Showing posts with label Thomo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomo. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Ana can't stay away from the Folk Toys of the World exhibit



Unless you're a first-time visitor to this blog of our dear extraterrestrial Ana Darcy, you already know that her ancestors, when they were delivered to the planet Thomo some 3000 years ago, died in droves.

The ultimate survival of our distant cousins was due partly to luck, partly to the aid provided them by whoever or whatever it was that took them there, but mostly by their own determination and cooperation, especially in the matter of the nurturing of families and raising of children.

Like most all Thomans, then, Ana retains a love of children, and because of that, a recent exhibition in a local art gallery of folk toys of the world, made by parents and others for their children, often from the most humble of materials but with abundant and obvious love and imagination, captivated Ana completely. She has returned to it over a half dozen times.

In an earlier post we have shown some photos of various displays from this exhibit. Now we shall concentrate on closer views of selected items. What child would not love these toys?

(These photos are generously sized. Click on any photo to begin a slide show.)



































Thursday, October 4, 2012

Still MORE Dia de los Muertos, Molas!

The items below were a part of the Folk Toys of the World (more here) exhibit which thrilled Ana Darcy so much. Her own people, on the planet Thomo, are not so exuberant nor whimsical in their art--except in their children's toys. Now that Ana has her own children and has worked and played with children around the world, she has found her soul opening to embrace the sheer, public joy of these creations. She's glad to share them!

These photos are generously sized to show details. Click any to start a slide show!


A detail from the above. These musicians are tiny!


Molas, as mentioned elsewhere on Ana's blog, are created from layers of material, intricately cut and stitched to make textile "paintings." They are made by the Kuna Indians, living on islands off the coast of Panama. Here we have birds, one with a broom and one with a fish! Amazing!









Thursday, December 15, 2011

Fennec fox kits playing at home!

Over the years, Ana's fear of dogs, second nature to everyone on her home planet, Thomo, has relaxed considerably. It began with the judicious introduction of a pair of Rhodesian ridgeback puppies in Distant Cousin: Reincarnation. Who could NOT love pups like these?



 
 
 
Ana has seen fennec foxes in zoos, but never as house pets, yet it isn't difficult to see her taken with these active, affectionate, tiny canids. If any convincing were necessary that they can make entertaining, fascinating companions, these two video clips will provide it. The first is from Julie of http://www.juliesjungle.com/. It seems that the fennec fox is being introduced to Julie's household menagerie, and vice versa, as part of a careful socialization process. Just try to count all the animals who appear! (Ana might have a problem with that enormous dog.)





The second clip shows a fennec fox kit playing with a house cat. They are clearly playmates. The cat seems to want to help the kit stay clean!


 
MORE:
 
 
 
And cats, house cats, caracals, lyxes, servals, and a tiger cub, in the column to the right under the photo of the blue-eyed kitty, at the bottom of that list
 

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Bhutanese architecture, similar to Thoman architecture, found by Ana in El Paso

As we know from Distant Cousin, Ana spent many years studying Earth from the moon. The quality of that study improved by several orders of magnitude following the advent of the internet, when it became possible for her to receive images, video clips, and movies from Earth. She was particularly astonished to discover the architecture of the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, half the size of Massachusetts, tucked away high in the Himalayas between India and China.
The larger Bhutanese buildings (see the photos above)--monasteries, temples, and official structures--were not that different from the buildings her ancestors erected long ago on the planet Thomo. After further study she was able to hypothesize why this should be, despite the unlikelihood of there having been any direct influence on her Earthly Proto-Indo European ancestors. Both Bhutanese and Thoman buildings are found in mountainous, lonely, hostile areas. In Bhutan, other people were the danger; on Thomo, the native wildlife was the threat. Both areas are seismically active. Thus in both cases, the walls of buildings were tall and immensely thick at the bottom and tapered toward the top. Arches and doorways were not curved, but squared off. And Ana instantly recognized the purpose of rooftop structures of Bhutanese buildings: they are watch towers, just as on Thomo.


So imagine Ana's surprise to discover, not long after she settled down in southern New Mexico, Bhutanese-style buildings not fifty miles from her, lots of them! The buildings of the University of Texas at El Paso have been built in that style for nearly a century! The reason is well known to people who live there. When the University was just beginning and the buildings being planned, the wife of a university (then a college) official noticed an article on Bhutan in National Geographic. The Bhutanese buildings perfectly suited the harsh, rocky mountains they were in, and the mountains in El Paso looked much the same. She suggested that style to the architects. The rest is history.

The photos below show some of the original buildings at UTEP and then a number of modern interpretations. The style has become famous. Some off-campus buildings now use the style, including a mall. The campus was even visited by a Bhutanese prince!


Friday, September 16, 2011

Two suns beats two moons


Recently, a team of astronomers using Kepler, NASA's planet-hunting spacecraft, has found a planet that orbits TWO suns. The planet, called Kepler 16-B, is only 200 light years away, in the Cygnus constellation. About the size of Saturn, and of similar density, it is thought to be composed of rock and gas, and is not believed habitable. Most odd to us, an observer on the planet would see two sunrises and two sunsets every day, one orange and one red, and double shadows when both were in the sky.


Ana Darcy Méndez's home planet, Thomo, would also provide an odd astronomical phenomenon to us, but not as odd as a sky with two suns. Thomo has two moons. The larger one, only a little larger in the sky than our moon, does make shadows, but the smaller one is one quarter that size. Its shadows are barely perceptible even on a dark night. Thomo is only 25 light years from Earth, however. If the Thomans' solar system had two suns, Earth astronomers would have found it long ago, and perhaps even found Thomo!

Ana loves our moon, to be sure, but she also misses her meshi and meshijn ("moon" and "baby moon," in Luvit).

Also: