The Vintage Moth - wonderful free vintage ephemera

There is so much (almost too much) amazing stuff out there on the web including tons of free stuff. I will try and start posting things I come across here. Vintage Moth is a great site of free vintage imagery for mixed media and other artists. I had way too much fun and spent way too much time looking at it. Below is the link. Enjoy!

The Vintage Moth..: The NEW site is UP!

Yiddish Class

 

 

I started Yiddish classes with Golde Block yesterday. Golde was a professional singer from New York and grew up surrounded by the world of Yiddishkeit (Jewishness). Yiddish was my first language but where I grew up, we were teh only Jews. As soon as I started school I wanted to be "normal." So when my parents spoke Yiddish, I would respond in English telling them that they needed to speak English in the new country. Like many immigrant kids, the desire to fit in versus the desire to please/honor parents was a constant battle. Flash forward many years and I've joined "Yiddish Club" at the Albert Einstein Senior Residence Center, organized by Golde who is also teaching or reteaching some of us younger folks. I have started collecting stories of peoples experiences with Yiddish also known as the "mamneloschen" or mother-tongue for a book I hope to make and went to the Einstein Center to do a workshop with some of the seniors there. We did both stories and art and it was quite magical. The only requirement was knowledge of a Yiddish word or phrase and then we developed the stories about how we came to know these words or phrases and of course the stories told us so much more than just what the word or phrase meant. The stories told tales of history, humor, culture, tragedy, family, community, loss, and love. Of course I fell in love the people and joined Yiddish Club and then I waited in line until Golde could fit me in as one of her individual students.

We met at her warm and welcoming house, not ostentatious - as she pointed out, but warm and comfy. I asked if I could take pictures of when she sang professionally and she said "sure - why not?" Learning Yiddish was more than just learning the words, grammar, alphabet or aleph bet. It was learning about Golde's life, history, and world, hearing Jewish and Yiddish jokes, and learning about Yiddish and Jewish culture. It was also remembering about my own history that I had tried for so many years to escape and sharing small snippets from that, amazed at how much Yiddish I remembered, tho reading was a big challenge. I love the idea that at some point I might be able to read Sholem Aleichem or I.L Peretz. I love that I will get to know more about Golde as I continue Yiddish class with her. I love that I am becoming more comfortable and at home in my Jewishness.

Fair Oaks Sacramento - like Marin turned down to 2 but with roaming chickens

A meeting of the minds. Stumbled upon lovely Fair Oaks today not too far from where I live. It reminded me of Marin, the hills, nature, loveliness, (excessive wealth), artistic looking alternative types, but on a very small scale. Downtown was especially charming for many reasons including the free range chickens that have taken roost in the plaza there. Evidently they rule the place. I spotted a few Rhode Island Reds reminding me of when I lived in the Obi Obi Valley of Queensland Australia and my boyfriend and I kept chickens. We named them after my girlfriends and when they started getting killed off, it was especially upsetting. Turns out there was a massive carpet-snake slithering in to the chicken coop after dark and partially gobbling them up. Aark.  Boyfriend went down one night with a flashlight and gun and that was the end of the snake. Although we named the girls after friends, we named the rooster after Elvis for his impressive vocalizations  and sex appeal to the hens. Jump forward a couple of decades to Northern California. Went for a walk across the bridge over the mighty American River into some gorgeous park land. Truly stunning. Every day I feel grateful to be here although I do sometimes miss some of the many other wonderful places I've been fortunate enough to spend time in.

The pictures were taken by a lovely young woman from LA who was gracious enough to take them and email them to me via her iPhone (appliance lust here). She did a good job, although it wasn't too difficult considering how camera friendly these fowls were.

School visit, school transformation, One Health proposal, sea otters, raptor rescue: Dinner with Megan, Melissa, and Julio

Wondering how other people balance living a full life, being creative, and using social media like Facebook and blogging. There's the experience and then there's the experience of writing about the experience. Had dinner at fabulous Sacramento restaurant Tapas the World with some really interesting friends and ended up taking notes for my blog. Not sure if this is healthy. I've known Megan since she was little and became her fairy godmother. Now she's married and in grad school at UC Davis. I met her when her mom, an elementary school teacher, invited me to come do a school visit and 'show and tell' about my kids books to the entire school. It was in El Grenada California, near Half Moon Bay. I ended up becoming close friends her mom Melissa and Megan. Came back to paint some murals with the students. Thus began the process of transforming the school from institutional greys into a vibrant and exciting place of learning. They now have learning gardens, many more murals, and fabulous sculptures. But I digress.

The following is from my notes from a couple of weeks ago: We talked about Megan's experiences in Vet school - guest speaker from One Health where AMVA and AMA have finally gotten together to make a proposal bringing Human Animal and Environmental concerns/relationships together. Cars caused diminishing of vet schools as we were no longer so dependent on horses e.g. closing of Harvard's vet school. Julio's  work at the Natural History Museum and how Southern Sea Otters eat sea urchins which turn their teeth and bones light purple. How passionate Megan has always been about sea otters and when she was 15 she made and exhibited 2317 images that she made to bring attention to how few remained (Megan is a fantastic artist). It was a powerful show. Julio's volunteer work with the Raptor Center where he climbed a 50' tree to rescue a Red Tail that had gotten caught in a kite and couldn't escape. Pretty terrifying. Melissa's fabulous new student teacher. How great it is having her but the amount of extra work in training her. We also talked about the movie The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which we all loved. I especially loved the eating scenes. Delightfully feral. Also talked about much more such as the demographic differences between MySpace and Facebook (MySpace - high schoolers, artists, people of color), Facebook (White, middle-class, educated) and much more. But life calls and must go. Next to come - writing retreat in Santa Rosa.

