Discovering "Jesus Doesn't Like Jumping" at the Strasbourg Cathedral

Daniel and I went to Strasbourg yesterday. We needed to get a document translated by a certain Madame Fuckenreider.
We thought we'd take advantage and visit the Strasbourg cathedral.
It was pleasing to be in the gray shadows of the pillars and carved confessional booths, sheltered from the winds blowing outside. We admired the rose window, the statues, the frescoes.
Daniel stood behind me and took me by the waist and aided me in several rather high 'lifted jumps' in front of the medieval astronomical clock.
A white haired man selling Strasbourg trinkets and ephemera approached us.
"Won't you two behave yourselves?" he asked.
"What?" Daniel said.
"You heard me, jumping around and doing I don't know what, you can't just behave?"
Daniel asked him to go back to his kiosk and sell his goods and mind his own business.
I asked Daniel if he thought Jesus would have cared if we hopped in the house of God? Was it not okay to show some enthusiasm? And further, was it okay to exploit the spiritual qualities of the cathedral in making a buck on cheap baubles?

Aphex Twin and Cite de la Musique

We're heading to Paris May 9th for the WARP Music Label celebration! WARP stands for We Are Reasonable People and it just so happens that Daniel's favorite musician of all-time will be playing: APHEX TWIN! Cite de la Musique, here we come!

Poe and The Conditions of Bliss

Edgar Allan Poe, don't worry, I know you're not dark, I see you're enlightened. How else could I be moved by the beauty of your work?
I happened upon one of Poe's short stories called: "The Domain of Arnheim." I read half of it through tears I fell in love with it so hard. Then I researched this Arnheim Domain, hoping to find it, visit it, but I've come to grips with the fact that its probably some domain in Poe's imagination. One of the most remarkable things for me in this story is the four conditions of bliss Ellison (the main character)lives by:
1. getting free exercise in the open air
2. receiving/giving love to a lovable mate (key word for me: lovable)
3. having contempt for ambition
4. focusing on an object of unceasing pursuit (and the extent of happiness is in proportion to the spirituality of this object.)
Ellison lives by these criteria and finds and maintains complete happiness in the construction of a garden of extraordinary picturesqueness. His poetic thirst for beauty is quenched in the pursuit of realizing this garden.
I highly recommend reading this moving, completely touching story of a man, his garden, and his pursuit of bliss. Bravo Poe!

(credits: Tales of Mystery and Imagination: J.M Dent and Sons, Ltd)

A Yurtin' for Certin'! Yurts for the Making, Yurts for the Taking!

"I want to live in a society where people are intoxicated with the joy of making things." Bill Coperthwaite
For a long time, I really wanted a yurt for the backyard. You know, a little piece of meditative Mongolian calm where I could burn incense, shapeshift, practice yoga, occasionally spend the night in, under scratchy wool blankets. But, after reading an inspiring little book by William S. Coperthwaite, called The Handmade Life, I see that I can make a yurt and live in one, too! As a house!
Mr. Coperthwaite founded the Yurt Foundation and he gives lectures and workshops around the country teaching people how to build their own yurts! To live in! Its called Democratic Architecture. Architecture for all peoples that's functional, simple, and mortgage bypassing!
The average budget for a family yurt: (concentric yurt raised one story with another ring built around it, 53 feet in diameter, combined area of 2,700 sq. fr.) $3,000!
And it can be build in stages, the central chamber can be begun with $1,500 and can be occupied by the family until further resources are earned to complete the second concentric yurt level!
Okay, and they look like super alien lookout posts! I like the yurt aesthetic, and I hear they're easily cleaned and maintained! This is really exciting and I'm taking recruits now: who wants to help a neighbor in an ol' fashion Yurt Raising?

