Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum

Beyond Blog and Art - Patriots and Paradigm Shifts

Beneath the blogger, and past the artist, is the woman. And in many ways as I look at what I am today, I see who I was as a child. Like all of us, I'm an amalgamation of things I saw, opportunities I had, and who I learned from.

In July of some year in the mid nineteen-fifties I fashioned what I must have thought of as very Yankee Doodle-ish hats out of folded newspaper, decorated neighborhood bike spokes with red white and blue streamers, grabbed my baton and organized a parade for the neighborhood kids. For as long as I can remember, the summer holidays, with their wave of patriotism have been special to me.

Some of what makes me who I am is there on a cellular level. Most of my family genepool is rooted in colonial America of the very early 1600s. Only one grandfather came later - and he  from Thurles in County Tipperary Ireland around 1900.

It was he who taught me my earliest and most profound lessons about what it meant to be a proud - and grateful - American.

It's not that the other grandparents - those of the deep New England family trees - were not patriots. Through the generations each defended their country when need arose.

One, William Allison, was with the Mount Joy Militia in the Revolution. Another, Martin Gifford, carried his friend General Strong Vincent down from Little Round Top where he was mortally wounded in the battle of Gettysburg.

It's just that Grandpa Ryan - with the thick brogue, ready tune to hum, black thorn walking stick and perpetually misplaced reading glasses - nearly glowed when he spoke of the opportunity that this country had afforded his sister Mary Ryan Clair and her husband Jerry - and then he and two brothers who followed them to Lake County Ohio. 

continue reading below -

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Memorial Day : Honoring the Fallen, and Those Who Risk their Lives

It's people who were probably a lot like Navy mechanic Anthony Gonzales that we honor this weekend. The difference is that Gonzales is not present just in the memories of family and friends, and his life is not marked today with an American flag placed on a grave.

While you read the story of this man who like many others risk their lives to protect our freedom, remember those who did not live to see home again, whose lives and service we honor on Memorial Day. There's a special download for you below as well. Use it with pride.

It's likely that Gonzales thought that whatever contribution our service men and women make is a valuable one. But for his part he just didn't want to tell his grandchildren that his time of service during the war on terror was spent working on engines in Hawaii.

 

Join Me @ Gather

I hope you'll remember that I'd love to have you be part of my Gather network. It's simple to just click and read, browse photos, or participate however you want.

Want to show someone a bracelet you made? Upload it to Gather and send them over. You get points for posting it AND for checking out other people's material too.

This is what I call a win-win situation.

Linking Thursday, Friday, Clouds, Gather and Liz's SOB

Whiner that I am, while marveling at the amount of stuff Tulip Hill Studio artist and publisher Carole Pivarnik's gets done (check out her blog and meet Carole here)  I also have to complain about how unproductive I've been and how I fell asleep yesterday morning after breakfast.

But - no matter how lousy I was performing there are a couple of accomplishments over the past week or so I'm not able to "but" away.
The tag cloud thing has been niggling at me for literally months and this week it's finally working on my blogs. Whatever it was that I was using first - and honestly it's been so long ago I don't remember - gave me fits; and here comes my famous "but". . . .

. . . BUT after discovering zoomclouds I'm really pleased with how easy it was to configure, drop the code that it built for me into a typepad type-list, then drag and drop it to the spot I wanted it in the typepad layout map. Whhoooooeeee, you know?

Having an opportunity to participate in the Habits Highly of Successful Bloggers writing project spawned by Darren Rowse of problogger net was enjoyable and I was happy to expound on the topic. Oh you're so surprised; right?

I got my Blue Star family link up properly (I think) and want to take the opportunity

Illustration Friday Mixed Media Art : It's My Party

Illustration Friday's topic today was a yummy one: cake! I celebrated the excuse to explore a dreamy swirl of soft images and lighthearted pleasure.

And what could be more appropriate for work coming out of the Artsy Asylum Studio?

Cotton candy, candles and confetti danced into a summer birthday celebration in my imagination.

So my entry whips up layer upon layer of  candied confection laced with hints of streamers and peaks of icing in the dreamscape titled It's My Party.

Clicking on the image will give you an enlarged version. And would you like a scoop of rainbow sherbet with that?

Veiled - New Mixed Media Art

For the theme 'Word Art' from  'Inspire Me Thursday' this multiple layered mixed media image emerged, much to the delight of my offbeat muse.

