Jan-Ai Scholarship Week: Day One, remembering Jenn See


(All images are portions of the painting ‘Art Heart’. Copyright Greg Spalenka)

β€œArt enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
~Thomas Merton

One early Friday morning in June of 2006, the 23rd to be exact, I awoke early and posted a Friday Favorite on artist Greg Spalenka. I had long admired his art and was especially enamored of the image that I opened the profile with, his collage/painting Art Heart. I didn’t have any particular reason for choosing to feature Spalenka’s work that day, it just felt right. Little did I know how right that feeling would turn out to be.

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The Incredible Hulk

Wow! I have to admit it…I am impressed. I honestly did not think they could do it. Not after the critical success of Iron Man.

Let’s be honest, it would not take much to reboot the Hulk after the Ang Lee disaster a few years ago. I have never seen a final act derail a movie the way that Lee’s Hulk film did, ever. So while I had little doubt that this film would be better, I certainly didn’t expect Marvel to release back-to-back comic book adaptation films this closely together and have both of them be outstanding.

But they did it. All hail Marvel Comics.

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Tis the Summer Of…

β€œA perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.”
~James Dent

I have mentioned on this blog before that seasonal changes have a great effect on me. Though it be a seemingly arbitrary date, the day that signals a change of season, in concert with the weather changes in and around those days, seems to provide a natural, unconscious, jump start for me. Without making a fuss over it I find that my reading spikes, times of greatest energy, etc. seem to fall in line very clearly with the beginnings of those 4 seasons around which our year is structured.

Summer, I must admit, is my least favorite of the seasons. I do not think it was that way when I was a child, but the lack of a ‘summer vacation’ as an adult causes me to see this season simply as the one in which it becomes unbearably hot and humid and my desire to be outdoors all but dries up with the grass.

A couple of years back I determined that I was no longer going to let the summer months pass by in a wave of heat. Looking back over previous years I noticed that the number of books I read, etc. dwindled miserably in the summer. It was then that I decided that each summer should be treated as if I was still a kid…at least in so much as I could still have some sort of summer reading program of my own. In addition I could set other goals for summer accomplishments that would help me resist the natural tendency towards sloth.

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The Beginning of the End

To quote from Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we have now come to “the true beginning of our end”.

Depending on where you live:

“in the Northern Hemisphere on: June 20, 2008 at 7:59 PM EDT; and in the UK on June 20, 2008 at 23:59 UTC.”

tonight is Midsummer’s Night…the Summer Solstice…and it marks the end of our second annual journey to the land of “Once Upon a Time”.

But with sadness comes joy, because there are prizes to be had!

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Eclectic Musings of a Renaissance Geek