Work and Play

I'm lukewarm about this painting, but I tried something new.  I went to Pasadena's Central Park, where I've managed to produce a run of pretty nice paintings of the Castle Green, and I painted something different.  I can't even tell you for certain what it is, other than a view through the park and across the street to the west.  There's a little slice of playground, and some little painted children.  Previously mostly commercial and industrial, this part of Pasadena has become increasingly residential, and the park, once frequented by transient older folks, now seems to host an enormous playgroup of school-aged small children.  These are the slightly neurotic children of well-educated over-protective parents.  Sorry kids, but it's true.  I imagine the kids will be all right in the end.  No matter how much and for how long your parents protect you, eventually life is going to wallop some experience and character into you.  To clarify: I use wallop in a really figurative way, because I would be the last person to suggest we should return to a time when spanking was the norm.

I've railed before on this very blog I think about the trend toward safe and bland playground equipment.  There I go again sounding like I want children to get hurt.  It isn't that at all, but adventure, fear, risk . . . those are beautiful things.  Kind of almost worth flying through the air and landing hard with a mouth full of sand.  This playground equipment seems pretty safe.  No hard edges or hot metal, or free-fall from ten feet up, but still honestly it looked fun.  These little kids had their own challenges, trying to grow up under watchful eyes.

As it happens, I used to work across the street from this park, also to the west, but slightly further south, to the left and out of the picture.  I was only a few years wiser about the world than the children of the playground.  I used to walk across the street to the park for my lunch hour.  I probably even occupied the swings sometimes - those treacherous swings of a bygone era.  There were pigeons eating things they shouldn't and old tired men drinking from paper bags.

Yin & Yang & Rain

You appreciate food more when you've known a little hunger, and love more after loneliness.  It rained this morning.  I woke up at four and opened my window so I could hear hear the rain better, and went back to sleep.  When I went out to walk this morning, the world was so fresh and clean.  Colors looked washed and bright against the darkened wet ground and sky.  I thought about tree roots, close to withering and dying like so many have lately.  But then . . . a cool tickling moisture . . . could it be?  Could there be more?  Roots inhaling deeply, taking precious water in, up their trunks and to the tips of their leaves.  Trees were saved today.  I'm sure of it.  Trees were saved and mushrooms were born.  

I painted the tree in the picture, perhaps a year ago.  I hope this tree is still thriving and taking in the rain of the day.  As I think most tree people can tell, it's a nice big California live oak.  It grows in a curious little spot that is the tail end of the vestiges of a lost nature park.  This spot has been borrowed from the utility that owns the power lines and transformed into a semi-private sanctuary.  I'm going back to paint there next Saturday.  

May

Nine or ten months ago, I painted at Singer Park.  It was an exceedingly lovely day, if I remember.  There was something nice about the people there, and not just the people I was painting with.  There were little kids there, I think, whose mother had just had a baby in the nearby hospital.  I put a person in my painting, and I think it's probably my best painted person  The proportions are nice, and there appears to be some walking momentum.  This is a fairly big painting, and after I painted it, I painted another.  

I still haven't learned who or what Singer Park is named for.  I'd like to know.  Singer must have been or done something special to have the park named thus, but if nobody knows what, then it's pretty meaningless.  We might as well call it Park Near the Freeway, or Park With Nice Restrooms.  I think I'll find out eventually.  After years of wondering, I just finally found the house where Guy Rose was from.  I'm going to see if there is something to paint there.      In the meantime, here's the second painting.  

Finally, I found a thirty day drawing challenge.  Thirty days seemed like a modest enough commitment.  So here's my day one drawing.  

Athenaeum

This is the faculty club/private club on the campus of the California Institute of Technology.  It was painted on a crazy hot summer day from a place in the parking lot with a nice shady wall on which to sit.  I had almost forgotten that I did some photographic cropping of the image, and eliminated approximately the bottom one-third of the painting which actually had a vertical orientation.  The bottom consisted of shadows, which probably should have added some pleasing visual weight to the bottom of the painting, but I mucked up the painting of them.  It is one of my better cropping jobs.

I'm still not sure about the palm trees.  But I think the painting has kind of vintagey exotic look to it, and it isn't even too tortured by its drawing errors.  I've been inside the Athenaeum a couple of times - once on a luncheon date with a graduate student, and once for a class reunion.  Twentieth, perhaps.  The Ath, it's called locally by insiders.

