Poetry Found

Found poetry is a process where you take a page or a chapter of a book and cull phrases out of it to create a new piece of writing... a piece of poetry. I wrote this one from a chapter in a critical thinking textbook. Enjoy.


Ride the wave of knowledge

Learning is messy, sometimes painful

Interdisciplinarity is universal because it is everywhere

Pressures of reality, convention and popular bias …

Weigh too heavily on her mind

For the pure joy

Adhesion, integration, application, transformation…

Bigger than just words

A Hammer with which to shape it

A weapon the size of your fist

It is the journey that matters in the end

Color 2.0

More fun with color...

Color 1.0

My first color wheel...

My Copy of a Master: Leonardo Davinci

I tried to copy a plant from Leonardo Davinci's plant series:

Here is my attempt in light pencil:

Sorry its a little difficult to see....

Here's another try at clarity

Gesture/ Figure Drawing

I need some good critique because I do not feel like I have this idea down at all. I ended up moving to newspaper for more practice with charcoal because I was going through charcoal and paper like tap water. So I feel like I have practice but i do not feel like I really have the full idea of gesture at all. I think that part of it is that I do not feel able to ignore all detail. Even when I think that I am, I look at the finished product and realize I have added detail. I used one of my pets sitting in a chair as a model as well as the figure and gesture site attached to the homework site. I only used charcoal and I picked what i thought was the 'best' of the dozens I completed.

Negative Space - Spider Plant and Chair

used pencil, charcoal, and fixative

Blind Contour Drawing of Hamster and Cage

*this was seriously tough

Pictures of original objects. :)

20 2x2 Squares Created with Pencil, Sharpie (Fine and Ultra Fine), Charcoal and X-Acto Knife

I took an art class a little while ago and I had quite a bit of fun with it. For the next week or so, I'll try to post my work in this class for criticism and comment. This was one of my very first assignments that I was given which was to explore the differences and capabilities of the different materials that had been required for the class. So here is my completed assignment. I liked it so much that I still have it and it is displayed on my wall. It felt a little scary and exciting to try and create something like this and I am grateful for the class which forced me to try. That way I had to push myself past my feelings of intimidation and fear if I wanted to try and pass the class. It ended up being quite a bit of fun overall. :)

Reaction and Thoughts on "Girlhood: Growing Up On The Inside"

This post is on an unique documentary that followed the lives two young women who became incarcerated in their teenage years... and how each of them changed and 'grew' through that process. Both individuals had open ended sentences which meant they would be released based on their behavior and family circumstances. The young women were named Shanae Owens and Megan Jensen.





Shanae was incarcerated because she got into a fight with another girl and the other individual died. She has some amazing family who really care about her and just want to really help her improve, to love herself and to have the best life that she can. I can feel their support in every moment with them and its obvious that she feels their love and support too. Even though she has done something really bad, she feels secure in their love and caring for her. Her family also really openly talks about their flaws and problems- her father admits to a shady past and her mother states, “I've been there.” One of the questions that her social workers and probation officers look at is whether the family is growing as well, and I see so much of that in these clips. Even at such a young age, Shanae is learning about critical thinking and in counseling sessions makes comments such as “That might be effective for her.” I listened to that comment and compared it with some of the individuals around her and thought of her as an older woman inhabiting a young body with a brain wise and thoughtful beyond her years. She has had circumstances that in many ways I can not fathom; raped by several men at age eleven, becoming pregnant at age eleven (not sure if they were from the same circumstance, but I suspect they might be), getting into a fight and not even remembering what happened during it, etc... When she is moved to a group home, she reminds herself, “I started at the bottom there, I can do it here”. She reminds herself of her flaws but also focuses on her blessings “They never gave up on me, my parents, my family, nobody...” She finds her strength in her family and their love for her, so much so that she is able to continue to draw from that strength even when her mother passes away. She seems to see how to grow even within tight limitations and how to use the limitations in many ways to her own advantage.

Megan is an interesting young lady. I am not sure what she was incarcerated for as if it was mentioned I missed it... she doesn't seem to talk about it at all. She states that she is in trouble ever day at her facility and that she doesn't care. I watch her and realize that she almost never looks at the person she is talking to or the camera... almost like she doesn't notice that they are there. Megan states several times that she 'doesn't care', but that isn't what I feel as I watch her. It feels like she cares so much her heart would bleed with the showing of it, she looks away to hide herself, her bravado and anger are her masks. I sense her fear of relationships and hurt, but I also feel her strength and resilience... her desire to be better and to have better is just as apparent as her defense mechanisms.

