It was a peaceful afternoon, and Kevin was home from work because he only worked 4 days per week. So this was Friday.

We heard a BAM, and then a car revving, and then something flew past the window out on the sidewalk. We could see a car flying past, down the sidewalk, and then back onto the street where the curb apparently ripped out the under carriage and the car ground to a noisy stop.

It was a cute little sports car with a tall insane man inside.

He got out, and began an unstoppable stream of incomplete sentences.

“Woah! That was not supposed to happen I was just…” and he trailed off, took in a deep breath, and went on, “Those guys really had me in…”

He talks about how he was just driving, and then he fell asleep but only for a moment. How he just does not know who it was that pushed his car onto the sidewalk, or why he can’t start it now. He’s telling me that he is worried the cops won’t get it, some are the kind that just get mean about it, some are the kind that understand.

The way I have recounted this may make it appear that he was more comprehensible that he actually WAS. Nothing really hangs together, you have to PIECE it together.

He rambles about driving 300 miles non stop and nothing like this happened the whole trip until now, and how the aliens were there and he apparently does not like that. His sentences are still broken, slightly jumbled, and occur in fits and stops.

He is certain he did not do anything wrong. He is certain it did not just happen. Someone did it. He does not describe the aliens. We are disappointed.

He swerved at an angle onto the outer edge of the driveway of the post office, and the right wheel went onto the sidewalk, and the other was apparently caught by the curved curb at the far edge of the driveway. That made the car stop heading for the post office door (at an angle), and jerked it back toward the road, where the front left corner of his car slammed into the rear wheel of a Toyota Tacoma that was parked there (hence, the BAM) – shattered the truck wheel and tipped the whole thing inward. He then just continued to careen down the sidewalk.

It was a LITTLE car. It skidded the entire way down the sidewalk between the brick wall and the curb, and then between the fence and the curb. Our car was parked on the curb side in the street, and he missed it by a whisker. Clipped a bit of fence post out of the fence though. Amazingly, he even missed the post office mail box that sat on the sidewalk just one side of the driveway – and he SHOULD have hit that!

It was all spectacularly bizarre. A friend of mine owned the Tacoma, I went out to be sure she was ok, but nobody needed me after that, so I went back inside.

Checked back a little later, and he was still talking. Trying to find the right kind of police man no doubt, they were there by then. His car is un driveable, and he’s mad about that, because he was going to keep right on driving, but the curb ripped out the under side of the car, and it won’t go anywhere now. I kinda wonder how he kept it so straight on the sidewalk, or what kind of race track he thought he was on when he was there. WHEEEEEE!

I don’t know what he was on, I don’t live that kind of life. I don’t know how many of those 300 miles he flew in, and how many he just tried to drive.

I do know we did not see the aliens. They apparently did their dirty work and took off before they could be fingered.

On the other hand, took my friend many months before she could laugh about it. She is the one who had the trouble of cleaning up half the mess he made. The aliens did not offer to help her either.

Bush Honeysuckle, they cry, MUST be eradicated! It is harmful, they say.

First, they tell you it is not native. Balderdash. It is native. It is recounted in histories and botanical references more than a thousand years ago, and listed as EVERYWHERE in the US that the climate is suitable, and grows into Canada, and some places in Mexico. Whatever history you are reading about someone discovering America, IT WAS HERE WHEN THEY GOT THERE.

Native Americans used it as a medicine, it is used the same as chokecherry, elm, and oak leaf.  They called in Honeysuckle Bush, and it is called Roberra, Lee Cho, and Fro Mose in three different Native American languages. I don’t speak them, but a man who does speak all three tells me this, and I have cause to believe he knows.

They’ll tell you it DAMAGES the understory. That it shades out other plants that will grow there, that it leaches toxins into the soil (they say this about everything they hate, even when it is not true), and that it changes the wildlife. Worst of all, deer eat the leaves and the deer them change the ecosystem! Horrors!

They go on to say that it out-competes a similar plant, which they call Native Coralberry (lest you think that it does not really belong here, they insist it is Native). Ironically, Coralberry is a cultivated plant that originated in India, and is documented in more than one place as having been imported and sown into the understory as a shade berry plant because Bush Honeysuckle was NOT PREVALENT ENOUGH! They’ll tell you Bush Honeysuckle is a nuisance, and too aggressive in one breath, and the next they’ll list the advantages of Coralberry and tell you it competes very well and holds it’s own against Bush Honeysuckle.

