And the two dreams were one ...

Portrait of the artist as a middle-aged man

"Calvin and Hobbes" fans recall the poignant final Sunday installment of this incredible series. Boy and tiger contemplate a snowscape, and compare it to a blank sheet of paper, full of new possibilities. "Let's go exploring!" I've used this picture as a desktop on several computers where I sat for temporary assignments.

In retrospect, maybe it's not a good idea to start a job by symbolically saying goodbye.

The monitor here has a different desktop background. It's a Norman Rockwell painting of a middle-aged guy standing in an art museum, contemplating one of Jackson Pollack's spatter paintings. Homage? Or sly dig? I'd vote for the latter. Rockwell can do Pollack, you see, but there's no way Pollack can do Rockwell! Representational art takes training, giftedness, discipline, and a heart for the end user. A real artist has something more important to express than himself. Such as, a respect for the created order, and for the audience. A real artist sees fresh aspects of the world around him, and is eager to help his audience also appreciate those details. Once, at an outdoor art show, Vicky pointed out how the portrait artists were cordial, approachable, down-to-earth folks. The "others" were pompous costumed jackasses, totally full of ... themselves.

So, where is "here?" Well, my desk is a refreshing 5.5 mile bike ride from home, in Building 205, on the campus of the company that made the Research Triangle Park come alive by relocating a few thousand folks from its Armonk, NY headquarters. I am in the pink at Big Blue, surrounded by blue collar craftsmen of the pen.
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"The more useful your markup is to you, the more it will cost you, and the fewer people will share the costs."

Food for thought can pop up in the most unexpected places. For example, a company slide show on "the promise and reality of XML" had the preceding comment on tradeoffs.

XML, the "eXtended Markup Language," lets you package information more conveniently for people and computers. You tag your text with labels that describe what it is, and what it's for. Your markups can be useful to others. Or, they can be idiosyncratic, quirky, and exuberantly expressive of your own interests and categories.

I'm reminded of a story Dad told from the wall-to-wall Ohio valley townships of a half-century ago. A couple of them hired a consultant to suggest ways to improve downtown business. "You need more parking spaces," he told the assembled leaders of business and city government. "Shop owners should park behind their stores, so that customers have more room to park on the street." "No way!" one retorted. "I want to be able to keep an eye on my car, to make sure nobody's messing with it." A year or two later, the area's first shopping center opened up -- and the downtown shopowners had lots of room to park their cars.

There's a moral in that story somewhere. Something like Martin Luther's comment that "only Satan, and men controlled by Satan, bear fruit for themselves."