The piece is titled: Veiled.

Click on the image for a closer view.

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Gathering and Weaving Your Web of Connections, Ideas and Information

I've found Gather to be a nice way to generate blog & Cafepress Gift Gallery traffic from people who would never go looking for me in a blog search engine. So it's my helpful tip of the week this Thursday morning.

What makes me think this is worth my time?

1.) It is bringing inbound traffic to my Cafepress gallery site, Blogs & On-screen Art Puzzles

2.) Business Week: Gather = one of the Top Desktop Diversions of 2006

3.) Price? Free  -  But sharing content ( articles, poems, stories, even photos ) pays YOU

Instant Messaging & Email Etiquette Tips for Bloggers

Filched in its entriety from ProBlogger.net, this says exactly what needs to be said, nicely but in a straightforward way. Instant Messaging Etiquette Tips for Bloggers is a great post - and boy is he right on target with these  points:

"If you’re going to ask questions at least make some attempt to find the answers for yourself first - . . . It might be a good idea to head to their blog before you IM them and do a search for the information you’re looking for. "

"At least make an attempt to do this before asking your question - you’ll probably find they’ve answered the question at least once already on their blog." 

It's something I also encounter in online groups and in email. And it never ceases to amaze me.  "What's Macrame?"  "How do you make papier mache?" "What's an Altoids box?"

huh? . . .

Habits of Effective Bloggers

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ProBlogger.net's Darren Rowse decided he was going to write an article about the Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers. Then as it progressed he was

frustrated because he could easily see that  some successful bloggers did the things on his list while others totally - um - didn't.

And so Darren's 'Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers Group Writing Project' was born; reaching out to gather multiple opinions about things "that new bloggers wanting to grow in their ’success’ or ‘effectiveness’ might find useful."

It's not essential that you do everything on my list - these simply work for me.
They are straightforward and relatively easy to put into practice - but if you find any particularly helpful - or crazy - feel free to talk back, Conversations are what make the bloggosphere the wonderland it is.

1.)  Write as You Can Carve Out Time.

Be it five minutes or an hour. Jot ideas on your PDA and beam to the computer when you can. Phone-blog. Do it in bite sized morsels. Blog instead of watching TV - or while waiting for soccer practice to end.

Use the Type-Pad Quick Post from your Firefox toolbar when you see something that you want to talk about. It takes a minute - literally. Save as 'draft' and come back when you've time to flesh it out.

Use the time-tested mom's trick and lock yourself in the bathroom for some alone time to carve out your blogging niche.

In short - do whatever you need to do to get it done.  

2.)   Add Images

Giving the reader one more thing to catch his/her attention and stay on your blog a  minute longer just has to be a good thing.  

3.) Enjoy what you Blog about and it won't Feel Like Work. 

Have opinions about baseball? Then don't blog about football because you think that will be more popular.

Readers will be entertained by your passion for the game and your insights about why Cal Ripken became a Bal'mer insitution. With the help of  other bloggers the readers will find you

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Easy Tips Bring You Web Visitors & Indie Virus Fans

Let's say you've got some kind of online presence. It could be a flickr page -or an eBay sellers page - or a flapr map page - a blog - a website - whatever.

So you need to get some traffic to the site. It's likely that you don't realize the huge amount of control you have in who finds you and learns about what you do

To do that you can rely on WOM (word of mouth, a golden tool if there ever was one) and after that you need some help from Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Technorati to point people your way.

A super way to get both Word of Mouth "free advertising" and help your reputation with Search Engines is what I'm going to teach you to do today:

We'll use this highlighted and annotated image of one of my blog pages as an example

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First click the image to get an enlargement of the "show and tell"

You'll notice that I've made notes on the page to point out areas that will help you market yourself, your blog, your photos - whatever.

- - - -

A.) Option #1: Comment on a post.

The comment form asks for your Name & a URL - which can be whatever you want people to see. Your Flickr Page? Your Frappr Map? Some Photo album website? Your Blog? Your eBay sellers page? Your Cafepress Main Page? All your choice entirely what you put in that box.

To show you how this works:

Take a look at the "Recent Comments" list on the image of the sample page. Now click on Laura Ricci's name in that list.

This takes you to her comment on an article. Next click on her name right there in front of the comment. Voila! You find yourself at her blog.

She has just gotten incoming traffic just from your reading her name and looking to see who she is and what she is showing us.

more tricks ahead . . . read on . . .