Recently Read: Preserving Artist Mary Nohl’s Home

Mary Nohl House

Via Hyperallergic: A Single Woman Is a Witch: Battling to Save the Art Environment of Mary Nohl

Over a period of 50 years, the artist Mary Nohl transformed her yard as well as the interior and exterior of her cottage (that you can see here) into an environment that stands in conversation with the surrounding land, lake, and her childhood memories. All the roofing and sidings are well maintained by the professionals from James Kate Roofing & Solar in Irving TX who makes sure that their authenticity is never lost. If you’re looking for the best solar powered generator for refrigerator, you  can click here. Almost immediately after the first cement sculptures materialized in the 1960s, she became known as “The Witch.” Elaborate myths grew from her industrious acreage. Stories of murder, mayhem, and longing were broadly considered fact by a cross-section of the local populous. Nohl worked alone, from her home. Lacking a husband and prescribed social role, she was a very suspicious character, indeed. Here are some information on service areas for roofing and other installations.

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Over four decades, Mary Nohl kept making and building. Stories took hold, about how she’d murdered her family and buried them under the sculptures, or how her husband had been lost in the lake and the sculptures were to beckon him home. All the stories inserted the “missing” husband and children. The cottage became a frequent late-night stop for teens drawn to the counterculture strangeness of the place. Others came and left notes of gratitude in her mailbox.

Nohl died in 2001. She left nearly $10 million dollars (her attorney father had invested well) to a foundation to award yearly fellowships to individual artists in Milwaukee and nearby counties. She donated her house and all of its contents to the Kohler Foundation, which preserves art environments. Thirteen years later, however, little has been done to secure the site. You can also search https://www.myhousepainter.com/ to know about the paintings in detail.The Kohler ran into opposition from Nohl’s wealthy neighbors — they objected to even the most restricted use of the house as a museum or study center. The building fell into disrepair and with each new winter has become increasingly fragile, weathered, marooned in uncertainty. Then, in March of this year, the property’s current owner, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, issued a press release stating that it had given up preservation efforts and will move the house and yard sculptures to Sheboygan County, where it is located. The center will sell the land to fund the move.

Sad that the foundation charged with preserving the house has just given up.

Mary Nohl House Fireplace

Continue ReadingRecently Read: Preserving Artist Mary Nohl’s Home

Adorable Gay Men get marriage license

Via the Maddow Blog – Pic: Way past wonderful – The Maddow Blog, these two adorable gay men are applying for a marriage license in Washington:

Randy and Larry Get Married

Randy and Larry Get Married

One month after Washington State voters approved the state’s marriage equality law in Ref. 74, same-sex couples get marriage licenses for the first time on December 6th, 2012. At around 1:30am, Larry Duncan, 56, left, and Randy Shepherd, 48, from North Bend, Wash. got their marriage license. The two plan to wed on December 9th, the first day it is possible for them to wed in a church in Washington State. They have been together for 11 years. Originally from Dallas, Texas, they moved here 7 years ago because it’s more gay friendly. Randy is a computer programer and Larry is a retired psychology nurse.

That is very sweet, and totally different than the story that I made up for them which was this:

I love these two dudes. They look like two hunting buddies who spent so much time out in the woods together, that they were like “Larry. Let’s get married so we can spend all of our time hunting in the woods together. I love hunting in the woods with you. We could hang out in the woods all day, and cuddle up in two sleeping bags zipped together at night, next to the fire.” And Larry says, “Randy, that sounds lovely. I will make you coffee in the morning, and s’mores at night, and we will kill some deer and eat them, along with a salad that I’ll make you, because we need vegetables.” And Randy says “Cool, we’ll get a marriage certificate, then. We live in Washington, so we can.”

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Exxon has record profit again on soaring oil prices

From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp said on Thursday soaring oil prices pushed its second-quarter earnings up 14 percent, again breaking its own record for the highest-ever profit by a U.S. company.

