2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 52 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Christmas Cards are in!

Order them here:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/88282843/holiday-sea-star-cards-with-built-in

Flaring at Mountain View

The day after Thanksgiving, five wells overlooking my elementary and high schools were flared. In an odd twist of irony, the wells are on the property of the school board president. I took some pictures.

On a related note, there’s another compressor station going up in Dimock! At what might be Pennsylvania’s first-ever public hearing about a compressor station, about 30 people came forward to oppose the station or demand better emissions controls. I am excited about the response to my testimony (and I was cut off for running over the time limit), so here it is.

My name is Kelly Finan, and I was born and raised in Hop Bottom, Pennsylvania,
about five miles from Dimock. My parents bought their ‘little piece of heaven’ in
the 70’s, and spent the next several years building a stone house together. The
house overlooks a small pond, where I’ve spent many a summer day swimming and
paddling with my friends.

I attended Juniata College, famous for its science departments, where I studied
environmental science and was groomed to love the concept of natural gas as
a “transition fuel”, or a bridge between fossil fuels and renewable energy. Juniata
is also the home of chemistry professor Paul Schettler, who used his enormous
understanding of physical chemistry to assist the US Department of Energy and
Columbia Gas Corporation in predicting the movement of natural gas deep below
the surface of the earth. This was a 30-year study which, I’m sure, had no small
implications for the development of hydraulic fracturing. When my parents asked
my opinion regarding a lease on our land, I said “sure, why not?” That’s when my
romance with natural gas ended.

Flash forward a couple of years. I’m watching a 40-foot-wide gash being chewed,
fern-gully style, across my neighbor’s land in order to accommodate a pipeline.
There’s a flare down the street that lights up the sky so vividly that, while driving
home one winter night, I worried that my house was burning down. And now, there
are several compressor stations being permitted within just a few miles of my front
door.

Tree-hugging and cosmetic ugliness aside, there are some serious health risks
to this industry’s guerilla attack on Pennsylvania. Although I could spend
hours criticizing every aspect of the industry, today I will address only the issue
of compressor stations, using examples of deteriorating air quality which is
threatening human health in towns across the US.

Sublette County, Wyoming, is a rural area subjected to a booming gas development.
The area contains at least 5 compressor stations. For 13 days last winter, ground
ozone levels there were deemed unhealthy by federal air quality standards.

Dish is a town of approximately 200 people and 11 compressor stations. It is located
in Denton County, TX., directly above the Barnett Shale. Independent air analysis
performed in the Town of DISH “confirmed the presence in high concentrations of
carcinogenic and neurotoxin compounds in ambient air near and/or on residential
properties. The compounds in the air indicate quantities in excess of what would

normally be anticipated in ambient air in an urban residential or rural residential
area. Many of these compounds verified by laboratory analysis were metabolites of
known human carcinogens and exceeded both Short-term and Long-term effective
screening levels (ESL) according to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
regulations. “ (Wolf Eagle Environmental).

Compounds that exceeded both short term and long term effective screening levels
include:

Benzene: Anemia leading to bone marrow damage, leukemia and death.

Xylenes: “are absorbed readily in the lungs and GI tract and quickly distributed to
tissues through blood flow. There is evidence that chronic occupational exposure to
Xylenes is associated with neurological effects.” (Wolf Eagle Environmental)

Carbon disulfide: “At high concentrations may be life-threatening due to its
central nervous system suppression. Physical signs of milder exposure may result in
nerve damage to the lower-lateral leg and foot resulting in foot drags or mild limp.”
(Wolf Eagle Environmental)

Dimethyl disulphide: “Health factors associated with exposure to Dimethyl
disulphide include irritation of the respiratory system (nose, throat) as well as
eye and skin irritation. Dimethyl disulphide is known to cause nausea and overall
weakness. Vapor or air mixtures of Dimethyl disulphide above 24°C may be
explosive.” (Wolf Eagle Environmental)

Benzene isomers: Trimethyl benzene, Diethyl benzene, Methyl-methylethyl
benzene, Tetramethyl benzene, 1,2,4-Trimethyl benzene: “They are also
identified as hazardous and may contain similar adverse effects on humans as
benzene.” (Wolf Eagle Environmental)

