mildred
You dear reader viewer are looking at a 10-layered mediation or curation of the artist known as Mildred Howard. This is my cellphone photo (1) frozen on tivo (2) on cable access channel 26 (3) of a broadcast (4) of Palo Alto Public Art Commission meeting (5) tonight Thursday, March 17, 2011 at approximately 7:31 p.m. (while Missouri was battling Cincinnati in D.C. in NCAA on another planet) from a presentation to the PAPAC by Art Center director Karen Kienzle (6) who brought her laptop (7) to show from San Jose Museum website archive (8) a videotape (9) of Mildred Howard, who will be in residence in Palo Alto shortly to build one of her world-famous bottle houses. Here Mildred reads from one of her inspirations, “The Autobiography of an ex-Colored Man” by James Weldon Johnson.
I hope it is not necessary to remind you that you are viewing Mildred’s image on a screen (10) and she is not a real person here. Although you can apparently come to Palo Alto to meet her, details to come.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 
wiki on James Weldon Johnson whose book was published in 1912:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Weldon_Johnson
I don’t believe it is a Mildred Howard but Austin, Texas has a semi-famous bottle house on South First Street next to Amelia’s store. Dao Strom played a showcase there two years ago during SXSW.
Michael S. Gant of Metro on Mildred:
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.08.04/houses-0450.html
Karen’s laptop was synched to project onto a screen although I’m not sure if the tv feed was patched direct or not…
My mom and I visited Mildred’s creations at Palo Alto Art Center, there for one more week, and I await the proposed installation of a bigger house of hers (Mildred, not Moms’) at Martin Luther King Plaza on Hamilton in front of City Hall, if Karen Kienzle and I (more here than me in this case) finally get over our respective colds (or is it the same bug — “I’ll have what’s she’s having” as they say if I could do as good a job with the arts as Ms. Kienzle is doing here-?)
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/depts/csd/activities_and_recreation/attractions/art_center/winter_exhibition_2011.asp
Not to be confused with the blockbuster “Mildred” coming soon to paid media consumers…
Terry and I are off to a media social networking and advertisting clinic put on today by the Palo Alto Weekly (I was an advertiser for many years for my concert company; I ran for City Council but bought no ads). The leaders of the workshop are Rachel Hatch, a former divinity student at Yale (via St. Olafs) and Institute for The Future worker, and blogger, and lover of Whitman; and Nathan Pape a youngish 2.0 devotee from Buffalo and Ontario — huh? I mean, not to be cynical, but do we really need to import a media evangelist from Buffalo? Every third person you meet on Cali Ave or Uni Ave is a media expert. (editors note: it actually turns out that Rachel Hatch nee Hamilton is a former Hoover Institute pr person and a BYU grad from Palo Alto, but has a namesake at IFF.)