Key identifiers for Bush Honeysuckle:

Bipinionate leaf structure.

Umbrel shaped growth habit, with branches and leaves that stay fairly orderly and form a canopy on top. Clusters of trunks, up to about 2″ in diameter, growing from a clump, arching up to form the umbrel.

Bright red berries, a little smaller than 1/4″, with a slightly transparent and very glossy skin. Very round, not elongated. NOT on a drupe, short stem.

Berries grow in clusters of 2-4 berries, rarely more, and not heavy like Possumhaw or Yaupon.

Berries grow on TOP of the branch, and at the leaf axils. Berries are very visible because they are dotted on top of the branch, in small clusters.

Leaf is not heavy like holly, and not quite as soft as willow, more like Elm in flexibility. Somewhat rough in feel. Long and tapered (similar overall shape to chokecherry except the point), with a longish curved point at the end. This is a distinctive identifier for it.

The very same things they say are a PROBLEM with Bush Honeysuckle are ALSO TRUE of Coralberry, EXCEPT that NEITHER ONE chokes anything else out, nor shades anything else out, they are JUST LIKE Salt Cedar, they just grow where NOTHING ELSE likes to grow! How could they shade anything else out? They GROW IN DEEP SHADE.

We find in side by side studies, that Coralberry is actually a MORE aggressive spreader than Bush Honeysuckle.

This is just one example of stupidity in this arena.

Salt Cedar is another example, it is not damaging, it does NOT leave salt on the ground, it just grows on alkali banks where nothing else grows, and is of great benefit. The salt leaches UP from inside the soil, and does so whether Salt Cedar is present or not. It anchors the soil along rivers and creeks, preventing erosion. It grows on waterways that have BEEN CHANGED, by man, or by nature, and SLOWS the change, or helps COMPENSATE for the change. It is also NOT invasive, it is NOT a non-native plant, it has been in the Americas since before Leif Erikson (documented by him as that sweet smelling tree we all hate – it has no usable lumber unless very large, and then it is such beautiful lumber they all want it to be bigger, so they hate the tree for being so small that it is not more useful). He said it was plentiful upon all the dry riverbanks.

Native Americans, and people across the world (it is present in dryer climates worldwide), call it Tamarisk, and it is beautiful, having a soft smudgy or misty appearance in pink, yellow, green or white, and a lovely perfume that IS harvested commercially. It fills the air with a sweet aroma in the early summer months. It is beautiful and smells beautiful, it helps the environment and grows where nothing else grows, and someone wants to kill it and leave your creek banks barren, white, and ugly, and no sweet perfume ever.

Kudzu has always been there. Purple loosestrife has always been in the US. Bohemian Vine is native to areas where it is not listed as a threat, and it is kind of pernicious. Canadian Thistle seems to have originated on the last flush somewhere in Kentucky about 800 years ago during a drought when nothing else grew well (natives processed and ate the small buds they were so desperate). Scotch Thistle was named as this by Tennessee Crackers, who had ancestory in Scotland, and named it for the thistle they were familiar with in Scotland. But they most assuredly did NOT bring it here.

Now, there is also some misunderstanding regarding terms.

Noxious means TOXIC. Poisonous. It CANNOT be used interchangeably with any other of the words. MOST plants being vilified (we are not talking about poison ivy), are in fact NOT poisonous, and some are edible (morning glory vine tips are a really great treat cooked with butter and a dash of garlic).

Invasive is supposed to mean non-native to the area, but we can’t find a SINGLE “invasive” plant that is not actually native to the region it is problematic within. They have degraded it to just mean aggressive. It does not mean that it is not good for cattle or other livestock. Often it is GREAT food for them, and they love it, but since you cannot buy it from Purina, someone hates it, and wants you to buy herbicide to kill it so you have to buy your animal feed as well.

Aggressive means it grows more than you want it to. This applies to ALL KINDS of plants, including apple trees (they sucker), prune trees (they sucker), grape vines (they go everywhere), sunflowers (they seed everywhere, some spread by bulb), some kinds of daisies, and many other flowers and weeds that spread by root, or seed. This includes thistles and burrs, which we never like and we often DO have to fight. But this is ALL the great animal feed. It HAS to be aggressive, because animals LOVE it, and just EAT IT TO THE GROUND if it is not a FAST grower, and plentiful spreader. We WANT these if we have livestock to feed.

