lozzy penguin day - april 25, 2009
april 25, 2009, is a a special day in history. first it is the day when lozzy, alias stephanie, second oldest of the grandchildren on the benefield side, reaches the magic age of 18. second it is national/international penguin day.
of lozzy, i’ll hold off the long version. the important thing is that she is a beautiful intelligent person who has fought the powers that be for many a day and today achieves legal control of her life which she richly deserves.
of penguin day, a variety of happy stops. A few years back i wrote to penguin types about the unofficial penguin day. there were actually at least two different claimants for the prize. today when google reminded me of the day, i found that the variety was in uses of the concept. One of those is so good that i must feature it and give you links to the other celebrations.
a woman named connie celebrates penguin day with humor and history - and links it to chocolate. her happy penguin day 2009 is the kind of page that really deserves to be seen by itself rather than quoted. but, of course, i have to include some of it and there’s really nothing that can be left out:

penguin day began many years ago when someone at nwc (naval weapons center in ridgecrest, california) became aware of the migration habits of the antarctic penguin, the harvest cycle of california strawberries, and the shipping data of worldwide chocolate exporters.
On april 25th of every year, the formally-clad penguins of the antarctic continent begin an incredible northward migration. Penguins are unique in that they are the only migratory birds that don't fly (they swim). They are also unique in that unlike, say, the crested egret, apparently penguins don't take migration all that seriously. In fact, the
penguin's migratory habits are an embarrassment to most instinctively compulsive species. They start their migration in that same wonderfully grand fashion that, say, the canadian geese do. On cue, in synchronicity with some mysterious call of nature, penguins of great number and varied breeds all dive into that "wild blue under" and head north.
Curiously, they only swim about a hundred miles or so from the ice shelf (or whatever) and, after enjoying an extended "krill break", they all shrug (as only penguins can) and seem to lose interest in migrating. After bobbing about for a while like millions of undecided, leaderless penguins (which they are), they all head back south and are home by suppertime.
Incredibly, on april 25, on that very same day that the penguins are involved in the above-described odyssey, the great california strawberry harvest takes place. More strawberries are picked, washed, and boxed up in the san joaquin valley on that day than in all other places worldwide all year long.
Finally, just to round out the symmetrical convergence of these otherwise unrelated events, the world's biggest chocolate exporter, nestle, always ships its greatest tonnage of chocolate during the week of april 25th. It all has to do with cocoa bean futures, swiss bank practices, and international export regulations.
One may be hard-put to imagine another day of the year that
cries out for recognition more eloquently than does april 25th. We call it penguin day.

a hockey fan from philadelphia does an almost as cute bit on happy penguin day 2009 while waiting to see if the pittsburgh penguins will eliminate her team from the stanley cup playoffs. they did and she deserves a quick look at least in sympathy.
on the technical side of the world: first, it turns out that a bunch of computer folks with good politics have a super-organized set of events which make today national penguin day . i am nowhere close to being able to literally understand what they are doing. but i do know that they seek to keep the internet free to the people in the tradition of the original internet developers and

linus torvalds

. torvalds is the maven of linux and he and his followers have always been the natural enemies of microsoft and the internet as big business. i learned about torvalds early in my penguin internet searching/learning because he made tux, the penguin, the mascot of linux and one of my first internet guides was a young english woman who sold his software. today i learned we share the same birthday.
second, i refer you to a page about a german company that has developed a robotic penguin] which the author says ‘ must surely get the prize for most awe-inspiring robot of 2009.’ I always thought the japanese had the lock on penguins [batz-maru] and robots. little did i know the germans have been making penguin robots for a while and now have one that swims and can communicate with its robot penguin siblings. check the site for a youtube video - i won’t impose it on you.
happy 18 darling lozzy. happy penguin day world.

