2010: art shows R us

In the beginning of 2010 I wrote - "Let is be a year of music!"  Instead for me 2010 was a year of Art. It was the first time in decades I showed my artwork in a Gallery.

,First I showed  a drawing called Aspects of the Self one drawing at the Frieght Street Gallery during their May Day Festival show: This was an amazing thing. No one had seen my work, except digitally, in years!

Later in May I showed one of my polymer faces during the Artwell Rocks show in Torrington. I was on a roll whoohoo!   The work was called "The British Invasion: 40 Years Later."

During the summer, at the request of Victoria Munoz, I brought three works to hang at Freight Street during one of her poetry Salons there. I brought my Dancing Poems collage, Hair's on Fire (an oil pastel) and  Water & Fire, a digital painting.

For Artwell's Landscape and Still Life in Septemeber, I brought three works I had finished recently, all oil paintings on canvas board: Between the Darkness and the Deep, Rural Free Delivery, and River of Sky.

I created a special work for Artwell's DaDa show in November. New Era: the Eagle Egg Shell Breaks, and a found art peice  called congress which consisted of twisted spring wires from an old couch.  It's been a good year!

In honor of the eclipse: Moon Madness Strikes

In honor of the eclipse: This column appeared years and years ago in the Ridgefield Press, back when I was a reporter there .

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Moon Madness Strikes Reporter

by Mar Walker

Some Ridgfielders had a perfect view of last Sunday's lunar eclipse.

``Did you watch the eclipse?'' I kept asking friends expectantly.

``Too cold.''

``Too late at night.''

``Saw one last year.''

Like many other disinterested parties around town,  I've always figured the stars and the planets could carry on perfectly well without me. And what I had planned for this particular event was to skip the whole thing and stay in bed.

Fortunately I was awake at midnight. On impulse, I put on some shoes and threw a coat over my pajamas. I was curious I guess, and it seems I've been cheating myself all these years. It's like the Grand Canyon was right off the porch and I'd never even looked.

Out the back door I went at a little past midnight. There was a bite out of the full moon already, just a little nibble really. It was a perfect night, utterly clear. The bright moon washed the night sky to medium grey and crisscrossed the yard with shadows. Bare trees swayed in parallel. Black limbs juggled stars in leafless hands like fussy husbands rearranging Christmas lights.

And of course there was music - the brook out back, full from the day's rain, murmured on its way to the Norwalk River. Over the scuttling of leaves and over the wistful sweetness of wind chimes on the back porch, ever so slowly, the round silhouette of Earth stretched over the moon.

As moonlight dimmed, starlight and darkness heightened. I felt cold and alive, shifting weight from one foot to the other, craning my neck like some fat bird in a courtship dance as I stared straight up.

My cat wailed at the backdoor to come out and as I turned, momentarily facing further North, I saw two bright shooting stars, one right after the other. The very long, very bright trails streaked down and I imagined I could hear the sizzle of air as they fell.

A little numb now, I ran into the kitchen and put on water for tea. I wrapped a scarf around my neck and rummaged around for a pair of binoculars. Leaving the tea to steep I went back outside.

What a revelation - with the binoculars I could make out the dark spots on the crescent of moon still showing. I studied a pale smudge to the lower right of the moon and found a cluster of stars. I focused on stars and found where I thought I saw one or two, there were entire flocks of stars drowned out by ambient light.

Alone under such surprising immensity, many thoughts came. About the fear this ancient sky-dance had once inspired. Once, before there were electric lights and television, it must have been a natural thing for men and woman to study the night sky, feeling its beauty, dwarfed by its enormity.

Now we hold nightly vigils before the TV's glitzy banality - consumer culture flashing across an 22 inch screen. What a contrast in pacing and depth when compared to an eclipse.   Our attention span is jaded by 30 second commercials. Our awe is reserved for special effects.

Instead of stepping outside and experiencing nature firsthand, we watch the highlights, rebroadcast to us as we sit on comfortable couches in warm living rooms. I know that I myself am like that. Most people I know are too.

