Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

Tonight I installed the driver for my new graphics tablet, installed After Effects CS4, and filled out my elections ballot, in between shoving candy at costumed kids who knocked at the door.  I think I got the better end of the exchange.

(Particularly since I got the tablet and the application on an education discount, because I ordered them during the week I was enrolled in an After Effects workshop and was thus officially, for one week only, a student again.)

Oregon voter ballot

This post is more for the benefit of my international readers (I.e. rellies in New Zealand.)

Now that Tom and I are citizens of the USA (and yes, we still have our New Zealand citizenship - to answer the question that always comes up) we get to vote in this historic election.  All national elections here get called historic (how, after all, could the mainstream media sell advertising during a run-of-the-mill presidential race?) but this one truly is historic. For reasons we all know about and which I need not repeat here.

Each state of this union does the voting thing their own way.  Oregon has Vote by Mail. The benefit to Vote by Mail is no one has to take time off work nor stand in line to vote.  It’s good, too, for the disabled. The ballot comes to your house, you fill it out, and you send it in or drop it off.  Another benefit is a paper trail! No creepy, hackable electronic voting machines here thank you very much. The downside to Vote by Mail is the loss of that feeling of civic camaraderie that apparently happens when strangers stand in line together to vote.  I haven’t experienced it, but Oregonians who remember a time before Vote by Mail say they miss the old way. Vote by Mail does statistically raise voter participation, though, and I’m all for that.

My international readers may be under the impression the ballot comes with two choices: McCain and Obama.  Pick one and you’re done.  What doesn’t make it into overseas news is that all over the country Americans are voting for thousands and thousands of other positions besides the president.  Senators, congresspeople, mayors, local senators and representatives (each state has its own government - it’s not just the feds running everything from D.C.), plus city councillors, school board members, judges, and so on.  And in a state like Oregon that has citizen initiated referenda (aka citizen initiatives), there are ballot measure, too.

Lucky for me Oregonians take their politics seriously, and there’s plenty of reading material prepared and distributed (er, rather a lot, actually) to help me decide. (I do like the Willamette Week’s riff on Shepard Fairey’s Obama HOPE design.)

Okay, I’m going to go vote now.  Once I have read all the endorsements and ballot measure explanations that have piled up on the dining table.

View from halfway up Mitchell Point

Mitchell Point is a stop on the Oregon side of the Columbia Gorge just a few minutes west of Hood River. It’s the site of the now demolished but once famous Mitchell Point Tunnel. The hike to the top of the rocky outcrop is 2.2 miles round trip, with a 1000+ foot elevation gain. Last weekend was perhaps the last mild sunny weekend of the fall (or maybe not!) so we took the opportunity to have a picnic at the top. I feel lucky to live close to the amazing scenery of the Columbia Gorge.

More photos from this hike on my Flickr page.

This soup’s got vegetables, protein, carbs, and fats.  Plus it’s colorful and super tasty and warms not just your cockles but everything else on a chilly Portland evening.

Ingredients

1 leek or onion, chopped fine
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large carrot, chopped fairly fine
1 large green pepper, cubed fine
1 medium zucchini, chopped fine
2 large ripe tomatoes, blended to liquid  
1 c leftover carbs, e.g. chopped boiled potato, or cooked rice
1/2 c peanut butter
spices: cayenne, paprika, coriander, ginger
1 scant teaspoon asian style mushroom seasoning.  It shouldn’t have MSG in it but it’s not exactly just made of mushrooms, either. It’s salty and very tasty. 
About 6 c boiling water
1 hefty handful of whole basil leaves
1 scant splash of Balsamic vinegar. 

Directions

Fry leek and garlic till beginning to soften.
Add carrots, spices, and mushroom seasoning and let cook for a while.
Add tomato puree, and let carrots cook longer till softening.
Add boiling water, and return the whole pot to the boil.
Add bell pepper, return to boil and cook for 5 more minutes.
Add carbs and zucchini, return to boil and cook for 5 more minutes.
Add peanut butter and mix in well.  When returned to a boil, cook for another minute or so.
Turn off the flame and stir in the basil.  Keep stirring till it’s wilted, but don’t boil the basil.
Add that splash of Balsamic vinegar if you want that extra edge on the taste.

A year or so ago Blue Mouse Monkey launched a web project for collector and philanthropist Leslie Durst. During the meetings we got to see (and sometimes touch) some of the many 17th - 19th C needlework samplers in her huge collection.  Elaborate and precise, beautiful, innocent, celebratory, and sometimes downright scary in their choice of bible verses, these pieces were made almost exclusively by young girls.  I’d never given antique needlework a second thought till I got to work with it up close.  But the cool thing about it is that they are artistic historical artifacts from a demographic that is almost entirely absent from art history, or any history at all.  These girls (many as young as six), lived in a world where children didn’t have voices or choices.  Born into classes other than the aristocracy (and some were even in orphanages), these girls grew up, lived out their lives in towns and villages, then passed on.  Their childhood needlework survived them, and is now being collected, researched, and shared by Leslie.  The project now engages over a thousand members of the global needlework community.

Allium Subcaeruleus, by Jorg Jacoby

All that is a lead-up to talking about Leslie’s 60th birthday party last night, and wow, what a party!  It was held at Leftbank. We began with a champagne and hors d’oeuvres reception for the exhibit The Butterfly Effect: A Visionary Gesture by Leslie B. Durst.  Over the last ten years Leslie has secretly commissioned ten artists to make twelve works each - which leslie then gave as gifts to others.  Wow! 

Then we were seated upstairs at large tables with opportunities to meet new people and eat course after delicious course of dinner.  Before dessert, a Brazilian-style street band and four dancers made a dramatic entrance into the hall, and drummed and danced so crazy loud it was hard to stay seated. Then the band led us all down and out into the street.  We followed them into another space at Leftbank, this one empty but for childhood photos of Leslie projected on one wall, and tables piled high with cupcakes.  And I mean high.  Mountains of cupcakes on tiered platters. Plus more champagne.  

After the band left my ears were ringing, but in a good way. There were speeches from her brother, PICA people, her needlework friends, and others.  And Leslie spoke of her mentoring work with Vancouver kids.  A video about the artists she’d commissioned played.  There were toasts.  Cupcakes were consumed. Needlework friends produced their surprise gifts of a set of samplers they’d sewn, in antique styles, for Leslie, and hung them one by one on the wall. And all of us who know Leslie from one facet of her life or another got to see her extended community and what great things she has done in the world. Wow!

From Under Polaris, by Cloud Eye Control

Then we went back to the dining space, which had been transformed into a theater, for the debut of the multimedia performance Under Polaris by Cloud Eye Control, - commissioned by Leslie. Wow!  Then we said goodbye to Leslie, and on our way out were given a DVD catalogue of the Butterfly Effect exhibition.  

A memorable evening to celebrate an extraordinary life. Leslie Durst, I’m proud to know you.

Screenshot from Horn OK Please

Horn OK Please is an award-winning short claymation film in the style of Wallace and Gromit.
“…directly inspired by director Joel Simon´s journey in the heat and frenzy of Mumbai, India. 
It follows a day in the life of an Indian taxi driver whose goal is to earn enough rupees to buy the air-conditioned taxi of his dreams…The film was made over a 10 month period by Irish and Indian animators and Joel Simon, a Belgian director. It´s a combination of claymation and hand drawn backgrounds…”  It’s fun and very well done.

Tori Ellison is an artist, arts writer, and curator living in Seattle. This website showcases her studio practice and her other professional activities.  With a custom-built content management system, Tori can update any of the site content herself.  She can also add new portfolio pages as her work grows over time.