Lost Time & Catching Up

Gratitudes:
1. I'm grateful for the house I'm now living in.
2. I'm grateful for the books I have to read.
3. I'm grateful for my friends, both online and IRL.
4. I'm grateful for my vision and hearing.
5. I'm grateful that I own a Bible.
Plan for the day:
1. Organize the back of the van.
2. Painting red flowers on green canvas paper.
3. Journaling in a pink Leuchtturm 1917, in ink; topic: what good am I, to anyone?
4. Cutting down some weeds.
5. Blessing the land I live on, with prayer.
Currently reading:
1. Perestroika in Paris, by Jane Smiley
2. Brave Intuitive Painting, by Flora S. Bowley
3. The World of Urban Sketching, by Stephanie Bower
4. Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo
5. One of my old journals (transcribing)
6. The Bible: Genesis 37, Psalm 71, Romans 15, 1 Corinthians 1.

Here's how my day is going:

Prior to taking my shower I researched folk art and hay fever. There's no time like the present for finding out more about how life works. I found out my antihistimine, Zyrtec, is approved for daily use, for people like me with allergies that never stop. I usually take Zyrtec just before sleeping because there's nothing more disturbing than waking up with a hay fever attack in the middle of the night. I don't need that kind of distress. However I've also discovered that Zyrtec can cause drowsiness which kind of explains my frequent napping as of late - two or three naps a day. That's too much. I'm 72 and don't think there's anything wrong with a nap at my age but when I spend most of the day napping, I feel robbed of my daylight waking hours!

Retrospective:

My lost time on this blog includes the entire last year and a little more. So let me catch you up on how my life is going. In May of 2023 when I last posted I was still living in a 30' travel trailer borrowed from the local tribe of Native Americans. Nice trailer, and I did my best to keep it nice though I lived in it for three years: 12/2020 to 12/2023. The man who picked it up was obviously surprised when he entered it because it looked nearly new still, at first glance. I've heard many if not most of the other trailers he recovered for the tribe were totally trashed inside. Sad but true. Travel trailers are not built to be lived in long term. Many people in my community got these borrowed trailers because our homes burned in a 2020 forest fire. The tribe didn't want half the community to move away from our small town because we were suddenly homeless.


I applied for help from a housing grant and in August 2023 building commenced on a two bedroom home here on my property. Or was it in September? I can't quite recall. Anyhow, from then until late December I had builders on this property and the happy result is a pretty green two-bedroom fire-recovery home. Two bedrooms are plenty for me. I have a room for sleeping and a room for art-making that I call my day room, and a great room with a kitchen in the corner, and two bathrooms and a laundry room. What old single woman could need anything more? I also have my 10x12 shed out back. It holds everything I don't want to put into the house. I like that. It helps keep the house uncluttered.


The builders finished and occupancy was approved by the county on December 21. I was able to move into my new home right before Christmas!


Living in a house again has been wonderful and amazing for me. My art is blossoming. I'm getting a lot of reading done. Furnishing has been a problem but recently my brother brought me my mom's dining table and chairs, so I really do have plenty. My reading chair is a plastic Adirondack chair with padding. Quite comfortable, really.


So, I don't know why I quit writing on this blog last year. I think things just got to be "too much" for me and there was some depression going on during the final stretch of trailer living. House living is so much better for me.


I've created a lot of new art since I moved into the house. Here's what my art studio (in the day room) looks like today.

Blogging, Affiliate Marketing, and What I'm Reading

I've had a busy, happy day. Yesterday I joined a blogging mastermind group - something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I also got a mentor for my affiliate marketing career. I've been having difficulty with sales since the time I was writing for Squidoo (a site that folded over a year ago) and am learning techniques (new to me) that will help increase online sales.

With that in mind, I made some changes to my most recent article, How to Overcome the Fear of Cooking. I also started a new page for selling scarves and shawls. It is partly written already because it had been posted on HubPages long ago. I am doing more research and will revamp all the affiliate links. I want to write well over 1000 words of content on each page. The last one I wrote was 2000 words... and that sounds like a good number to aim for. I want my readers to find the information they're looking for whether it is ways to overcome cooking anxiety, or the information needed to safely wash delicate silk scarves.

Today I also wrote a new welcome page for my online office at LJ Martin Web. I want to continue adding to that site as the central hub of my online activities. It has most of my links - both blogs and social media links - but I've skipped a few that will eventually be added, when time allows.

Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils
(and Rewards) of Artmaking
by David Bayles and Ted Orland
Buy at Amazon

I'm nearly done reading Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. I bought the book because, while reading the introduction I was moved by a particular quote that spoke to my heart. The book delved into scholarly writing, but not frequently. For the most part it is readable and I've learned more about reasonable expectations for artmaking.

Finished Video: Review of "One Zentangle a Day"

I finished my video yesterday and uploaded it to YouTube. There were still a few things I could have done better - but let's face it - this is just a simple YouTube video and for me, these videos are all learning experiences. At some point you have to quick picking at it and upload it to YouTube, then move on to another project.