A sudden noise caught my attention as a bright light appeared moving quickly along from the direction of New York. In the binoculars, red and white lights flanked the slender shadow of a jet. As it drew closer, low in the sky, I could see the glow of its engines spewing eerie white smoke, twin rockets in the dark. The sky is amazing and despite our drawbacks, we and our technologies are amazing too.

At one thirty a.m., when the moon had dimmed to a glimmer, and my hands had grown numb holding the metal glasses, I went in and drank my mint tea and rubbed my neck. I found if I lay flat on the floor beneath the kitchen window, body stretched under the table, I could see the moon easily without having to twist my neck. Lying on linoleum, bathed in the emerging moon, I fell asleep.

Drawing with markers: An odd little sheep

Okay I admit this cross-eyed sheep is slightly silly, though it's fun. It's something I drew with markers when I was in college. Of course that was in the stone age!  HAHAHA, I used it recently on an All rights reserved notice on my Picasa web slideshows. More on that later.  

I think it represents me - sort of odd but colorful in a squirrelly kind of way! hahaha!  though these days I am no sheep to be herded. I am more the puzzled dragon, fire contained within, ready when the situation calls for it. Or a feckless flea - hopping around pointlessly. Depends on the day.

Painting: one last tweak on Blue Velvet - the cat

What did I change in this painting?  Yes!  The cat didn't fit. No cat I have ever known would sit with its back to two persons as they approached it outside. Most cats would skitishly prepare to run somehow, then look back to see if they were still approaching, stopping if the people involved made a friendly noise. With everything else so delicately poised, it seemed wrong to me to have the cat so solid and seated. So I fixed it. The lines work better now as well with the cat's tail leading to the arm, leading to the faces...  Note the cat above and the cat in the version below.

The original drawing was called Bad Date as I mentioned in an earlier post. As you can see, it was energetic and threatening. Needless to say, the feeling of this painting is a gentle one, and does not follow the sketch. See my earlier post for commentary on that change.

Attack of the pie brigade

Thanksgiving goes from one extreem to another. There might be 35 people or just one. All you need is a semblence of a meal eaten with appreciation.

In 2007 and 2008, my mom and I broke with tradition and went to a local diner for our meal. This year my cousin who had moved to PA has moved back here, and one of my mothers sisters has moved back from Florida. My cousin's sons and their families were not visiting this year. (One is overseas, the other is on the West Coast.) So it was a small crowd and a meal featuring some high fat but really delicious food. Our gathering including five actual relatives and three folks the cousins invited who are not relatives. One of them is Chef Johnny who deboned the bird and stuffed it with chestnut sausage stuffing. My cousin's husband basted it with brandy and cooked it on a grill outside. Oh my. Chef Johnny spiced up mashed sweet potatoes and doused green-beans with almonds and amaretto.  My family always fears there will not be enough, and so there is always WAY too much. When one is trying to avoid cholesterol  - it seems almost an assault to sit with a mousse pie to your left, cream pie to your right, etc etc. The following video is an account of dessert.

Going WAY back here - my first oil painting

I have always been a fan of brown in all its zillion permutations with raw and burnt umbers and siennas rich as compost.

This is my first oil painting. This was painted during a Painting I class with Robert Alberetti at Western CT State U - decades ago. The actual painting mildewed and was tossed out. All I have is this rather blurry snapshot - which I scanned into the computer and digitally signed in Picnic.  The wonderful thing about Mr. Alberetti's still life setups was that the objects were all so beautiful and compatible. My rendering of them is forgettable but forgivable considering it's a first attempt.

P.S  - the blurry snapshot does it a service in my opinion, i.e. it looks nicer in the photo.

Inspiring pastel demo with Clayton Buchanan

Pastel artist Clayton Buchanan gave a local workshop last week. Wow. Now, first I have to say that I don't work with soft pastels much or ever. I work with oil paint and oil pastels, occasionally watercolors, collage - yadayada.  But the way this artist talked about what he was doing, and the way he was doing it shed light for me on the process of "seeing."  Check out his website, by the way - his finished works are gorgeous.

