Flying

I haven’t even gotten around to drawing last week’s Illustration Friday theme, “germs” (I really wanted to do that one but I probably won’t) but I’ve got something old-ish for this week’s theme, “flying.”

Probably a better title would be falling but…I drew this image after reading Rogue Planet (a Star Wars book) by Greg Bear. Anakin is about 12 or so, getting sort of bored with the Jedi life, and seeking adventure. In one of the opening scenes he finds out about an underground race that takes place I think in the sewers of Coruscant, using these sort of winged jet-pack things. It sounded like super-enhanced hanggliding. It really just needed to be drawn.

I went for a sort of Icarus feel for the composition, and I was happy with the result, particularly the perspective. Unfortunately I rushed the background and kind of ruined it. It does have a nice raw feeling, and there is a sense of motion, but it’s just too messy to be very effective. Maybe some day I’ll cut out the surviving sections and start over.

Fan Girl (me)

On Sunday, Matt and I went to see Neil Gaiman reading at Cleveland Public Library. Amazingly, this event was free. I mean, I would have paid to see Neil read, but free is fantastic. Our libraries rock.

Anyway, Matt is wonderfully supportive of my fan-girl-ness. It probably helps that he is also a big fan of Neil Gaiman’s writing and comic books.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of crowd. I figured either, yeah, it’s Neil Gaiman, so they’ll be lining up around the block (this is what actually happened) or this is Cleveland, so no one will find out about it, and there will be fourteen people in a huge auditorium yelling, “we love you Neil!”

There ended being over a thousand people, all radiating happiness and hero worship. Neil’s fans are an odd assortment of hippie-craftsters, goths, metal-biker types and general misfits, most of which are much friendlier than they look. The book worm connection probably helped. Matt, who is usually by far the social one in our pairing, accused me of being a social butterfly for once.

It’s just easier to talk to people who are a bit batty over fantasy and such. Cult audiences are so much fun. Also, yes. A real bat got into the building, which seemed fitting.

Neil is super friendly, which didn’t surprise me, but he is also rather adorable, which did. The grim visage he carries around doesn’t really translate in person.

We got to hear the first ever reading (I think) of Odd and the Frost Giants, a short novel he wrote for World Book Day, which I’d never even heard of until yesterday (the day, not the book, but actually, I’d never heard of either).

Apparently authors and publishers put out 100 page books for free, children are given book tokens and get to choose from (I think) 9 books. I’d never heard of it because it’s the world OUTSIDE of the US. Shame, it sounds like a good idea.
Neil and his undead army. Actually they’re Oberlin students, and I had a brighter picture, but I liked the zombie look.

There were enough people that not everyone fit in the main room, which I think held about 700 people.

Another few hundred peopel were shuffled into an overflow room across the hall, where I suppose they watched on TV screens. Still more were turned away entirely. Matt and I got there just before noon, and managed to get great seats in the middle. During the question and answer section, Neil made sure to gett a couple questions from the overflow room, which was cool of him. He also took a few questions from kids, (there were quite a few in the audience) including “do you remember signing a girl’s foot in Portland?” which was pretty entertaining.

He got a standing ovation, which is predictable these days, but I’d say he actually deserved it, which is less common. He’s a fantastic speaker, and of course most of his fans already know he’s a wonderful reader. I’ve listened to his audio books before, but I was still sort of amazed at his vocal range with characters, particularly reading Odd and the Frost Giants. I really did feel as though I were a little kid again, listening to the bear voices in a faerie tale. Afterwards he signed books and possibly feet.

Actually he’s a saint. He signed for everyone that wanted something. I’m not sure what time he left, but Matt and I finally made it out with our signed books at about 6 pm, and I know Neil was supposed to leave to catch a plane at 4:30. So yeah. Saint.

In high fan-girl fashion, I drew Neil a picture, hoping I’d have a chance to give it to him. I’d planned to draw something from one of his short stories, but I couldn’t settle on anything so I ended up doing a caricature of Neil. As he put it: “Oh it’s me! Beekeeping! With a 3 headed Cabal!” So I think he liked it, even though my friend Jack told me I was being creepy.

