Strike a Pose.

Exhibit AExhibit B

After watching the Women in Art movie several times, I noticed a pattern that reminded me of something I read recently in a book called, Math and the Mona Lisa by Bulent Atalay. But first, help me with an experiment ... I want you to strike a pose, well two poses.

First, think for 30 seconds of someone you are really fond of -- your kid, your favorite dog, your significant other, me. Now, pretend that you are posing for a picture that will be given to that person/dog/me. (Did I mention you can NOT be looking straight ahead into the camera? You can't look directly into the camera. Tilt your face slightly either direction.) Take your time and really visualize it. CLICK.

Next, take 30 seconds to visualize posing for the Official Portrait of You that will be hung in the hallowed halls of SIU (some important university.) Again no straight ahead faces. CLICK. Which of your eyes came forward, right or left during each pose?

In portraiture bilateral symmetry is quite rare. Usually the subject is presented with one eye and one check compositional dominate over the opposite eye and check. Simply said, her nose points either to the left or right of the picture. If the nose is pointing left from the viewer's perspective, then the subject is presenting with the left cheek and eye. If the nose is pointing to the right, the subject's right side is dominate. (If you are doing the experiment on yourself, your nose will point to your own right hand when the left side of your face is dominate and to the left hand when your right side is dominate.)

You may have noticed nearly 75% of the women's noses in the movie pointed toward the left side of your screen. (They are left presenting portraits.) Why is this? One hypothesis is based on our experiment. The idea is that the presentation is actually determined more by the subject than the artist. It would appear that the emotional frame of mind of the subject effects the direction in which she turns. Warmth, endearment and emotion are feelings associated with LEFT presentations (like most the paintings in the movie.) RIGHT presentations are associated with rationality, power and suppression of emotion.

WHY? Maybe neuropsychology explains. The right side of the brain - the hemisphere associated with emotive functions, like endearment and love, also controls the left side eye and cheek. The left side of the brain controls rational, calculation and confidence controls the muscles in the right side of the face. Possibly, the emotional state of the subject subconsciously dictates which eye comes forward. Not to forget that the viewer is also conditioned to expect a certain "look" from a certain kind of woman.

It is most likely bunkish psycho-babble, but it was interesting for me to go back and look at all the portraits of the movie asking myself what each woman was thinking. Who did I want to get to know better? Which were saying, "I care deaply about your well being" and "I'm pregnant, the father is dead and I am going to throw myself out the window." (Exhibit A and a true story about Modigliani's common law wife.) Or which seem to be thinking, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." (Exhibit B)

Next week we will discuss the golden mean, Baby Bear Rectangles and Fibonacci's rabbits. (It was just too much for one post.) In the mean time, ask your friends to strike a pose.

P.S. Thanks, Marco, for the mental health break. xoxoxo

TGIF

Happy Friday, everyone! That's right, today is Friday and you know what that means when you are a MOM?

It means NOTHING -- ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL. It means Mothering should be the next verse in "If you could Hie to Kolob." There is no end to no end to no end of infinity. It means "they" (read angel children) somehow know how old you are and how old they are and who, ultimately, is going to live longer. They have done the math and deduced that can whine your entire life away and still be left with several productive years for themselves! (Maybe the time has come for me to take a two hour mental health break. Anyone what to go to the movies with me?)

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Women In Art

Curious and beautiful. Thanks, Raquel.

Total Eclipse of the Heart.

You may or may not know that I am not much of a sleeper. I don't know if it is due to my children or my parents -- via genetics. For once, my insomnia came in handy the other night during the total eclipse of the moon. Zina and I sat out on the balcony and snuggled at 3:00 in the morning watching the moon get darker and redder. She asked me who turned the moon down. It was a miracle we could even see the moon with all the light pollution in Utah. Marco says we have to have our street lamps and porch lights extra bright so the burglars can see exactly what they are doing while they are picking the locks to our cars and houses. Because, in Utah, we are nice to everyone.