His method was at first baffling. He'd stare at his subject, then stare at his chalks. (a familiar enough process). He'd suddenly pickup one and make a little mark here or there on the paper. At first the results didn't seem to make much sense or form a picture. It was just little squiggles or patches of color. But after a while the subject emerged from the chaos of color into a recognizable and accurate picture.  During the process a roomful of 30 people sat silently watching for an hour and a half.  There was a ten minute break, and an occasional question shot out by onlookers - but mostly these folks, all artists,  watched intently.  And it was worth the wait!   He also had two great handouts about using pastels and using them for portraits. The event was put on by SCAN.

Mr. Buchanan said we should try to see our  compositions in terms of "plains of light and shadow," and to try and see those plains in terms of color rather than value.  That really hit home for me. I am currently working on a bunch of paintings. One in particular features two men sitting on a bench in the early sunlight. I am trying to apply these ideas:  "Plains of light an shadow" and color rather than value . I think these ideas will allow me to move forward with this particular picture in a different way than before.

Melody with slide show

This is a tranquil melody or that is how I envisioned it.

While brandishing a set of wind chimes and ringing them occassionally, I improvised this melody to a video of my cat. When I watched it afterwards, the tune didn't really fit the pictures. So I took some old stained glass-like early digital paintings of mine and made a slideshow of them. The slides overlap which makes new colors as one fades into a another. The last slide is a low res pic of a painting of mine. Hope you like it.

Drawing: the groper

This is an old sketch. I like it though. He is surely a groper - but she doesn't seem to mind and clings to him as they slide. I made the jacket rather too splashy and check out the blue suede shoes! Have always had a visual fascination for dancers of various kinds. There are quite a few sketches of bodies in motion here on the blog.

I was bummed earlier because someone was on the blog looking at the drawing category and I realize only 5 old drawings were properly categorized. There are actually 24 plus drawings on this blog...  I have fixed it and the drawing category now calls up everything it should.

Painting: Rural Free Delivery

This is an oil painting on a small canvas board.   This painting hung around for a year because I couldn't figure out how to finish it.

Below are earlier versions of it.  I have this debate with every picture:  when do I stop? Things are lost and others gained. Perhaps I am over painting them.

Painting: Busy No 1 - Cat Dreams, oil on canvas board

Cats are busy when they're awake, and who knows what they dream about. Maybe little birds or mice running, or leaves skittering on the wind? This painting is busy too, with color and movement of dots. I don't know why. Just a fancy I had I guess.

Vote. It's important.

Vote. Whoever you are, vote. In the end, when you complain to me about the results of this election - I will ask you "DID YOU VOTE?"  If you didn't vote you  should be ashamed and no one should listen to your complaint. I know I won't. Are you in the hospital? Out of the country? Get an absentee ballot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DRkUU-qhjk

My improving mood

A little sunshine can improve your mood. This afternoon featured streaming rays with attendant blue sky. This pic looks like someone just beamed aboard the mothership. And only a moment ago I was sitting right there... haha

three sisters dance

Though this is based on a family of sisters I know - today, right now, this is how I feel. No matter what I do, I am hemmed in by some imagined necessity.. No matter how I dance I am not doing the right step and meeting with disapproval on every side.

There is a ton of paperwork I am behind on and somehow, despite my efforts and worry I can't seem to do it right.  I forget things. Am beleaguered beyond reality today.

This sketch started in pencil then other odds and ends were used to add color.

Live with Reason and Sympathy!