Lord of the Druid Boulder Rings

One of our discoveries on our hike-gone-wrong on Sunday were two large iron rings embedded in some boulders that made up an old Druid Wall. "Pagan Wall" is its official name. Etched on the ring were Roman numerals. I doubted they were from the Roman era, but it was fun to pretend.
Last evening Franz dropped in for a visit and we told him about our ring discovery and he said that there are lay lines that begin and end there at those rocks. He said it was a sacred sight for the Druids and that standing in one place on the lay line could empty the body, standing in another place could charge it. (with what, I'm not sure.) He said that others say the rings are where Noah anchored his arch for a while during the great flood.
What an amalgam of Roman, Pagan, Druid, Biblical, and New Age explanations!

The Book is Done!

The book we've illustrated is finished and on the market for sale!
Check it out here.
It's also featured on the blog for The Arkansas Times.

Audiologist Magazine Interview

Kim Bright, the author of "The Princess and the Magic Ears," sent me an e-mail. In it, she said she was having an interview with a prominent Audiologist magazine about her forthcoming book. She wanted a blurb about Daniel and I as illustrators. "What do you want the world to know about you?" She asked.
This was what we ended up submitting:
"Daniel and Eva Sutter infuse their art with the love they have for the beauty of the living world. Their art is a tool, reminding us of our human connectedness in this fascinating universe.
Daniel Sutter was born doodling. After completing studies at The Fine Art School of Mulhouse, France, he launched himself into the world of art: painting, sculpture, theater set design and illustration. One example of his most recent work is currently on display at The Art and Soul Gallery in Carmel, Indiana.
Eva Sutter, warrior of the imaginative spirit, is a graduate of Purdue University in art history and design, and The Pont-Aven School of Art in Brittany France. She is currently working on a children's book, "The Three Gnomes Pookins and the Alchemist."
Daniel and Eva have studied more recently under John Stolfo, the Lazure Art Technique in Chicago and are 2009 graduates of the Indiana beekeeping school."
We're hoping this interview and this project and this exposure can open up some other doors into the illustration world.

Forest by Day Forest by Night

I knew we were in trouble when I started seeing Troll Women and White Cats in the dusk brush.
We were still on trails after a long day of hiking in the Teanchel forest of the Vosges Mountains. We were lost.
The night was young, but getting older and darker every minute. Soon, we couldn't see our feet misgauging and twisting on rocks, branches and holes on the path. I couldn't see Daniel's face. Wild boar surprised at the sight of humans in the wild at that hour scattered in snorts. Fleets of deer bounding, crashing up vertical mountain grades in front of us left us frozen.
There was a marked difference between the mountain forest by day and the forest by night. It was another world.
We could no longer see the trail markers, only Orion's belt. But, we didn't panic. What's the worst that could happen? We would walk all night until daybreak. Or be eaten by a mountain lion.
Daniel mentioned something about a hot shower and soup for dinner. I was preoccupied with the hours that lie between us and the car.
Somehow, with the light of my camera, we stumbled down a path with thick pine forest growth on each side and heard barking dogs and someone yelling.
"Oh, good. We're near a village," Daniel said.
"Or a pack of wolves," I thought.
My camera batteries gave out just as we touched down on a floodlit street in a village that happened to be where we parked our car.
We followed the road to our car and thought how lucky we were to find the right path, the right village after walking kilometers and kilometers out of our way, going deeper into the wilderness instead of closer to civilization.
Thank God I had my camera that provided just enough light to keep us from blindly wandering off the path, slipping down the steep gradation, and fumbling in the unknown.
I hugged the car, so grateful, so exhausted.
On the car ride back home, I remembered asking God in the beginning of our hike if I could, please, see a wild boar today?
I couldn't complain. I got what I asked for.