I made his head too big, and the dog’s body is a little confusing (but I suppose it would be) and actually the front dog head looks like a Corgi, which Cabal certainly is not. And don’t even ask about the futuristic bee hive.

I wanted him to be grabbing something out of the air, and I eventually settled on star anise. I tried to think of what an idea might look like, and this seemed like a good representation: half seed, half star.

His cloak of course is a nod at the Sandman’s getup, and I was trying to make his hat look a bit like Odin’s cap, but honestly that’s pretty much what beekeeper’s hats look like anyway, so I’m not sure I succeeded.

It was an amazing day and I got to give Neil my drawing, and we got some books signed, and hear part of a new story, and get a teaser about what he’s working on now, and generally hear him talk about what he does and what it’s like. It was an unbelievable way to spend a day, especially sharing it with Matt. Even if I didn’t get to eat more than a cookie and a half between waking up and 7 pm dinner. I’m still a bit giddy, and emotianlly drained from being giddy all day yesterday. Totally worth it.

The Number is Sand

Nearly everyone’s seen those books, posters, etc: “How many is a million?” Actually, if you search Amazon for books on a million you’ll come up with a whole bunch on the same theme: trying to express the concept of million to children. It’s sort of a brilliant idea, but I’m not sure how possible it is.

In my high school world history class, our teacher stressed the significance of the invention of mathematics. Also the concept of zero. Both are extremely important, and probably represent huge moments in human achievement.

That they are important is inarguable (not true, everything can be debated given enough alcohol time, but never mind), but they’re also sort of inevitable. Simple math, numbers, counting: all came from trade. Business men needed a way to differentiate more from less, to assure that they were getting a reasonably equal worth. The origins of writing can be found in these clerical slips. Symbolic representation does not come from a human need for art or communication. It comes from accounting.

As significant and important as it is, I can’t help but think it must not have taken a huge leap of genius to start counting apples and oranges (or really probably dates and papayas since we are talking about the cradle of civilization here). You don’t really need the deep philosophy behind math to understand that 5 is more than 4. Babies and animals can identify these basic differences, because the concepts of less and more are far simpler than 4 and 5. Much (most?) of math comes down to this idea. Basic algebra is not that difficult, and honestly has more to do with logic than math. All I’m getting at here is that however much we may have pulled out our hair writing calculus proofs, math as an idea is pretty intuitive.

MATH though is more than numbers. Math is about theories, about twisting common sense, about measuring things that cannot be measured (imaginary numbers anyone?). Physics is a practical application of mathematics, and a theoretical physician can tell you exactly how practical physics is. Engineering is the practical application of physics, and even they come up with some whoopers.

The invention of zero falls firmly in the realms of math as a theory, beyond the tangible. If you’ve never heard of zilch, it’s a bit more of a stretch to conceive of it, but I still don’t think it’s particularly miraculous.

“0″ as a number might be hard to understand, but the concept of zero is pretty simple; it is nothing, it is absence, it has existed and been related to in all of human history because it is death. As I said, the application of zero is a bit more than “do not have” just as 5 is more than apples (dates). At some point though, it is not all that surprising that someone said: “I had five apples. Now I do not have them. Ergo: zero.” (All inventers must say ergo. Or possibly thenceforth.)

I say this not to understate the hugeness of inventing zero, is is merely to explain how small the understanding of zero is compared to the understanding of million.

I can have five apples. I can have zero oranges. But I guarantee I will never have a million apples or oranges. Even if I do, if you see what I mean.

To talk about millions is as effective as talking about infinity. No matter how long you look at a book with a million ants, or a million cars, or a million people, your brain, or at least MY brain, is incaple of comprehending any more than the trollish concept of “lots.” If you were to show me a photo with an infinite number of marbles (not possible I know) I would think: lots. A billion=lots. Million=lots. 100,000=lots. To be perfectly honest, 500=lots.  I’m not sure what the numerical cuttoff is, but I suspect it’s a much lower number than we think. I certainly understand that a million is more than 500, but it ceases to be a question of “how many” and becomes a question of “how big.” The group of ants with a million is bigger than the group with 500, but as far as my brain’s ability to count is concerned, there is NO OTHER DIFFERENCE. I can know that there are more ants in the million group, but it is impossible for me to see it.