Live with Reason & Sympathy

Look. Investigate. Appreciate. Share who you are. Help when you can. Value people over dogma. Celebrate this brief beautiful life

It's no surprise that most people find aspects of nature beautiful and inspiring since we are a part of nature and its amazing menagerie of life. We are a part of the earth, subject to the machinations of its atmosphere, oceans and crust. We are part of the cosmos with its billions of stars. This universe is beautiful, astonishing, and we are alive for now - so celebrate, appreciate, explore, invent, create, achieve, care for each other and for our home, the earth! Nature, the earth, the cosmos are a part of 'space-time', a gestalt, a matrix of all, and they are what they are, without intention towards us, whether we understand them or not, and without regard to our various conflicting cultural stories about them. What they are, objectively, can be shown, overtime, though reason and scientific method, which assembles an amendable approximation  of how things work - amendable by future knowledge gained through replicable experiment. This sits opposite so called "revelation"  or story-telling. The writers of ancient texts, "inspired" preachers, story-tellers, alledged psychics, channelers and shamans reveal their own thoughts which may contain purely human metaphor and which may  metaphorically reflect the culture in which they live. Their thoughts may become codified into a dogma or religion  by which some are content to judge themselves and others -- by which sometimes armed groups judge others, waging bloody wars to enforce their beliefs. Everything, (both inside of us and outside of us, including codified belief) arises from the natural physical world. What most folks refer to as the soul is the best part of the self as found in the intricate human brain. The logical end of this thought is this: when we die, the matter and energy that we contain will be recycled and reused, but our unique life will be gone, except in memory, in history, in genetic code. So cherish this one life that you are privileged to possess. Never, never throw it away..

You only get this one life, so live it well.

-- MM Walker

Human Being on Planet Earth,

Painting: The Competitors, some dancers in conflict

This is an acrylic called Competitors which dates from the days when I was associated with the Connecticut Conservatory of the Performing Arts. Though it was voice I studied there, most of its students were dancers. Before that time, I never really thought about the competitive aspects of dance - I just enjoyed watching it.

In this piece, dancers flair into seeming conflict. Or is it seeming?

And yes, their legs are unnaturally long. Very exaggerated.

Oil Pastel & Watercolor – a little ballet with some smudgy color

This is a mixed media work of mine, created with oil pastel and water colors on paper. I think I may have posted it before - if so, I will add a link to that post. This photo is taken through the glass of the frame, so it looks a bit subdued.

DRAWING: Fingers of the Sun

This is a pen and ink from quite a few decades ago. It's first life was black and white only. Then I got the itch to alter and out came the crayons. I like the sense that everything is in motion, very busy, frantic motion. I think life felt like that to me back then.

Bruce Gray’s wild kinectic sculpture – gravity with sound effects!

A Kinetic Sculpture by Los Angeles sculptor Bruce Gray, titled "Califormia Dreamin"

One of things I am always excited about in a work of art - is a sense of motion. But with kinetic sulpture - you have the immediate delight of motion in three dimensions rather than motion hinted at on a flat plain. This sculpture also has sureal sound effects, even though it doesn't seem like the Califormia Dreamin of that era.. Another thing I like about it is the idea of alternate routes that all lead to the same destination and the juxtaposition of natural force (gravity) and man-arranged force which lifts the iron ball to the top for another cycle.

I found this video featured on a blog called DenverArtsyGal - she has a fantastic blog and twitter feed so take a look.

Healthcare thoughts and a book: The Treatment Trap

Sometimes an office visit for a medical complaint seems more like a marriage than a date.  You not only get  your doctor, but all the relatives - a flock of specialists to look after each body part separately.

I have watched strange goings on as a patient advocate for an elder relative for the last ten years. A kidney is atrophied, for instance, according to some test or other by one kidney doctor, then a stent is put in by a sub-specialist kidney doc who does stents, then immediattely there is a question as to which kidney was damaged, as both appear to be fine....

Or when in the hospital for a fall, the hospitalist says they are going to send a neurologist to evaluate her, and also a specialist to look at her sinuses since the scans of her head revealeved a tiny polyp that might be causing post nasal drip. BUT THE PATIENT HAS ALREADY BEEN FULLY EVALUATED and is under treatment by a NEUROLOGIST associated with that hospital.  She doesn't  care about her perennial post nasal drip and wants to go home. She is stable,  and IS SHARING A ROOM WITH SOMEONE INFECTIOUS.  So MRS X -  How about another CAT Scan or maybe we need another MRI, or five more specialists to consult on your case - If you have good insurance - they have some tests they would like to run..... Never mind that post nasal drip isn't exactly something to make you check into a hospital.