“You're going to end up just like your mother and unconsciously I have been doing that”

“I regret so much... I feel like an old woman trapped in a young girl's body”

“I'm never going to change anything in my life cause this was what's supposed to happen”

I see parallels between her and her mother and the ways that they think as well as differences in their views. Both of them seem to state at different times that they have nowhere to go and you can see how this view of their lives and positions can shape a negative vision of their lives and possible choices going forward. Her mother states that they need to go to counseling together and Megan refuses- a struggle that I can see in two lights. Counseling would be helpful for Megan for her own problems and learning to deal positively with her anger, but at least at this point I am not sure that family counseling would be beneficial for her. Her mother complains that Megan states that her mother was never there for her – is a 'stranger' to her in fact – and then state that she had custody of Megan until Megan was seven. You see her mother try to count out how many years she had with Megan and the use of words like custody, she had her grandmother, etc... suggests that Megan may have a valid viewpoint... her mother wasn't there even when she wasn't in jail. I watch Megan tell social workers and probation officers that she will not avoid undesirables because her mother would be considered an undesirable and as time goes by to cut her mother out of her life, recognizing the danger and stress that it causes her in her life. Megan has more options than her mother... mainly because she sees that she has more choices than her mother. In so many ways, their viewpoints are similar but Megan's are beginning to evolve as she heads out on own and starts to try and live on her own and with friends. She doesn't have the strong support of much family at all... you do not see her grandmother much at all and only hear about things she might do, etc... (In her grandmother's defense, it sounds like she is overwhelmed trying to deal with all the problems she faces between herself, her daughter, and all her grandchildren.)

“I ain't nothing like my mother”

I see a very tough life for Megan ahead of her. She tends to fight her limitations and looks at adversity in a short term way, not recognizing how her behavior and thoughts can affect her long term choices and limitations. I want to reach out and help her and also back up because her anger scares me a bit... no matter how justified it might be.

Something that interested me and I am still thinking about is that Shanae's family seems more close knit and show their love for each other better. While Shanae seems to have committed a harder crime and therefore, has more to overcome along with the lack of privilege that she has due to race, gender, etc... she is the individual that I have the most hope for after watching this film. Both of these individuals were living their lives beginning to relieve the cycles of their parents that were potentially destructive to themselves and others. Andre Lorde states, “There is no such thing as a single issue struggle, because we do not live simple issue lives.” Both of these individuals show us a good example of how trying to separate people into single categories isn't helpful for the individuals being classified nor really informative to those doing the classifying. It seems like the only consequences of trying to see people in these limited vision are negative... for everyone involved. Megan's mother makes a very excellent observation- “It doesn't matter what you did, it matters what you do” After the death of her mother, Megan mentions that she has so much to forget and she could get drunk or smoke to 'try and forget' but that wouldn't really be helpful in a positive way for her- a very mature observation for some her age and with her grief. I see Megan as getting some advantages that she didn't really work for... that Shanae only got through hard work and in some ways, I think that Shanae will do better for it and that some of Megan's privilege is helping to hold her back from what changes she really needs to make in her life.

I wonder how the director chose these two girls, how she found them and what about each of them drew her to them to help her express her ideas and thoughts. I wonder how these young women changed the ways that Liz Garbus viewed them and their individual situations and how all the individuals involved in this project may have modified their viewpoints on these women and incarcerated young people in general based on the work they performed for this film. I am grateful to see this small vision of what could have been my past and what so many struggle with. Thank you.


One how that came up in some reading near the end was "Orange is the New Black." I have never watched or had any interest in watching this show, however, the statistics in the readings were powerful, sad and horrifying. The fact that jails are now are largest mental health providers in our country isn't totally new to me, but adding women to that equation is. Recognizing that their families and children are affected by the states' choice to incarcerate these women instead of providing mental health services and giving them the ability to be at home seems to suggest that what society's goals really are is to provide people for private incarceration for profit, instead of helping people be productive members of their communities. The documentary asks a good question... “Is incarcerating these women worth it?” I suggest it is not.

photos from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368745/, https://woyingi.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/documentary-review-girlhood-by-liz-garbus/

Thoughts on the Khan Academy...

I started this assignment by looking at the Khan Academy website and watching the video about Saloman Khan and how he started his videos for family use and then eventually developed a public site. Two things struck me right away. First, I used my home laptop at the school and since I was logged into my Facebook account, the home page for the academy told me that three of my 'friends' were also 'friends' with them. That felt a little intrusive and odd that this site I had never heard of had figured out 'who I was' before I even set up an account. I also discovered pretty quickly that I couldn't watch any other videos without opening an account. While I appreciate that the site allows you to sign up for free and then you have full access to all of it, but I am very careful with how I give out my info and I felt a bit trapped at that point. I needed to watch a video or two for the discussion, but couldn't do so without giving my name, email address, and my birth date. I went ahead and did so, but I still feel a little uncomfortable with that.

The video that I started with – the interview with Salam Khan- was really interesting. I liked listening to his journey of the opportunity and the desire to help his nephews learn and how those few videos he put out that seemed to be so useful that he branched out and they eventually became the website that I just visited. I love the fact that it’s free- cost can be such an impediment for some groups of people. I know for me I am much more likely to take the time to check it out if I do not have to shell out money to do so. I next decided to try a few things that I knew to see what I thought about them. I have been teaching BLS for over a decade so I looked up CPR and they have a program for it. The program tries to teach body position and arm angles and hand placement and as soon as I figured out how the program worked I has able to successfully do it. I thought it was interesting but I wonder how much can be really learned when you are using one finger to do it. One of the things we do in class is the do the ‘maneuvers’ several times over a class to try and develop a body memory so that if you cannot mentally remember what to do, maybe your body will. I think this was a great introduction to the topic and gave you a few good ideas so I thought it was useful. I wonder if any users have felt compelled to take a real class from using the program on the site... I would love to know that answer.