Children's Books and Children's Book Press

One of my many passions is for children's picture books. I was lucky enough to be one of the earlier multicultural picture book artists working for Children's Book Press. They were the first publisher to show the beauty of all children, not just Anglo-Americans and to help challenge and change old racist ideas by presenting books by and about the many different cultural groups in America.

I illustrated Uncle Nacho's Hat, Baby Rattlesnake Where Fireflies Dance, and was honored to be in the anthologies Honoring Our Ancestors, and Just Like Me. I also got to art direct and design other books and through various CBP events got to know some of CBP's authors and artists such as the amazing Maya Christina Gonzales, Elizabeth Gomez, Enrique Chagoya, Carmen Lomas Garza, Elly Simmons, George Littlechild, Joe Sam, Felicia Hoshino, and Carl Angel who, among others, have all created ground breaking art for books that address important themes such as environment, lbgt, immigration, racism, war, feminism, special needs, spirituality, you name a social justice issue and it's in one of their books but in a gentle non-didactic, playful and whimsical way. Children's Book Press books have won just about every award except the Caldecott, which will hopefully happen soon. I have some annotated reading lists on my website for anyone interested in finding out more about multicultural picturebooks.

This year CBP is celebrating their 35th anniversary but like many small non-profits they have been hit hard by the recession in terms of donations and funding and the difficulties schools are having purchasing books. Other mainstream publishers have jumped on the bandwagon doing "vanilla" multiculturalism that imitate CBPs work but don't quite have the same heart, soul, and guts. While there is definitely a place for all kinds of books I really want to encourage anyone with any discretionary funding to head on over to Children's Book Presses website, check out their work, and donate. You'll feel really good afterwards. http://www.childrensbookpress.org/get-involved

Danny does blue-tongue

Here's my nephew Danny with the effects of a "pop ring." He wanted me to include the ring so that people could see cause and effect and know that he didn't naturally have a blue tongue. When I lived in Australia I loved the blue tongue lizards, so these images are particularly evocative. Fortunately, Danny is much friendlier than the lizards.

Teaching Danny to needle-felt

I am working on a book about needle-felting (more will be revealed later) and one aspect will be kids making totem animals. As my delightfully talented nephew Danny was visiting over the holidays we decided to do some needle felting together. He's an extremely focused and precocious seven year old and I doubt that most seven year olds could do this, especially in a classroom setting. I would recommend ages 9 and up if the kids are fairly focused. It's enormously fun. Danny loves penguins because of how they walk (waddle), how they look (cute) and their color. He recently received Club Penguin membership, which he was over the moon about. We didn't talk much about totem or power animals as he just wanted to make art and not think about it too much. Here are some of Danny's comments during the process and when I told him the pictures might end up in a book. Click on the image to enlarge for step-by-step directions.

This is worth doing. It gets you real excited.
How does the technology of this work?
Wings are easy.
Sometimes getting an idea is harder than making it.

On needle felting - Fast motion, slow motion, medium motion.
When I asked him what kind of penguin he'd be he said "Emperor penguin, because then I could do whatever I wanted but I'd rather be human. I'd really like to know what fish tastes like straight from the sea. I'd be a good penguin.

On being in a book. I want to be famous. No I don't want to be famous. I was just saying it.

So there you have it, a glimpse of my delightful nephew Danny. I love how smart, funny, and passionate about art he is. Quite a treat for this Auntie.

I will be teaching a class on felted totem animals Saturday Feb. 13, 1-4 at University Art 2610 Marconi Avenue, Sacramento, CA 95821. Kids over 10 welcome. Contact me through my website if you are interested in coming. www.mirareisberg.com

Beauty at the old cemetery in Sacramento.

The cheerful side of cemeteries

Last weekend I was feeling a little blue with the winter greys so my husband Guy took me to a beautiful cemetery to cheer me up. It always works astoundingly well. I'm not sure if it's the beauty, or the reminder of mortality and how lucky I am to be alive, but I always find old cemeteries very uplifting. My favorites are Pere lachaise in Paris, an old cemetery in Brooklyn, there's a beautiful one in Palouse Washington, and of course Colma outside of San Francisco, a city of many cemeteries. Guy saw a bumper sticker there that said "Colma, a great place to live" - the irony was not lost on him.

This particular cemetery had tributes to the early pioneers of the area. It also featured a lot of beautiful statuary, mostly ethereal and solemn looking statues of women in portent poses. I thought I'd share some here. These are color pictures and it was a delightfully eerie and refreshing afternoon.

More picture from Esthers Place - goats, cheviot sheep and chickens

It was getting late in the day and the animals had either come in or were coming in. I loved how curious and expressive the goats were. The sheep also looked happy and of course I was drawn to the graphic patterning of the chickens.