I shot my first game over 200
Posted By Kathleen David on July 31, 2008
Last night during our summer bowling league I shot a 172, a 192, and a 201 for a 589 scratch series. My average is a 138 which is up from the 128 I had at the end of the Women’s league. This was my first 200 game ever. So that is my new personal best. Before that I had 3 games at 193 and 2 at 197. I won the average pot for the second game and had a pretty good shot at the third. All in all, it was a good night for bowling for me. Our team won all 11 points which we really needed to keep ourselves in the hunt.
I come home to open my e-mail to find a rather heated debate (for lack of a better word) where one person is belittling everyone who makes fleece and foam puppets. They admit they don’t get the appeal of the Muppets and apparently have problems with the relationship between Kermit and Piggy which is strange to me since they are just puppets. Their puppets remind me very much of Bil Baird’s style of marionettes so the stone throwing is probably breaking some windows in their glass house.
I think I am most disappointed with some of the other puppeteers who have made this sort of puppet jumping in with a you are so right there are so many foam and fleece puppets that are reminiscent and thank you for pointing this out to this person. There is one puppeteer I am particularly saddened by considering how his exploration into new materials has given me insight in to some rather clever ways to doing things. He is better than this and now I think a little less of him which is sad.
So I put myself in the line of fire by writing the following.
I’m going to put my foot in this one being one of those who builds puppets for fun and profit out of foam and other materials. I am sorry you are so disappointed by my art which by the way has given me a lot of joy and some great memories.
Yes, there is more to puppets than those materials. Now ask me how many of those sorts of puppets I have sold to the general public as apposed to the foam and fleece ones……9.
That’s right I can count on the fingers of my two hands the number of rod and marionette puppets.
6 of the 9 were rod versions of Oberon and Titania for a couple of different productions of “Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
2 string puppets were custom jobs for a commercial in Atlanta that I got some serious money for since they needed them in less than 24 hours.
And 1 was a string puppet I sold in an Artshow called LunaCon.
And that is not for a lack of trying to sell them either. I have built all kinds of puppets but I find that my bread and butter lay in fleece and foam.
I do charactures puppets for people. Grandparents get puppets made for their grandkids of themselves. Parents have me make puppets of their children for them. It is not a bad sideline business.
I have build science fiction and fantasy based puppets that I have sold to people all over the world. I met Neil Gaiman because of a foam and fleece Sandman puppet I made.
If I hadn’t built in this style I would not have met my husband since we met over a foam and fleece creation he bought for something he was working on.
I have found something that I do well in this industry and I am rather proud of the smiles and the laughter my puppets have generated.
It may not be high art or ground breaking but it works for me and I will thank you not to spit on it.
I know you are walking in here with an agenda but belittling what many of us do and informing us that we are not creative is rather crass.
There are few of us out here as it is. Why should we stop making a certain type of puppet because you (as you have admitted) don’t get it?
Normally I would have left this alone as a disgruntled puppeteer whose art form is not that popular right now. But I have been reading a series of web logs that Kate Orman, the author, has been writing about cyber bulling within fandom. And when the string artist rather savaged one of the younger members of our group, I could not let it stand without comment. I am tired of cyber bullies and how we tend to just let them go off and hurt other people’s feelings because we don’t want to stir the pot and possibly get them to go after us. I’m tired of keeping quiet while people take potshots at my friends and family and then get their knickers in a twist when they are called on it. So this time I spoke up and await for the condescending reply that I know is forth coming.
I am grateful for Kate’s recent exploration of cyber bullying.
Congrats on the 201 game!
And bigger congrats for standing up to bullying.
Is it bullying, or just being an obnoxious opinionated eedjit? Arguably it’s a subtle distinction at times, and time spent sorting one from t’other is usually time wasted… Just slap ’em all down and let God sort ’em out, so kudos for doing that.
(I always think of Larry Niven’s “Theory and Practice of Teleportation” essay when someone starts acting out on the ‘net. He posits that cheap long distance teleportation gives a new motive and opportunity for murder because you live right next door to everybody… The stalker, the jealous ex, the guy you fired, all living right next door. I tend to think that if there are a million fans of, for example, a TV series, then 100,000 of them probably follow the news group and it’s only the statistically tiny percentage of those who are ’emotionally overinvested’ that generate all the sturm and drang that takes over from time to time. I tend to file ’em under cost of doing business and try to ignore them. Maybe I should cultivate more of a zero tolerance approach)
Cheers.
Thanks so much (to both you and Kate Orman) for taking a stand against cyber-bullying. I’ve seen this type of behaviour before on other unmodderated message boards that I used to frequent. I say used to, because the behaviour and attitudes so disgusted me that I left. I’ll have a read of Kate Orman’s blog later.
Congrats on the 200 game! I hope it happens to you the way it did to me, and others I know of… that once you hit that first 200, more follow…
Thank you for speaking so clearly on the cyber-bullying issue… I have dropped out of groups for just that reason, although I have to say that some of the moderators were on the ball and quickly banned the posters causing the most problems. I’ve found that internet bullies are usually those too cowardly to say those things to people’s faces, for fear of a physical or public verbal confrontation.
It’s sad to say that in the fifth grade last year, I had a case of this that I had to address… and I even had to get heavy with the parents, who saw nothing wrong with their girl flooding another girl’s inbox with hate mail daily.