willard stone - bwendo's silence and awe

sculpture isn't usually a form of art that leaves me speechless. the late willard stone is a cherokee whose sculptures in wood have created a series of happy silences - often while looking for words to aim at various friends along for a trip. the first stop was at the gilcrease and i think i was alone. the sculptures were in the middle of others but they grabbed me. dark reddish wood made into beautiful long and lean horizontal and vertical sculptures.

along the way i spotted a series from the 1940's reacting in a personal but political way to the first a-bomb and atomic power. the picture at the top is our atomic baby' in this pic from a 2002 gilcrease trip with my friend patann.

later i ventured to the official willard stone museum outside of locust grove with my friend gladys. it's actually the old stone home and studio where his sculptor son and family kept him alive in a real way.

last thursday may have been the nicest willard stone surprise of them all - and the reason to write today. i went to the gilcrease with my sometimes sculptor and potter friend calvin and there was a major exhibit devoted to stone's work and life: Willard Stone: Storyteller in Wood. thomas gilcrease was an early patron and the museum was the perfect place to put together a really complete exhibit. it included a large number of works which is a wonderful to really see and feel him.

it also included pictures and stories in his personal history. one surprise item - like django reinhardt he lost parts of his fingers on one hand and later converted the loss to part of his method.

the exhibit also created a dvd which i actually purchased which repeats his personal and gives you a chance to see the sculptures from all sides. as a commentator this is one of the things that is special about them - they are beautiful no matter which way you look at them.

from the exhibit and my net looking when i got home i found out more. one more happy surprise was that he was part of a white house exhibit during the clinton years and they linked him with that other love of mine [and tulsa's] - art deco.

for now i'm suffering html difficulty and can only promise to talk a bit more latter and to offer some links that i can't seem to get working now. but i do want to suggest you go to the exhibit if there's any way you can. the gilcrease is always special but this is one step up. i am available to go along and talk of not as you wish.

a quick addition to penguin animations - penguin graphics
i just stumbled on this page which has a bunch of penguin gifs, some animated and some not. it also includes penguin backgrounds and headers/lines which i don't know how to use. i can't get the html code right to make it a sophisticated link so i'll repeat the url for you to copy into the browser. pengophiles will find it worth the extra work. the rest of you feel free to go on to the next blog, rollin in my sweet baby's flippers.
http://www.webcreationsbyjumpy.com/gifs/animalgifs/animals/penguins/penguingifs.htm

rollin in the morn
the memory of leon russell singing flatt and scruggs' 'rollin in my sweet babie's arms' visited me last nite and i determined to offer it before today's official blogging. i offer you the youtube version from the record where i first heard it and links to 3 other versions.


If that's not enough for your check out a page from internet archive with a 1971 one mic instrumental version, leon and buck owens, and junior brown, ricky skaggs and more.

don't poke the penguin - my continuing penguin/puter saga

most people who know me personally know that, starting around 'the turn of the century'*, i learned the internet by really learning about penguins and vice-versa. today i offer the latest result of that matching. [*i really like to say that.]

i've wanted to share my anti-poking animation for some time but i just didn't know how to install an animation in a blog. [actually there's an interactive version of don't poke that will take more learning.] blogger help and my near adult granddaughter stephanie pushed up my learning curve and i found you do it by embedding the animation from one of those internet 'storage sites' like photobucket. it turns out that i already had one of those housing my way too extensive collection of penguin animations. a little cleaning up and updating and i am now prepared to offer a few of my favorites hoping it might entice even the non-pengophiles to look at more of them at some other locations.

MONKEY BALL:

RESERVOIR PENGUINS - stephanie's favorite:

ICEMAKER - my other favorite pengie joke:

more penguin animations online - you can copy from all of them to your own computer as i did back when for some of my current collection:

mony’s curry and potluck - animations. from sweden - one of the original penguin supersites and the first really good collections of animations i found. get it while you can. she's going to have to shut down in august.

penguin dance - all penguins all dancing. diabetics beware.

bwendo’s penguin animations - the remaining 130+ i didn't inflict on you. most of the best are up front.