1,000,000 is a number, but it’s not a real number. It is absolutely possible for something to exist and not be real. If you want to count the grains of sand on a beach, the answer is not a number, the answer is: It’s sand. The number is sand. How many stars are there? Lots. The number of stars is stars. That is the nature of stars, that they are uncountable. The fact that there are a finite number of sand grains (or stars, though I have no idea if that number is finite) is completely irrelevant because even if a machine counter told you that there were 94,392,347,778 grains of sand, the answer would still be: It’s sand.*

I would guess that it was far easier to invent the number 1 million than the number 0, but there is such a huge difference between knowing and understanding. In these days of unfathomable deficits, idiotic house prices, and rising world population, million has become common as dirt, and is generally shuffled aside for words like billion and even trillion. Ultimately though, they might as well use the same number, because it’s all the same to me.

*The irony here is that in order to explain the concept of infinity, all you can do is compare it to a really big number, while in reality the closest we come to honestly understanding a really big number is infinity, which is actually not all that difficult to understand, and basically comes down to: +1 etc.
**Photos by me, Srqpix Bruno Girin and Sanyam Studios.

Pattern Recognition

This week’s Illustration Friday is “Pattern,” and I had an old piece that fit too well to resist. I’ve never posted it on this blog, but I posted it last year some time on Living in Space.

The title I gave this at the time was EmpTV. The style is much more simplistic than I usually do, playing more a comic-y effect, and appropriately, experimenting with pattern. I like the result, though I probably won’t repeat it often, since I’m sort of obsessed with line and detail. Another piece that I found a bit more interesting was this one:

The theme for this was “zoo,” can’t remember if it was for IF or something else. I was especially happy with the squiggly patterning in the bushes in the back, and this piece, far more than the TV zombie piece, ended up being a directional piece for my style. The blog logo for example, was absolutely drawn with this piece in mind.

Finally, since both these pieces are old, I figure I’ll give you a sketch I did this week: (don’t have a scanner, so a photo is the best I can do)

This was drawn yesterday at a Caribou in some Chicago suburb. Not exactly sure where we were, but you can rest assured, if there’s a Caribou in the area, Matt and I will find it.

Normally when I sketch in public I concentrate on people, but since I’d like to do more finished drawings involving cityscapes, industrial pieces, and in general, less organic subjects, I took the opportunity to make myself draw the whole room. It took a shift in perspective to say the least. I started with the fireplace, and though it was relatively easy to estimate the size on the page, I was surprised at how small everything was. I’m hoping this will also help my background staging in general illustration since one of the criticisms I’ve received with my artwork is that backgrounds are a bit stiff (I AGREE). You can see what I mean here:
This is part of a comic I created (ignore the implication that I finished it, I only inked 5 pages) called Messenger of the Gods, to show at Wizard World a few years ago. (More Messenger of the Gods pages in my Gallery)

I’m hoping if I keep practicing drawing settings they won’t feel so much like, well, backgrounds.

(Note RE: a couple other crits I got on these pieces – The character looks like a boy because… he is a boy… who happens to have long hair. The character looks like he has a black eye because he… wait for it… has a black eye.)

Infinite

When I heard the Illustration Friday word of the week, “Infinite,” the first thing I thought of was the silly philosophy question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

I’m pretty sure at least one of the answers that came out of that was “infinite,” but I could be thinking of “is Hell endo or extothermic?”

Of course there are other ideas about the pin question…

“Firstly, angels simply don’t dance. It’s one of the distinguishing characteristics that marks an angel. They may listen appreciatively to the Music of the Spheres, but they don’t feel the urge to get down and boogie to it. So, none.

At least, nearly none. Aziraphale had learned to gavotte in a discreet gentlemen’s club in Portland Place, in the late 1880s, and while he had initially taken to it like a duck to merchant banking, after a while he had become quite good at it, and was quite put out when, some decades later, the gavotte went out of style for good.

