2013 Arts on the Green, Davidson NC

I was in Davidson this morning at 7:30 with Jim and Beni to help Jan Black get her tent and displays assembled for the “Arts on the Green” in Davidson.  Arts on the Green is not your usual art festival in that the artists’ work is vetted by their peers and only the best artists are invited.

I got to see some of Jan’s latest works for the first time today. To see the improvement in her work is inspiring. She has always had an eye for a good photograph and she could take a picture with a cell phone and get results that I can’t get with a Nikon.  Now that she has a professional grade camera, the result is awesome.

Jan’s subjects have gone beyond sunsets and sailboats, although those subjects are well represented. She has mountain streams, waterfalls, park shots and even a lake shot with a fish jumping from the water. There are wonderful pictures of an old mill, and a geometric taken from the inside of the mill's water wheel is gorgeous, with the rust and moss adding the color contrast. The detail on the sailboat shots is amazing.

She has introduced two new media for this show. Some of the prints are now on metallic paper that makes the colors really pop. And the pieces de resistance are the sailboat pictures printed on metal. They look like 1” deep gallery mountings but they are actually on metal sheet. These are not affected by weather so they are suitable for patio or boathouse, unlike paper photographs which can wrinkle in humid conditions. The brilliant red sail on one of the metal pictures really grabs your eye, with almost a 3-D effect.

You can see Jan’s work, along with the other better artists in the Davidson area, today and tomorrow, April 20-21, 2013 at Arts on the Green in Davidson NC.  

Ivory Soap....And Witches?

Sometimes you just have an unusual train of thoughts while in the shower. Sometimes it’s a brilliant idea that later goes away because you don’t have time to write it down before leaving for work. Yesterday, I was thinking about how long this particular bar of soap had lasted. I started thinking about the soap we used when I was a child and how quickly a bar would be used up.

We were an Ivory house. Ivory Snow for the laundry. Ivory Flakes for hand washing “unmentionables.” And, then there was Ivory Soap. 99 and 44/100% pure. So pure that it floats! Actually it floated because it was whipped with air. It was about 35% air. That’s why an Ivory Soap bar the same weight as Palmolive or Dial was 50% bigger and had a score line so you could break it in half and actually hold it in one hand.

So pure that it floats! That led me to think of witches. In Colonial Virginia, witches were ducked. They had a seat on the end of a long pole. A suspected witch was strapped to the seat and dunked in the river. This was called a witch duck. If she was a witch, she would drown. If she was pure, she would not drown and would survive.

In the City of Virginia Beach, where I lived for six years when I was in my twenties, one of the major streets is Witch Duck Rd. In colonial times, this road wound its way down to the river where the witch duck was. I don’t think I need to explain what was at the end of Pleasure House Road.

My Thoughts on Gun Control

With all the hype and hysteria that accompanies gun control these days, we need to think about the situation before we jump to conclusions.

For what it's worth, I think North Carolina does it right and I wish more states would copy what they do. To purchase a handgun, you need a purchase permit issued by the county Sheriff following a check of police records. Gun show and internet sales still require the permit and delivery of the gun to the purchaser must be through a licensed gun dealer.

To get a concealed carry permit, you have to undergo 8 hours of classroom training (which includes about 2 hours of legal training) followed by range certification. Then you have to undergo an interview by the Sheriff's department, a full background check, fingerprinting and a mental health background check.

The Manchin-Toumey Amendment to the Senate Gun Control Bill sounds a lot like this doesn't it? But this amendment was in fact an attempt to water down the requirements of the bill in the Senate to make it more palatable to moderates. But, the Senate Gun Control Bill goes so much further, I believe it to be unconstitutional. It seeks to control the types of gun you can buy. (Automatic weapons are already banned unless you have a federal permit.) It seeks to control the quantity of cartridges your gun can hold. It seeks to ban certain types of rifles because they look like military rifles, not because of the way they operate. There's also this thing about a federal registry of gun owners.

Two other things to consider:

One size does not fit all. Why should the rancher in Texas or Arizona be limited to a long rifle with 6 cartridges? If he is confronted with a smuggler trying to cross his ranch who is armed with an illegal automatic weapon, he should at least be able to defend himself with a modern AR-15 with a 15 or 30 round magazine.

Also, if there are abundant concealed carriers in an area, it is a big deterrent. There are armed people with training who can legally act in self defense or to prevent the loss of life or injury to others. Why is it that the 3 cities with the tightest gun control, Chicago, Detroit and Washington DC, have the highest rates of gun crimes? It is because of an unarmed citizenry. Only the criminals have guns.

If there is going to be gun control, it needs to be at the state level. Let the state's citizens decide the level of gun control that is needed in their state and then enforce the existing laws.