Ethyl pyridine, 2-Methyl pyridine, and Diemethyl pyridine: “Effects of acute
pyridine exposure include dizziness, headache and nausea. It is currently being
evaluated as a possible carcinogenic agent by government agencies.” (Wolf Eagle
Environmental)

Ethyl, methylethyl disulfide, Dimethyl trisulfide, Ethyl n-propyl
disulphide: “Known eye, skin and respiratory irritants” (Wolf Eagle Environmental)

Now I will apply this information to the planned Shields Compressor Station in
Dimock. Some expected pollutants from the Shields Compressor Station include
VOCs (common VOCs include Benzene and Xylene, listed above) at a level of 47.49
tons per year, when the EPA limit is 50 tons per year. It’s obvious that this company

isn’t using best management practices to reduce its emissions to protect the
environment and human health. Rather, it is polluting as much as it possibly can
without quite breaching the Clean Air Act.

It is obvious to me that the Department of Environmental Protection is not doing
its job in monitoring the natural gas industry, which forces citizens to do its job for
it. There are several people in this room who have been robbed of their peaceful
retirements, and instead patrol the backroads of this county all day, every day
looking for violations that the DEP continually overlooks. Thanks to the negligence
of the DEP, my own father has been forced to purchase a FLIR Gasfindir camera,
which costs more than my 4-year college education did.

Also, it has come to my attention that North Central DEP Region as a matter of
routine allows a half hour question and answer session with the public before each
DEP public hearing. However, we in the Northeast DEP Region do not get that public
discussion. Why?

I don’t understand exactly what made the DEP conclude that the water in Dimock is
safe to drink, because it doesn’t take a water expert to prove that the water coming
out of many of those faucets is brown and cloudy. It seems like common sense that
water exhibiting that kind of turbidity wouldn’t be acceptable for drinking., even if it
wasn’t laced with methane or a cocktail of drilling chemicals.

It’s been a few years since I first realized that natural gas is not the miracle fuel
that I had initially been taught about in school. Today, I like to go running on my
road and take my dog for walks in the woods, but these activities are frequently
interrupted by the roaring of nearby gas wells being vented or flared, or the sounds
of heavy machinery chewing its way through the woods. The other day, I turned
around mid way through my morning jog when a loud release from our neighbor’s
gas well startled me and made me think hard about the air that I was laboriously
sucking into my lungs. Every time I fill a glass of water, I instinctively inspect the
water for bubbles, discoloration, or odor. I dread the day that our water turns
brown, or worse, the day that it becomes contaminated but doesn’t change visibly. I
dread the day our air quality makes it impossible for me to run in the morning.

I demand actual protection from the DEP. Stop making citizens do your work for
you, increase and actually enforce air quality regulations regarding compressor
stations, and for the love of God stop allowing every natural gas related permit to
fly-by-night into your “approved” pile.

Kelly Finan
4450 SR 2002
Hop Bottom, PA 18824

Sources:

Dr. Paul Schettler:

http://www.juniata.edu/services/library/friends/friendsnews/

FOLNewsletterSpring09.pdf

http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/servlet/onepetropreview?id=00017070&soc=SPE

Sublette County, Wyoming:

http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/wy/information/NEPA/pfodocs/

jonah.Par.3636.File.dat/52app-g.pdf

Dish, TX (including list of emissions):

Wolf Eagle Environmental: http://townofdish.com/objects/DISH_-
_final_report_revised.pdf

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120043996

ways* to save money on art supplies

*Mostly legal

This is the first year that I left my house during Black Friday. I was not impressed. I waited until Cyber Monday. I was even less impressed. Here are some suggestions that will save you WAY more money than any stupid retail holiday, brought to you by arguably the thriftiest artist in the world.

Disclaimer: Information put forth on this blog post is not necessarily endorsed by Kelly Finan, Kelly Finan Illustration, or Finan Enterprises. Consider it to be a study on how some people save money, not necessarily the ways in which I save money (except for when it is explicitly stated, or alluded to in an anecdote). I am not paid by anyone for the opinions expressed in this post, or any of my other posts. (Ha! I wish!)

Saving money costs time. If you don’t like to spend copious hours looking for a deal, then by all means buy the first thing that you see. I like to window shop, find cheap alternatives, and do my own equipment repairs when I have time. Sometimes my cheapness takes hours out of my life. It’s about the chase.