Two views of the moon are seen during the eclipse, which happened early Tuesday morning. The image on the left was shot at approximately 3:00 a.m. and the image on the right was shot at approximately 3:30 a.m. They say this is the first time a lunar eclipse has been visible from Utah since 2004. Another eclipse will not be visible from Utah until 2010. Now if we could just have a total eclipse of the street lights. (Then maybe I would sleep better.) Good night Moon.

... and the Homecoming.

Thanks to cousin Jonathan, I have a picture of me taking pictures of our friendly Homecoming party guests. (ps. I just posted more wedding pictures so scroll down to see even more.)
Katie, the guest of honor, is wearing her hand-made African shirt. She gave a great talk and inspired me to fill out my mission papers tomorrow. Just think, what would it be like to go on a mission again right now? I bet Erin would do it.

Here's a close up of juicy Rosie Jo, blessed bundle of Matt and Becca. Those cheeks!

I love this happy shot of Marco. I think Jonathan took this one.

The rustic and rugged look of Brandon the drummer. I hear he's available, ladies (and 22).

Yeah, yeah ... Lindrew, the honeymoon was so last year.

Becca with cousin Abby and baby RoJo.

Did you know Marco has a twin brother? Meet Alan Davis of Mesa, AR. Of the eight Davis brothers, Mark and Alan have the most similar kind of lives. They were born exactly 10 years apart, went to the same Rome mission, majored in exactly the same thing in college, went to same law school and even worked at the same firm for the first part of their careers. Their whole lives they have had parallel journeys and alway seem to randomly cross paths with the same people and places.

Just like Marco, Alan has left the mega firm and branched out in a new direction. He is a lawyer for US Air in Mesa. Now, he and his family can travel for free on US Air (which is how the came to Katie's homecoming.) It is super funny he is working at US Air because, all I am saying is, this family can travel! Alan has says his yard is in bad shape from spending every weekend in a different city.

(Pssst, Marco, maybe it is your turn to follow your brother and get a job with an airline.)

She tossed a frisbee, not flowers.

Thanks to Whitney and Jonathan I have more pictures of the reception than you ever really wanted to see. Tough, it's my blog and you will just have to indulge me.

A very special thanks to the Parking Sheriffs. You saved the day more than you will ever know!!! (Let's just say my dad is really particular about his grass and nothing makes him crazier than a rogue car parked on the wrong spot of green.)

But of course Liz tossed a frisbee instead of a bouquet. I love that girl.

I love these lemonade jars. Twenty gallons of juice never needed refilling!

This one is my favorite.

Sistahs.

getting ready

First things first. Let me put it in writing that if ever we have to cross the plains again, here's who's in my Relief Society; Carolyn, Shauna, Diana, Whitney, Erin, Emily, Kim, Anisa and Brittany. Without these women the Davis family would be a very sad lot. Thank you, thank you, thank you for helping us spin straw in to gold on Saturday night. It was a great party. I only have a few shots of getting ready on my camera. (I was either way too busy or too tired to take any good pictures.) Luckily, Whitney was on hand with her camera and I think she will send me a few of her pictures soon. But I think you can get a feel for how things came together.

Other than glorious Liz, the center piece was Anisa's dark chocolate cake. She surprised us all by making her own fondant to lay over the cake. Fondant is basically chocolate play dough and is not for the novice cake maker. She also made strawberry blossoms and leaves out of sugar-gum paste and we wrapped green silk ribbon (care of Carolyn) around each layer. It was SO GOOD. The decorations and food were all circles with lanterns in the trees and whole peaches, melons, green apples, candies and 18 gallons of BYU Creamery ice cream. Here are a couple of pictures of the pre-party-panic. (But everything looks so calm. I wasn't very calm. I think I even said damn in front of my mother in law! Sorry, Betty Jo.)

