Kids do the darnedest things...

Kids are funny little creatures. They have the ability to speak the truth (see: new clothes, Emperor's) and the wonderful and total belief that nothing is impossible. It's something us old fogies would do better to keep in mind sometimes. My friend Blair sent me the following link to a story on CNN on the amazing Charlie Simpson. The seven year-old British boy wanted to do something for the people of Haiti. He decided to ride his bike five miles around a park near his home with a goal of raising 500 British pounds. Word of his efforts caught the Internet's attention, and he recently passed the $240,000 mark.

The Daily Mail highlighted another seven year-old British boy undeterred by potential limits. Kieron Williamson attracted buyers from as far away as Japan and Canada when his watercolors, oils and pastels went to auction in November. The pictures sold out in under 15 minutes and earned the boy 17,000 British pounds. His mother arrived late to the sale and missed it completely. This after another auction last summer netted him 14,000 BP. Kieron just decided to start painting after a family trip to Devon and Cornwall; he showed no particular interest or aptitude before then.

Finally, the video above, courtesy of YouTube, is just fun. I'm not entirely sure how old the boy is or where he's from, but he exhibits excellent coordination. I've never really seen the appeal of the video game "Dance Dance Revolution" beyond a funny scene in "The Big Bang Theory", but this kid is amazing. I could never do what he does.

Exponentially cool...

This man to the left is Stephen Wiltshire. Diagnosed with autism at an early age, his teachers at school noticed he communicated to the world through art. One eventually taught their formerly mute pupil to speak - at age nine - by withholding his art supplies to get him to ask for them.

He progressed from animals to motor vehicles to buildings. Wiltshire has been featured in several documentaries on the BBC, including "Fragments of Genius" in which the BBC filmed him flying over London then creating a meticulous, to-scale drawing of the city within three hours.

He has created similar aerial illustrations, including one of Tokyo on a 10-meter long sheet of paper.

Entirely from memory. Again, ENTIRELY FROM MEMORY.

His artwork has been shown all over the world, and he has his own personal gallery in London in addition to multiple published books. The third, "Floating Cities" (1991) made the London Sunday Times Bestseller List.

PS - His birds-eye panorama of Rome may just be my favorite of his aerial skylines. The store section of his website is one that keeps you clicking through. Some pieces appear in color, some are oil paintings and some are simple black and white sketches. But all are amazing. I'm not much for art made after 1750, but I'm now Wiltshire's newest fan.

Monday morning round up...

So the little darling to the left (who refuses to look even remotely happy in pictures) is my first foster, Boogie. Yes, I know that is a horrible name for a cat (not my choice), so I've started calling her Boo or Bug, as in love-bug, since all she wants in life is to be in my lap, snoring.

I have a bunch of good stories which in no way connect to each other (much like my intro paragraph does not transition to this one), so I'm going to post an unthemed round up for today.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. made the news yet again (he of the arrested for breaking into his own home/grabbing a beer at the White House with the president). His research for a documentary led to two South Carolina men being posthumously pardoned for a murder they were convicted of 94 years ago.

Boston.com posted both the above and the following story on a Utah high school marching band that overcame personal grief to sweep the awards at the Rocky Mountain Marching Band Tournament. American Fork High School band lost its woodwinds instructor in a fatal bus crash just days before taking top honors. Heather Christensen grabbed the bus wheel when she noticed the driver had passed out; the bus crashed, killing Christensen, but all the students were unhurt.

Last week MSNBC reported on the potential discovery of a Leonardo da Vinci painting. Bought for $19,000 at an auction in 2007, what was thought to be a sketch by a 19th century German artist has been called the first da Vinci discovered in over 100 years. Da Vinci used his hands liberally when working, and analysis done by a Canadian forensic firm has proven there is a da Vinci fingerprint on this piece of art.

And finally, a blog on TIME's website reported on the first US reunion of the (living members of the) Monty Python comedy group in 40 years. Apparently, the show started a little slowly, with the actors a little uncomfortable with direct contact with the audience, but it picked up steam and the jokes started flying. I wish I had seen the program; I started watching Monty Python movies and sketches in middle school. It may have been my first taste of British humor, and it definitely left an impression. To this day, single lines from sketches like "The Spanish Inquisition" and "The Cheese Shop," not to mention from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and "Life of Brian" make me smile.

Sources of inspiration...

I get inspired by both the oddest and most mundane things. And usually one will inspire an idea of the opposite extreme. For example, watching an HGTV episode on redoing an Arts & Crafts house inspired me to replicate some typical stained glass designs from the period in cookies. Or a puzzle I picked up on a sort-of whim gave me the idea to completely do over a bathroom in my future home with a San Francisco theme (yeah, I know, but I have no idea what to tell you). Or a passing remark or random observation while out on a walk develops into my latest children's story. 

For artist Bill Guffey, his inspiration is Google. More specifically, Google Street View. The Christian Science Monitor reports Guffey is based out of rural Kentucky but frequently paints scenes from London, Paris and all other fancy cosmopolitan cities. He does it by typing in random locations in Google Maps and using the Street Views that come up as the scene. He recently finished a series on all 50 states. The photo for today's post comes from his blog. It's a scene from Burkesville, Ky. 