Still with me? Okay, here’s the equipment that I have, and the cheapest/best way that I have found to get it (or get it fixed!):

Printers are the bain of my existence. They are roughly 298759287352 times overpriced, the ink is even more overpriced, they break within minutes of the warranty expiring, and the repair never costs less than the printer. As The Oatmeal puts it, “Either printer ink is made out of unicorn blood, or we’re all getting screwed.” How to get less screwed:

1. Epson.com + Retailmenot.com = massive discounts.
Three years ago I bought an Epson R1900 inkjet. List price was somewhere around $500. It was on sale for $400, and with the coupon codes on retailmenot.com I managed to eek the price down to around $250, plus free shipping. Retail Me Not is not particularly useful for most sites (I check every time anyway), but at Epson.com it can offer glorious savings.

2. Buy or salvage a laser printer for everyday stuff. I use the Epson about once ever couple of months (a set of new cartridges for that beast costs well over $100… more on that in a minute) for prints that will be framed. For everything else, I prefer a laser printer. I found an old HP printer/scanner/fax/copier with some toner left in it at a yard sale for $10 a few months ago. Used, you can pick something like that up for around $50 on Craigslist. Just make sure it has a USB connection, not a parallel port. I’ve fired a ton of black/white prints (reference photos, usually) out of that old thing and it’s still got toner in it.

Note: Inkjet printers, for everyday use, are the devil. For some reason lots of people are under the delusion that an inkjet printer is a great idea for the everyday printing needs of your home office. Mostly they are a great way to throw away a lot of money on ink. This comic expresses my views on inkjet printers. If you decide to go this route, I’d recommend a continuous flow ink system (~$20 on Ebay) but I wouldn’t install it until after your warranty is expired, as it will void the warranty.

3. If the warranty has expired, at least consider fixing it yourself. My most recent printer problem involved a tiny squeegee that was stuck in a little bit of stray ink (the printer was a Canon MX700 inkjet). When I told Canon what the error code said, they told me it would be a $120 repair and recommended I buy a new printer. When I looked up the error code myself (yay Google), I found out about the stuck squeegee and freed it. Internet searches indicate that this sort of this is frequent.Words cannot describe my disgust with printer companies and their wastefulness.

Cameras: I love cameras almost as much as I hate printers. I am the proud owner of a Nikon D40 DSLR (purchased in 2007) and a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS10, which is a shock and waterproof point and shoot. In the last month I got my Nikon lens repaired for free and got the Panasonic Lumix for free. Here’s how:

1. Lens warranties are excellent, but underadvertised. When the zoom on my 18-50 mm Nikkor lens started sticking (probably due to years of copious overexposure to sand on beaches, or the many photographs that I have taken while leaning into the salty spray produced by a speedboat), I asked my photo-savvy friend about it. All of the warranty papers that came with the camera/lens combo indicated that the warranty had expired in 2008. However, as it turns out, Nikon has a 5-year warranty on their lenses, which was confirmed when I called Nikon. When I mailed in the lens, Nikon repaired it and returned my 4.5-year-old lens it within a week, completely free with the exception of the outgoing shipping (~$3). According to my friend, some lenses have warranties up to 7 years! So always call your lens manufacturer before you replace your broken lens!

2. B&H Photo is the cheapest place to find digital photo equipment, hands down. Thanks to some conveniently damaged luggage by Delta, I was recently compensated for damages to my mediocre & battery-eating point-and-shoot camera. When I received the money, I scoured the internet for the best deal on a waterproof point-and-shoot camera. I did numerous Google searches and even checked Ebay multiple times. The products that I was searching for were ALWAYS cheaper on B&H (I was also hunting for a Nikon lens and some filters). Toss in the fact that B&H has a used store, and you get stuff in near-mint condition even cheaper still. Their only downside is that they are closed for just about every obscure holiday, but who cares? I scored the waterproof Panasonic Lumix, a Nikkor 18-55 mm zoom lens, and some assorted filters for only slightly more than Delta had paid me for my crappy old camera.

Computers (specifically Apple computers): Here are some pointers to avoid paying money for stuff involving computers.