Nuisance just means it is WHERE you do not want it. It is a weed, because you do not want it where it grows.

County Weed Control wants EVERYTHING to be classed as invasive, because then they get to spray YOUR pastures and lawns, whether you want them to or not. Actually, it is a CRIME for them to do so, there is no LAW (only regulation which is NOT LAW) to force you to stop growing a thing they do not want you to grow. There IS law that prevents ANYONE, including government, from vandalizing your property. They are all about keeping their jobs, growing their own department and budgets, and increasing their power over YOU and your land.

Geez I hate having to talk about this stuff. Gets into ugly areas of corruption.

Use your brain. Think about what they are saying. Most of it does not make sense. Don’t let them persuade you that a thing is a problem if it does a thing and they hate it, but the same thing is an asset to a thing they like. Common Sense does not work that way.

It’s that Muppet’s song. Sung by Rowlf.

You and I and George

[Intro]
Now, here’s one of my very favorite songs (read this with a growly voice)
It’s a romantic little song
It’s called “You and I and George”
I don’t know what George’s last name is
Actually George, well, George came to a very untimely end
Somewhere before bar thirteen

[Verse 1]
You and I and George
Were strolling through the park one day
And then you held my hand as if to say
“I love you”

[Verse 2]
We came to a brook and
George fell in and drowned himself
And float?d out to sea
Leaving you alo-one with m?.

This song is sung with a great deal of feeling and gusto. It leaves an impression on you.

We wonder…

About George.

My friend does not. She wonders about YOU. Where were YOU when George was drowning himself?

Not me.

I wonder about George.

WHY was he drowning himself?

Was the romantic interlude between his supposed friends just too much for him? Poor George. Playing third wheel sucks.

Was he that kind of guy, always trying to get attention? Well, he probably deserved it.

Was he the guy who just HAD to do everything he was told NOT to do? Now we feel a bit better about the whole thing.

Was George 5? Well, I don’t think George can be 5. Nobody will ever sing the song again. Poor little thing, left alone by you and I…

Many people, I am told, delve deeply into other questions left by this song. I don’t. After all, why ponder where YOU were when George was floating out to sea? You were probably on the bank waving goodbye… after all, there wasn’t anything you could DO about it, he was already dead.

I am also told there is an entire Mystery Book written about this song. It is seven pages. In large print.

Then there are those who wonder about I. Where was I when it all went wrong? Who was REALLY to blame? It could have been I.

Sigh…

It often is.

You are probably going to take it, aren’t you?

It was just a farmer’s market. A small one. One with pretentions for grandeur.

First, they informed all the vendors that if they wanted to participate, they must be compliant with all “regulations”.

Now, in the first place, regulations are NOT LAW. They are guidelines. Recommendations. Not even exactly legal requirements since they aren’t EVEN Civil Law. Just something that the state harasses you about until you give in and let them enforce them on you. Sigh.

But the farmer’s market board does not understand this, and does not want to. They require that all vendors sign that they will be in compliance with regulations (and the regulations are specified). These regulations require licensing for some things.

They also burden the vendors with many unreasonable requirements, and some reasonable ones. That isn’t what this is about, really, but it just goes along with officiousness where it impedes the intent of the event. They can’t quite figure out that their primary purpose is to help people honestly earn from local sales. They have to make sure that the vendors only do it in an “approved” way, and that they sell only the things that the board thinks will make the market look good. This year EVERY SINGLE ITEM that you sold had to be approved by them, and even if you wanted to bring ANOTHER item that they had already approved for someone else, they did not want you to sell it unless YOU were personally approved to sell that thing!

All this bother for a TWO HOUR PER WEEK market!

It’s $25 for the entire season. Most people just give in. Just like the government.

We get to the farmer’s market and there is a big sign there. “Food sold here has not been regulated, licensed, certified or inspected.”

Wait a minute.

They REQUIRED it to be “regulated”.

Some vendors CHOOSE to license, seek certifications, or invite inspections. Some vendors are PROFESSIONALS who choose to do that. Some are PROFESSIONALS who choose not to!

But after requiring the vendors to DO SO, they now warn the public that it HAS NOT BEEN DONE.

