Needlework and computer coding might seem to be incongruous pursuits, but for the Dutch artist Anna Lucia Goense, the combination has provided infinite creative possibilities.
“If you look at cross-stitching or working with a loom or even knitting patterns, they are always binary systems on grids,” said Ms. Goense, 33, who is known professionally as Anna Lucia. Her focus is generative art, a process that involves designing systems, manipulating parameters and fine-tuning algorithms to create artworks that can range from browser-based animations to textiles such as quilts and embroidered fabrics.
Along with the concept itself of art from computer code, I had to admire the role of syllables in that sentence:
… generative art, a process that involves designing systems, manipulating parameters and fine-tuning algorithms to create artworks that can range from browser-based animations to textiles such as quilts and embroidered fabrics.
flag of stars, of man! sure and steady step, passing highest flags of kings
“Flag Day, Fifth Avenue, July 4th 1916” by Frederick Childe Hassam.
FLAG of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting! Long yet your road, fateful flag!—long yet your road, and lined with bloody death! For the prize I see at issue, at last is the world! All its ships and shores I see, interwoven with your threads, greedy banner! —Dream’d again the flags of kings, highest borne, to flaunt unrivall’d? O hasten, flag of man! O with sure and steady step, passing highest flags of kings, Walk supreme to the heavens, mighty symbol—run up above them all, Flag of stars! thick sprinkled bunting!
Flag of Stars By Walt Whitman as printed in Walt Whitman: The Complete poetry and selected prose and letters, London, The Nonesuch Press, 1964
how the time matters in which virtue of even the best man happens
Proh Dolor! Quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cujusque virtus incidat.
Or …
Oh, how much does it matter into what times the virtue of even the best man falls!
Or …
O how much does the time matter in which the virtue of even the best man happens.
Or …
Even the best of men may be born in times unsuited to their virtues.
It is the Latin, Proh Dolor! Quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cujusque virtus incidat, that is carved on the tomb of Pope Adrian IV.
He got to be Pope for of one and a half years during the Reformation (January, 1522 to September, 1523).
The ONLY Dutch Pope.
Some felt he would have been a GREAT Pope but for his untimely death and that his attention during his Papacy was taken over by Protestant protests.
Thus the inscription on his tomb, Proh Dolor! Quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cujusque virtus incidat, or Even the best of men may be born in times unsuited to their virtues.
I have to say that, while I will not be counted among the best of men, I am certainly born in times unsuited to my virtues.
FDR is once wrote to Winston Churchill that it It was fun to be in the same decade with you.
Well it isn’t fun being in the same decade as that man in office.
Taking a cue from the white house, folks are crabby, folks are mean, folks are cutting and because of this folks are worried and folks are unceratain.
Americans used to and were used to living carefree lives compared to most of the world.
Care Free!
No one was going to come to our door and demand to come.
We never had to ‘show our papers’.
I didn’t even know what ‘papers’ were.
For much of what the World worried about, Americans were care free.
Not any more and all because of one man.
It isn’t fair that I have live in the same decade with that man.
Proh Dolor! Quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cujusque virtus incidat.
BTW, after Adrian VI, it was another 460 years before the Catholic Church tried out another Pope who wasn’t Italian.
but I shall stay the way I am because I … I do not give a damn
OBSERVATION
If I don’t drive around the park, I’m pretty sure to make my mark. If I’m in bed each night by ten, I may get back my looks again, If I abstain from fun and such, I’ll probably amount to much, But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn.
As printed in Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker This material may be protected by copyright.
he made the Lord seem … so real … after a long pause he just said amen
Re-reading … well, listening to the audio book as I drive to work, the book Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Burns, I was again struck by the bit of dialogue between the hero, Will Tweedy (Yes, this is where I got Boy! Howdy!) and his Grandpa when Will has a near death experience after being run over (he lay low in the tracks) by a train.
Ms. Burn’s writes, picking up the story here where Will has told his Grandpa what happened – (The dialect is rural Georgia, to the east of Atlanta of the early 1900’s):
With the way he took it so casual, and the relief of getting it told, I felt like I’d been stuck back together. But one thing worried me. “Grandpa, you think I’m alive tonight cause it was God’s will?”
“Naw, you livin’ cause you had the good sense to fall down ‘twixt them tracks.”
“Maybe God gave me the idea.”
“You can believe thet, son, if’n you think it was God’s idea for you to be up on thet there trestle in the first place. What God give you was a brain. Hit’s His will for you to use it—p’tickler when a train’s comin’.”
Resting my chin in my hand, I thought about that while Grandpa finished up his pie. I felt awful tired. “Sir, do you think it was God’s will for Bluford Jackson to get lockjaw and die?”
Grandpa spoke kindly. “The Lord don’t make firecrackers, son. Hit’s jest too bad pore Blu didn’t be more careful when he was shootin’m off.”
“You don’t think God wills any of the things that happen to us?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows?”
“Mama and Papa think He does.”
Grandpa licked some meringue off his fork while he pondered.
Finally he said, “Life bullies us, son, but God don’t.
He had good reasons for fixin’ it where if’n you git too sick or too hurt to live, why, you can die, same as a sick chicken.
I’ve knowed a few really sick chickens to git well, and lots a-folks git well thet nobody ever thought to see out a-bed agin cept in a coffin.
Still and all, common sense tells you this much: everwhat makes a wheel run over a track will make it run over a boy if’n he’s in the way.
If’n you’d a-got kilt, it’d mean you jest didn’t move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog.
You think God favors the dog over the rabbit, son?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t neither. When it comes to prayin’, we got it all over the other animals, but we ain’t no different when it comes to livin’ and dyin’.
If’n you give God the credit when somebody don’t die, you go’n blame Him when they do die?
Call it His will? Ever noticed we git well all the time and don’t die but once’t?
Thet has to mean God always wants us to live if’n we can.
Hit ain’t never His will for us to die—cept in the big sense.
In the sense He was smart enough not to make life eternal on this here earth, with people and bees and elephants and dogs piled up in squirmin’ mounds like Loma’s dang cats tryin’ to keep warm in the wintertime.
Does all this make any sense, Will Tweedy?”
They’s a heap more to God’s will than death, disappointment, and like thet.
Hit’s God’s will for us to be good and do good, love one another, be forgivin’….”
He laughed. “I reckon I ain’t very forgivin’, son.
I can forgive a fool, but I ain’t inner-rested in coddlin’ hypocrites.
Well anyhow, folks who think God’s will jest has to do with sufferin’ and dyin’, they done missed the whole point.”
Grandpa had made the Lord seem so real, I wouldn’t of been surprised if he’d said good night to Him. But after a long pause he just said a-men.
Finally he said, “Life bullies us, son, but God don’t.
Well anyhow, folks who think God’s will jest has to do with sufferin’ and dyin’, they done missed the whole point.”