I struggled with learning the software programs, Audacity and Adobe Premiere Elements 13 - but this video project taught me a lot. The next one should be easier if I keep up the momentum to continue making videos regularly.

One Zentangle a Day
by Beckah Krahula
Buy at Amazon

This is the book I reviewed: One Zentangle a Day by Beckah Krahula. I'm still working my way through the book, but I did enough to feel confident in recommending the book for anyone interested in learning how to do Zentangle art. This is essentially a thirty-minute per day form of meditation through focus on artistic process. It is easy to learn, and practical to use.



Thirty minutes of artistic focus calms and de-stresses us, and that's a good thing.

You might notice, if you go to the YouTube page for this video, that I included a lot of text on that video page. I'm doing that to help the search engines classify and understand my YouTube pages. I also place text in the Closed Captions (CC) section as it helps search engines rank a page as well.

I appreciate all subscriptions to my YouTube channel. As of today, I have sixty-two subscriptions - which isn't very many! I guess not too many people are interested in seeing an old lady's videos. YouTube seems more successful for the youth culture - with young teenagers getting thousands of subscriptions. To be young and beautiful helps, and they appeal to young YouTube users - teenagers - who have plenty of time to watch youth videos about topics important to them, like what makeup to use, or what clothes to wear.

Well, God bless them... and all that. I wish them well. But I'm still hoping to make my YouTube channel something older people (or anyone) would like to subscribe to.

After reviewing all the videos I made last year, I noticed my book review videos were getting more hits than any of the others, so I will be making more of them. After all, I'm the "Book Lady" on YouTube now. I love this persona.

I Spent the Morning Reading About Bigfoot

I've been a Bigfoot blogger for ten years now. Go ahead and laugh if you want to. It is weird how these things happen.

There's always been curiosity about the big elusive creature. Does anyone forget the first time they saw the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot video?



When my 2 youngest children were about ages 6 through 10 we took a lot of "home school field trips" and several times were in Trinity County, CA - to visit Weaverville, the Joss House, the museum there, and the area around Clair Engle Lake, aka. Trinity Lake. As we approached Trinity Center, CA - there was a Bigfoot statue, and I was immediately drawn to it. "This is what I've been looking for," my heart told me. "They're here."

Ever since I first heard about the town of Happy Camp, I wanted to be there. Happy Camp, CA is a very remote small town in the center of the Klamath National Forest in Northern California. On January 11, 2000 I moved into a cabin-like house there, surrounded by the forest. The house was just outside of the town, in a semi-secluded area. There were other houses nearby.

The town of Happy Camp is full of Bigfoot statues now, but when I moved there, the only Bigfoot statue was the one in front of the post office.

There were also "Bigfoot footprints" painted on the sidewalk in front of the liquor store, and many of the businesses in the town were named after Bigfoot. There was the Bigfoot Trailer Park, Bigfoot Towing, and the Bigfoot Car Wash. That was in 2000 - several years before JavaBob opened his restaurant, JavaBob's Bigfoot Deli. Now that is closed but there's a place called the Bigfoot Store that has a deli in it, across the street from where JavaBob's restaurant was.

Brandon Tennant of Idaho, and JavaBob Schmalzback in JavaBob's Bigfoot Deli late in 2005, in Happy Camp, CA. At the time we met Brandon Tennant, he was doing research while organizing a Bigfoot conference held in Pocatello, Idaho in 2006.

Bigfoot Lives in Idaho
Brandon Tennant illustrated this.
Buy at Amazon.

I was always curious about Bigfoot, and wondered why so few of the Happy Camp local old-timers had anything to say about it. They acted like it was a joke, but they loved the annual Bigfoot Jamboree, a three day annual festival over Labor Day weekend.

By 2005 JavaBob was president of the Chamber of Commerce and I worked in a small office across the street from his deli. The chamber needed a focus for marketing Happy Camp and chose to market it as an artist's retreat town. I told JavaBob that we already had a theme in the town - and it was (and still is) Bigfoot.

Monsters, Myths, and Me
By Robert (JavaBob) Schmalzbach
Buy at Amazon

Anyhow, I got serious about wanting to find the truth about Bigfoot. I wanted to know why this town claimed a theme of Bigfoot but then denied any knowledge of Bigfoot sightings in the area. So I bought the domain name for my blog, Bigfoot Sightings, and started doing research.

I've never seen one, but many credible people have, and I know they're real. I collected no less than five Bigfoot sighting reports about sightings that happened within a mile of the cabin I lived in, there in Happy Camp.

When I moved to Idaho in 2013 I wanted to be able to continue Bigfoot research in the forests around where I live, in Northern Idaho. I live in Post Falls, which is on a prairie. No Bigfoot here! And I have no car anymore... so I can't do field research. But I do intend to continue working on my blog, which has been silent for many months now. I spent this morning "cleaning it up" - ie: making format improvements - and reading the amazing comments people leave there about their Bigfoot sightings.

I do believe I'll be blogging more there, soon. It is time for me to compile the rest of what I know about Bigfoot sightings in the Klamath River Valley.

