Tomorrow the woodchuck tries to predict the end of winter. I have a hunch he's not going to want to climb out of it's warm bed just to see if the shadow is there. I know I won't feel like it. Even inside this computer room it's pretty darn cold. I have moved my email and various other accounts to this machine, which was a gift from Larry and runs XP, as opposed to the old thing which runs ME and frequently has to be rebooted several times just to get up and running. I backed up a lot of graphics to a portable hard drive and then spent a lot of time trying to convince Picassa that it should import these pics to this new machine. Now I just have to go thru about 4000 images and somehow find catagories for them to make them more useful. I really enjoy Picassa, it makes posting images to my blog easy as pie and organizing even massive amounts of images becomes pretty easy. I really would like to publish my better images, I think some of what I've done is worthy of public notice. Besides, Larry gave me the camera and in his name I would like to use it well.

Speaking of public notice, I am working on a project for the National Museum of Dance here in Saratoga. It's an exhibit springboarding from Isadore Duncan's dances and set in a Greek temple or shrine. I'm using three existing pieces of mine: Persephone, Artemis, Dancer (playing the role of Demeter) and a new piece I haven't created yet, Aphrodite. I'd have like to have been able to design the thing myself, but they already have designers, I just have to supply some of the art. It's very exciting in part because the exhibit is scheduled to be up for a year! Now if it generates a commission or two that would be swell. I have a number of pics of Isadore dancing and will use that energy to come up with a good design. The lady running the show obviously has strong feelings toward Duncan and the various Goddesses she portrayed. Those feelings are not always in synch with mine, as she seems to be working off the later, classical period and I tend to pull the stories back to their origin points. Thus, she talks of the rape and abduction of Persephone and I lean toward her incarnation as Inanna, who went down on her own to visit her sister.

My brother in law has had open heart surgery to repair a bad valve and two arteries. He's going thru the climb upwards back to the light, seeing insects on the walls and having odd fixations and dreams. Poor Sis doesn't know what to make of it, but she is really scared. He just retired, doesn't like to eat right and like Dad, seemed to think he could dog it out by being tough. Well, he is tough and that will help him, but it is the love of his wife that will give him the kind of strength he needs. Sis does love her man and she will fight tooth and nail to keep him alive. I wonder if she can see the common thread here between the classical Persephone and her own experience? In this case the sexes are reversed and the abduction was done by a heart attack, so the abductor is the victim himself... but we still have the image of going down, down, to the dark unknown and then rising to a new life, changed inside and out.

This month they want to stick more chemicals into my spinal fluid to try to undo some pain. The first time I tried epidurals it did nothing, but they want to try different chemicals. I have an appointment with the pain management people on the 23rd, and the orthopedic on the 27th. I hope something happens. I had to move Artemis down the stairs to take it to the lady from the museum so the designers could see what we have and I discovered that I could barely lift it, much less walk it down the stairs. I used lots of padding and a dolly finally. But I built that piece and I used to be able to move her around fairly easily. My weakness annoys me a lot. Today I am suffering a lot from the lifting. My back is like a sheet of steel and feels like I'm in a collossal vise. So I am cutting this entry short. It's really tough typing...

Jon is still Jon but I hope to go back down and try to move some papers around to get him on a list to move him to the Saratoga area. Since they no longer bother with stimulation therapy... since they have given up on him... I can get as good a care up here as down there. Turn him, clean him, talk to him. I can do the rest.

Talk to ya later. There's more going on.