Otherwise, I've also been on vacation. My wife and I recently turned the big 5-0 within 3 days of one another. To celebrate (run away and hide?), we made a trip to New Mexico, where we rented a small house in the middle of a gorgeous nowhere. It was awesome. Maybe the best week of my life. So far.

Anyway . . .

They'll be back. In fact, they'll be back quite soon. Particularly the bees -- the butterflies will have a couple of incarnations to go through before they start flitting about.

How do I know we are on the verge of an insect upswing? The trees are budding and some even starting to blossom. Like our peach tree. It's called a "web of life" for a reason.

For now I can remember and anticipate. Hey, that web has cycles!

Is that starfish a democrat or republican?

'Society garlic'? Probably in favor of universal health care.

Oh-oh. That pineapple is on its way to reproducing. Hope it doesn't later have to go on the dole! (sorry)

Wow. Do I disagree. For me, technical aptitude is but one aspect of art. Another equally important aspect, if not more important, might be called "creative vision." To re-create something in nature strikes me as not very creative. Congrats, you win the Xerox award for artistic achievement!

BTW - I really enjoy Larry Miller's podcast. While it's an audio show basically about nothing, I guess I enjoy Miller's personality, so welcome time in his company while I complete "mindless" tasks such as yardwork and workbench-tidying.

As for taste in art, maybe I have gray matter that welcomes flying off the handle of its customary apprehension of reality. Mind you, the work of art does not have to be fully abstract for me to like it. It . . . just needs to challenge me a little, I guess.

For example, in the photo below (taken by moi), I find the portrait of a Jesus ("a" Jesus for there are many different depictions if the dude) on the upper left to be the least artistic and creative. In fact, what I am most drawn to (intrigued by?) is the overall spatial arrangement of the items coupled with the dynamic of the visual space.

"Dynamic of the visual space"? WTF! Maybe art critics and wine tasters come off as pretentious because they lack generic terms to describe what they are attempting to describe.

Likewise, in this next photo (provided by NASA) I find not the bald objects themselves to be of interest, but of the relation between them (and the background).

Lastly, what follows is my own attempt at a Warhol-like self-portrait. My interpretation: What matters is not only the object of our focus, but the characteristics--plural--of the subject doing the viewing. Maybe.