... I said yesterday that I might write more about Keith today, but I'm just not ready. Maybe soon, but not today.

Update 8/23 - I decided to write about Keith on my other blog: How Comforting it is to Know He Takes Care of Us

The Energy Flower Hoodie

I'm making products on Zazzle.Com . . . with my own art on them.

Here's one:

Energy Flower Hoodie by LindaJM
See more Flowers T-Shirts

The excitement of getting my art out there in a way that others can see, appreciate and buy... this is thrilling. I love Zazzle, and of course many other artists, entrepreneurs and photographers do too. It is similar to Café Press, but I think there's more variety in the products.

Here's a page that explains why I started my Zazzle store, Emanations From A Playful Imagination.

The Homeschool Table, State Line, Indian Town, and Bolan Lake

Today my daughter and I drove to Grants Pass to buy a card table for Aaron's homeschooling. He really likes it and I think he appreciates that his education is important enough to warrant a whole new table this year. I also got more art supplies... but I need more. I want better quality water colors for him and a new set of oil pastels. I love his artwork!

On the way back we stopped to take pictures at the state line but we didn't like the way they turned out... so we will try again some other time. Her idea is to get photos with us standing in both states at the same time. Also on the way back we went to the site of Indian Town. A friend here told me how to find it and I believe from her directions I found the right place this time. There's no signs from the road... just a gravel road going downhill and a flat place at the bottom. There's a sign saying "Day Use Area" which I think means they don't want people spending the night down there. It used to be a town larger than Happy Camp, I've heard, but I don't see how they could fit that many people in the area. They must have spread out quite a bit from the clearing I was in today. Of course absolutely nothing is left of the town - not a trace - but I wonder why it isn't marked as a historical place. In fact, there are no California historical markers around here... and there's so many cool history spots, I don't see why not.

The other day I was telling people at one of our meetings that there's no sign from our direction telling where the road to Bolan Lake is. (That's up there on the road to Oregon too).. and so to find it, people have to pass the road, and then turn around and come back to see the sign that tells there's some lakes down that road. We went there twice last year and there's still no sign from our direction. So Eddie took the information and indicated that he was going to make a request that this be fixed by the forest service... now why didn't I think of that! I will look forward to see what kind of response he gets. If that works, how about a historical marker about the bowling alley that used to be up there in the middle of nowhere next to Bolan Creek... "Bolan" being a mountain-man way of saying "Bowling" I guess.

Mom Was Here

Today my mom left - I think it was too hot here in the Klamath River Valley ... or maybe there just wasn't enough to do. Too bad she didn't get here a few days earlier when the temperatures were down.

After she left, Keith and I walked from here all the way to the other side of the Elk Creek Bridge and back, for exercise. We both need exercise so much. It used to be that we walked together all the time, when we first moved here... but when I got sick and had to have the hysterectomy last year, we quit and we're both so out of shape now. He needs to walk because of his diabetes and I need to walk because I'm overweight and because of high blood pressure... so hopefully we'll keep walking every morning now... at least, that's the plan.

I also finished chapter three in The Artists Way. This is like the third time I've done chapter three but probably the first time I actually did all the tasks. Instead of trying to keep up with the one-week schedule, I'm just going at my own pace.

Later we went on a tour of a few river access places we've never been to before. One was China Point. It is still a bit smoky here. The smoke is coming from the Florence/Biscuit fires in Oregon.

Going to China Point helped get my mind off the misery I was feeling because of my mom leaving.

Teen Foster Child in SF Turned to Prostitution

I had such a quiet day today. Just what I needed. I stayed home all day except for taking my daughter to her hiphop dance class and picking her up afterward.

I spent a lot of the day researching news about child welfare. San Francisco's Examiner has a really depressing series this week about a girl who was in state custody who became a prostitute. She was living with her mom in SF when that started, and when mom found out she took her daughter to another town where they were staying temporarily in an old hotel. Child welfare workers didn't think that was good enough, so they took the girl from her mom and took her back to SF. There, the girl ran away from the fosterincarcerators and entered the prostitution world full time, at the age of 13.

She was refused re-entry into a foster custody situation after six months. Whenever the police picked her up for prostitution, nobody ever bothered to call her mother. Instead the police just dropped her back off at the dept. of human services, and she would walk in the door, out the back door, and go back to her pimp.

This is all sick enough but at age 15 she was found dead in a lake... that's why she's being written about in the paper. The paper is accusing the city and social service meddlers of being responsible for her death as much as the actual murderer, who got away with it. I agree - they made a good call on that. So anyhow, I went through a terrible depression over that this afternoon. ::sigh::

Okay... so then I had to rest in bed for a while to get over it. Now I'm up again and listening to an old Art Bell show from 1997, about Atlantis. I decided to make another graphic..... this one is called, "Something's Missing."

Keith likes this one...... he said it would make a great CD cover. My daughter prefers a different one.... strange... well, the graphic she likes (Pink World) is really too strange for me. My favorite from this week is Leaves.... I made that one into this week's desktop wallpaper, and when I get ready to put up my design website, I'll be putting my wallpaper online for free use. That's the plan.