KDW

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For the longest time the Dittrich house had displayed this poster from a 1970 National Geographic magazine showing on one side the stars of the Northern hemisphere, and on the other, the Southern. Since we lived in the mid-Atlantic states only the Northern hemisphere was shown. When I found the same poster in a thrift store decades later, I was fascinated by the Southern side which I had never seen, the stars including Canopus, Achernar, and Rigil Kent, with constellations like the goldfish and the chameleon. Here’s a part of it. It really is a gorgeous poster.

Alas, no purple rain…

We don’t need no stinkin’ lifeguard!

No kitties were physically injured in the making of this picture.

Dignity is not physical.

Steampunk is one of the hippest trends in music and decorative arts right now. The design aesthetic is retro-futuristic, what the 21st century might have looked like if science had never progressed beyond Victorian-era technology. Cars are powered by steam boilers, computers by clockwork. The dominant metals are copper and brass. Steampunks themselves dress in tattered velvet and lace embellished with leather and obscure bits of cogwork. Edward Scissorshands is a good example of a proto-steampunk. When Disneyland’s Futureland received a makeover in the late 1990s, it was an 1890s Jules Verne  makeover.

Then there are those who decorate their houses and cars steampunk-style.

The car looks a prop from the rock metal band Gwar, but it is real and drivable. The spiky thing on the arch, which looks like a deep sea anglerfish cast in metal, is emblamatic of the steampunk style, as atoms and electrons were to 1950s design, daisy blobs to the 1960s, and hexagons to the 1970s.

This was taken on a more recent trip to Mars.  I went first class this time.  It was fun!

Violet!  Did you see this?

I have a friend at work whose birthday is in April.  Sometimes I make her a bunny birthday cake.  But I don’t do it every year, so she never knows if THIS will be the one!

My mission today took me to Kalaeloa Harbor.  I sort of knew where it was, and I was sure I had seen signs pointing the way.  So I set out.  Yes, the signs were all there and I was driving down the road in a very industrial part of the island.  Lots of big commercial truck, and burly men in huge pick-ups.  And me.  In my little old lady Saturn.

Then I didn’t see any more signs to the harbor, so I thought maybe they took them down or something.  But I want around a bend in the road and saw…boats!  However, none of them looked like the one I was searching for.  And the sign said “permit parking only”.  There were 2 security guards there in a golf cart.  I told them my daughter was away at college and when she heard the Black Pearl was here she begged me to take some pictures.  They laughed, and pointed me in the right direction.

So here she is…