It's the season of new life, color and mud, when dead sticks unfold tender new leaves and the air feels like the life-sustaining ocean it is, instead of scraping the breath out of lungs.

Easter will be celebrated this weekend with church services, painted egg hunts, chocolates and Peeps and cakes featuring cute fluffy ... uh...

Cakewrecks blog

ANYWAY!

I've survived my classes (so far), replanted my garden boxes, and am recovering from a near-miss with pneumonia. And, I've sold my first ever commissions, taking the first step into drawing as a living as well as a life and love.

Hope your worlds are turning to the sun.

Posted in response to *Losmios 's poll here.

I had a great fascination with dinosaurs when I was very little, drawing them, writing stories about them, and running about pretending to be one. This didn't go over well with the fundamentalist teachers at my school who told me either there never were any such things as dinosaurs, and "fossils" are just fakes put in the ground by God to test our faith; or that dinosaurs were evil monsters that Satan mutated out of nice normal animals and God destroyed by sending the Flood. But dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts are so obviously beautiful and charismatic, and not so strange or vicious compared to many animals still sharing the Earth with us now. Why wipe out the dinosaurs, but keep sharks and Nile crocodiles? Why lose Eohippus but keep both dogs and deer? And what about the duckbill platypus? Whose bright idea was that one?

I was also told that drawing dinosaurs, dragons and my own fantastic creatures was sinful, because only the creatures God had created were worthy subjects. Horse okay, unicorn not. There was also an incident when I corrected a teacher's spelling of Archaeopteryx, much to her annoyance, and earned myself the hatred of the whole class for the crime of being right.

So, as a creature neither fish nor fowl myself, I chose one of the most famous transitional fossils ever found as my symbol. The dancing fossil, living contradiction, and spawn of Satan in some folks' opinion. Archaeopteryx lithographica means "stone-written ancient wing", so I hope to leave my tracks also written for the ages, or at least the curious.

Pteryxx has two X's to distinguish me from all the other wing-folk out there, and is shorter than Archaeopteryx but just as difficult to pronounce.

~ 8 >

As I write this, I'm watching (for the fourth time now) an episode of Deadliest Catch, the documentary-drama about Alaskan crab fishermen working the hazardous Bering Sea in winter. Like many fans, I've been watching religiously for years and feel I know these folks.

A series of storms battered the fleet during the night, damaging several of 'our' boats. Phil, the captain of the Cornelia Marie, got thrown from his bunk and hit the corner of a cabinet opposite, breaking some ribs. His son Josh bound him up and they all went on fishing while Phil kept up a quiet, steady coughing behind the wheel.

During the day he started coughing up blood. Josh came up to check on him, and Phil with unaccustomed gentleness thanked him and asked for a few ibuprofen. He said nothing about the blood. "My health is on the back burner right now, we got a lot to get done... Chances are this is nothing."

After a day of fishing and getting gradually worse, Phil called up Murray, his senior crewman and best friend. Murray listens and says "Sounds like you poked a rib into your lung." Phil says "Yeah." Then they go on fishing, Murray working the deck with a solemn face, Phil coughing into bloody paper towels and hiding them in crevices in the wheelhouse.

Late in the night, now 24 hours since the injury. Phil abruptly calls a hospital in Anchorage, then says he's got fishing to do and hangs up. "I got to find another hospital... I don't like what this one is telling me. She says get to an ER right now."

The next morning, two days after the injury. Murray checks on Phil and finds him slowly getting worse. Phil keeps saying he doesn't want to let down his crew and his ship. "I always had this dream that I'd die at sea." Murray keeps on fishing, but before long he disobeys orders and tells Phil's sons what's going on. Josh comes upstairs and says screw the fishing, screw the money, if it was me we'd be in dock already. Phil gently says he needs to be alone right now and sends his son away. They go back to fishing, now all the deck in silence, but their postures speak volumes.

Later that day, another captain calls Phil about the fishing. Phil says listen, I got hurt and now the hospital's after me. The other captain goes, You did what?! Call the coasties, make the call, don't be shy. Phil thanks him for his concern and hangs up.

He turns to the camera and mutters how everybody is after him now...

"This is starting to get to me man... I don't know what to do. Big tough guy huh, ain't so tough. Big tough guy that ain't so tough."

--------

It's hard to grasp the scope of what a human mind can do to itself. What we believe is more central to us than our talents, more powerful than our intelligence, more important than our survival. We believe so easily, so willingly. And what we believe, no force on earth can change without our consent.