So providing the dance was a gavotte, and providing that he had a suitable partner (also able, for the sake of arguement, both to gavotte, and to dance it on the head of a pin), the answer is a straightforward one.

Then again, you might just as well ask how many demons can dance on the head of a pin. They’re of the same original stock, after all. And at least they dance.

And if you put it that way, the answer is, quite a lot actually, providing they abandon their physical bodies, which is a picnic for a demon. Demons aren’t bound by physics. If you take the long view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them. But if you look from really close up, the only problem about dancing on the head of a pin is all those big gaps between electrons.”

- Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

I haven’t decided yet whether to develop the sketch into a portfolio piece… I like the concept but I’m not sure if I’m actually managing to draw the pins successfully.

On a Boat

This last weekend may have been one of the most relaxing I’ve had in ages.

Our friends Jack and Kim invited us along on a boat ride Saturday. The 31 foot sailboat belongs to a friend of theirs, so I was a bit nervous about barging (hah!) onto the trip, but he was a super nice guy and seemed happy to share the experience, not to mention his knowledge on boating. He put everyone to work who wanted to work (for myself, I prefered to stay out of the way, clinging to anything that seemed somewhat stable) teaching them boating slang as they went. I guess Jack and Kim join him on sailing races pretty often, so they were more or less already part of the crew.

Matt got a chance to haul rope and generally play pirate (no boarding though) which he seemed to enjoy. I love boats but am not so much a fan of, you know, water, so I didn’t help much until the end, when we pulled into a dock which seemed WAY to small for the boat. It was a bit of a scramble, with everyone running to the edges to push away from whatever permanent feature was about to hit the boat. On my side we nearly hit a large metal pole. I thought to myself, someone really ought to take care of that before we hit it. Then I looked around at everyone already frantic with something and realized, aw crap, that’s me. I’m still shocked we managed not to scrape off any paint or people.

We sailed from Elyria to Edgewater which gave us some fantastic views entering the city.

Other than docking, most of the trip was pretty tame. For the first few hours there was unfortunately not enough wind to sail, so we had to motor our way east. This made things easy, but I liked it better when the sails went up. The weather was beautiful, a gentle breeze that got us up to 7 knots (nots? whatever, and don’t ask me to translate that into mph), with nothing rough enough to make me wonder if I’d end up in the lake. In spite of my dislike (ok, FEAR) of water, when I was a kid, my ideal bed was a padded row boat in a flooded room. For some reason my parents didn’t go for that, but I could easily have fallen asleep for large parts of this trip.

The only slightly scary part of the sailing had nothing at all to do with the weather. This was labor day weekend, our destination was to anchor downtown and watch the airshow. Being labor day weekend, it was rather crowded, which was entertaining during the show, but extremely annoying afterward.

I guess it’s the same old story of one bad egg ruining the… whatever it ruins. In this case there were several. I’m not a boater, so I may not have the right to get indignant when people ignore ship rules. As a passenger though, I feel pretty entitled to be pissed off when people put me in danger. A good handful of motorboats decided they were getting back to the dock, and screw everyone else. They jetted back at top speed, causing wakes that pushed everyone else in all directions and all angles. I don’t know if we nearly tipped, or how close we came to the other sailboat riding the waves, but I DO know that the captain was looking anxious, and looking sideways and suddenly seeing water is pretty freaky for a landlubber.

Mostly though, people were friendly, and except for the few jerks, considerate of each other. Also, fireboat showing off=me acting about four years old with simple happiness.

We had a fantastic view of the air show, getting constant close flyovers. This was exciting, and I probably missed some of the show trying to get good photos, but I got some good shots so I think it was worth it. They did all the sort of death defying loop-de-loops you expect from the Blue Angels, but I think the flyovers were my favorite part.

There is something alarming about seeing airplanes so close to the cityscape.

The air show lasted several hours, with leisurely breaks in between. People on other boats were swimming and climbing around like the boats were jungle gyms.

I don’t expect I’ll have the opportunity to go sailing all that often, and I’m not sure I’d enjoy it as much if it got “exciting.” I wouldn’t have missed this weekend though.