For a lot of money, I could become a supporter of Caltech and apply for membership at the Athenaeum.  Then maybe I could sip tea or eat prime rib and possibly cast flirtatious looks at very smart old guys.  Something to think about as I formulate my retirement plan and need some balance for my painting.    

A Painting I Like

Mirroring the human life cycle, my day started all fresh and full of promise and had pretty much fallen apart by the end.  I'm hoping to salvage a little light by posting a painting I like.  August 30, 2014, Grant Park in Pasadena, looking across Cordova at some mid-century apartment buildings not quite obscuring the mountain view.

It's late, but I need to stay up and constantly monitor what will probably be the last load of laundry I can eek out of my failed washing machine.  I need a new washer.  I'm overwhelmed by the selection.  There must be  hundreds of different washers on the market.  Probably any of them would be fine.  They all seem too expensive and too complex.  Seriously, I don't think my clothes and linens could possibly detect more than three different temperatures or spin speeds.  Just more little sensors that will undoubtedly fail long before the motor wants to quit.  My dying washer only lasted ten years.  The repairman and sales people tell me that's not bad.  It seems to me that things like washing machines used to last much longer.  Or is it just that ten years used to seem long?   You, lovely people, can help me.  If you or anybody you know has purchased a washer lately and feels okay about it, please let me know what washer it is.

I don't keep a journal, and I don't see a counselor.  I don't talk to my friends enough.  So sometimes I want to vent here in blog world.  I think that's all right as long as I don't get too personal.  I kind of want to rant about my health and my job and my love life.  But I think the washing machine is a better idea.

Bridges

The way my thoughts flow these days, literally anything could be metaphor.  Bridges are easy ones.  Bridges get you over obstacles - real or metaphorical.  There are bridges that give teeth to the toothless and bridges that save music from being tame and repetitive.

We travel by bridges to safety, but we also travel by bridges to the new and unfamiliar.  I saw a counselor recently to work through my concerns about life transitions.  I came away determined to exercise daily, make lists, get things done, try new recreation, and stick with my employment for now but not let it be a drag on my spirit.  These things are like a bridge - to get me safely over stuff - to take me somewhere good and safe, but as yet unknown.

These are paintings of the Colorado Bridge in Pasadena, a spectacular old graceful curving span that the paintings barely hint at.  It is also known as suicide bridge, for the obvious sad reason.

Metaphors make me think of symbols, and symbols make me think of film class.  I took a film class in college, and recall the wonderful movies I possibly wouldn't have watched otherwise.  I think my taste for good films was timely nurtured.  I remember lectures and discussions of visual devices.  My recollection about symbolism, however, was not from my own film class, but an earlier film class that a friend of mine had taken and told me about.

The way I remember it, my friend told me about Ingmar Bergman films, and how there are children  that aren't so much individuals but are a manifestation of a younger self who is trying to show you something.  He said children like that showed up in dreams as well as film, and that film had borrowed from dream theory.  The other thing I remember is that when the wind picked up in a movie, it meant that change was coming.  So all these years since, whenever the wind starts to blow, I look knowingly at the sky, and say in my best wise-old-farmer voice, " Change is coming."   Of course, wind is wind, and life isn't art, at least not all the time.  But the thing I've figured out is that whether or not the wind blows or whatever the music does, change is coming.  Armed with that bit of truth, I'm a fortune teller.

Might As Well Paint

Last Saturday, I visited Defender's Park in Pasadena.  It's a small park with some significant monuments, but I believe its main purpose is access to the Colorado Bridge.  Because the mountains looked beautiful, and not because I'm obstinate, I painted with my back to the bridge.  There is a sign posted at the bridge to discourage suicide, "there is hope."  My back was to the sign as well, but not metaphorically or anything.  I started painting relatively early and relatively small, which afforded me some extra time to do little people studies.  They include a couple of painters and some unsuspecting walkers.  

Here is the view that is behind you if you are driving west on the Colorado Bridge or sitting and painting it at street level.

In Pictures

On August 11, I finally took the oil paints for an outing.   A film crew arrived at St. Luke's Hospital before us though, and thwarted my parking plans.  Filming is fairly common at St. Luke's.  They weren't actually filming as far as I could tell; there was just a security guard keeping an eye some lighting equipment and chasing off painters..