"Something will go wrong, it always does."
"I just don't have the talent for it."
"Everything would be okay if I just do better."
"Nothing I do would matter anyway."
"He's trustworthy because he's one of us."
"But I love my mate."
"I'm not the kind of person that has this problem."
"I don't need help."

We minimize, we rationalize, we deny. We guard our beliefs as jealously as a dragon with its hoard and respond to any intrusion with overwhelming force. Changing our souls is so threatening, so terrifying, that we can't even conceive of the possibility that we might be wrong. The world might not be what we think it is... indeed, it never was.


"I've seen many times that after the shock of violence has begun to heal, victims will be carried in their minds back to that hallway or parking lot, back to the time when they still had choices, before they fell under someone's malevolent control, before they refused the gift of fear...
"Often they will say about some particular detail, 'I realize this now, but I didn't know it then.' Of course, if it is in their heads now, so was it then. What they mean is that they only now accept the significance...
"This has taught me that the intuitive process works, though often not as well as its principal competitor, the denial process."

-Gavin de Becker in 'The Gift of Fear'


'The Gift of Fear' is primarily about teaching people how to predict violent behavior and avoid it; but it is also, at the core, about intuition, creativity, and humanness. When a person frees oneself to guess, to make mistakes, to ask questions, one is more likely to find a workable solution to a problem. This can be demonstrated through experiments with simple puzzles, or by posing a question to any group of young children. Adults are expected to be more reasonable, which often means conforming; and school tends to be a long process of training in the fear of being wrong, both scholastically and socially. Artists, and especially writers, often have to *un-learn* this fear in order to fully capitalize on their creative abilities. In the deep places of us where creation happens, the heart does not know the adult's fear of making a mistake. It can never be less than true to itself.

The freedom of the heart that speaks without words, seems to me to come from those questions that are the stamp of childhood, as well as storytelling and art and creativity in many fields. One is "Why are things that way?" and the other is "What if they were different?" Why is the sky blue... what if it were green, or white? Why can't dogs talk, and what if they could? What might happen if we colonized Mars? What would a laughing pear look like? What if this species had three legs? What would it be like to live the life of this person we admire? What if those signals really add up to something.... what if I really need help?

Asking such a question implies willingness to search out and create an answer, one that is not necessarily right or wrong. It's our birthright, a free pass on our own recognizance to wander in the strange open lands beyond the walls, to see with eyes unclouded.

---------

Three days after being injured, Phil concedes under pressure and sets course for the nearest clinic at St. Paul island. All night, the word is spreading through the fleet, and other captains start calling on Phil's radio, concerned for him. He answers none of them. On the Time Bandit, Johnathan says, "I'm sure he ain't gonna call us (back), he's the tough guy. Tough guy just gonna disappear on us... Say a little prayer for Phil. Hope he's gonna be okay."

Phil: "It's weird, you feel alone. Never felt real alone before...
"If something happened to me right now, what would happen with the boys? What would happen if I fell off the face of the earth right now?"

He finally gets medical attention, 60 hours after the initial injury. As the episode closes, we see him standing in the snow and slush outside the ER, gathering his nerve to go inside.

"I can't believe that this is happening. But it is, and I'm here."


-------

Further reading:

Deadliest Catch fan forums

Blain's page on denial

Amazon link for 'The Gift of Fear'

Below find the link to the novel 'Little Brother', being given away by the author Cory Doctorow on his own website. The reasons for letting anyone who wants download his latest, just-released book for free, in this case are twofold: First, because authors need buzz before they can expect to sell anything. Second, because ordinary people dealing with the constant presence of security and technology in their daily lives, desperately need to learn to think critically about what those things really can and cannot do. Mostly we just trust the little black boxes that run our lives.

The strongest way for an author to have his stuff read, the way most likely to gain him fans and spread his name, is by the personal recommendation of a trusted friend. I just finished the book, and I found it good enough to pass along to y'all. It's fast-paced, keeps raising the stakes, and it's also full of information that amounts almost to tutorials. It reads a lot like Heinlein's 'Have Spacesuit Will Travel' that way, a story that does as much teaching as storytelling. But it is NEVER slow. It's basically a showcase of the hacker mindset and gamesmanship. I thought character-wise it was pretty flat. Marcus, whose POV we share throughout, does think about and react to what his actions mean. The teachers, authority figures, and parents act pretty much like you'd expect them to, and hold the views they need to hold. It's Marcus and his friends who know the reality of the technology they use, and who know that the DHS detained them and forbade them to tell; everyone else, all the people living in the ordinary world, are the ones they have to wake up, to convince. But that IS the purpose of the novel; it's a meta-story, a call to action by blazing the path and showing what it means, what it's like to decide to fight the system.

