderous? Check. Despises freedom? Check. Crushes dissent? Check. Expansionist ambitions? Check. Pursues totalitarian aims? Check. This is the same recipe as the Bush/neocon game plan. So, that should make communists visionaries in the Bush/neocon worldview. Who knew?!!

Familiarity really does breed comtempt.

Saturday Painting Palooza Vol.96

Welcome back.

This week we'll be continuing with our 5x7 painting of the new Gehry building in New York City. It is seen in the photo directly below.



When last we were together, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.



Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

What will be immediately apparent is the orange color added to the lit surfaces of the building. I thought that I would try something dramatic, at least just to see how it looks before deciding on a final color. I'm still not sure about how I feel. I might just keep this color but lighten it a bit. Or I may paint something similar to what is depicted in the photo.

Tell me what you think in comments below.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.



See you next week.

Sacrificing the Sonoran Desert?

Apparently the US military is evaluating a portion of Arizona's Sonoran desert for additional training grounds. (Because you never can tell when another ugly war might come calling.) And when the term portion is used, we mean up to half a million acres of delicate habitat.

PEER link

ARMY LOOKING AT BIG EXPANSION OF ARIZONA TRAINING GROUNDS — Half Million Acres of Public Land May Be Put Off-Limits


Tucson — The U.S. Army is considering a large expansion of Yuma Proving Ground firing range, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The action would remove as many as 500,000 acres of U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land from public access.

The Army is considering whether to propose converting between 100,000 and 500,000 acres of BLM public lands in Yuma, La Paz and Maricopa Counties into an expanded firing range for the Yuma Proving Ground. According to Val Morill of the Army’s Range Sustainability program:

Apparently prior protections for this region may be out the window. This quote says it all:

“The Army says it needs more space to shoot bigger weapons that fire farther than ever,”

Saturday Painting Palooza Vol.95

Welcome back.

This week we'll be continuing with our 5x7 painting of the new Gehry building in New York City. It is seen in the photo directly below.



When last we were together, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.



Since that time I have continued working on the painting. For this installment I've concentrated on the building shadows. Those shadows are what give this photo its drama. A review of the photo shows that the shadowed sections alternate in a regular pattern with lit sections, at least for the lower floors. I've painted those in blue. The same has been done for the upper section but without the regular alternating pattern of dark and light.

I will change the color of the shadowed sections as we go along as not all of them are the same.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.



That's about it for now, see you next week.