On a totally unrelated note, I’ll be working on the blog design for the next few days (read: weeks) so the layout may be a bit… broken for a while. I know there’s a way to work on wordpress blogs without disturbing the online site, but I haven’t figured out how, so please just forgive me for any annoyances.

Current layout:

Eventual layout (I hope):

Tangled New World

I don’t post on Sugar Frosted Goodness nearly often enough, but this week’s theme (and last) was “New Work” and I realized I DID actually have some things that might sort of qualify. In fact, I realized that my favorite portfolio piece (which does not yet appear in my online portfolio because I have not yet gotten around to updating it) has never been online.

As I was working on putting together all the odds and ends of graduation this spring, the Editor of the Vindicator asked me to do an illustration for an inhouse ad. She left it pretty open, but asked for something that illustrated diversity and interconnectivity. This is what I came up with:

They ended up flipping the image for the ad. I’m not sure why I decided to center the image around knitting, but I liked the idea of having all the cables work as yarn, and, you know, the craft movement is HUGE right now, so it kind of works. For any geeks out there, take note of the OLPC.

This is sort of the direction my style has been tilting lately, with the interplay of color and lots of white space. It’s far more contemporary than the stuff I did in college, but still lets me focus on my technical strengths (I think). That’s not to say I’m not doing any more black and white, but I’m trying to incorporate a similar feel in my new ink work. Anyway, comments and criticism welcome. Sometime soon I really will redo my website, and there should be a couple new things in there.

Close up:

Letter of the Law

I have recently decided, based on an opinion I completely disagree with, that Justice Antonin Scalia is nonetheless, not a total ass.

This week the United States Supreme Court ruled that a lower court must hear new (or changed) evidence that could prove a man on death row innocent. I applaud them. Justice Scalia (along with Justice Thomas) wrote a dissent, and I sort of have to applaud him too.

I am 100% against the death penalty. I think our judicial system is corrupt (or at least inadequate), and if Mr. Troy Anthony Davis is innocent, he won’t be the first innocent man (or woman probably) on death row. I absolutely think if there’s new evidence he should have the opportunity to present it. This is another perfect example of the kind of famously ridiculous opinion Justice Scalia is famous for. I wrote an indignant blog post sometime last year outraged at a statement he made stating that it was ok to torture terrorist suspects because they hadn’t been convicted of anything. If they haven’t been convicted, he reasoned, they aren’t being subjected to cruel or unusual punishment. You don’t punish someone who has yet to be convicted. You just torture them, and that’s a-okay according to Justice Scalia.

That combines with the more recent statement that it’s ok to execute an innocent man: “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.” It really makes Justice Scalia sound like a monster. Maybe he is. But I think I’m beginning to understand his thought process, and while I disagree with the particulars, I sort of get the theory.

In my high school government class (which was half a lifetime ago, so bear with me if I’m completely wrong) we talked about two different approaches to the constitution. I don’t remember what they’re called. They boiled down to Spirit of the Law vs. Letter of the Law. If you follow the Spirit of the Law, you believe you have to keep in context the reason for the laws in the first place, you have to believe that the laws are mutable. This is the argument, for example, that some use to repute the second amendment. They claim, quite rightly, that the second amendment didn’t actually have a whole lot to do with defending yourself from buglers and rapists. The second amendment had to do with civilian militias, and isn’t particularly relevant (ok, that could be debatable, but let it go for now) today. Letter of the Law proponents however, say that it doesn’t matter what it was FOR, it’s in the constitution and therefore stands. (Note: I realize this issue is way more complicated, I’m just using it to illustrate a point. Ok? Stop yelling. I’m not trying to take away your guns.)

If Justice Scalia is in the Letter of the Law category, he doesn’t necessarily believe that an innocent man deserves to be executed, or tortured. All it means is that he believes the Law, and in particular the constitution, is more important than the fate of a single individual. I hate to admit it, but I kind of, almost, agree with him.