Little Brother download site

Take care all, enjoy, and pass on.

- Peace, Pteryxx

In the last few days, the Net has lit up with alarm about a bill pending before Congress that would effectively remove copyright infringement penalties for any artwork not specifically registered with a paid service. Art communities are justifiably concerned by the prospect. Journals, blogs and emails are flying the banner "Legalized Theft!" passing the message on like a grass fire. All the power of the outraged communities is being brought to bear for the crusade.

Problem is, no such bill exists. Yet.

The rumor arose from an article by Mark Simon on Animation World Network, which claims that all unregistered copyrights are under immediate threat:
You Will Lose All The Rights To Your Own Art

"If the Orphan Works legislation passes, you and I and all creatives will lose virtually all the rights to not only our future work but to everything we've created over the past 34 years, unless we register it with the new, untested and privately run (by the friends and cronies of the U.S. government) registries. Even then, there is no guarantee that someone wishing to steal your personal creations won't successfully call your work an orphan work, and then legally use it for free."

He's expanding on concerns raised by the Illustrators' Partnership of America, whose own news release of March 19 asks its readers only to be alert and stand by:
Orphan Works Update
"Many artists have contacted us, asking if it’s time to write Congress about the new Orphan Works bill. No, Congress hasn’t released an actual bill yet and lawmakers tend to ignore letters when there is no bill.

But when we do ask you to act, it will have to be quickly. We expect a bill to be released after the Easter recess. Sources say it will be introduced in the House and Senate simultaneously, and fast-tracked for a vote in the House by mid-May. Advocates hope for swift passage before the summer recess."

The IPA is responding to a presentation made to the House IP subcommittee by a company called Pic Scout. Pic Scout has created image recognition technology that can automate scanning for infringing works, and presented its newest product, the Content Clearance System, as a solution to the problem of orphaned works. Anyone wishing to use an image would upload it to be compared against Pic Scout's database, then receive back the image owner's contact information if it exists.
Pic Scout statement, 13March08
"This system targets the simple person who wants to use any digital file, and doesn't know who it belongs to. All he has to do is go online, upload this file to our clearance system, using our friendly interface, and click on a search button. Our system will compare this file to millions of other files, already stored in our secured database, and the user will receive an email notification with copyright owner detailed contact and licensing information. While performing this reasonable and diligent search at a little or no cost at all, the users will have the ability to decide whether they can and want to use the content."

While I'm sure Pic Scout would be overjoyed to have every artist in the States forced to pay a fee to get into their safe, gated database, it's a long road between here and there. For one thing, the Copyright Office has already considered requiring registration and rejected it as too extreme. Register of Copyrights, 13Mar08
"In our study of the orphan works problem, the Office reviewed various suggestions from the copyright community. These included creating a new exception in Title 17, creating a government-managed compulsory license, and instituting a ceiling on available damages. We rejected all of these proposals in part for the same reasons: we did not wish to unduly prejudice the legitimate rights of a copyright owner by depriving him of the ability to assert infringement or hinder his ability to collect an award that reflects the true value of his work."

For another, image comparison is just one potential tool in making a reasonable search for an owner. Art communities, websites, professional organizations and such already do a pretty good job of searching out infringement without any such technological aids. And new tools come along all the time, such as Google's Image Labeler currently in beta.
Image Labeler

Finally, current copyright law already stipulates that when the owner of an 'orphaned work' resurfaces, that work is no longer considered orphaned. The owner can still claim compensation for the image's use. Reasonable effort to search for the owner, and formal registration of a work, only come into play for statutory damages. If someone claims your work is orphaned, and you show up and say 'Hey that's mine', you have rights. It's that simple.

Current copyright law could indeed be in flux; it's been pounded from all sides by entertainment giants extending their terms, recording companies attacking fair use, and software producers claiming everything they make is only licensed and never sold. Any proposed legislation that appears in the next few weeks needs to be scrunitized. We have every reason to carefully watch the proceedings and keep ourselves informed of the laws. And then, when a real threat arises, to recognize and act on it as swiftly as we did these past days.

If nothing else, perhaps this scare reminds us how much we value our own creations and those of our fellow artists. The first step to believing something is the fear that it might be true*.


*(to paraphrase Terry Goodkind.)

Further reading:
Radio Free Meredith's excellent analysis on orphaned works:
Six Misconceptions About Orphaned Works"

Statement by Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights, before the House on 13 March 2008:
The "Orphan Works" Problem and Proposed Legislation"