I will post an explanation later...probably later this weekend. Stay tuned, folks!

...I'm reposting my best piece here.

Plus a WIP snapshot, from when I was working on it:

It fits the holiday spirit, does it not? Also, I'm proud of this piece. It's one of the best things I've ever done. I have at least one similar piece planned. Probably won't do it this year, though...my life is busy now.

My OC is hidden in the picture, btw.

It wasn't an easy choice to make as I have a few nuggets amidst the ore here, if I do say so myself.

Was tempted to post In the Catacombs as I'm proud of that one, but it is b&w & so not colorful enough for the kinda audience one gets around here. When that occurred to me, the choice got easier. My candidate is

Enjoy.

the spot price of gold per oz., as of about 9:56 p.m.

the spot price of gold - its change from Sept. 16th to now

I was hoping it would clear the $2,700 level. Awesome.

...for just under five bucks:

Also, when I was slumming in the forums (was up at night & bored) I came upon a thread about blocked users... Of course it was locked before I got there, but I wouldn't have posted anything in it in any case. Right now I don't have too many people on mine....as my time here piles up, however, I suspect the list will too.

Father Time is not a gentleman...to put it mildly.

If he were, then we would retain our abilities (even if not our looks) until shortly before our passing. But we don't...no lifeform with any complexity ever does, when it lives that long. Time & entropy DGAF.

Been looking at the last few canes I built, & how I plan to slightly alter a couple of 'em...

For years I've known about the Krenov School. I never went there, not even for any of its short courses offered in the summer. Something I didn't previously mention here: my first woodworking teacher was my mother's 2nd husband. Under him (it was an apprenticeship, basically) I built a Shaker-style desk out of big box-store pine. Other than my not making any drawers for it, it turned out pretty good for a mid-sized project. This was in the early 1990's.

I can't go to the Krenov School now, mainly because of chronic issues & the commitment I made this year. (Eventually gonna put a house on a place I bought, but it'll take a while to do. My health issues are a major reason for that) So learning the craft in a structured curriculum, especially in a great place like that, is not possible for me now...

Jesus in an Edsel, how I wish it were. I'd just love to enroll, & be out there for weeks or months & soak up all the knowledge & build something better than anything else I've made in my life. But that six-day-per-week daytime schedule is impossible. (Also, it's pretty expensive now)

There's no point in feeling this way about it, but emotions have nothing to do with reason.

...the older you get, the more conscious you can become of roads not taken. The young artists I see on here don't know anything about it...yet. Some of them will, in a few years. They'll know soon enough.

"The thing is to become a master and in

your old age to acquire the courage to do

what children did when they knew nothing."

- Ernest Hemingway

Some new names have been showing up on the follower list in the last few days. To those of you who recently found me, welcome...feel free to hang out for a while. You can call me Shade.

If you need something to pass the time, you can always browse through my art here. As of now there are 49 pieces in the gallery. I'm especially proud of the Mixed Media section; most of my best work on NG is in there. I do fancy writing & text-based art sometimes...you can find it in Lettering/Calligraphy. If you want to know more about me apart from my creative work, read a few previous entries in my blog here. My interests involve history, finance & investing, geopolitics, & not taking life any more seriously than I have to.

Edit: With all that out of the way, here are some interesting pictures:

from my weather app, 0330 hrs

same but with IR mode layered on it, at 45%

Hmmm...am still not that worried but Milton might cut a bit close. I should get more canned food. Gotta do laundry, too. I still have plenty of H2O. And vino. We'll see what happens.

In foreign affairs I mostly look eastward...been doing so for a few years now. The Far East (China, India, SE Asia) is most important with the Near East (the Arab nation-states, Israel, Iran) running a close 2nd place. The following clip describes an instance of why:

For geopolitical analysis, Peter Zeihan is okay. He tends to be overconfident in his predictions but that's par for the course--I've made that mistake myself. His knowledge of the Near ("Middle") East is rather weak, whereas in the West he's on firmer ground. He has a sense of history, which is more than can be said for some well-known members of the commentariat today. Zeihan is definitely correct in that western Europe is even more in decline than the US...I'd say he underestimates conditions in France. It's true that their demography is not as desperate as Germany's (or Britain's). However, look at the overall situation:

• their political scene is tribalized like ours, with right-wing parties racking up small victories here & there.
• Macron doesn't command the respect he had when he first won the throne.
• France did not vet migrant flows for a few vital years--the government tightened things up afterward, but it's too late. The bombings in Paris & attacks in Nice & other locales in the 2000's are evidence of the jihadist networks inside the country, which the North African & Middle Eastern communities there support to varying degrees.
• Related point: Islam commands allegiance in France whereas its Catholicism is moribund...the percentages of French who practice it mainly do so out of habit. Their churches are museum pieces for tourists while the mosques are full. The word is Marseille is practically another Morocco now.

All of the foregoing is evidence that as a great power, France is hollowing out from the inside.

A couple nights ago I slummed around in comment threads again, out of boredom & insomnia:

1. I am another year older. I hate it. Growing old stinks. It rained all day, which suited my mood perfectly.
2. This: