Reflections on Ray Bradbury

I heard this morning that Ray had passed on. I always smile when I think of him.  One day he rode the train up to San Luis Obispo, CA to speak at the Earthling Bookstore (now long gone). I snuck in the back door and ended up in the front of the seating area.

I remember some of the things Ray said. One local man who was often seen wandering the streets was there and in front of everyone explained the plot of the book he was writing.  After that long winded speech, he asked Ray how he should end it. And in the immortal words of Ray Bradbury, he said, "How should I know. It's your book."

Ray talked about taking the train up because he saw some relatives decapitated in a car once.  That cured him of wanting to drive. He talked about the Hoover Dam and how he told them if they built it like they planned it would leak, and it does.

He talked about typing 90 WPM because he used to have to rent the manual typewriter at the library and pay per minute. If you've never used a manual typewriter, your fingers had to be super strong to push those keys down.

He talked about living in Venice Beach for many years and roaming the streets because of insomnia.  If was fine when the city was in good shape, but as gangs and drugs took over, he often got stopped by the police and when they asked who he was, he said, "I'm Ray Bradbury." And they'd say, "I bet you are."

Then he signed everyone's copy of his book.  I don't remember what book he was selling that day but I brought one from home.  When I told him my name was Fayme, he said he'd never heard it before.  I said, "It's French." He said, "Are you French." And I said no. I kept hoping my name would appear in one of his books some day, but if it did, I never heard about it.

It was a special day and he was a special man.

Library Woes

I'm afraid I've become dependent on the library's automated e-mail system to tell me when my books are due.  I'll be paying for it today. Recently I changed my phone number. It didn't occur to me to tell the library.
Because I didn't tell them, evidently their whole renewal system is verified via phone number. So I didn't get the email that would have told me my 17 library books were due on Valentine's Day. Only this morning did I get an email saying their system couldn't verify my phone number.  Now why they didn't just go ahead and e-mail me is beyond me. Now I have to wait until 11 AM and drag my books over there and unless I can talk them out of it, pay the fine. Sigh.

Symbols and What They Mean To Me

I think about symbols a lot. I often wonder why am I involved with this or that symbol in my life right now. I use symbols all the time in my art.  Like a kite isn't just a kite. It can be a symbol of childhood, of freedom, of clairvoyance, or wind or air, and so on.

Here are some of my needle punch projects. Of course, the saguaro cactus is the symbol of the AZ desert. Dragonflies are a symbol of joy and summer. The ankh is an ancient Egyptian symbol of eternal life.
Symbols can have a conventional meaning, a spiritual meaning or a cultural meaning. Dragons mean different things in Asia than they do in Europe. Snakes mean different things whether you are in India or the U.S.A.

The Victorians were famous for their extensive use of symbolism. They even covered up piano legs because they symbolized a woman's legs. Each type and color of flower meant something, like a not-so-secret message. Even the movements of a fan could tell a suitor if the woman was available or married or mad at him.

Before Your Comment, Think

Can you believe this comment that was on one of my hubpages articles?
this is NOT HELP GUL AT ALL K IT IS NOT HIPPISH AT ALL SO U UNDERSTAND ME!NEXT TIME BEFOR U GO AND PUT SOMETHIND STUPID LIKE THT ON THE INTERNET LIKE THT USE A DICTIONARY TO SEE WHAT THE WORD MEANS OKAY!
LOVE ALWAYS
HEYWOOD

Smoking Takes Another Life

Everything happens for a reason. My mother's funeral was on Aug. 19, six years ago. She was a heavy smoker.

And my daughter's father in law just lost his battle with lung cancer, also on Aug. 19 just a few hours ago. The Dr. thought he had another six months. He smoked for 30 years. May he rest in peace.

When a noble man passes on
All you can do is be glad his pain is gone

He will not live to see the birth of his grandson in Sept.

I hope my mother is there to greet him as he passes over the veil. I'm not sure they ever met in real life but she would have liked him.

Happy 4th of July Suspenders and All

Hope you had a great one.

Bloggers New Templates and Google Adsense

I was really frustrated last week when I tried to tweak my Google AdSense widgets on some of my blogs. I got error messages on the blogs I was editing as well as on a new blog I created. I tried to resolve the issue by searching for answers on Google and on the help pages of Blogger and AdSense to no avail. So I crossed my fingers and hoped it was one of those issues that would fix itself if I just stopped mucking around with it.

Happily today I was greeted on Blogger by a pop-up window announcing new template software. It's been so hard to create decent original templates on Blogger. And I'm guessing that implementing that new feature was the thing that was mucking up Adsense on my blogs because today it's all working just fine. All the blogs I edited have the Adsense ads showing up again, and even the new blog is showing the ad boxes.

I've played around some with the new template features. So far it's been confusing. I did test out a few of the designs but still don't know if it will let me add my own photos to the backgrounds like Twitter and other sites do. So I still have a lot to check out. Please don't try it on your favorite blog that you've soaked hours into. Make a new blog or use one of your experimental blogs to test drive the new features.