I was able to park across the street and stand in a shady spot and paint this view on a small canvas panel.  I was impatient to start painting, so I didn't do any planning that took the foreground into account, and I think it shows.  

Two From Caltech

I live fairly close to Caltech.  By several reckonings, none of them having to do with football, it is the finest university in the United States.  I visit occasionally to paint, and more frequently for musical performances.  I used to folkdance weekly.  I've heard wonderful speakers there, including Stephen Jay Gould and Ralph Nader.  Nader spoke about how, lacking in public funds, universities tend to become bound to corporate interests.  Gould spoke about evolution and the marvels of life.

Bungalow Heaven

This post was formerly titled "My Opinion" but nobody was reading it. 

Since I'm in a snit, I think I'll make a list of things I don't like.  This painting is not among them.  I like this painting a lot, at least for now.  I did it in about a half an hour at McDonald Park in Bungalow Heaven last Saturday.  I won't mention illness, death, loneliness, intolerance, cruelty, and other really sad and dark things I dislike.  I'll stick to the lighter and more subjective side of negative.

I don't like the excessive misuse of reflexive pronouns.  I don't mean the pleasant colloquial Irish usage, but when people ignorantly opt for "myself" because they can't decide between "me" and "I."

I don't like hand soap and lotion that smells like fruit or vanilla.  Clean hands and skin should not smell like something sticky that you'd like to eat.

I don't like sexy stiletto heels, or really any shoes that even approach that.  I can't wear them because they are excruciating to my toes and metatarsus.  Also my ankles are a little weak and my balance a little poor.  And I'd rather no one else wore them either, because they make my shoes looks clunky in comparison.  They can't possibly be comfortable for anybody.   Look at men. Men know how to treat their feet.

I don't like foam-filled padded bras.  I don't really care if anybody else wears them, but I hate that they are so ubiquitous that it's hard to find a bra that isn't foam-filled and padded.  In the general scheme of attractiveness, I think real nipples are better than fake cleavage.  And I think your bra should not stand on its own.

I don't like those coffee makers that make one cup of custom beverage at a time from a single use plastic container of something.  They seem to create an appalling amount of waste.  And frankly I don't see how the resulting beverage is any better than instant coffee.  Where is the fresh roasting and grinding that goes into a real cup of coffee?  If you like other flavors, get yourself some Torani syrup.

I don't like noisy gardening equipment.  Sounds that come from gardens should be sounds of birds and bees, water drops, rustling leaves, falling fruit.  I'd like it if people could just keep their noise in their own yards, but the noise has no regard for my fence.

I don't like phone solicitations and sales calls.  Who does?  You would have to be awfully darned lonely.  Is there even really a "don't call" list?  If you wanted solar panels or a security system (for instance), wouldn't you search them out rather than just wait around for the phone to ring.

I don't like Las Vegas.  Everything there is extravagantly artificial.  Even the outside air is tinged with false climate and humidity and light.  Games are okay, but they are seriously stacked again you, and you have to drop a huge amount of money just to play.  Except slot machines, which are just completely awful, except for vintage ones which they don't use.  The shows, which are the only thing I might like, are ridiculously overpriced because nobody in Las Vegas thinks about money in the normal way.  People are either happily throwing it away, or randomly winning it.  I liked the swimming pools there when I was a little kid, but I don't have much interest anymore in sharing swimming space with the children of people who like Las Vegas.

I don't like televisions in elevators, buses, and gas stations.  I don't like televisions in bars, except possibly sports bars, and for the most part I don't like sports bars.  I don't like the television in the lobby of the building where I work, and I especially don't like that it shows FOX News all the time.

I don't like FOX News.

I don't like LA Live.  It's sort of like Las Vegas.  Just too much artificial everything.  There are some actual trees, but they are completely covered with lights.  I love Los Angeles, and I hate the fact that people will visit Los Angeles and think that LA Live is what Los Angeles is.

I don't like lime flavored potato chips.

I don't like being called ma'am, although I will forgive it from somebody who doesn't know my name and needs to tell me I dropped my keys.

I don't like reality television (except Mythbusters and Antique Roadshow, and Top Chef a little).  I don't like that it has made huge celebrities out of the Kardashians and people on American Idol.  While I know that there are beautiful brilliant people living in the world who will die as unrecognized as Nick Drake and John Kennedy Toole.

