If you could have something named after you, what would it be?
The blog prompt for today got me thinking about how much I enjoy Texas State Parks and how many opportunities there are for volunteers like me and my Master Naturalist friends to help out and educate the public at them.
View across the dam at Meridian State Park
Sadly, there’s no State Park in Milam County, so our El Camino Real Master Naturalist Chapter have had to make our own opportunities, like our Wildscape that Catherine Johnson spearheaded. Another group is working on a project at Sugarloaf Mountain, a cool site in the county.
We don’t have much public land, if any in Milam County. Thank goodness someone donated land for this park!
So, if I had anything named after me, I’d love it to be a State Park in Milam County. Of course, our ranch isn’t big enough to be one. And we don’t own it all ourselves. So I’d have to get really wealthy and buy up some scenic land. It’s just a dream, but I’ll help out anyone else who wants to create one!
I hope my park would have cool beehives like the one I found yesterday on the dam! Watch this video!
Until the Suna State Park is developed, I’ll just keep visiting others and documenting the biodiversity at each one.
Lee and I talked about printing some of our best photos to decorate Seneca the motor home. This is a juniper hairstreak on antelope horn milkweed.
The next trip will be to a Corps of Engineers park with people from our former church. That will be more social camping! Enjoy more photos from yesterday. Which do you think would make good wall decor?
Red admiralTexas beautiesNarrow leaf poccoon whatever that isMore purple paintbrush LakesideSpillwayVerbenaEngelmann daisyTexas yellow star, I thinkPossumhaw Red admiral on juniperTrailCactus coreid bug, maybeBack of damOrange sulphur YuccaBuckeye Little egg
Moody morning Weaving progressRode Drew outside the round pen for the first time. Amazing sunset from College Station Costco parking lot. Dallas Cowboys manicure.
Recently, I was talking to one of my old friends about being mistaken for a man. It happens to her fairly often, depending on how she’s dressed, since she is not shaped like the stereotypical Barbie-doll person, has short hair, often dresses androgynously, and is blessed with a deep voice (one of my favorite former singing partners). It doesn’t happen to me very often, probably because I like shiny accessories so much. Neither my friend nor I are particularly bothered by being mis-gendered, though I know it can be really difficult for some of our other friends, especially those who are trans.
I’ve talked about this before, but I tend to see my father’s face when I look in a mirror; I don’t have especially “feminine” features. And, now that my hair is quite short, it’s more noticeable, even though we all probably know enough people with different lengths, styles, and colors of hair to realize that any hair stereotype out there is pretty outdated. So, I was prepared to see interesting results when I tried that new AI software that turns your photographs into cartoons or paintings. As you can see, one setting gave me blue eyes and made me look like a 12-year-old boy.
My lovely friend.
I’d seen a few that my female-identified friends had done, and they looked cute/pretty and like women. I admit my example here is extremely lovely, but you can see they gave her eyelashes, lipstick, and such. That makes me think that the software makes a guess about whether an image is of a male or a female. I’d love to see more images from people who don’t identify one way or the other or who provide few cues to what they are trying to tell the world about themselves.
Adding glasses made me look more like a woman, but increased bye crossed-eyes.
Another thing that I notice about this software is that it’s very literal. I appear to have a “lazy eye” in most of the AI renderings, though at least in some of the photos I used I had appropriately brown eyes. The thing is, these things look nothing at all like me, whereas the ones I’ve seen of other people at least resemble them enough that you can say, “Ah, that’s so and so.” Well, it’s no big secret that AI is not perfect and that it is worse with women and people of color than men. Of note: none of my friends with darker complexions posted their little cartoon heads, unless I just didn’t see it in my feed, which is a possibility.
The bottom line for me is that the images are just plain…plain. Dare I say unattractive? I don’t imagine myself as some raving beauty, but I hope I am not as aesthetically displeasing as these images came out. The ambiguous, gender-fluid aspect is fine, even fun, but I’d like to be an attractive guy!
It did a great job on the wrinkles and blew up my eyes.
I look like someone’s Uncle Ernie
This one is just plain spooky.
I don’t know who this sneering person is, but it isn’t me.
Oh, vanity, thy name turns out to be Suna, and THAT is not pretty, at all. Let’s change the topic, so you can enjoy Alfred and Goldie getting along well, and a nice photo of Goldie. I wish they hadn’t cropped her ears, but she’s still got a sweet, yet noble face. Like me!
Things are good in the dog department.
Have you tried playing with the AI toy? Do you find it fun? I guess it appeals to fans of the selfie. Sometimes I am one of those, just because observing and recording the aging process is pretty fascinating.
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The Hermits' Rest 