Be A Writer, It'll Be Fun

Arg. Tuesday is my writing night and this particular writing night has been mildly unproductive.  Or was that wildly unproductive.  Part of the problem is that I seem to want to write vignettes (which are static dead-ends) or  poetry (which I suppose counts as "art"). 

I guess I need to just force myself to write short stories based on a modular outline—what my friend Nina calls "roll-ups"—for the next few months just to get started and to have a story with an ending.  I'll have to see if I can come up with something other than "quest" or "secret library" or "whiney hero" plots (or "eye-candy" non-plots).  

Here; have a recent hummingbird photo.

Tiling Stars

One of my hobbies is playing around with different types of tilings.  Mostly I like to play around with Penrose Kites and Darts.  I also like to try to fit stars into regular patterns.  The most recent exploration that I've done comes from Daud Sutton's "Islamic Design," where he talks about making a grid out of right triangles, and then placing regular polygons and other shapes onto the edges and corners of the triangles.  In the case that I was interested in, he used five-pointed stars.  

Getting the stars down on the triangles was simple enough, but it took me a lot of wiggling to get the nine kite-shapes at the top and bottom of the design to look symmetric and not smooshed.

I'll have to see what sorts of patterns will result from right-triangles which form squares instead of hexagons.

A couple of weeks ago, I read about a technique for putting odd-numbered polygons and stars together.  Start with a figure, duplicate and reflect it, then make the two closest points touch.  Skip a point on ether side of the touching point, and place a reflected duplicate there, too.  This will make a repeating line, which you can put together into a mesh.  I tried it with 5-, 7-, and 9-stars; the 7-stars were the most aesthetic, so I put together some interwoven 7-stars into a larger interwoven pattern.

Whats fun about this technique is that it allows one to break away from patterns that are hexagon- or square-based. 

When In-laws Turn 90

The first week of February we flew to the east coast to celebrate Mark's Mother's 90th birthday.  Mark is one of seven children, and his mother has thirteen grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren (of which The Child is the oldest).  Almost everyone—including the Florida nephews and nieces—was able to come to the celebration, which lasted several days over the February 3 weekend; there were upwards of fifty people spanning four generations in the Suffern house.  

Probably the best way to describe the gatherings in full force is "a frat party with lots of theatre people."  Or possibly a slightly grittier version of backstage at The Muppet Show.  

Since there were so many relatives scheduled to attend the fancy birthday lunch, there was a raffle to "sit at the captain's table" with the birthday girl.  Since the instructions didn't specify a limit, Mark proceeded to fill out multiple tickets with his name on them.  This sparked a loud discussion among his sisters about the interpretation of the rules and whether Mark was stuffing the ballot or not.  During this time, The Child (at least) wrote Mark's name on an extra ticket, and somebody else submitted a ticket labeled "Anyone BUT Mark."  

When the tickets were drawn, Mark's name was drawn five times (six if you count "Anyone BUT Mark"), and after a consultation, Mark's Mother decreed Mark disqualified.  

"I've been sent away!" said Mark, "Banished."  Smeagol-like, at the fancy birthday lunch, he sat down at the captain's table and pretended to lick the forks.  

The lunch was a hearty Italian meal, with several courses (I had salmon).  The strangest aspect of the party was that it was the same venue as Mark's Mother's 70th birthday, but the room seemed smaller somehow. We couldn't figure out if the room had been painted a white back then and that the now red walls made the space seem closer, or if there had been some slight remodeling or additions.  

Afterwards, Mark and I took late-afternoon nap; the news of which alarmed one of the precocious young nieces, who firmly announced to her mother that she "did not take naps."  We rejoined the family at the Suffern house, which by this time, through the piano magic of one of the nephew-in-laws, had turned into a kind of piano bar with sing-alongs—I don't know what happened, one moment I was chatting in the living room, and then next moment I had a solo singing "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina."  The requests poured in—"This Land Is My Land," "Part of Your World," "Under the Sea," "Piano Man," "Bohemian Rhapsody," Scottish ballads— and folks were still singing when we left at midnight.