We tend to be pretty casual these days about the constitution. We talk about our “constitutional rights” in reference to things that are not even hinted at in the document, and we dance around with the idea of adding amendments as though they were decorative fonts. All the talk of adding a “marriage protection” amendment scares the spit out of me, and not only because I’m a proponent of gay rights. That people can so easily contemplate adding any amendment at all, much less one that RESTRICTS rights rather than protects them, is terrifying.

Obviously, since the constitution has semi-recent amendments, the constitution CAN (and should) be changed if the circumstances call for it. My point is just that the constitution is important. It is supposed to protect us from the government, corrupt businesses, each other. Even small changes can have unintended consequences. It should not be twisted or taken lightly.

Which brings us to Justice Scalia, and this week’s court case. As far as I remember, the role of Supreme Court is to rule on whether things are constitutional. It is not the role of the Court to rule on whether things are fair. Under the constitution we have the right to fair trial. One. Singular. We can appeal a decision, but we do not have a constitutional right to another fair trial.

Of course it could easily be argued that if an innocent man is convicted, the trial was in someway unfair. In this case there are allegations of police leaning on witnesses and all sorts of shenanigans. The problem is that we can never know anything for sure. Relying on our justice system means sometimes innocent people will be incorrectly convicted of things they did not do, and sometimes guilty people will walk free. It is an imperfect system. A “fair” trial has to be judged by the court having the trial.

I don’t agree with the dissent, I think the court made the right choice. I still don’t think it’s ok to torture anyone, convicted or not, regardless of bombs they may or may not have planted, ticking away. The role of the Supreme Court is not only to read the law, it is to interpret it. If the constitution exists to protect the rights of the individual citizen, it is problematic to claim the paper is more important than the individual. I do however understand the strict, literal reading of the constitution, to the exclusion of any judgment of fairness. The constitution is a big deal, so interpret it, yes, but please do not stretch it all out of shape.

On the other hand, Justice Scalia is still a jerk, and whenever he opens his mouth, he completely weakens his case.

*Photos by Thomas Roche and Ralpe.

The Other Cathedral

Matt and I made sure to get to the National Cathedral when we were in DC this May.
I’ve been there before, when I was twelve on a school trip in middle school.

Actually I based a lot of my suggestions of sights we should see in DC on things I’d seen while on that middle school trip. I think we were there for a week, and we saw far more than I could have retained. I guessed however, that anything which DID stick in my memory from that trip was probably worth seeing. After all, most 12 year olds are more interested in hanging out with friends than seeing national monuments.

Probably the most memorable images from that first trip were our tours of the cathedrals in Washington DC. I thought there were several, now I’m not sure how many we went to see. Definitely more than just the National Cathedral.

Matt and my mom and I went to the National Cathedral first, because that was the only cathedral we could find any information on.

In a way, we picked a bad day. We got there at about noon on a day where tours were canceled until one. The reason for this was interesting: there was a graduation in progress.

The National Cathedral has two high schools associated with it– a boy’s school and a girl’s school. On the day we visited, the girl’s school was having their graduation mass. I don’t know if they call it mass at the National Cathedral, which is (I think) Episcopalian. I went to a Catholic school and we called it mass. It made me think of all the small prayer services and holiday masses, and I wondered whether they had them all in the cathedral, vast and beautiful.

It must have been an amazing place to have a graduation. We stood and back and waited until it was done. There couldn’t have been more than fifty girls, so the whole thing seemed rather quiet, and more relaxed than I would have expected for the setting. It was lovely. The architecture of the cathedral makes it a fascinating setting for any service, or just to walk through.

They have continual tours, and though we waited until one for the first tour to begin, we ended up wandering without it, which I think was more enjoyable, if less informative.

We got a vantage point that I never saw on my first tour, because the upstairs floor would be too cramped to bring a large group. I remember being a bit disappointed in the cathedral as a 12 year old, because I’d wanted to see the gargoyles and grotesques, but couldn’t see any close enough to really see them. From the upstairs observatory we could see much better, not to mention a great view of the surrounding area. There’s no doubt that the National Cathedral is awe inspiring. An exhibit on the main floor told us that it took almost a hundred years (83 actually) to build. I didn’t realize when I visited in 1993, construction had only just finished three years ago.