I next went to a few medical videos and watch those. I worked for Mercy ambulance in a big city out west for a decade and I saw a few abdominal aortic aneurysms in people- some who survived and some who didn’t. So I did watch the video on the site about it here. I thought it was very accurate and pretty interesting. Covered all the facts I knew and two that I didn’t. I do recommend it for everyone to watch for informational purposes because many people have to have the AAA burst before they recognize they have it and makes it more challenging for medical staff to fix. The video didn’t cover all the ways to recognize them, but an aneurism is a hard thing to recognize because it depends on where they are in the body. But it covered quite a bit and all the testing that doctors do to diagnose it.

The next one I watched was on breathing and asthma that can be found here: It was just awesome and I am going to recommend it to the current teacher of the medical assistant program. I thought it was really helpful and reinforced what I knew and I gained some knowledge as well. I think I might be start using this site as a permanent feature of my education… even if they do track me and my friends ;)

What are your thoughts?

Rob and Bug - The Photo Files 2013

So I didn't send out Christmas cards because I was just swamped and a little overwhelmed at the end of last year. And today is a special and a bit of a bittersweet day. So to celebrate and for remembrance, I thought I would take the time to share some pictures of the guys. :)

The ocean is Bug's very favorite spot. He would go there pretty much everyday if he could! :)

Bug totally has my hair and I think he is just too cute... Am I allowed to call a twelve year old cute? :)

Waterfalls are great fun too!

Bug with his father. They have some good times!

This is the 'tree house' at my cabin- It is one of Brock's very favorite places to hang out. I am looking forward to this summer so we can hang out when it is warm. :)


Enjoy. :)

A Baby Step Forward

So… I have a new place to live! No more tents or cars or anything half baked. I have an actual apartment with a kitchen and *gasp* a bathroom too. : ) I am still moving in and will be for a few weeks, but I am slowly trying to figure out the new routine in my life. Some parts feel so strange and unreal. And I am very much on an emotional roller coaster. I suspect that will continue even as I finish moving the few belongings that I have left into the apartment.

There have been many blessings in this move. One is that I haven’t really had a way to cook really healthy food for a long time. Not having a set kitchen has made things pretty difficult. But I have a kitchen now and some friends have made sure that kitchen wise I am all set! I know have all the needed dishes and I have been spoiled with a hand blender as well as a few other appliances. I have bowls and pans and so now I need to change my old mindset…. as I can cook again! I have gotten in the habit of I can’t cook so why bother and I think that habit has taught me to skip meals like mad – gotta stop doing that too. Another blessing is the opportunity to be able to actually spend time with my cats. My ex is in a bit of a hurry for me to get on my way and so he has been very helpful in giving of his time, energy - and today his blood- to get my stray friends boxed and to the vet for neutering and then pills and flea treatments. They are comfortably resting in the ‘extra’ bedroom in my apartment. (I feel a little ‘wealthy’ and wasteful to have a room for my cats… doesn’t that sound so ridiculous. : ) They will have a bit of storage in their room for a while and as they seem to like using the storage as forts that seems very doable. I don’t have any furniture with the exception of two chairs and a book case, but that seems like a good start. A part of me is starting to feel excited about my new opportunities.

One hardship that I am trying to figure out is the idea of living alone. I have realized as I have thought about it over the last few days that I really have never lived alone. I am not sure that I even really know how to do so. I will hear noises in the night and sit up, confused and frightened… listening and then finally able to go back to sleep. I find myself trying to fill the quiet and even a little bored as I look around wondering what I should do next. (I think putting myself on a schedule will be a bit important to stop that… I don’t think that’s a good habit to start.) I can have horrible dreams- many of which I can’t really fathom how to interpret so I find them not only terrifying but confusing and perplexing as well. So I no longer have any one to disturb if I can’t sleep or I am struggling, but that seems to make the struggle seem more difficult as it becomes even more obvious that I am all alone. I have the freedom to do whatever I want and so, in theory, that should be a benefit. But I guess I haven’t really ever learned to be alone and so I feel it keenly sometimes and I find it very difficult to not just lay down and cry. I find myself starting at the fridge and feeling relief and a little joy that I have food and a fridge and then think… but why bother… no one to eat with. How ridiculous is that? I think in some ways I have become a fresh adult ready and moved out from the parent’s home… I need to learn all the things that I never learned and I need to develop the wish/need to care for myself again. Scheduling, coping, all that stuff.

But I have made a good step forward. I have a safe place to stay and even though I am not sure I want to plants any real ‘roots,’ I can rest and try to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. I feel a little like my apartment- mostly empty but with good things and ready to accept them. Bug also enjoyed his visit today and I was able to really enjoy his company and we were both comfortable…. a wonderful experience. So I will see what I can do… and what other steps I can make…. : )