It was fun to throw a good bash, especially because Andrew and Liz are totally worth it!

Fiddle-twig

For good luck we ate at Bombay House before playing the reunion FXs show. Becca and Matt are in town from Hawaii and Grandma Louise came up from Manti. (Louise is Marco's mother-in-law. It's a long story.) I was pretty excited seeing how I took a vow of celibacy from partaking anything tasty at the Bombay House 18 months ago and boy, it was super tasty. A little shrimp coconut kurma, garlic naan with chutney and a mango lassi was just the thing to get us through the week. (SLC Bombay is open for lunch, right? What time is it now?)

The show was a big hit with 100s of CD sells peddled by our four year old. Welcome to the business, kid. Liz always jokes about starting with the family band on the pink plastic recorder. Now Xanny can say he did his first gig as a microphone stand. He is now an official "Fiddle-twig" and is available for booking through his agent/mom. (Luckily Andrew turned the microphone off because Xanny decided to make up his own words to Mist Covered Mountain.) Next stop -- the WEDDING RECEPTION!

(Child labor)

It all started when ...

Time to play a little blogging catch-up. (It's been more than crazy.) Marco pulled up with the truck packed to the brim last week. In our defense, we also moved things for 4 other people that saw a chance to put our U-haul to the test. (BTW - If your stuff is still on our porch, please make the appropriate arrangements!) The real muscle came from Xanny and Katie. Unfortunately, Zina Boo stubbed her toe early on and was forced to wait out the rest of the evening on the porch.

After moving -- everything hurt. The house was a pile of insanity (still is) and we had no idea where the cups and spoons were. Of course that can only mean one thing, THAI CHILI GARDENS. Definitely half the fun of returning to Zion is the really tasty cheap ethnic food. Who would'da thunk? But Utah has some decent food and they really don't seem to mind that you drag your kids along. In fact, the best part of Thai Chili was the 9:30 pm 4 year old birthday party happening in the back booth for the owner's kid. (They ordered pizza and a spider-man cake.) Xanny, of course, saddled right on up and shared a bit of "4 but nearly five" wisdom and a generous piece of cake with the new 4 year old. Now he thinks when ever you see a random party happening in a public location all you gotta do is ask. The very next day he crashed a nice Peruvian party in the park. The next thing we know, he is marching back with a giant piece of pink cake. He is working on saying Happy Birthday in 7 different languages in order to increase his chances for cake no matter what the circumstances.

Baby, bear and band aid toe. :(

What could be more fun ...

Ok, I'm busy this week. We have plenty of stress with out poking the little ones. Somehow I thought today it would be "fun" to see some tiny blood cells. Actually, this story starts about a month ago when my DC friend, Amira, who lived just a couple blocks from me disapeared from the park for about a week. She had taken her baby to his one year check-up where they tested him for elevated lead levels. The results were so high that they STRONGLY suggested she not return him to their rented house even to gather his things. This was Monday and by that Saturday they had found a place in Arlington and moved. After that I began to notice more and more that our rental was hardly, shall we say, lead abated. They say the signs of a contaminated pre-1965 house are paint dust in the window sills -- check; pealing or bubbling paint (especially at kid eye level) -- check; and, of course, any water pipes in Washington DC -- again, check. My kids are older than the most vulnerable growing period when exposed to heavy metals (pre-natal to 2 yrs.) but why wonder what if. I had done a little research and felt sufficiently worried enough to go in for testing.

What I didn't know was that Utah hospitals don't offer the less accurate but much easier "finger prick" test. I got to the lab with my two brave Guinea pigs where the phelebotomist informed me they were going to have to draw a full 4cc of intravenous blood. I nearly fainted. We put on a happy face and told Xanny that he got to see his red-blood cells go on a ride through the curly tube. He was eager to meet these cells he has read so much about and was excited to make more blood in his "blood factory" bones afterwards. (If you don't know already, Xanny is a little of a medical knowledge freak of nature. He just might tell you he wants to kiss you on your zygomatic.) I am proud to say that the kid didn't even FLINCH! Then, not to be out done by her brother, Babes pretended not to even notice she was being gouged by a sharp metal object. I was amazed and made sure we ALL got lollipops on the way out the door. In the end, I was much more traumatized than my children. Because what could be more fun than getting poked with a sharp needle?