What I really remembered from my first trip was that while the National Cathedral was the stone worked gothic arches that you envision when you hear the word “cathedral,” it wasn’t the one that struck me as most beautiful.

None of the local advisors seemed to know what I was talking about when I mentioned another cathedral, a place full of mosaics and side chapels. For some reason it took us half the week to find the Cathedral of St. Matthew.

St Matthew’s is a Catholic cathedral, and like many Catholic buildings walks the line between beautiful and gaudy. Churches lined with gold tend to annoy me, the overt expense reminds me of a time of dishonestly rich cardnals and popes.

St. Matthews manages to avoid that feeling, though I imagine the piles of marble used must have cost every bit as much as gold plating. Everything is so colorful that it’s almost distracting.

Not quite though. Unlike the flashiness of gold, marble is beautiful but understated, expensive but not braggingly so. The cathedral is full of skillful beauty, with marbled alters tucked away in side corners, and mosaics lined up on the walls like paneling. I could have looked at the art of this cathedral for hours, but Matt and I decided we’d better make it quick instead.

Unlike the National Cathedral, St. Matthews is not so orderly a tourist attraction. I imagine they give tours (I went on one when I was 12) but when we walked in, the building was silent with worshipers. We tiptoed around the perimeter, trying not to disturb anyone. At one point my camera flashed (it turns it back on every time the camera restarts) but I mostly covered it.

I’m sort of conflicted over whether this building should be more of a tourist attraction. On one hand, it’s an amazing sight. I suppose construction probably didn’t take 83 years, and the type of beauty is completely different from the majestic depth of the National Cathedral. Spanish rather than French maybe. The difference I see is that the National Cathedral is a coherent masterpiece, while St. Matthew’s is a gallery of brilliant mosaics. It’s not that they clash, it’s just that they are meant to be seen one at a time, up close. In prayer I suppose, though as a non-believer, I’ll have to appreciate it for artistic value alone.

It seems a shame that more people don’t know about St. Matthews, but on the other hand, part of the beauty may well be it’s quiet. So nice to walk in and see people meditating, praying, thinking, believing, instead of chatting and taking photos. I think they try at the National Cathedral to retain a sense of holiness, they remind you to please be respectful and speak in lowered voices, but they tell you in a tour-guide yell, so it’s hard to take it seriously.

St. Matthew’s is a church first and foremost. I love it because it’s beautiful, but I’m not sure it would be quite so beautiful if it weren’t so respectfully hushed.

The two cathedrals can’t be fairly contrasted. Stone work vs. marble. Architecture vs. mosaics.

One area where you ought to be able to make a straight comparison are the stained glass windows.

In the National Cathedral, each window is different, with a separate burst of color and composition. Oddly, in St. Matthew’s, where each nook and cranny is individually crafted, the windows are very nearly identical. The windows in St. Matthews seem to be made of impossibly thin marble pieces (either that or painted glass to look like impossibly thin marble pieces). The variety of windows in the National Cathedral is breathtaking, but I couldn’t pick a winner between the two.

I’m glad I saw both. For the National Cathedral I’d say it’s worth taking out an hour or more. At St. Matthew’s we felt disruptive, and left after 20 minutes, which was enough to see everything since the space is so much smaller. I won’t claim St. Matthew’s is prettier, or more impressive than the National Cathedral, but I am surprised that one is almost unknown to tourists while the other is a visitor staple.

Nature Bites

There are certain phrases in the English language that, once uttered, spell doom for the speaker.  “What’s the worst that could happen?” is one example, along with, “Well at least it’s not raining.” Of course we can’t forget the horror movie classics like, “I’ll be right back,” or Darwinian helpers such as, “Hold my beer and watch this!”And then there’s, “Aw, I hate bug spray. I’d rather have a couple bites.”

I went camping about a month ago and came home with 78 bug bites.  Most were probably mosquito bites but there were also blood flies and at least one spider bite.I generally consider bug bites slightly worse than annoying, but this was downright agonizing. The first night, depending solely on calamine lotion, I didn’t sleep at all.  By the way. Calamine lotion is worthless.