So when an entity decides to ENFORCE regulations on independent vendors, they do not DECREASE their own liability, they INCREASE IT. Because THEY have now ASSUMED the role of ENFORCING it. Voluntarily.

If they really wanted to avoid being sued, they would simply say, “All legal compliance is the responsibility of the vendor, the market entity is not responsible for enforcing any legal or regulatory compliance.” and leave it at that. This is the escape route, rather than taking it on, along with the entire load of liability.

But to then declare that NO regulation (or other compliance) has been done is not merely an insult to their vendors, it is a further invitation for suit. The vendors can sue them for posting a false declaration. The CUSTOMERS can sue them for misleading statements.

Kinda dumb. They want to control so badly that they do it backward in both directions.

I made enough to justify the $25 fee, the transportation, and the time to get there. Barely.

I predict that next year they will have another layer of impeding controls laid down upon the unsuspecting vendors who really just want to bring part of a local business into the public eye long enough each week to increase their earnings.

Keep it up farmer’s markets. You’ll eventually put YOURSELF out of business.

Weaving, that is. Star Trek never had this.

I don’t have pictures yet. Sorry. But I need to write anyway.

I have a SampleIt Loom. Have had for a few years now. I got it soon after I started spinning. If you spin, you have to USE the yarn you make, or the thread you make. But then, you also have to make ENOUGH thread or yarn.

Problem was, I didn’t have enough of any one thing to really DO anything with on the loom, and warping the loom requires space that I did not have. Still don’t. So my loom sits in the corner, lonely and abandoned looking, gathering dust. Too costly to let it do that forever, I WILL use it. But I need a project that I have enough yarn for first.

Stumbled on Band Weaving. Was not impressed. Then I was. It is quite lovely in many patterns. They used to call it Ribbon Weaving, and sometimes Tape Weaving. Look it up, it is easier than me trying to explain and you getting it all wrong.

Shoelaces. You can make shoelaces with this. Decorative ones. In any color you want, provided you can find the thread. I started with crochet thread, bedspread weight cotton. Works good.

It took WEEKS to get from “I want to do THIS” to actually threading a heddle.

First I had to make a loom. I did. A modification of the Beka 4″ wide loom, mine is wider, and shorter. Just 9″ by 12″. Works much the same, but has a design change on the warp board on the back to make it simpler for me to make.

Then I made an even smaller loom, just a 6X9″ frame. I tied on two raddles, and added a 3/4″ by 1/4″ board that is about 8″ long to wind the warp onto. Tied that on, strung the heddle, and made pink and yellow shoelaces. The colors I HAD that I didn’t mind using on a practice product. I now have two 30″ long striped shoelaces that someone in my family will find in their mailbox sometime around Christmas this year.  25 threads wide, ends up about 1/2″ in finished width.

Next are Kevin’s bootlaces. Navy, Light Blue, and Dark Green. These are about 3/8 of an inch wide. They are wool. Handspun wool. It is what I have on hand. I started these on the same tiny loom, but used some clamps instead of string, to make it faster to advance the warp. The loom suddenly went from simple looking to trashy – the clamps are large, with pink handles and grips.

The thing is, weaving by hand is SLOW. And this is a TINY loom. Even the larger one is SMALL. Weaving ribbon is pretty fast as far as passing the shuttle is concerned. The time is lost in advancing the warp .

Warp thread is the long thread that you put through the heddle (look it up). It runs from the back of the loom to the front, and however many warp threads you put on determines in part the width of the end product.

The threads that go back and forth in the shuttle, to form the rows from bottom to top are the Weft. So you weave the weft into the warp, again and again, until you run out of room. Then you advance the warp – you unroll more thread to use at the top, and you roll up (or just reanchor) the finished weaving at the bottom.

There are all sorts of ways that looms handle this one basic function. Some are easy, and some are hard. Some are simple, but take time. If you make a loom by hand, this is one area where you often have to compromise, and accept a more difficult or time consuming method, in order to simplify the pieces and assembly of the loom.

I’m faster now at advancing the warp than on the first set of shoestrings. With those, I wove about 3-4 minutes, and then spent 2-3 minutes advancing the warp. Now it takes less than a minute to advance the warp, but I’m also weaving wool, which is a bit slower since it likes to cling to itself and does not slip easily when the heddle is raised or lowered. It seems to be taking longer to weave this set of laces, even though I’ve gained so much speed on the warp advance.

