My my, July 2024

July seemed like a good month! Summer is still a fresh new thing in July. It feels delightful to slip out for an ice cream cone or bring in a load of clothing sun-warm from the line. Here are some things I got up to this past month.

My Own Oracle Cards

I've been thinking about my personal values: things that are important to me, that I think are good and important, and that I want to hold onto and grow. My values include creativity, curiosity, authenticity, humor, and embodiment. Because I like oracle cards, I thought it would be cool to try to make cards with these values. For artwork, I turned to the public domain photography at the National Gallery of Art. It is a TREASURE TROVE! I had a great day on the 4th of July just scrolling and scrolling through hundreds of photographs that are available for download. All of those people, those expressions, those relationships, those souls, looking at the camera from long ago. I picked photos I especially loved and matched them up with a list of values using the Procreate app on my iPad. This is a little of my work in progress:

Next I want to figure out how to print or stick these onto cards somehow.

Gaming

I've been playing Legend of Zelda games for over 2 years now, including Breath of the Wild and the newer Tears of the Kingdom. This past month I decided to try some new games. One of them was a "platformer" with two characters, called Shady Part of Me. It has a girl character who can't be in the light, and a shadow character who can only travel on walls where the light creates shadow for her to exist. So basically, there are 2 characters that you toggle back and forth as you work through one and then the other to get to a series of checkpoints. The characters can help each other by doing things like moving boxes or flipping switches. I finished the game in a couple of weeks, but maybe I'll try it again because I missed some little elements I was supposed to collect along the way.

Perfumes

I go through phases where I get interested in perfumes. I've read a few books, including The Secret of Scent by Luca Turin. Now and then I'll buy a bottle of something, usually a blind buy based only on the description. (I've had pretty good luck with my purchases.) My most recent perfume phase involves watching YouTube reviews of people talking about scents they like and don't like, and I discovered that the site Twisted Lily sells tiny sample bottles for $4-8. I don't mind paying that to see what something smells like! So I placed an order and have been playing around with interesting smells this month.

There are perfumes that smell like a cup of coffee, or like suntan lotion, or like cinnamon. There are perfumes that are just one synthetic molecule and "develop" on the skin uniquely for each person. Most of the samples I've tried are delightful. Only one was a miss, smelling exactly like the pine shavings I used to put in the cages of my pet mice when I was a kid. I really love smelling nice. It's like a little lucky charm I can carry around and reset myself whenever I smell it.

MAD Magazine exhibit

My love and I traveled to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to see the "What, Me Worry? Art & Humor of MAD Magazine" exhibit that is there until October. We both grew up loving MAD Magazine in our own ways. To me, MAD was a fascinating send-up of the odd mid- to late-20th century culture that I found myself in as a child and teen. It was kind of a relief to see grownups poking fun at other grownups. I especially liked Don Martin (who drew Captain Klutz among other things) and Dave Berg (who did "The Lighter Side of..." series). I also liked the caricature-like movie "re-dos" by Mort Drucker, who created spoofs like Star Blecch, Shtick Tracy, and the Da Vinci Coma. We were allowed to take photos at the show, so here's a little taste of what we saw.

Wallace Allen Wood, Is a Trip to the Moon Possible, 1955

Don Martin, Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward Men, 1962

Dave Berg, The Lighter Side of... selections, 1970s

Roberto Parada, X-Files the Spoof is in Here! 1998

Tom Richmond, Harry Plodder and the Torture of the Fan Base, 2007

Mort Drucker, Saturday Night Feeble, 1978

One of my favorite things was an interactive touch-screen kiosk where you could virtually fold in a bunch of different Al Jaffee Fold-Ins from the back covers of the magazine. It was really fun to be there and mingle with the other weirdos of all ages. Highly recommend!