One of 73 California stations served by Amtrak, the Merced Amtrak Station is on the San Joaquin line.
Today’s practice is based on an iPhone photo I took a week ago…
As usual it’s in Paper 53.
Merced Amtrak Station
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Category Archives: Sketches
Yard Sale
I met some neighbors this morning at a yard sale. Actually, there were two yard sales, one on one side of the street and the other right across the street. One woman has been living there for 53 years…sharp as a tack and as friendly as they come. Another neighbor invited me in for a tour of the gardens, chicken coup, and house. We would have sat longer out front in the plentiful Ragsdale shade, if I hadn’t needed to get back and make lunch. How lucky we are to live along side these folks under all this shade!
Note: I’m still using Paper by 53 or 53 Paper or Fifty Three Paper and an inexpensive stylus. In this case I took and used a photo, but I also went out for a peek in person too after I started. I often think about getting and trying out another iPad drawing app, but there’s so much more to learn about Fifty Three Paper, so many technical things to learn about drawing. Trees are tough. I’ll never take them for granted, ever!
Tree Pose
Stay still no matter what flutters by . . . .
The Cedar Tree Pose Man was giving birth to me and this drawing.
When it comes to accelerating extinction…
…we’re breaking records.
Maternity – Guayaberas
Tents?
E 27th St. Cypress Missile Defense HQ
I love this little house on E 27th St., just down the block from us, on its own corner. Those two Cypress Trees are so strategically positioned! They remind me of missiles. Add the flag, and I think of it as the neighborhood’s civil defense headquarters.
Shade
But it’s dry heat. Today’s high was something like 102. Tomorrow, 108.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far. If there’s a tree in the parking lot, anywhere in the parking lot, and a space under it to park, that’s where you park!
Or Weed? Larry David in a Cheech and Chong Movie
Just getting started at the Ophthalmologist waiting room, when I got called in. Had to wrap this one up in 30 seconds after only a couple of minutes.
Then it dawned on me: I was assigned Schick…
Water Tower
The Water Tower near the Merced County Fire Department, McKee Station, on which is written (in lettering much finer than depicted here) Merced, Gateway to Yosemite is not very far from Yang’s Produce Stand right there on McKee.
I’m intrigued by this water tower for some reason. When I drive by and stare at it, I’m afraid I’m going to cause an accident. So I thought I’d get some of it out of my system by trying to illustrate it in its beautiful setting.
Marketing Anthropology or Vice Versa
My dad once told me that, when he was growing up as an Italian American in the 20s and 30s, he was ashamed to admit to his schoolmates that his mother made bread at home. Can you imagine that? Store-bought-bread was considered more modern; and even though Wonder Bread barely protected your fingers from the mayonnaise, it served to help folks shift upwards even before the advent of aluminum siding! Nowadays, making homemade bread is interpreted differently. Things change. What goes around – comes around, I guess.
What got me going on this? Yesterday Amy Santee got my wheels turning in a wonderful post about the value of ethnographic research for use in general marketing on her blog, Anthropologizing. Then today I saw a post by Tom Maschio in a LinkedIn group about the ways in which big business sometimes draws on anthropological notions. In Maschio’s post he shares a YouTube video by Abigail Posner, Google, Canada, who describes a few ways in which ethnography and anthropological concepts have helped Google and the rest of us make extraordinary sense of some pretty darn ordinary things that we habitually overlook.
Why wouldn’t these anthropological perspectives and ethnographic insights come in handy? They’re about people and the people-ish ways people do people things. In my view, a lot of the really good stuff came from anthropological research and theory in the first place; but, nowadays it’s either called something else or done by modern folks to look even more modern.
Still, ain’t nothin’ better than homemade bread! Oh, and I’m so glad there are creative, productive, professional anthropologists in the classroom and beyond sharing this delicious stuff!
(Sorry for the technical difficulties and the uploading fragmentation involved in this post. I hope you were lucky and didn’t even notice it.)
portfoliolongo 