I don't like calling drinks martinis just because they are served in martini glasses.  A martini glass is a beautiful thing, but it doesn't make a candy-flavored cocktail into a martini any more than a tiara would make me queen.

Enchanted

This is a bit of Hahamongna Watershed Park - one of my favorite parts.  Hahamongna seems to me a slightly magical place that has been relatively untouched by time - but not without enormous effort and struggle.  In our modern world, entropy often leans toward progress.

If you leave the frisbee golf course, and walk out onto the big sand flats and south toward the damn, you'll likely walk through this spot.  A few eucalyptus trees left behind by who knows, past oaks and amid true natives.  It's like a gateway.  I lured my fellow painter out to this spot so I could paint in safety.

I was quite pleased with this painting when I did it, and I still like it, but it's starting to look a little busy to me.    Like I keep telling myself, simpler is better.  I'm mostly convinced of it.

I'm not mad for my last post.  But it's better I think than me writing to the editor of the L. A. Times.

Memorial Park

This a view from Memorial Park in Pasadena, looking across Raymond at the former theater I know best as Perkins Palace and the Armory Center for the Arts.  I like the view because it's familiar without being obvious.  You know you've seen it, but you can't quite place it.  That seems like a good basis for a painting.

Like everyone else I know who actually looks at Facebook, I have a kind of love hate relationship with it.  Facebook finds your old friends you thought you had lost forever.  You can keep track of people and share people's lives without the risk or inconvenience of actually being with them.  It's also a pretty big time drain, if you check even rarely to see what's been going on in hundreds of lives.  But its hard not to check since you know it's there.  I like the like button.  I like to respond positively without having to explain why, or say something that doesn't add to the greater discourse.  I find myself reflexively looking for a like button in a whole number of circumstances.  Then I want my share of likes, my little bit of fame and positive attention, so I can't resist posting my paintings.  But then I feel like I've stolen the blog's thunder, and it takes me longer to show and tell the paintings here.  

My palm tree technique is coming along nicely, but always I struggle to express cars.

Power and Chance

As I've been blogging less, I do believe I've been thinking more.  I've had some big thoughts.

One big thought is about the incredible unlikeliness of our very existence.  I'm not a numbers person, so it's more a concept than a precise calculation.  It is wildly rare in the known universe to find a planet so conducive to life as our Earth.  Even Earth hasn't always been so habitable.  And where other planets might foster life forms,  it's a very small chance that the life would even slightly resemble ours.  It so happens that there are billions of humans on Earth.  We are extremely complex fragile beings, with whom a million things could go wrong.  Forces from inside and outside of us threaten our survival daily.  You have enough experience to know how rare it is for two people to meet and be fond of and attracted to one another. Even if their stars align and they make love, what are the chances they are fertile?  What are the myriad obstacles to conception?  And to one out millions of sperm cells being the one?  And every generation before us was more or less equally a long shot.  It's no wonder people like to gamble.  Every one of us has won something so much bigger and better than the lottery.

I painted the Pasadena power plant.  There isn't a lot of industrial subject matter around where I live, and I think I'm drawn to it, if only for variety.  Inexplicably, there is some unusual and very pretty landscaping around the power plant, and not just around the parts you can see, but on this little dead-end cul-de-sac, where almost nobody has much business.

My Career in Art

This is a shirt.  I thought about photographing it or cropping it, so that it wouldn't look like a shirt, but it is after all a shirt.  I am not an artist.  I may draw and paint, and use the tools of an artist, and sometimes even make art.  I don't think that makes me an artist.  In the same way that I am not a singer, a plumber, a driver, a stripper, a writer or a dog walker.  I'm not employed as an artist; I don't spend most of my waking hours in art, and history will likely not remember me as an artist (or at all probably.)

I used to be an artist for a little while.  I was just finishing high school.  My sister was a student at Pasadena City College. She made a friend whose parents owned a women's apparel company.  They did a lot of screen printed tee shirts.  I'm not sure how it came up because I wasn't there, but my sister met the art directer at the company.  My sister is not given to understatement, so she told him I was an artist.  I think she meant that I drew well and liked to take art classes.  I think she even showed him stuff I had drawn.  The art director agreed to meet me.  He didn't interview me; he could barely speak English.  He gave me a picture of a chrysanthemum and told me to draw it.  So I did.  I think I spent a couple of hours on it, and when it was done, the art director said it was nice.  It wasn't a test, it turned out; it was my first day of work.

