Mirang Wonne

I saw this painting in her studio and immediately fell in love with it. It's large! [4' x 5']


More at -> Mirang.

Veerakeat

I love the sense of motion!


For other paintings, visit Veerakeat.

Larry Schwarm -- Prairie Fires

Larry Schwarm, a mid-western photographer, has done an amazing series of photographs based upon prairie fires. Here's one of my favorites...


You can find more information on his work at his website.

Olcese Family

(Click on picture to enlarge)

Margaret (Margherita) Olcese (née Camiccione in Borgonovo, Italy, 1840) , with her grandchildren. I believe this photo was taken either at Thanksgiving or Christmas in 1904, at the ranch in San Leandro, California.

My grandmother is the baby, Marguerite (Stoakes). Her siblings in this photo are Frank, Lester, Ethel, and Billy (Milton).

Margherita Camiccione came to California in either 1856 or 1857 (at the age of 17 or so). More information regarding Margaret Olcese (and her six sisters) can be found in the book, The Seven Sisters, by Mary Grace Paquette.

Kohler and Chase

Established in 1850 by Andrew Kohler. First music store in San Francisco. A bit of history here.

(The "Chase" of "Kohler and Chase" was Quincy A. Chase. Andrew Kohler was his uncle. Quincy (born 1830 in Freeport, Maine) joined him in 1853 after a 6 month journey around the horn.)

The earthquake of 18 April 1906. Kohler and Chase is on the left corner. Still standing, but not for long...


Kohler and Chase Piano building, burning, but I'm not sure from which street. (I'm not even sure if it's the same building.)

(From the Earthquake Engineering Online Archive at U.C. Berkeley).

After the quake and fire!


The new building on O'Farrell, built after the quake:


Here's a shot of the O'Farrell entrance:


The same building, today. No, it's no longer in the family.

To Hell with the diet. These look tasty!

Dare I admit that some of these look great? After all, who could resist...

The Bacon Cheese Pizza Burger

Giant burger between two large meat pizzas, eggs, bacon, colby and pepper jack cheese. Could life get any better than this?

Sure it could! Check this out:

Meat Cake

(Meatloaf with a mashed potato & ketchup "icing")

And this next one is, in my opinion, absolutely brilliant!

The Pizza Cone!

Where can I buy one?

An Interesting Read -- God's Little Problem...

Click Here! (Found via Andrew Sullivan's blog: "The Daily Dish")

Highlight from the article...

The vast majority of Christians, guided by their priests and pastors, assume a loving God who intervenes regularly in human affairs. Christians pray to God to cure them from cancer or protect them from a plane crash. (Intermediaries are also useful: A soon-to-be closed Catholic school in Brooklyn is called Our Lady of Perpetual Help, presumably because She does provide perpetual help, but not in this case.) A politician and Baptist minister in Kentucky is promoting a law requiring the state’s office of homeland security to display a plaque that reads: “The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.” Apparently God is not just a co-founder of the United States but also a federalist, honoring state boundaries in his on again, off again solicitude for the country.

However, the article points out, this assumption leads to the following conundrum...

Since believers give credit to God for answering their prayers when they are saved from catastrophe or illness, they have to explain why he answered their prayers and not those other people’s prayers, why he saved these children from a tsunami and not those other children. Any believer who today thanks God for making sure that his coronary bypass operation was successful has to explain why God allowed at least 37 peasants to be buried in a Guatemalan landslide on Sunday. Such an explanation requires either extraordinary narcissism on the believer’s part or positing capricious injustice on the part of God.

And this is why I've always been incredibly annoyed by those who've told me, "We were blessed..." (fill in the blank with whatever). Don't they realize what they're really saying?