For today’s Rhapsody we will be playing the Newfoundland Rhapsody by Howard Cable performed by the Hillcrest Wind Ensemble
Other than most of the second half being a variation of “Sweet Betsy From Pike“, I quite like it.
Following up on my entry on biking from a few weeks a go I had been planning to do a number of entries regarding my ever growing list of the pet peeves of mild hazzards that occur when one is commuting on a bicycle.
Just yesterday I got a new one which was probably a once in a lifetime occurrence (here’s hoping) that I just had to share before I got to the more in depth tirades that I have planned for the future. One of the main parts of my commute consists of Lake City Way. I should point out that this is not a particularly smart route to take and lots of my fellow biker prefer to take the back roads. I still risk it because it gets around the worst hills in the area (there are times I’m convince that Lake City is at the very bottom of a small valley.) And as far as Lake City Way’s very heavy traffic it is safe enough for me to risk this calculated bit of stupidity.
Anyway what is probably the riskiest part of this is when you initially turn into Lake City Way from Ravenna Ave. The visibility isn’t perfect and there’s a few time’s I’m amazed I didn’t get clipped when I do it. If you know there is going to be a car making the turn about the same time you have to hug the side of the road as much as possible and it requires all of your concentration.
So this was the situation yesterday… and as it happened I heard I heard a loud barking right in my ear that surprised me so much I nearly lost my balance. As the car passed me I saw a Jack Russel Terrier sticking it’s head out of its window.
So here is my newest biking pet peeve (and this time it’s literal) Small dogs in cars barking at very inopportune times.
Today’s sketch is of the Lamentation of the Dead Christ by Massimiliano Soldani Benzi, I’ve done multiple sketches of this piece before but the beauty of these baroque bronzes is they are so detail heavy you can draw them hundreds of time’s at multiple angles and never get the same thing twice.
I know sometimes it seems that this entry is degenerating to nothing but different versions of Queen and Liszt but this one is fun. My opinions about the new Battlestar Galactica are… mixed. I enjoyed the first two seasons after that I felt it deserved all of the mockery it got… Like this video here.
Today’s sketch is of the painting “Boys Blowing Bubbles” a Flemish painting attributed to Michelaena Woutiers (The best article I could find on her was in Dutch, Sorry) Done in the 1640s in oil and is one of the Museum’s better examples of Chiaroscuro. A and a nice example of Flemish artists tendency to focus on slice of life scenes. In this case two boys playing (or at least one boy playing.. based on his facial features I have the sneaking suspicion that the other boy is a dwarf.)
When I was doing a little bit of research on this piece I stumbled over an interesting article from the Stranger about it. Until 2002 it had been attributed to Jacob van Oost, a 17th-century painter from Bruges. Regrettably little is known about Woutiers, one of the rare female court artists at the time, and credit was given to the slightly better known Van Oost. 
I’ve been thinking a lot about biking lately. I’ve been biking as a form of transportation for a long time. But for the longest time I’ve been a complete wimp about it. The instant there was so much a drop of rain (and in Seattle that happens quite a bit) I’d walk or take the bus, and usually I would pack the bike away once fall started.
But last year I had an epiphany. I had been house sitting for a friend and one of the fringe benefits I got out of it was getting to use his SUV. I hadn’t driven for years and so it was nice to have the luxury of going beyond my usual area of travel and do some errands for items that did not fit in my backpack. But the real great thing that became apparent over the week was that not counting anything that involved the highway that once you considered things like congestion and parking there really wasn’t that much difference between riding a bicycle time wise.
So I decided that this year I would not stop biking when the weather started getting bad. And taking the bus would be reserved for going downtown and pouring rain. It wasn’t pretty while contrary to popular belief rarely pours here it does just about everything else. While I refuse to whine about it let’s just say I became a master of waterproofing my backpack and it rarely gets that cold in this town my Yankee knowledge of layering has come in handy time and time again.
And despite the hardships it definitely began to pay off before I knew it I was biking places I had normally taken relaxed hikes to and found myself very surprised that I had an extra hour of free time to use on my way their. Soon I was biking everywhere north of the Ship Canal and felt safe going as far south as Mercer Ave. And of course now that busfare is up to 2.25$ I’m saving a fortune.
Now that the weather has finally turned around it’s nice for it to be a luxury yet again.
This weekend I took the next step. As I said earlier I decided to try biking to the Seattle Center for the Folklife festival. It turned out to be a great success and I ended up commuting on my bike for the rest of the weekend (16 miles round trip) While I think I regret it slightly I’m still a bit stiff right now I know if I keep it up (easier said than done working in a home office I don’t have to go anywhere every day) I can improve exponentially.
More thoughts on this to come.