This was before the advent of personal computers.  The art director (hereafter "my boss") would go to the downtown L.A. library and borrow pictures he thought would make good shirt designs.  There was a fashion designer too who was hired soon after me.  She'd draw shirts with little indications of where the art would get printed and some idea of the subject.  I'd render drawings in pencil, and then finish them with ink or paint or whatever my boss decided would look best.  The art for the shirt above was airbrush over pencil.  I did the pencil; the boss did the airbrushing.

Meanwhile I enrolled in college.  When I explored possible fields of study, I decided not to be an art major.  I thought, based on my experience, that it would be no problem at all to get a job doing art while I pursued liberal arts for the love of learning.  The art department at my job grew by a couple of people.  And when it was time for the department to get smaller again, they cut the part-time untrained college student.  I had the job for less than two years.  I think when I got a passport, it said I was an artist.  I looked around for another job doing art, but people wanted to see a portfolio.  I had some drawings and some shirts.  My next job was preparing fast food.    

Castle Guard

I shared some history of the Castle Green previously, so this time I think I'll share a little of my personal history that converges with the Castle Green.  I have a few stories, but this is the right one for the season.  I was in my early twenties. I was employed and single.  Old Town Pasadena at that time was considered rundown and seedy, and it was in a sense.  At the same time, it offered wonderful nightlife opportunities - several drinking and dancing venues within a two or three block radius, good music with no cover charge, ample free parking, and the absence of stuffy, pretentious, or timid people.  I think it was pretty safe.  There was a nice crowd of friendly people and good friendly bouncers as well.  My girl buddies and I would go there for the evening and drink a little beer, and flirt and dance for hours.  Sometimes we found different ways home.  It got so sometimes I'd go by myself, because there was this almost Cheers-like vibe, and I'd always find people I knew.

So it was Halloween.  Or maybe only almost Halloween.  There may have been a costume party in one or more of the bars, or perhaps I just decided to wear a costume.  I'm pretty sure I came with my friend, because while I might have had the nerve to walk into a bar alone, I can't quite imagine I'd do so in costume.  It was, I thought, kind of a cute costume - a circa 1910 bathing dress, probably real, that I borrowed from my sister.  In hindsight, it was a little frumpy.   It was pretty chilly out, but I left my jacket in the car, because it didn't go with the costume.  The jacket was a 1970s model puffy down parka with velco pocket closures.  I always stashed my purse under the seat of the car, because purses are a nuisance when you're dancing.  The evening passed and eventually I returned to my car.  My first thought was that I left the window open, but I quickly realized my window had been broken out.  My jacket and my purse were gone.  I had my keys and my license on me.  I think I decided not to report the crime until the next day, although it also seems possible that I went to the nearby police station and was told to come  back the next day.  If you follow the blog closely as I'm certain nobody does, you're now thinking that I was a serial victim in my youth, but not so.  You now know about the only two times my wallet was ever stolen.  And nothing worse ever happened.  

The next day I reported the burglary to the Pasadena Police, who I believe never solved the crime.  Later that same next day I got a call from a man who lived in the Castle Green and took daily walks around Central Park and had spotted my wallet in or near a trash can including sufficient identity to contact me.  I think I got just about everything back with the wallet.  I don't know that I even had credit cards in those days; it was probably mostly photographs.  The purse and the jacket were not found.  The nice man who found my wallet stuff I think had some position of importance vis a vis the Castle Green.  His name was something like Robert Hall.  I picked my wallet remains up from him, I think, and he gave my an abbreviated tour of the lobby.  Although it is possible he mailed the wallet to me and I met him and got the tour some months later on an unrelated occasion.   I sent him a thank you note with a good luck charm.  I miss that down jacket sometimes when I'm cold.  Sometimes I miss the old bars of Old Town Pasadena, and being young and not so wise.

Long post about not much.  A lucky charm as a prize for anyone who read the whole thing and can prove it.           I like the painting.  I've had pretty good painting luck lately.  I'm glad I stuck around in the damp weather and finished it, and talked my fellow painters into staying too.