So 4 am found me googling bug bite cures.  Twitter and Facebook also yielded some helpful suggestions, but stuck at home the next day, I tried the only “cure” available in the house. Scotch Tape. This sounded unlikely, but I was desperate, so I figured what the heck.

Most of the bites were on my legs, so I mummified my calves in transparent strips, covering every bite. It worked much better than I expected (in that I didn’t expect it to work at all) but certainly wasn’t 100%.

The main usefulness of the tape seemed to be reducing friction on the bites. Protected by the tape, my bites weren’t constantly irritated by my clothing, or even the air. Miraculously, I could also scratch my bites without bothering them, as the smooth surface of scotch tape let me rub without abrasion. The forum that suggested this cure claimed that the tape sucks out mosquito venom (total nonsense) but I’m pretty sure the stickiness has nothing to do with the relief. I think this is entirely caused by protecting the bites. I didn’t realize how much the tape was doing until I took it off. Then the itch-burn returned full force. While Scotch Tape isn’t perfect, it helps far more than you’d expect and I highly recommend it as a home remedy.

The down side to the tape was that I could feel it when I moved, which meant every step I took reminded me that my body was covered in mosquito bites. As you’re probably aware, the best thing you can do for bug bites is forget about them, and the tape made this almost impossible (not that it was even remotely possible WITHOUT the tape).

I asked Matt to ask the pharmacist what to use, and he brought home some AfterBite (ammonia) and Cortisone. The instructions were to put on the ammonia (stings like a scorpion), wait for it to dry, and then smear on the cortisone.

The effect of the ammonia was immediate, after the sting dissipated, the itch was GONE, though it didn’t last too long if you left it at that, and itching reawakened at the slightest breeze. The cortisone is supposedly a longer term effect, up to 24 hours before it has any impact. I can’t testify to that, since I have no idea what the itch would have been like if I hadn’t used it.

I do know that the chemicals were sanity saving. The pharmacist said nothing about covering the bites after, and I’m not sure whether health wise it’s a good idea, but I’d already witnessed how much scotch tape helped and I wanted to get rid of as much itch as possible. I wanted to SLEEP, thanks.

The scotch tape was not ideal. For one thing, taking it off left painful red marks, especially at the back of the knee, where it actually caused a friction rash, and seemed to make the bites worse. For another thing, I mean, it’s scotch tape. That can’t be healthy, right? Some people online were using duct tape, and scotch tape is probably better than that, but I thought surely there were better options.

I picked up some medical tape, and this was a huge mistake. Nowhere near as effective as scotch tape, the huge strips of medical tape dragged constantly at my skin, a painful reminder of my itching bites. Since the tape is designed to breathe, air could get in to bug my bites, but it was somehow still hotter, more sweat inducing than the scotch tape. The only plus I can see is that it would have made a good Halloween costume. Scotch tape, surprisingly, was a clear winner here.

Better though, if more ridiculous, were individual band-aids.

It took me more than an hour to cover all my bites with tiny round bandages, and it seemed like a complete waste of time, but even more than the tape, the band-aids worked beautifully. I can’t think of a better use for the band-aids, I’ve always wondered what they were for, so maybe this is it. Though time consuming, the band-aids, coupled with the ammonia and ointment, were the best by far at relieving the itch.

They’re less conspicuous than the medical tape (though not as invisible as scotch tape) relieved 95% of the itch and burn (enough that I could forget it), and most importantly, didn’t pull at my skin at all, or give any reminder that they were there.

I also tried to defend my band-aid use by claiming that they must be attractive. After all, Anime characters are often covered in band-aids and everyone knows Anime characters are hot. Right? Matt has informed me however that, while I am always hot in his eyes, being covered in band-aids is not at all sexy, and should be avoided whenever possible. Especially if they’re covering itchy bug bites.

Ah well. Half my friends on the camping trip ended up with poison ivy, so I guess it could have been worse. I’m pretty sure calamine lotion doesn’t do much for that either.