Did I mention that these days seniors go to a doctor for each part of their bodies? Besides her primary Doc, my relative has a doctor for her heart, one for her arteries, one for her kidneys, one for the colon, one for her nerves and another for her thyroid. Then several of them want to see her four times a year which always involves looking at the papers and having a chat. No hands on at all. SO Why not do the blood work and let the primary care guy decide if she needs to see them? No fee in that....

For more of the same foolishness and some outright larceny from all across the country - read the The Treatment Trap -  a book by Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh. It's available at the Danbury Library.  It's a sobering read.

Flash fluke - Cat with burning eyes

This is one of those accidental photos that I could never take on purpose, because as a point-and-click photog, I just don't have the skill.  Miet walked right up to the camera and got caught in the flash closeup..  The photo was taken at night, and the lamp in the background has one of those new fangled energy-saving bulbs

Sculpture in clay, from a live model

This is a larger sculpture f(or me I mean) - about 14 or 15 inches high. I made it during a class at Wooster Community Art Center quite a few years ago,. The instructor was Janice Mauro who does a lot of cool work with figures in enclosures, and with patinas that have an incredible depth.  We had a live model for the class. I had previously sketched a live model before but working in three dimensions was quite different.  This has some cracks in it now. The back of the base is broken, as is one hand. I still like the lines though.

I also took a class at Wooster with Alex Shundi, but in that class we worked with terra cotta clay. Shundi is another great instructor. I have fond memories of both of the classes I took at Wooster. I wish the center was still open.

Polymer Face – Sad-Eyed Man

I used the vignette function in iPhoto to focus on the face of this sad=eyed fellow with his doubtful look. The sculpture is polymer, mounted on a stone tile. It's one of dozens of polymer faces I created around the year 2000. Each is different.  I signed the photo in Picnick on Picasso.

The Holmes Brothers at Ballard Park

Last Thursday, I enjoyed an outdoor show at Ballard Park put on by CHIRP, (usually they are on Tuesdays). It was free, the weather and the music were good. The Holmes Brothers , Wendell and Sherman Holmes and Popsy Dixon, are originally from Virginia. According to their press relase, the band originally formed in 1979, and it doesn't hurt that they have a lifetime of stylistic knowledge to draw on. They play heavy on the blues with fabulous vocal harmonies including a sort of quavery falsetto, a little rockin' jazz, tasty guitar licks, and a bit of country. There were many toe-tapping fast-moving songs, with a few glacially slow and subtle songs. And yes, this group may have some grey hair, but so did much of the audience, including me!

One nice feature of Ballard Park is its small size. You can park in town, walk into the park, walk out Through Ballard Green Apartment's parking lot, walk down towards Maine Street walk back up Maine Street and go into the same park entrance as before, and still hear the music. A concert and exercise too!

Subtle - I didn't notice at first

How a calculating MANIPULATOR works methodically
to cut out the opposition while looking innocent

Some of us, including me are slow to see the undercurrents.  And if you are the patient sort, you just shrug and walk away, without putting the pieces together. But consider:

Suppose every time you had a good conversation with someone in a certain public social setting, a third party literally inserted herself directly between you and the person you were speaking with cooing at them about how much she's missed them, beaming at them, hugging them, petting their hair, giving them her undivided attention . How sweet everyone thinks - but whoever you were speaking with instantly forgets about their previous ongoing conversation with you and begins speaking with the interrupter. Or she sits down on the other side of them while they are speaking to you and begins touching and speaking to them so they turn away and net result is the same - you are shut out.

Once, twice, three times, you shrug it off and walk away, chalk it up to the enthusiasm of the moment. But suppose this happened repeatedly literally dozens of times over the course of a year's time. And in your observations - she only did this to you.... Yet you remain patient and polite - and no one, not even your best friends notice or care or even believe you when you finally mention it, because she is kissing up to each of them in various ways cultivating their favor. Once only, you object in the moment as it is happening - such a mean person you are interrupting this tender moment between the interrupter and the person who only a second ago was talking to you. You begin to avoid speaking to others, lest you draw her attention to them. So now you are self-censoring yourself to avoid her behavior.