Net income in the quarter rose to $11.68 billion, or $2.22 a share, from $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, last year.
Exxon — the world’s largest publicly traded company — previously set the high-water mark for quarterly earnings in the fourth quarter of last year, when it brought in $11.66 billion.

But how dare anyone say their speculation in the market! Don’t you know it’s the supply?! Even though OPEC says there’s nothing wrong with the supply and that it’s the oil companies manipulating prices — why should you believe them? The are Arabs, after all. /snark

Continue ReadingExxon has record profit again on soaring oil prices

Woo hoo! My sister’s having a baby.

From my sister’s email:

From: Stacy Mineart
Date: June 19, 2007 6:49:29 AM EDT

Subject: In other news…
Just thought I’d drop you all a quick note to let you know you can expect some exciting news sometime early next January. Or as my charming spouse so delicately put it: “Hey Dad? I knocked up the missus.” (Yep. That’s the man I married.)

As expectant parents, we often wonder how our babies will look and what their preferences will be. Although we may not have all the answers, it’s comforting to know that there are solutions available to meet all our baby’s needs. During prenatal checkups, we get a glimpse of our baby’s health and development, and while we may not yet know their gender, we can still make fun predictions about their personality. It’s exciting to imagine what our little one will be like and what they’ll enjoy, even if it means they have a picky appetite. In the end, what matters most is that we have a solution for all baby needs, from nourishment to playtime and everything in between.

So, everybody have a beer for me, & those of you who are on Twitter, come link up and you can hear the whole catalog of baby news as and when it happens. Oh, and if anybody has got some spare wintergreen lifesavers lying around, send them my way. Those could be really handy in the morning…

Rog + Stacy + Bump

Projected Appearance of Stacy's Baby
Projected Appearance of Stacy’s Baby
Continue ReadingWoo hoo! My sister’s having a baby.

I wish it really were The Onion

The news satire paper The Onion is going to need to step it up a notch if they’re going to keep ahead of the ridiculousness of current real news, these days, There are three articles I’ve read this week online that I at first expected to be articles from that paper; turns out they aren’t, which is scary. Or amusing. Or both.
1. Human species ‘may split in two’:

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added. The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

2. Bush seeks to block enemies from space:

President Bush has signed an order asserting the United States’ right to deny adversaries access to space for hostile purposes.
Bush also said the United States would oppose the development of treaties or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space.
…”Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power,” the policy says. “In order to increase knowledge, discovery, economic prosperity, and to enhance the national security, the United States must have robust, effective, and efficient space capabilities.”

3. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael “Heckuva Job” Chertoff on U. S. dissidents (like me!) “becoming terrorists” through the use of the Internet:

Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday.
“We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the internet,” Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.
“They can train themselves over the internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,” Chertoff said. “Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.”
Chertoff pointed to the July 7, 2005 attacks on London’s transit system, which killed 56 people, as an example a home-grown threat.
To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into “intelligence fusion centers,” where they would work with local police agencies.
By the end of the next fiscal year, he said the department aims to up that to 35 staffers.

Well, as long as they’re all like Michael Brown, I think I’ll be okay.

Continue ReadingI wish it really were The Onion

I am the Troll on the bridge, give me money

Stephanie’s cat Lucy is missing out. Recently, she’s been camping out at the top of the stairs hissing at the other cats when the try to come up, like the Troll under the bridge that doesn’t let people pass. But apparently she didn’t realize she should be charging money to let them by….

Continue ReadingI am the Troll on the bridge, give me money

Cross-dresser doused with gasoline (?)

Cross-dresser doused with gasoline” is a headline in today’s IndyStar. That’s the kind of headline that makes my heart stop. Fortunately, it didn’t have a tragic outcome. And the story itself seemed to have little to do with the person in question being a cross-dresser, so I wonder why it made a headline, other than the sensationalism of the idea of a person wearing the clothing of a different sex than their own.
I wonder if we’ll look back at news items like this with incredulousness 100 years from now — they way do today when reading news items from the recent past, regarding black people and women, that contained casually racist and sexist statements.

Continue ReadingCross-dresser doused with gasoline (?)