Band Weaving is a great place to start, because it teaches you patterns in Straight Weave. Straight weave is just back and forth, every other thread, alternating row to row. So if you have a hole and slot heddle you just lift for one row, and drop for the next row. There are literally hundreds of patterns you can create with Straight Weave, just by varying the colors.

With Band Weaving, it is a Compressed Warp style weaving, so all the warp threads get pushed together tight, and you don’t even see the weft threads. It makes it so you only have to worry about the colors on the Warp, in order to work out a pattern. It can be simpler to start out than many other kinds of weaving.

Kevin is weaving on a Peg Loom, and it is Compressed Weft. So the back and forth threads compact down, and you don’t see the warp threads that hold them together. This simplifies the process for him, he only has to worry about getting things right one direction, not two.

There are other things I want to do. But I have to work out how to make the loom do them. There are problems with small looms that cause aggravation for weavers worldwide, and it makes it difficult to produce even work.  Wider and longer finished work compounds those problems, and it gets really awkward to first warp the loom, and then keep the warp from getting all tangled or having uneven tension. I assume there may be solutions. But I cannot find them.

Meanwhile, I CAN make small ribbons. And they make really cool decorative shoelaces.

I am either really crafty creative, or I am really pathetic.

Back then, I could not do it. I could not even IMAGINE doing it.

In highschool, where I was taking art classes, and learning to paint with oil paints (they never introduced acrylics at all in those days), I could not envision myself picking up a paintbrush and wrestling with the canvas EVERY DAY as a full time artist. I could not imagine harnessing that kind of flow of creative inspiration EVERY DAY, let alone full time every day!

But life changed me. First off,  I learned a set of SKILLS and TECHNIQUES from Bob Ross, and other painting instructors. My teachers in school never even hinted at the wonders I learned – how to use a brush to create effects instead of having to paint each dot individually to create the same effect!

This changed not only HOW I paint, but WHAT I paint. I was never even able to TRY to paint some things, and I learned to paint them quickly, and easily, and the outcome became better with practice. I was still that artist that painted the thing that I was never satisfied with, but I could at least produce a thing that had merit.

I stopped painting when I got married. No place for a studio, not even a desk.

After the birth of my fourth child, I started painting again. That was the Bob Ross phase of learning, and I sold a few paintings, gave a few away, and kept a few. One portrait, in progress, never finished, lost in the great disaster. I learned to gain inspiration from the works of other artists, and a little from photographs.

But in the mean time, I became a successful home business owner, and webmaster. All my spare energy was funneled into that business. My reading was no longer novels and biographies, it was technical manuals. My art was headers and template designs and logos (I learned to be an accomplished computer graphics professional). My writing was all instructional. My hobbies were all technical and professional.

I became a type of Commercial Artist. I learned that when someone wanted a design from me, the thing I thought was perfect, which I created first, and knocked out of the park, was NEVER EVER the thing they wanted! I learned to satisfy the customer who thought entirely differently from myself.

About a year ago I started painting again. Kevin bought the supplies for me for my Birthday.

There’s a difference now. I can work daily at painting, and produce more than one painting a day, for weeks at a time, and not lose my enthusiasm for it, as long as there is hope of a customer at the end of the day.

I’m no longer the unfocused girl I was. I’ve learned technique, method, and skill. And I’ve learned not only the business and marketing side of things, I’ve learned two major skills that are ESSENTIAL for an artist, which I did not know I even needed, back when I just knew I’d never be talented enough to be a full time artist.

I know now that talent is only a small part of the equation.  Oh, you HAVE to have it, but it is nowhere near enough by itself.

I know TWO things that I did not know I needed to know.

1. I know how to START when I feel absolutely uninspired. I know how to pick up the brush when it is the LAST THING I want to do, and GET STARTED on a thing I know I am capable of doing. I learned this troubleshooting databases, and installing and configuring website structures. I learned that if I just PICKED UP the task, and STARTED IT, then I’d be able to get inside it enough to FINISH it.
2. I know how to GET PAST the stupor of thought in the middle of a thing that makes me feel unable to finish it. When things don’t go right, when I’m out of ideas, when I just can’t face wrestling with that again, right now, I know what to do. I either take a little break and go to do something else for a bit, or I just dive right back in, after a prayer for help. I know that 95% of the time, I can just KEEP WORKING IT, and something will change. So the solution is sort of the same. I just pickup the brush and KEEP GOING until I FINISH IT.