Playhouse

Last Saturday, I painted at the Pasadena Playhouse.  It was a busy morning.  Pasadena Artwalk was going on in the street.  In the Playhouse courtyard, the Friends of the Playhouse were holding a bazaar to raise funds.  I edited out all the people, and guessed at what the ground looked like.  By and large I like it, although I'm not too thrilled with the busy and confused top of the fountain.  One the nicest Friends of the Playhouse envisioned the painting as a item for their silent auction.  So I gave it to her.  I signed it and photographed it and gave it away.  In return, I can attend a performance as a guest, and get some free marketing.  Another good tip from the Friends of the Playhouse is that you can get a free tour of the Playhouse - anybody, pretty well anytime. 

Green and Growing

Businesses come and businesses go.  Big chain stores replace independent stores.  But in and around Pasadena, nurseries abide.  In Pasadena there are three independent nurseries that have been in business for over 80 years.  This is one of them: Bellefontaine Nursery.  The other two are Lincoln Avenue Nursery and Burkhard Nursery.  A little distance to the southeast, and huge, is the San Gabriel Nursery.  I admit it; I've bought plants and potting mix from the chains, but I'm not going to do that anymore. The history of these nurseries reflects a larger history: German immigration, Japanese immigration, war and Japanese internment, community spirit, perseverance.  In the present, these nurseries are run by people who honor their heritage and know and love plants.  

We almost didn't get to paint here, and I'm really glad we did.  There are beautiful and surprising shrubs and trees.  Huge butterflies flutter from flower to flower.  Hummingbirds are on to it too.  There is a smell of sweet roses and ripe concord grapes.     

Singer

Another hot August weekend.  This is a house at 602 S. St. John Avenue across the street from Singer Park in Pasadena.  I liked the subject for its light and shadows.  With the aid of the internet, I attempted to learn about the origins of Singer Park.  My searches for Singer and Pasadena history led me to the lovely Singer Building on Colorado Boulevard and to Loretta Thompson-Glickman, a former mayor of Pasadena who also had a career as a singer.  Very worthy subjects, but I'm none the wiser about the park.  The house, I learned, was built in 1909 by an unknown architect.  Quite a lot gets forgotten in a hundred years. 

Crowned with Glory

This is First Church of Christ, Scientist in Pasadena.  It is built in a Classical Revival style, which few other buildings in Pasadena are.  It reminds me of Washington, D.C.  White buildings, like white birds or flowers, are pleasing to paint in watercolor.  For the white portions in light, you use no paint at all.  For  the shadows, you may use any color you please.  I strain my eyes to see the shadows as polychromatic.  I was happy here to be able to capture some of the reflected light in the shadows.  I'm pretty pleased with this painting.  It was about 105 degrees out yesterday.  I moved repeatedly just to stay in the shade.  

Little One

Yesterday, I set out to paint at La Casita del Arroyo.  La Casita was built by Pasadena and its Garden Club in the 1930s as a community meeting house.  The wood to build the building was salvaged from the velodrome from the 1932 Olympics.   The Garden Club maintains the beautiful gardens that surround La Casita.  Matilija poppies were still blooming yesterday.  In addition to some of my regular painting companions, there was a plein air painting class all the way from the Antelope Valley.  Perhaps one day the plein air painters and the roving archers will face off in a competition for scarce Arroyo land and  parking resources.  Speaking of which, La Casita has the most beautiful parking lot - a parking lot only a garden club could dream of. 

It also happened that La Casita had been rented for an event.  Staff arrived and unlocked.  A truck load of tables and chairs arrived.  It was suggested that we should probably vacate the parking lot and go down below in the Arroyo to paint.  I complied, not because I'm an agreeable person, but I hadn't started painting and I had seen some promising views below. 

I thought the event would be a wedding.  I know people who were married here.  Then I heard it was a first birthday party.  Seriously?  I thought, renting a hall and round tables for a first birthday party?  It seems to me that people indulge in some pretty ridiculous excesses these days, especially for small children who have simple tastes and short attention spans.  But after I returned home, I spoke to somebody who is more culturally aware than I.  I learned that first birthdays are huge in many Asian cultures.  An important part of the celebration is when several items are set out before the child, things which may include rice cakes, a spool of thread, a brush, a crayon, a pencil, a book, money, a ruler, a golf club, and a bow and arrow.  The child picks things up, showing more interest in some than others.  The child's choices enable proud and optimistic parents to predict the child's future.  Since I only just learned about this, I missed the chance to try it myself, and I missed the chance to try it with my children.  What would we have picked?  Knowing what I know now, I would pick the crayon.  Or the tree.