The Crescograph

The crescograph is an apparatus invented by Jagdish Chandra Bose of India in the early 20th century. It's used to measure growth in plants. The crescograph uses a series of clockwork gears and a smoked glass plate to record the movement of the tip of a plant (or its roots) at the enormity of up to ten million magnifications. Bose said, "If a snail's crawl were enlarged in the same proportion, the creature would appear to be traveling like an express train!"
I was first introduced to this scientist in Autobiography of a Yogi, one of my favorites of all time. Bose continues, "The telltale charts of my crescograph {FN8-2}are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, stupor, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals."
But get this: he also began testing metals and minerals with interesting results. He says to the author Yogananda, "I will show you experiments on a piece of tin. The life-force in metals responds adversely or beneficially to stimuli. Ink markings will register the various reactions."
Here's Yogananda's reaction to witnessing the experiment:
"Deeply engrossed, I watched the graph which recorded the characteristic waves of atomic structure. When the professor applied chloroform to the tin, the vibratory writings stopped. They recommenced as the metal slowly regained its normal state. My companion dispensed a poisonous chemical. Simultaneous with the quivering end of the tin, the needle dramatically wrote on the chart a death-notice.
Then the scientist remarks, "Bose instruments have demonstrated that metals, such as the steel used in scissors and machinery, are subject to fatigue, and regain efficiency by periodic rest. The life-pulse in metals is seriously harmed or even extinguished through the application of electric currents or heavy pressure."
If this doesn't prove there's a 'unique throb of life found in all creation!' I don't know what does! Thinking I should reread this classic...
(Credits: Paramahansa Yogananda Autobiography of a Yogi Chapter 8)

The Obamas' Bees and Gardens! Oh, My!

The last effort made by anyone to get a garden going at the White House was Eleanor Roosevelt with her Victory Garden during WWII. Michelle, the one instigating the presidential organic garden project, we applaud you. Although the first lady hasn't ever had a vegetable garden in the past, she feels it's time to start one now. She's even going to have a couple of beehives. I don't want to get political, but I see this as setting an exemplary example to the nation. Read the entire NY Times article here.

A Couple that does Yoga together Stays Together?

Daniel and I have taken a couple of Iyengar classes in Strasbourg together. We've also done sun salutations a couple of days in a row together. But, for the most part, he doesn't really 'get it.'
So when I'm doing my hour and a half yoga practice, six days out of the week, I wonder what he's thinking, if he's judging me, and I get that feeling of YOGIC GUILT.
This yogic guilt has become a persistently sticky thing during my practice and I can't seem to shake it, even in Shivasana.
So what the heck is the deal? Maybe in reality, I'm the one feeling that I should be spending an hour and half each day doing something more productive and am projecting it onto Daniel?
But here's my problem. I just can't stop doing it. Does this mean I have a yoga addiction? Yes. I'm addicted to the balancing, the calming, the neurological, emotional magic that happens that makes me more curious in what is going on around me. Upon reflection, I in fact, don't think I could spend a more valuable hour and a half doing any other thing!
"...the human body is meant to move well, and any block in the body is a block in the soul's ability to reflect through the body,"
says the author Machaelle Small Wright. And I think its succinct in summing up why I feel I need to dedicate so many hours a week to the practice.

beehive dreams

Well, our bees are coming in April. One hive (goody bag of one queen and workers)is coming from Northern Indiana. The other hive is coming from Southern Indiana. How will their temperaments differ? How will their honey taste? Will the queens be fertile? WILL THEY LIKE THEIR NEW HOME?
Of course, this last question is the most important. We've built the hive boxes and all the frames from a kit (three supers tall). Now, we just have to show the bees some Hoosier hospitality. At the beekeeping school, Rob Green suggested that we paint the outside of the hives a simple white that reflects the light.
Okay, Rob. Boring! Why not spice it up a little? My first thought was a psychedelic representation of Saint Francis, arms extended in Bee Benediction. Then I thought more about it. Since one hive is coming from the North and one from the South, why not paint mini Civil War scenes of blue and gray bees in battle? We could even fly the Confederate flag on one and the Union Jack on the other. Okay. Cheesy!
Then it hit me. What about the Lazure technique? It's natural, so the bees wouldn't be offended by any paint odors, and the layers of transparent colors are subtle and pleasing. Nature spirits are telling me they agree (oh by the way, after finding that golden ring in the garden, I can talk to them now.)
Here is one girl who's kind of on the beehive lazure track:

and other colorful hives...