I used to have all manner of unfinished paintings laying around. I no longer do. I have a stack of unstarted items that are roughed out, but once I start it, I finish it.

I am capable now of doing things for a living that I never thought I could. I’ve walked the walk as a web designer, sufficient that I know that in the end, full time creative work is just a job, like any other, and a privilege to be able to do every day.

I also learned to be PRODUCTIVE, and I now approach art in the same way I did the $500 website (which was our bread and butter). I learned to create a $500 website in a matter of a few hours of my time. Far less time than my competitors. I also learned to give HIGHER VALUE to my client (we gave them EVERYTHING they needed for the website to WORK, at THAT price), and how to EARN MORE myself. I systemized and streamlined the processes, invented my own processes, and became something outside the mainstream.

So I now paint with an eye to efficiency, and I work on my OWN techniques to speed the processes without compromising the quality of the art. There are assuredly many growing pains. But I produce a painting of higher quality (for me) in 2-3 hours. I produce a rougher work in less than an hour, on average. These same things took 4-10 hours for me to do many years ago.

Once you learn to treat it like a job, instead of like playtime, you can do it full time.

Oddly, it doesn’t take the joy out of it. It only takes the joy out when you can’t treat it like a job!

When I have the brush or pen, or pencil in hand, I still lose myself in the work. I still delight when a thing turns out, and I still despair when it can’t get the magic working.

I became a Commercial Artist, as I said. Able to create according to someone else’s specification, within my scope of talent and skill. And it was VERY fulfilling.

And now, I can create “fine art” (a subjective term, to be sure) in a more intensive manner.

I can be a Professional Artist, and am working in improving my skillset within that capacity.

There’s no such thing, folks!

All these so called marketing experts out there crying that they have the secret to endless buyers. They tell you one of the first steps is to identify your “Ideal Customer”.

Now they do this for all kinds of things, but I am seeing it lately with Art Marketing Coaches.

There’s no such thing! Ok, I already said that. But there ISN’T an “Ideal Customer” for ANY business.

There’s too much variety.

You can’t even isolate a set of characteristics that is valid.

You CAN isolate some NEEDS. But they vary also, and you can’t cookie cut your customers.

I decided I wanted to go after Assembly Line Art buyers.

But they are all different!

Some are brokers, some are gallery owners, some are boutique or even big box retailers. Some ware wholesalers, some are distributors.

There’s no “Ideal” because there are too many types.

Even among those types, the INDIVIDUALS will respond to different messages.

You don’t TARGET anyone.

You BE YOURSELF. (Ok, some version of nice, professional, informative, honest, etc, in case you aren’t those things, ’cause “yourself” only works when “yourself” is LIKEABLE.)

Talk to your audience like you do to your friends. Talk to them like you do when you are talking to an actual prospect, or customer.

And you find that you keep having to add little bits, because encountering new people to negotiate with or to inform, exposes you to versions of customers that you could not envision! They keep coming up with new perspectives that blindside you! You just can’t predict it!

So just tell the world about your product. Because THAT is something EVERY customer needs.

Just give good and honest details, and speak to the NEED that your customer is likely to have, that YOUR product provides for, ESPECIALLY when it is a unique product that meets the need better.

Speak from the point of view of THEIR NEEDS, and not from YOUR NEED TO SELL. It works better.

But don’t go trying to map out some mythical customer who only exists in the fragile minds of the mentally unstable.

That customer doesn’t exist except as a figment of your imagination, and you’ll just be wasting valuable time, that you could be using to present your product in a persuasive way to the general public. Let them choose. Don’t filter them (except for legal and moral reasons).

Let THEM decide if they are the winning customer that you never expected would be the one to buy your product or service again and again.

No, folks, you CANNOT charge sales tax from your internet business in one state, to the residents of another state. I don’t care if you DO live in Chicago. I don’t care is some ignorant webmaster wannabe says you have to now because some law or another says so.

They are wrong.

NO INTERNET BUSINESS CAN, Nor SHOULD, NOR CAN BE REQUIRED to charge sales tax to ANY RESIDENT of ANY STATE where THAT BUSINESS does not have a PHYSICAL PRESENCE.

It is against the law to do so.

Which Law?

