That's saying something.

"We know that the safest place in the world to work is where the Lord wants you to work."

These words were uttered by missionary Barry Mosier after he and his family survived a plane crash in the Congo. Read about it at CNN here.

Jason Dog Sits His Favorite Pups!

This is Winston. Isn't he cute?

Springing

The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and the temperature is rising. Must be spring. I took some pictures of a beautiful apple tree in blossom. Be sure to check them out here.

So long old friend

Aurthur C. Clark is dead at the age of 90.

See the CNN story here.

Dungeness, New Designs, and Narthex Painting

So, there's all kinds of stuff I have done over the last few months... most of which I wish I had written about, but have long since forgotten. I looked back through my photos and found some interesting things, so that's how I'll approach this. Photos help me to remember things. :-)

First, I'm going to go back to October to revisit my trip to Cumberland Island. The guys in my family took my grandfather there to celebrate his 79th birthday while the ladies stayed at home and enjoyed doing whatever it was they did.

There's all sorts of amazing things to see on Cumberland because it is 98% natural. There are only a few homes there, a handful of unpaved roads, and a few other assorted structures, but by and large it is a rather natural island. Wild animals roam the place and you are 100% guaranteed to run into one if you wander the island for a few hours. That's a WILD horse in the photo to the left, not your usual friendly Mr. Ed.

One of my favorite features is Dungeness, a mansion in ruins that was once occupied by the Carnegie family. I made one of my time-lapse videos of the place, which you can check out here. It's not the best one I've ever done, but it may give you a glimpse of it.

Here you can see me, my uncle, my brother, my grandfather, and my cousin standing in front of Dungeness.

I just wrapped a couple of design jobs for Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Atlanta. The church just celebrated its 150th anniversary and had hired me to produce a few items for them. The first piece I did was a banner. They had several produced, six or seven I think, and put them up all around the church. The church is in a rather busy area across from the capital building, so many, many eyes saw the banners. I took some time one Saturday afternoon back in the fall to take some pictures. I think they have since been taken down.

The second piece I did for them was a batch of greeting cards based on cut paper banners designed and produced by Ellen Phillips, an artist and member of Central Pres. Her banners are amazing! The first banner is a cityscape design (which was also used on the aforementioned banner). The second had a tree theme. And the third one was an active design with birds in flight. I took the preliminary sketches she had for these banners and converted them into a format suitable for printing. I laid out these designs on four different greeting cards. One card for each banner, plus one with all three on the front (pictured at left).

The third and final piece I did for them was very exciting to me. I remembered a technique called laser cutting from one of my previous places of employment. I had never done the technique myself, but was familiar with it. Basically a laser machine cuts a design into paper. By using a laser, instead of a traditional bladed die, you can achieve much more intricate designs. I realized that this process would be a great way to have a miniaturized version of Ellen's banners. At first I thought we would use this technique for the greeting cards, but that proved to be cost prohibitive. Instead the Central Pres. folks decided to get a small run of them to use as gifts for those involved in making their 150th anniversary celebration a reality. I scaled the three-up design to a larger format (18"x10"), tweaked the artwork for the laser cutting process, and then sent it off to the laser-cutting vendor. The resulting artwork, I have to say, was pretty cool. I hear that they eventually framed it on a maroon (one of the church's colors) matte board, which I was able to simulate with a maroon wall (see the photo to the left). All of the maroon areas inside the edges of the paper are actually holes cut out by a laser.

The narthex painting project I have been working on at my own church has finally been completed. I think it took around six months to finally finish. We had a great crew of church members working on it the whole time. I don't have any pictures of the finished piece, but the picture to the left shows it very close to completion. There are three stripes, representing the trinity, that run the entire length of the hallway. The wall is divided into sections, one for each season of the Christian year, each colored according to its appropriate liturgical color (By the way... the liturgical colors for Christmas aren't green and red. They are gold and white). Important days in the Christian year are denoted by some sort of icon. At some point I'll post more detailed pictures. Perhaps I'll even dedicate a whole journal entry to this project. After all that work I think it deserves it.

Falling Off the Face of the Earth

Yes, I admit it. I have fallen off the face of the Earth. I am floating through space and enjoying the view of the stars and other planets. The solar wind is nice this time of year, don't you think?

In actuality my mind has been on many other things in recent months and I just haven't had the time or inclination to update my website. Though, I did fit a graphic redesign in a few weeks ago. Did you notice?

To Gillian and Aaron: Thank you for checking in with me here and there. I am sorry I haven't responded in a more direct way. I promise I will pick up the phone soon to say hi.

Will write again soon.

Wildlife and Soup Kitchens

Today began like no other day in my life.

I started house sitting two days ago at a remote north Atlanta home that is situated on the banks of the Chattahoochee River. I've been taking care of 'Joe', a friendly, yet instinctual canine. We've wandered the rather large property together several times for some exercise, played fetch with a large stick in an expansive field (though I'm usually fetching the stick from Joe's mouth as he doesn't quite get the concept), and napping in the house.

Joe startled me awake this morning with some rather ferocious barking. I bumbled sleepy-eyed toward him and when I looked out the window I saw a canine-shaped specter drifting across the backyard. Joe kept barking at the top of his lungs, and clearly the creature heard him, because its large ears perked up and its head turned to look at the two of us as it continued to cruise across the yard.

Before leaving, Joe's owner warned me that the remote property had wild visitors from time to time, and among the most recent sightings were coyotes. The owner told me I would usually only hear them and that they would either howl or sound like dogs fighting. Of course it's a bad idea to let Joe out when they are around because his territorial instincts would kick in, he'd chase them down, and then find himself completely outmatched.

So, here I am at five o'clock in the morning with Joe barking his head off, staring out the back window with a coyote staring right back at me. The coyote trotted off to the left and disappeared into the woods. Joe was on high alert for the rest of the morning.

My encounters with wildlife had just begun, though. After I fed Joe and took him on an observed walk, I walked out to my car for an appointment. I had just cranked my car and headed up the driveway, when a LARGE buck crossed in front of me. I just stopped and stared.

My 'appointment' was with a soup kitchen where I have been volunteering lately. Since my friend Ashley asked me to go with her a little over a month ago, I have been (almost) every Thursday to the Open Door Community on Ponce de Leon Avenue near downtown Atlanta. Today was a Thanksgiving meal, which was quite a bit more elaborate than usual. For starters, there were at least three times the usual amount of volunteers. As you can imagine there were quite a bit more people to be served than normal too, so the place was packed to the gills with people. I think the final number served was 316. The food was also much better. I don't know where it came from... probably a local church, but it was all the traditional Thanksgiving food. Turkey, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, green beans, dressing and gravy, and much more.

As usual, after all of the homeless people were served, the volunteers cleaned up, and then shared the leftovers together. Our meal is always preceded by a time of prayer, scripture reading and reflection. Today we learned that one of the regulars was found dead this morning outside a homeless shelter. No cause was given, but we prayed for him, his family, and the all other homeless people who live like he did.

I came 'home' to find Joe giddy and excited to see me. We immediately went on one of our long walks and as we were strolled along the Chattahoochee, I saw a beautiful crane. We came back to the house, where we chilled out and watched some TV (some show about how to survive in the Sahara desert, where the host gutted a camel and used it for shelter [yuck!]), when I heard very soft howling through the living room windows. It seems the coyotes are still around.

================================================
Links of Interest

Two Dollar Trick
Drumline Meets Revenge of the Nerds
Save the Paper Towel Forests
The Elevator of Conformity. How would YOU react?