Vital petition

I don’t usually get into the whole petition thing but this one is an issue close to my heart. Please go to the following link and add your name to the petition concerning urgent action regarding climate change.

 

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tcktcktck

Facebook Games Replacing TV Leisure

Many people are no longer coming home, turning on the TV, and flipping channels to see what’s on. Instead, they sit down in front of the computer.

Even before checking email, many people now go to Facebook, just to see if anything is new on their home page, or to see which of their friends might be on line. Next, a few minutes is spent commenting on friends’ posts, or taking fun quizzes that their friends have taken.

Next, they check in to their games. In some games, money arrives every hour, and they want to get it to the bank before someone steals it. In other games, they want to buy items, and they only have an opportunity to earn money every six hours. If they already have enough money, they may now be going shopping (in their online game) to relax after work.

There are games for all ages, from kids to grandparents (such as World War II).  Some whole extended families play on line at the same time, from different locations.  One of the things I enjoy persoanlly is meeting people from all over the world who are playing these interactive games at the same time.

I’ve noticed a transformation in myself taking place since I’ve started playing these games, and since I’ve been using Facebook regularly. 

I write six blogs on completely different topics, and I’ve noticed my blogging has really suffered because Facebook is using up all my computer time! What are other people finding?
Just when I thought I’d finally get back to blogging, today I discovered Spy Wars and found that looks pretty interesting……..HELP!!!

–Madame Monet

Field

This is a collaboration with my son Matthew. He drew the lines, and I colored it in. He said it was a drawing of pipes, but it looked more like crop fields to me, seen from an airplane.

Sharing a link

I was sent this link and found it very interesting so I hope you guys do too..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA

First haiku

I must confess this:

No haiku have I written 

 Till I wrote this one

Slipping into that Green Pool again

Hello friends! Spring has been a busy time for us all. I’ve been working on new art, but I haven’t posted much of it yet.
I was excited to get a chance to participate in a fine art fair for interior designers, going on this week. It opened over the weekend, and I took a couple pics to share with you.

It was interesting to note which piece is getting the most attention here at my second show. Last time it was my Meditation on a Coffee Cup #6. This time it is the one I translated into French, Green Desire, inspired by one of Niki’s paintings.

I was excited to get a photo of a rainbow this morning. My camera didn’t catch all the colors, but it was neat anyways.

Best wishes to you all!
~Shelley

Lost art treasures

 

I finally managed to retreive some film that had been jammed in my old camera and got the pics developed. I’d forgotten what was on it and was pleasantly surprised by the photos I found.

This one is of a very special place indeed, Creswell Crags on the border between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. We’ve been a few times and enjoyed every visit. As you can see from the picture, it’s a rather beautiful place but it hides extraordinary secrets. For thousands of years the caves on either side of the gorge were used by early man. Hundreds of artefacts and remains have been found but in 2003 something even more astounding was found.

13,000 years ago, this was the place for artists to hang out and work.

Yes, honestly. In 2003, a discovery was made that shook the world of archaeology and anthropology. Until then, it was thought that the earliest European cave art was to be found in the caves of Lascaux and others in France. Creswell Crags is the site of not cave paintings but engravings and relief work. These were probably painted as well; traces of ochre and other ancient paint pigments have been found in the art.

In 2006, there were limited tours being offered of the caves where the art was found. Needless to say, we went and marvelled. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end at the sight of a carving of a sleeping bear, of a horse, a reindeer and others. Sadly, the light was too poor to take photos and I’d recommend having a look around the offical site, www.creswell-crags.org.uk to have a look at both the art and the history.

What Witches Know ~ An Original Fable

 

WHAT WITCHES KNOW 

by

Psychscribe

© 2009 www.psychscribe.com

 

     My grandmother, just before they burned her, said this to my mother: the only difference between them and us is they don’t know they have it.  She gestured with her chin at  the bonneted, jostling women, who far out numbered the men in the seething crowd around the stake. Her own unbound hair snapped in the wind as they lit her.

     Afterwards my mother fled to this secret, wooded place that welcomes our kind.  The curse they call a power spills like gentle sunlight upon the bears  and other wild things that feed from our hands. The beasts of the forest are kin to us.

     I had no father.  She grew me, all on her own she liked to say. I never asked her for the truth.  I knew he’d met the same terrible fate as all the others, the ones who came after. 

     We never knew how they found her here.  They would just appear between the trees, squinting and searching, as if sucked from the great open spaces by a hungry wind.  Raking her fingers through that thick, viney hair, she would sigh so deeply you could feel the cottage tremble.  I trembled too.  For them and for her.  Go away, she would whisper.  Not again, I would pray. 

     The gods did not answer. The men did not hear.

     She tried to warn them.  I’ll hurt you, she’d cry.  Leave while you can.  They never believed her.  Princes and farmers, hunters and noblemen, even the friar thought he could save her.  They never said from what.

     Save yourself! she would shriek.  They only chased her more.

     She looked safe enough. Layers of violet gauze robes hung from a tall, fragile frame, concealing tiny breasts and skin so pale it seemed as if she might vanish at any moment.  They must have thought they were chasing a fairy.  How could they know what she was?

     What they hunted, hell-bent, was their own annihilation.   They would forget to eat and drink, or wash, or even sleep, and laugh in delight when she called it to their attention.  See what you do to me, crooned the hunter to his prey.   See what you do. 

     And each would whisper his dream of wholeness and nothingness, the dream we’ve been hearing since time began, the one that sends them from their churches and wives’ beds and into our damnation.