It is Contrary to the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution which PREVENTS any state from collecting sales tax from any resident of any other state! It GUARANTEES free trade between states, and this is part of it, and the Supreme Court has ruled on that, many times.

It is that simple.

It is NO DIFFERENT than if you have a mail order company that sends out catalogs. Online business is the SAME, and your website is considered to be nothing more to the courts than a MAIL ORDER CATALOG SYSTEM. This is also upheld by the Supreme Court.

The fact that the system is online, rather than hand processed by the business MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. It is still just a MAIL ORDER BUSINESS.

It is a CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION, and a FEDERAL CRIME if YOUR BUSINESS charges sales tax to anyone outside YOUR state (tourists are IN YOUR STATE when the sale occurs).

In fact, it is TREASON to do so, and a CAPITAL CRIME. That means, if you are found guilty, the death penalty is mandatory.

Not only is this a crime Federally, but it is a crime in EVERY STATE to collect sales tax that is not legally due. Every state stipulates that you can ONLY collect tax on sales that occur IN YOUR STATE (with the customer present), OR from mail order with an in-state customer. It is a crime at the state level for which you can receive the death penalty also. THIS is Tax Fraud, and it is no small thing.

If your webmaster or accountant is telling you otherwise, THEY ARE A CROOK.

If a business is charging you sales tax for a state YOU DO NOT LIVE IN, then THEY ARE A CROOK.

No exceptions. No excuses.

This is a growing trend among dishonest businesses who charge you illegally, so they can skim that extra amount for themselves. You better believe they are NOT paying it to their state. There is NO STATE that requires that, they cannot without getting sued six ways to Sunday.

We are a Constitutional Republic. That means something. It means that the Constitution of the United States of America is the SUPREME law of the land. It holds. No state can just decide that they don’t want to do it that way anymore.

WE DON’T OWE IT!

I’ve been drawing since grade school, and painting since highschool. I always knew I could not be a professional artist, because I could not paint and draw everyday, all the time. I knew I lacked the essential inspiration to produce art on demand.

I produce an average of 3-4 paintings a week now, but they are simple, and quick to do. I have learned to be a full time artist, even though I do not paint full time right now. I know I COULD, if the financial motive was there, and I know I could produce between 4 and 20 paintings a day, depending on what media, method, and batch production method I was working.

There are major things that have changed since highschool.

First, I know how to work. I know how to do a JOB day after day, and when it comes down to it, painting is just another job.

Second, I know how to do CREATIVE work every day, all day. I learned that as a web designer, doing computer graphics and website design, and doing web development to create individual solutions for each website.

Third, I know how to use TECHNIQUE, and how to develop METHODS and SYSTEMS to produce work more quickly, and more efficiently.

Fourth, I know how to RESEARCH and STUDY the works of other artists for inspiration and to learn new styles, methods, and techniques. That began with Bob Ross in about 1992.

Fifth, I know how to get up in the morning and just do the work. Just do the work that is here to do today.

The biggest thing that makes it so I can WORK as an artist is that I know how to get up and do the work, and that I now consider art to BE work, not just something I do for my soul. It IS still that, but I can do THAT as work!

Long ago, art was not BUSINESS for me. Now it is. But it produces a PRODUCT, and that makes it business.

I am an artist every day. I am a writer every day also – I made THAT transition long ago. I don’t LOSE something by being an artist every day. I gain something.

When I am not working on a painting, I am often studying a work that I plan to use as my reference work to paint from. I am sometimes researching categories of painting material to learn styles, compositions, color usage, and other elements that allow me to be READY to paint when I pick up the canvas and brush.

I study the techniques of other artists, but I also practice to REFINE my own use of technique to create various stylistic elements. I also work to refine METHODS, both those that I learn from other artists, and those I create on my own.

All that time, between youth, and middle age, I was learning. The things that come to make me ABLE where I was not then, are not merely artistic, but mechanical, intellectual, displinarial, and analytical. I am more of a person now, and that makes me more capable.

The art has a long way to go to improve as I want it to. But the rest of me does also. I’m not ready today to paint a highly detailed large work. But maybe I will be in a month or year or two. Because I’ll be even MORE of a person then than I am now.

But now, for the first time in my life, I am an artist every day… An everyday Artist.

View my scratchings and smearings at Firelight Heritage Farm Library and Gallery.