Editor's note: Test results should take several days but most of any lead they might have in their systems should dissipate significantly over the next 30 days. Also, no, my hair is not pulled back in the pictures. On a whim I chopped it all off yesterday with Katie. It really is this short and I love it.

He he he ...

I give you L I L O ... L O L
(M. Penelope Ellis, please don't hate me.)

what a surprise!

little house = BIG BLOG
BIG HOUSE = little blog


(That is real grass under Xanny's toes.)

Here is the list of events this week and I will have to fill in the details later.

Monday: Moving Day! Move a lot of stuff into the house. (What is the cubic area of a 14 x 7 x 7 Uhaul plus the inside of a packed car in tow? Our 6,000 square feet of hungry house gobbled it all up nicely. Aaack.)

Tuesday: Buy all the food (minus the ice cream and the ice, oh, and I forgot to get the cones and a second box of napkins) for Lindrew's reception. We have been planning on 300 but I think we will see fewer than that - I hope. Pick up lanterns and supplies from Whitney. Katie goes to Logan to find a life at USU. Xanny shatters King Kong toy all over his head and eyes. A toy that was undoubtedly recalled from China that I couldn't bother to find and send back to manufacture. Tune in later for details. Find someone to color the abundant grey hair that has come in lately. Shocking.

Wednesday: Test the two and four year old for elevated lead levels from living in 1903 row house. We should know by morning if he will be blind in his left eye. Write Whitney's mother a "Thank You" for giving birth to Whitney. Write apology letter to ex-landlord for casually mentioning in a blog post sometime in June that she was spying on us from Spain via a yahoo list serve. (She didn't think it was funny.) Officially, I am sorry. Also, find the box in the basement that has the silverware. Kids are tiring of eating with fingers.

Thursday: Becca, Matt and Rosie Jo arrive from Hawaii for the festivities. Clean the car out so all the Davis sisters, spouses and kid can fit comfortably in one vehicle. Davis sibs and Maxfield sibs have bonding party up the canyon. Pick up 15 white tablecloths and a croquet set from BYU (and maybe the cones, ...oh, and napkins?) Get over the flu finally.

Friday: Pick up ice and start setting up in Alpine. Make sure "yard" at Alpine is mowed. Find someone to be the Parking Nazi. Check on the cake. (How many tiers do we need to feed 300 people?) Meet at Bombay House at 5:00, family pictures (maybe) at 6:45 in Noni gardens and Fiddlesticks gig at 7:30 at Noni Building Cafe. EVERYONE SHOULD COME TO THE CONCERT!!

Saturday: Meet chair rental guy at 9:30 am in Alpine. Set up wedding reception and have some fun then take it all down and return home by midnight. EVERYONE SHOULD COME TO THE PARTY!! (But not my house afterwards because I think I will be beat.) Check on Marco's broken toe.

Sunday: Arrive at church with our newly returned missionary at 7:00 am to Highcouncil meeting for Katie's report. (I don't think I did this when I came home ... can't remember. Anyone want to volunteer to watch my kids?)Then on to Katie's this-is-not-a-homecoming at 9:30 at 600N 1100E with neatly dressed, quiet two and four year olds. EVERYONE SHOULD COME TO HER "THIS-IS-NOT-A-HOMECOMING" HOMECOMING. Then home for a 1:00 Katie Party in our front yard under the shaggy willow tree (house is completely jumbled). Note to self: trim willow tree on Wednesday. (Will someone call to remind me?)

Monday: Move Katie to Logan and first day of school.

What are you up to this week?