Some people find inspiration in popular media - books, music and movies. For me these usually provide a form of comfort or escapism, but whatever floats your boat. Bleacherreport.com has a story on a movie character come to life - Ricky "Bobby" James. If you draw inspiration from "Talladega Nights," I'd worry about you, but Ricky James is definitely someone worth looking up to. The 20 year-old car racer is a paraplegic after breaking the T7 bone in his spine at 16. He has since competed in all sorts of competitions I wouldn't try as a person with full use of her extremities and has won the 2008 West Coast Pro Truck Championship. 

So keep a weather eye out. Maybe the smallest thing you notice today will send you off in a completely different direction. Happens to me all the time...that explains a lot actually. ; )

The odd time when I miss something by not watching reality tv...

[Interior: late afternoon, early evening; in an apartment, a man and a woman sit facing one another on opposite couches; each has a laptop open]

Roommate: Hey, do you watch "America's Got Talent?"

Me: No. 

Roommate: Well, I'm sending you this anyway. 

[Roommate types (you can hear clicking noises)]

Roommate: It's a video of the winner of the Ukrainian version of that show. 

[I look up, one eyebrow raised]

Roommate: She paints with sand. She does this whole thing about the Nazis invading the Ukraine during World War II.

[Both of my eyebrows are now raised as high as physiologically possible]

Me: Seriously?

Roommate: Just watch it. It's mesmerizing.

And darned if he wasn't right. This video is 8:33 long but worth every second. I was immediately tempted to make a joke along the lines of "The Ukraine has talent?" but after watching this video...I mean, wow. She is good. I do have to tell you one thing about the end (and no, this does not give anything away). What she writes translates to, "You are always near."

One man's trash is another's treasure...

It really is all about perspective when it comes down to it. I've decided that is the secret to life - it's all in how you look at it. Yesterday I got up and walked dogs at the MSPCA as usual and after showering off six dogs worth of appreciation for treats, I gathered my things together to run a couple errands. One glance out the window canceled the trek to Target and instead sent me on an odyssey to the Berkshires. I'm not entirely sure who else would drive two hours each way on a whim, but I guess that's what makes me me. : ) Anyway, I decided on my destination after looking on the bright side of all this rain - the Bridge of Flowers located in Shelburne Falls, Mass., had to be beautiful now. So off I went and I was not disappointed. 

Speaking of the MSPCA, I went into the cat room yesterday for the first time since stationing my cat at my parents' house. It appears I've turned into more of a cat person than originally thought. I spent the last 15 minutes of my shift cuddling homeless kitties. One feline who recently made news, even all the way out west in the LA Times blogs, was Postina. She was found by a Boston mail carrier after being dumped in one of those big blue mail bins. After some TLC at the animal hospital she was adopted by the same mail carrier who found her. 

Recently I was listening to Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" on CD in the car. It tells, in language I can understand, how the universe was created and thus the rest of history. Part of it is devoted to prehistory and dinosaurs. In his imitable style, he does mention some of the more ludicrous examples of ignoring or misidentifying dinosaur bones. Recently, Australia has had no such issues. Yahoo! News reported paleontologists have found three new large species of dinosaurs in Oz, including one bigger, even-more-scary Velociraptor-type creature. These are the first dinosaur bones found in Aus since 1981 and seem to point to a more complex past than originally thought.

And in a perfect example of things not turning out as one may have thought at the start, porcelain created for an emperor in the Chien Lung dynasty (during the middle to late 1700s) has turned up in the hands of an average American woman. Reuters says that woman has scored the first $1 million appraisal on the TV show "Antiques Roadshow." Her father bought the pieces while stationed in China in the 1930s and '40s. Previously the highest estimate had been $500,000 for artwork. 

(Photo courtesy of LA Times blogs)

Wacky and Wonderful...

A few days ago I was extolling the virtues of the mysterious force on the Interweb that seemed to make themes appear whenever I went looking for happy news. That was not the first time I've marveled at this phenomenon on my blog.

Today is not one of those days. But they're all pretty cool.

I know it's June and Opening Day was ages ago, but I just stumbled onto this video on ESPN.com that shows Charlie Brown throwing out the first pitch at a Pirates game. While Charlie's struggles lay with kicking a football, the metaphor is apt for the Pirates, whose struggles often lay in both pitching and hitting. My old boss two schools ago was a huge Pirates fan, so I was kept up-to-date on baseball's buccaneers all summer regardless of whether I cared, but now I will admit to not having a clue how they are faring this season. Everyone loves Charlie Brown, so maybe some of his universal appreciation will rub off on the Pirates.

When I clicked on the following story, I thought it was the Metro paper that is ubiquitous to T stops all over Boston.  One of my roommates was actually featured in a "man on the street" survey months ago. But this link turned out to be to a Metro newspaper from the UK, and it had a story on a man who suffered a stroke six years ago, becoming an art genius after ensuing surgical treatment. The man says he couldn't draw so much as a stick figure before his stroke, and now he's, in his words, "Michelangelo." 

The Toronto Star had a neat story on May 31 about a class project , and the link to the story was "Boy writes to Heaven, receives response." That just begs to be clicked on. Turns out as part of a class project, the Canadian equivalent of fifth-graders were directed to write letters to God and tie them to helium balloons before releasing them. Bailey Pinto's letter landed in the yard of a lawyer a few towns away who was so touched by the contents, he wrote back in a "Yes, Bailey, there is a God" theme. 

(Photo credit: Metro.co.uk)