I have just returned from a lecture about how to best manage the flood of e-mails, spam, semi-spam, and non-spam that is inundating our inboxes (more about this in another blog post), but as a result of this I think I will start adding interesting things here on the blog instead of sending so many links via e-mail to my friends and family. Don't worry, you (family and close friends) will still get the personalized stuff, but not the 'hey, look at this cool thing I found" in your inboxes. It will be here instead as 'bits and pieces of life', so you can look at it whenever you feel you have time, and also so the rest of you blog readers can see it.
So, here is today's Bits and Pieces:
I love WPA (Works Progress Administration) posters, made in USA by Roosevelt's Depression Job-making programs in the 1930s. Here is one promoting travel to Montana and another for an art exhibit in Chicago. Clean lines, shapes and even colors, little text, but the message is clear. Today so much advertising and information is drowned in messy unimportant things (like too long, verbally winding emails with a hidden message somewhere, but where?). You can see more WPA posters here.
Britt Irick is continuing to make amazing illustrations, see them on his blog. I love the one of the dinosaur with leafy, homemade wings.
Things I have learned recently: More than half of American meteorologists do not think that global warming exist. An island that has been the source of border debates between India and Pakistan for a long time has ceased to exist. It sank into the sea. The Amazon river basin is as wide as The United States and only 4 million people live there. It takes an amazing amount of water to make half a kilo of sausage (this includes the total water needs for growing the foods for the animals, treating the waste from the animals, etc.) - see most recent issue of National Geographic Magazine. And 20% of all fresh water is in the Amazon.
Tomorrow is April 1st and the day before Good Friday. In Sweden young children will dress up as witches with brooms, coffee pots, and cats (at least sometimes), and go from house to house and beg for candy. This is not a joke.
Some gorgeous things: nice candles on etsy.com, the Design Observer's Today images are never boring (even some Swedish ballet in this one) , flowering crocuses in our yard, and a planned summer trip to Colorado...
And the Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden was gorgeous and at the same time too much orchids.... a fantastic example of how you can have too much of a good thing, just like perfume, ice cream, and jewelry around your neck. But I bet most people love it. I just think that sometimes you see beauty more if you have to look close and think about it, instead of having it stuffed into your face repeatedly. Orchids are gorgeous after all... (Dear NYBG web designers [if you read this], if you had some nice permanent web pages about the show with readable normal-sized text, interesting links, and additional photos I would have loved to link to them, but since that is lacking... sorry).
Then came the competitions and challenges of the Peepshi. How to make a nicelooking sushi out of all junk food: Peeps, fruit by the foot (long bands of colored tough fruity things), and Rice Krispies treats, all things that my kids are familiar with. The competition spread to Flickr, where people started to add their home-designed junky sushi :) Enjoy! more photos here!