1. Raise Hell. I have a 2007 Macbook Pro. Issues to date include a swollen battery that temporarily rendered the keyboard and trackpad useless, and a fried logic board resulting from a faulty Nvidia GPU. Both were repaired by Apple for free, despite the fact that my computer was 3 YEARS out of warranty.

In the swollen battery situation, I went to the nearest Apple store and carried the deformed battery around the store with me. It was moments before someone quietly whisked the battery away and gave me a new one for free. Apple does not like unhappy customers making noise in their shiny stores.

The GPU situation was a little more sticky. When my computer started booting to a kernel panic, many of my tech-savvy friends (and their friends) flocked to the problem and asked me questions about the situation until they had a theory. Better yet, they had discovered that Apple was replacing the damaged components for free, provided my computer fell into a certain range of manufacture dates. All I had to do was call Apple and ask, right? Not so easy. If your warranty has expired, Apple will not talk to you on the phone without charging your credit card $50 first. I figured out that if I called Applecare and pushed 0 enough times, someone would eventually be forced to deal with me. The guy on the other end sheepishly admitted that my computer *might* fall into that range, so I took it to a certified-repair-whateverthoseplacesarecalled, announced the problem (which they confirmed) and had it fixed free of charge. I’m not sure Apple would have fixed it for free, though, without my friends having figured the problem out first and me demanding the solution. (Thank you so much to everyone who was involved! You saved me $1200).

*Note: Raising hell also works with other things in life. I was so enraged that my the gloss optimizer on my Epson R1900 ran out that I convinced Epson to send me another.

2. Maybe just buy a PC. Macs are expensive. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to get them on the cheap, and honestly I’m not sure that the quality difference between the Mac and the PC justifies the vast price difference. I know plenty of graphic artists who are perfectly happy to work on a PC. Macs are the only computers that I have ever used for graphics, however, so I don’t have much basis for comparison with PCs.

3. Hackintosh: the ultimate solution? This is my upcoming project. A home-built PC that can run Mac OS, in addition to Windows. It’s much cheaper, more powerful, and arguably just as reliable as a real Mac. This is a favorite reference. Yes, I believe it is a legal gray area. The project could be quite a bit over my head in terms of my computer knowledge, but the internet is always there to help, right? Right guys………….?

Speaking of legal gray areas, here’s the most gray topic of them all!

Software:

1. Buy an old version. Most people don’t need to be on the most advanced cutting edge of whatever they’re doing on their computer. I’ve been running Adobe CS3 forever, despite the fact that I am a graphics professional. It’s mildly annoying when I am sharing native files with others, and I plan to upgrade soon, but it’s not killing my business.

2. Student discounts. Again, with Adobe, you can get massive discounts of roughly 80% of you are a student or work at a school. Just be prepared to show some serious paperwork.

3. Open source software. There are some wonderful people out there that believe that all software should be free and everyone should be able to do whatever they want with their version of software. They are people like Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project, who I recently had the pleasure of seeing at a lecture in Scranton. It was very enlightening, and you can read more about the GNU operating system and access the free software directory here (free software does not always require the GNU os).

4. ‘Obtaining it otherwise.’ AKA bit torrents. They are an option that I will neither endorse nor condemn. Google it if you want to learn more.

Professional Printing:

I use PrintDirtCheap, located in Bakersfield CA, for just about everything. They are orders of magnitude cheaper than any other professional printer that I have found (and believe me, I looked). They have superb customer service, and quite frankly I don’t think that I have ever been put on hold for even a minute. The person on the other end of the phone is always delightful. I REALLY wish that they would offer some more eco-friendly options, and I will have to stop using their services if they don’t make some advancements on that front pretty soon. But otherwise they are wonderful.

Other Art Supplies:

1. Buy Rapidographs on eBay. Rapidograph 7-pen set in stores = $60-$100. Rapidograph 7-pen set on eBay = $25.

2. Get stuff at yard sales, or wait until your housemate is moving across the country and is trying to get rid of stuff. Lots of people have brief moments in their lives when they decide to explore their artistic side. Most of them come to their senses. Cash in.

3. Coupons at AC Moore. Every week, the large art/craft supply store makes a coupon available to the public. It’s 40%-50% off any single purchase in the store, with very few exclusions. Needless to say, I get almost everything at a minimum of 40% off. (But if you live near a small independent art store, support them!).