Lord of the Garden Rings

Daniel and I did some gardening today. I went inside to make a change on a children's story I wrote about gardening. (changing the word Cinderblock to Limestone, more classy, no?) And heard him call me outside.
What was it? A golden ring the rake had picked up.
Needless to say my mind grasped for understanding. Why this remarkable find? What did it mean? A golden ring, to me, is vastly significant! It means marriage. Marriage to the earth? In the Lord of The Rings, the ring represented power (okay, I don't really know what the ring represented in the movie because I fell asleep). But what is the significance UNIVERSE?!

I'm hoping some answer will reveal itself at some point.
Right now I'm just content pretending its previous owner was a Renaissance woman from Ancient Rome. Its on my finger now as I'm typing. I have no idea if its real gold. It doesn't matter.

THE NEW FRENCH FAST FOOD: PASTA!!

Okay. You can't go two blocks in Paris without finding one. One's opened in Selestat. I'm here to witness the invasion of Pasta Fast-Food concept chains in France. That's right! Restaurants with names like Mezzo di Pasta, PastaCosy, Mecca Pasta, and Francesca are giving traditional restaurants a run for their money. So, like, what's all the hubbub, Bub?
In France, when you need something on the go, your options are limited. Let me explain:
Eating fast is a relatively new concept here. Settling down with the family for an hour and a half lunch was the norm for everyone in the past. But, this is slowly 'leaving town,' as people are beginning to prefer spending their lunch breaks doing things other than eating. You know, more important things, like running errands and multitasking.
So, the French aren't really innovators when it comes to 'grab and go.' That's not their style. But it's quickly becoming their style. And so the huge niche is being filled by foreign chains that have already mastered the concept. McDonald's for example, does quite well here. Quick, too, a Belgium hamburger chain. So do Doner Kabab stands. These Turkish stands are usually open until the wee hours, too. Now, its time for the Italians! Fast-food pasta! Of course.
What the heck is the appeal?
The price. 3 Euros for a little box of hot pasta (you pick the pasta shape and the sauce)
And the public thinks they're eating relatively healthy. Even though these pasta fast-food chains MICROWAVE the Pasta after giving the pasta only a two-minute boil. Gross!
I'm not French, but I hate to see the old ways of preparing and eating food with time and attention leave this country. Or do I? Come on! I'm an American! I like limitless eating possibilities and scenarios! I guess I respect the fossilized traditions yet want to leave a door open for the innovative. Yeah, that's it.

Vegetannual: the growing season at a glance

My mom bought me a book last year called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. With spring approaching, I've been thinking about it lately and what can I say? I highly recommend this book! Barbara tells with humor all about one year on her Virginia farm. The benefits of farm life are not just about Barbara feeling great from eating all the vegetables that she's grown herself. Oh, no. There's much more. She learns an enormous amount about life from her small farm. And that's the joy of books. I learned, too!
One thing she invented is the Vegetannual. Its a diagram of what to expect from the garden in a growing cycle. Its pretty cool. She explains...

"Here’s how it goes. First come the leaves: spinach, kale, lettuce, and chard (at my latitude, this occurs in April and May). Then more mature heads of leaves and flower heads: cabbage, romaine, broccoli, and cauliflower (May - June). Then tender young fruit-set: snow peas, baby squash, cucumbers (June), followed by green beans, green peppers, and small tomatoes (July). Then more mature, colorfully ripened fruits: beefsteak tomatoes, eggplants, red and yellow peppers (late July - August). Then the large, hard-shelled fruits with developed seeds inside: cantaloupes, honeydews, watermelons, pumpkins, winter squash (August - September). Last come the root crops, and so ends the produce parade.

To recover an intuitive sense of what will be in season throughout the year, picture an imaginary plant that bears over the course of one growing season all the different vegetable products we can harvest. We’ll call it a vegetannual. Picture its life passing before your eyes like a time-lapse film: first, in the cool early spring, shoots poke up out of the ground. Small leaves appear, then bigger leaves. As the plant grows up into the sunshine and the days grow longer, flower buds will appear, followed by small green fruits. Under midsummer’s warm sun, the fruits grow larger, riper, and more colorful. As days shorten into the autumn, these mature into hard-shelled fruits with appreciable seeds inside. Finally, as the days grow cool, the vegetannual may hoard the sugars its leaves have made, pulling them down into a storage unit of some kind: a tuber, bulb, or root."