     Did she love them?  Almost, always almost, she once said.  But as soon as I can smell the fear in them the feeling is replaced by something else, something I can’t name. 

     Sooner or later she would grow tired from the hunt.  How long can you run from water when your throat is parched?  But she never succumbed, not at once anyway.  Breathless and laughing, she would toss the suitor her robes and the promise of tomorrow, disappearing into the cottage and bolting the door.

     Witch! they would shout at her naked, fleeing form, angry yet smiling in a way I did not understand.  Burn her! Burn her! the wives left behind cried out in their dreams. 

     In the morning, still naked, she would unbolt the door and open it wide, her dark hair coiling and writhing, lifting toward the sun.  I could feel her heat from where I lay in my small bed.  She would not close her eyes when she made what they called love . They liked that at first ( ah… spirit! ) arched triumphantly over her like bows and staring into the depths of what they fancied to be their souls.  They always got to the point, of course, where they needed to close their eyes on what they saw. But by then it was too late.

 

     We keep a little piece of them.  Not because we are evil but because it is our nature.  What we take are their shadows, their dark, howling secrets.  If you’ve ever seen a squirrel skinned alive then you know what it is like.   

     They live through it.  They go home to their wives, their hearths and their children.  But a man without his shadow is never sure he’s really there.  He looks at the ground and sees nothing beneath his feet.

 

     The witch hunts come cyclically, just like the seasons.  We know it is time long before we hear the pounding of hooves, the blood-thirsty cries.

     The man who led the hunt for my mother was probably the most enamored of all her lovers.  And the most tormented.  He brought his wife, a small, plain  woman with flat brown eyes.  She’d known, of course.  They always know.  He’d offered her first torch when they found the witch.

     There must have been forty men.  You could smell the lust in the air when they stripped her.  I sure would like a taste of this one before we cook her, one of them said as he grabbed at her breast.

     Don’t touch her! I’ll kill the lot of you! screamed my mother’s lover, aiming his musket at all of them. The wife paled at his outburst.  She swayed on her feet like a sapling in a winter wind. My mother reached out a hand to steady her.

     A look passed between witch and wife that can hardly be described.. It flickered brighter than the torchlight in the air between them, a fusion of forces human shaped and witch radiant, so brilliant, so strong, that the men had to turn their faces from it. 

     She passed her torch to my mother, then gently wrapped her cloak around my mother’s bare shoulders.  Piece by piece she flung the rest of her garments at the men, laughing and spinning herself into the frenzy that is older than time.

     The men dared not say a word.  The husband could not.

     Embracing the stake like a lover, she wrapped her naked arms and legs around it as my mother lit the pyre.  Not a hand was lifted to stop it. 

     Afterwards he carried my mother home, belly down on his horse.  He married her and got his shadow back.  It was said, for a time, that he’d never looked better.  My mother, of course, died the death the wife had chosen for her.  It was slow, and a terrible thing to see.  First they bound her hair, then they put bonnets on her, and in time when he looked into her eyes he saw nothing.  Nothing at all.

 

     A witch without her magic is like a man without his shadow: useless both of them, and damned anyway.

Kev Moore @ Pride Park singing Commons People

Cafe Crem was for me always the place to share Art, Music, Thoughts and Words. but it was also the place where I could tell my friends what is going on in my/our life.

Some of you might have followed Kevin’s football  story which started about 2 months ago as his Home Team Derby got a new manager, Nigel Clough, the son of one the most famous English managers of all time. To express his deep joy and his new hope for a better performance from the team Kevin wrote a song called “Derby Pride”, went on the radio with it, and at different places in the net, and from reaction to reaction he finally wrote another song, and another and another. The project grew so big that it became an entire CD album. The CD will be released officially on the 25th of April, when Kevin will sing one of the songs from the CD

“Commons People”

in the very centre of the Derby Stadium,

in front of  33000 people.

It is an exceptional event in Kevin’s life. He has already been often on different stages throughout the world in front of many people, but this one, this is

AN EMOTIONAL BIGGIE!!!

Well, I am proud to say that I have been deeply involved in this CD, making the whole design of the 2 CDS (there are 2 different versions, one is officially endorsed by the Derby County Football Club), and I have also followed the creation of each song from up close, sometimes giving my humble advice and opinions.

I have also created a full product line for the fans: posters, prints, T-Shirts, fridge magnets, posters, keychains, mugs, etc… this was a lot of work!

A last info… Not that I believe that any of the Cafe Cremers might be interested, but who knows who will come across here:

The CD and some other memorabilia  are  available @ Miki’s Mart

and most of the other stuff @ Goodaboom’s Boutique.

PS: for the ones who don’t know: the Derby players are called “The Rams” and their mortal enemy, coming from Nottingham, down the road, are called   “The Red Dogs”.

This is why I have featured Kev Moore as a Ram fighting for the ball towards a red dog. I seem to be very successful with this design among the Derby Fans!!!

by Miki

Happy Earth Day!

Hello everyone! It’s hard to believe it’s been a whole year since I first drew my “Butterfly Flower” in honor of Mother Earth. The original idea behind it was based on the “butterfly effect” and Chaos Theory, the idea that one butterfly could eventually have a far-reaching ripple effect on subsequent historic events. The flower is my representation of the Flower of Life, a sacred geometric shape found in all major religions of the world. I want everyone to know that each and every one of us, through our loving creative thoughts, has the power to create the vibrations that will heal our planet.

Cafe Crem is the place where I feel most connected with this world. The creative interaction here from friends all over the planet feels strong, and always warms my heart.

Thank you, everyone, and have a beautiful day, in honor of our Earth!
Peace and love,
Shelley