I suck at conclusions, so I’m just going to say that I hope that this article allows multitudes of artists a little extra income to feed themselves with this year.

Sea Stars

Now, I’m noticing that WordPress has a poll feature! So, I’m going to use it to determine if you folk are more likely to purchase artwork (for example, the sea star above) on postcards or greeting cards. Please vote, I need your input!!

when life gives you grapes

Today, in a burst of creativity, I decided to pull the wild grape vines off of the trees across the street and make wreathes. Behold:

In memory of Snow

Several weeks ago, my friend Becca’s beautiful and much-loved cockatiel, Snow, passed away. Becca’s boyfriend, Allen, commissioned me for a memorial portrait. Using photos that Allen sent me and that I found on Facebook, I managed to piece together a likeness of Snow. Rest in piece, beautiful bird.

Happy Halloween!

Screw candy, here are some zombies.

The project: Zombies Occupy Dimock. For those of you who know me, it won’t surprise you that two of my favorite things are 1. costume parties and 2. bashing the natural gas industry.

In a recent turn of events, the PA DEP (Department of Environmental Protection, or as I like to call it, Don’t Expect Protection) gave Cabot Oil and Gas permission to stop delivering clean drinking water to the Dimock families whose well water it contaminated in September of 2008. In an outrage, some folks aroun’ these parts grabbed our pitchforks and…. just kidding. We had a nice dinner at a local Italian restaurant and decided to organize a series of protests. We wanted the first one to be fun, so we made it a Halloween party of sorts. The graphics have been spotted on Occupy Wall Street, Food and Water Watch, and StateImpact by NPR. There’s a great write-up on the event in The Scranton Times.

I take particular pride in a cardboard graveyard that I assembled which represents each county in Pennsylvania. The sizes of the gravestones are related to the number of drilling permits issued in that county, based on research by Frack Track, so it’s an information graphic of sorts.

Here are some of the event highlights:

Please visit www.dontexpectprotection.com for downloadable versions of the posters, the water ration cards, a pretend gas lease and other fun things!

The Growth of Industrial Art

Every Monday night I monitor the computer lab at Keystone College for six hours. I began doing this when the logic board in my 2007 Macbook Pro bit the dust* a couple of months ago and I desperately needed to meet a deadline. The folks here at Keystone were super nice to me and offered me not only use of their computer lab, but also an adjunct teaching position for next semester.

*Turns out that this is a common problem: failure of the NVIDIA GPU in these 2007 models. Apple, of course, would not give me phone support without relieving my debit card of $50. Thankfully my friends in California were more generous with their knowledge, and figured out the problem without me ever having to talk to Apple. When I took the computer to a certified Apple whatever-those-places-are-called (not a genius bar, the other one), they ran some tests, confirmed the problem, and proceeded to spend 2 weeks fixing it (a $1200 repair) for FREE. Not all that bad of an experience, plus, that’s how I wound up here in this computer lab with a new job! But that leads me to a topic that will probably appear in an upcoming blog post… the Hackintosh.

Anyway, back to the sitting in the computer lab part. I usually spend this time working on a project that pays me. Or shopping online for sparkly cocktail dresses. Not the case tonight. Instead, I have decided to scan 26 pages of beautiful (or strange) illustrations from a book that I picked up at a local flea market and share them with the world. The book is The Growth of Industrial Art, and none of the illustrations within date more recently than 1892. So, graphic artists, you know what that means…. PUBLIC DOMAIN! (I know just mentioning those words in this post will get my blog a ton of hits, so I’m going to say it some more. PUBLIC DOMAIN PUBLIC DOMAIN PUBLIC DOMAIN.)

Also, this book is huge, and has really put the Epson Perfection 10000XL that I’ve been scanning it with through it’s paces. Some of the images are cut off at the edges. Oh well. Please enjoy, and if you plan on having your way with these images, at least think about dropping a dollar into the Paypal account of the poor starving artist who slaved over the hot scanner to share these with you.

Woodchucks can chuck wood… and also rescue people!?

This illustrator drawing was for Molenko’s Paint Shop and Sign Graphics in Brooklyn, PA. They took my black and white linework and made it into a stunning graphic for the Rush Volunteer Fire Department.