Idyllopus is J. M. Kearns, or Juli Kearns, born 1957 in Lawrence, Kansas, childhood spent mostly in Seattle and Richland, Washington (thus the interest in Hanford, see below). I’m an artist (link to my art, there) and writer. A few plays produced. But mainly I’ve misspent my life authoring unpublished books. My husband is a musician, plays keys, now in production and engineering after years doing road work. H.o.p. is our son, ten years of age, and is an artist. His animation shorts and art frequently appear on the blog.
About Idyllopus Press
The Idyllopus website started circa 1998 with the playpen Bigsofa when I became determined to learn html and web design in order to bring some ideas to the web. So I learned html and web design and soon was freelancing doing web design and computer art, as I’d also started experimenting with digital art. I also have done a good bit of volunteer web design.
Idyllopus Press was later formed with the intent of one day taking advantage of on-demand publishing, The Unending Wonders of a Subatomic World (or) In Search of the Great Penguin eventually published in 2006.
In 2005 came about the blog, Idyllopus – Meanwhile Back at the Ranch, which is pretty much as the tag line states, “A sometimes notion is better than no thread at all”. I had already begun a blog chronicling a bit of our homeschooling path, but then I decided to take it broad, and I invested a good portion of 2005 writing about the war and politics and religion. This essay is a good description as to the why.
Via the blog and the post Growing Up in the Shadow of Mount Fuji, I began the series of essays and digital paintings which became Remixing the Hanford Declassified Project and was a Counter Punch website of the day in April of 2007.
Nobody reaches this blog, via the search engines, looking for anything to do with Hanford. Or with art. Or with Unending Wonders of Subatomic Worlds and Great Penguins. The majority of visitors to this blog either end up here for the few essays on film I’ve written, or because they’re interested in banana popsicles.
I wrote about banana popsicles once and I am, for some bizarre reason, the first google search result for “banana popsicles”.
I call this kind of happening Google Casino.
One may email Idyllopus at:
meanwhile at idyllopuspress.com
Previous incarnations of Idyllopus (and more besides these, I just didn’t take screenshots of them):
Now an explanation of the graphics I used in the header of this page. Top left is the desert near Richland and Hanford, Washington, where the tumbling tumbleweeds are radioactive monsters. I photoshopped in the book and the trailer. The trailer, because I’m always going to be some way there, in that desert, and the book because I consider my youth there as one of the main influences in my life. The middle image is a rhinoceros toy that belongs to son H.o.p. I adored that rhino. Every time I looked at it I thought of Murukami’s “The Wind up Bird Chronicles”. I was able to keep the little toy rhino on my desk until H.o.p. was about four years of age. He retrieved it and now all I have are photos as memories. The image on the right is from the Bill Cullen show. A distant relation, blues and jazz singer, was a performer on the short-lived show, and was Bill’s comedic foil. (Road musician life is hard. She grew up singing with her brother and sister. Her brother died of food poisoning while they were on the road.) My husband, a musician, used to play accordion in Cajun bands. . I was charmed by the accordion guy seeming to be chased by the rhino. In the picture below, at left, is a drawing my son did of Mechagodzilla, Godzilla being of course a popular entertainment way of Japan to deal with the Nuclear Age, the terrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then on the right that’s me and my eyes.