This is just one of the many insights she has to offer in her book. Just reading this is getting me all excited about starting some seedlings...

Sharon Gannon, Thanks for Reading.

Sharon Gannon, thanks for writing that book. Its a timely response to my last post devoted to you that begged, "Why do you feed your cats carrots?"
Thankfully, you tell all in your new book, Yoga and Vegetarianism. Thanks again Sharon. Inquiring minds wanted to know.
Here's your response to why everyone should be vegan:
"In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali offers practical advice for how to overcome the obstacles presented by the others in your life. He says: if you are seeing others and not the Divine Oneness of being then: #1. Don't hurt them, #2, don't lie to them, #3. Don't steal from them, #4. Don't manipulate them sexually and #5. Don't be so greedy that you cause them to become impoverished. Those five bits of advice are referred to as the yamas. Yama means to restrict, so these are the five ways that a person who is interested in yoga (enlightenment) should restrict their behavior in regard to the others in their life. Each one of those yamas supports a vegetarian (vegan) diet. I think it is self-evident why," you write.
But, I wonder, Is it really that self-evident, Sharon? Is Patanjali speaking about humans or animals when he says "others?"
Yo, Sharon, if you don't want to harm "others," eat fruit. Thats the only thing offered from Madame Nature you can possibly eat that doesn't harm a thing.
Want to go a step further, Sharon, be the ultimate Yogini? why not tell the world to become breatharians?
The more I read about your new book the more I see that Jivamukti is just not for me. Especially when I listen to what you have to say about farms:
"I think that ‘farms’ are a bad idea to begin with. The original concept of the farm is not a good one for the animals. Farms are designed as concentration camps–places where animals are confined, broken, enslaved, degraded, isolated, force fed, exploited and slaughtered. Are factory farms worse than small family owned farms? Should we revert to the small family owned farm? Farms whether big or small are not good ideas. Freedom is a better idea."
The backbone of cultures for centuries, small farms, are being discredited by a small yogi from New York City! Sharon, you've got balls!
Then you are asked, "If you had the chance to meet one person who you’ve found specifically instrumental in the vegetarian community - dead or alive, past or present - who would it be and why?"
You answer: "Pan."
What blasphemy! Would Pan endorse a diet so restricting when Nature herself is so abundant? Would Pan be into expansion or restriction? Would Pan really care what we ate as long as we were feeling good? Wouldn't Pan ask us to listen to our own bodies for our own personal wisdom? I think you've grossly misinterpreted the spirit of Pan, Sharon Gannon, and your book on Vegetarianism and Yoga makes me yawn.

Eva:"Hey Daniel, it'd be great if you could pull me into town."

Well, what else can you do when your bike has a flat tire? But, really, thank God for that tire blow out! Because it's been a real revelation, these roller blades! I don't remember feeling so free before. Its more like I'm flying than anything else. It's something about my limbs in motion. And being always on the edge of falling that keeps me cracking up. Something is so fitting about me, bumbling around on blades on the cobblestone streets downtown, because I bumble around the language, codes, and customs, here too. These wheels on my feet have helped me not to take myself so seriously, and to smile.

Sketching with the Dummy

Daniel and I have been sketching together at our writing desk. We have a wooden dummy lad that poses for us and lets us sketch him in different positions. More on our project coming soon...

One Year Anniversary! Cotton Anybody?

Daniel and I celebrate one year of marriage today the 12th of March. It's the anniversary of "Cotton." I guess we're supposed to get each other towels or something.

Chou Frise Farci a la Madame Sutter

Madame Sutter is at it again!
She hit the kitchen at ten this morning to make an enticing Chou frise farci to be eaten with her boyfriend as the church bells sounded at noon. Thankfully, there were leftovers. Daniel and I had them with potatoes. (In English, Stuffed Kale Leaves.)