Congratulations. You are in box. What was formerly a happy place of connection is now a place of sadness and loss. What would be the point in continuing to go to that place? You step out of the box and go somewhere else. You don't say where.

A Bic pic – doodling again….

This pair of characters is now pinned to my bulletin board. It's drawing with a Bic on a little scrap of blue paper. I digitally eliminated the color.

The man seems to be studying something in the distance, the woman is evaluating her next move.Or perhaps they have just returned to their car to find it has been vandalized and are looking around to see who might be on the scene.

Or that is the story I tell myself about them. So much of our relations are like that.  Someone who hardly knows you is looking at you, telling themselves a story about you, piecing together your motives, your history, or pretending to someone else that they see you clearly.. It may or may not have any relation to reality, and may also be diametrically opposed  to the story you are telling yourself which also might have little reality to it.

"Alas poor Yorick -I  knew him well" - but did you? Hamlet gets away with saying that because he is speaking to a skull.....

Art vs the Artist: Disappearing into light

To much illumination and things get very hard to see. This photo, of some glass hung in a window, is a tad over-exposed, and forms of the glass bottles are barely discernible against the backdrop of a bright day.  I think this happens with people also.  An artists works are a brightness against which it is difficult to really see the flesh and bone, foibles and fragility. The works are larger than the artist. For instanse Wagner's operas are larger than his personal prejudice.  Then again, a given artwork may mean something completely different to each viewer, and something else entirely to the artist...

Litany of the car - my trail of debris

Cars - the personal space you travel in. We get attached to them. Well I do. I don't imagine I'm alone. We see the passing show from the front seat of our cars, the darkness illumined in halogen glare, the passage of time ticked off in miles.

I haven't had much luck with cars over my 40 plus years of driving. (Yes indeed - I am old as dirt!) I started my car career with a little white Chevy I bought from my Grandmother when she got a new car. Then I got married, and when that car started falling apart, we had an old VW bug and a huge Ford Van. In the breakup, I got the bug, he got the van. When the bug developed some bugs, my father took it.. He used it to fiddle with an experimental carburetor he was trying to build from plans in Popular Science Magazine.

I got something called an Astra, a used three-door hatchback. it was a little car I liked a lot - but my Astra was totaled nearly head-on by the student president of the local high school's Safe Rides club who was driving her daddies brand new caddie. I saw her coming around the corner in the middle of the road, and yanked the wheel to the side. As she hit me I could see her look of horror and HER HANDS IN THE AIR!!!! Idiot. I was lucky I lived through it. Afterwards she indignantly accused me of speeding. The nice policeman had to walk her back along the 100 feet of skid marks the caddie left after it hit my car....

Then came the Blue Renault - a five door hatchback that I bought new (my first) and paid off. I drove that car for several years and moved to Maine with it. In Maine its chief flaw was this - the heater and the defroster were crap. When my mom got rid of my by then late father's Plymouth Duster, (which had a fabulous heater) I took it and gave the Renault to my cousin's boy (who later totaled it during his first year of college)

The Duster had its own set of oddities. There was something mysteriously wrong with the onboard computer. I went through four of these. Though some tragic flaw in the design - when it rained (Snow and ice were okay) the car would not start unless I got out a HAIR DRYER and dried the computer casing. So for a year and half I carried a 50 foot orange extension cord and a hair dryer every where I travelled. Traveling home from Maine, in Massachusets town - on a bleak day when their were multiple accidents in that town because of conditions - the duster and I hydroplaned into a Mass Electric truck - which was completely undamaged.

I was carless for a time after that, and once I took the plunge again, I had a white honda civic hatchback for 11 years. What a great little car that was!!! BUT - in the end (no pun intended) - it got rear-ended in front of the Brookfield Craft Center by a giant red pickup truck, driven by a volunteer fireman. So much much for my great little car.

I bought a used Ford Escort wagon, a 96, that threw a rod six months after I bought it. i paid $1,500 to have a new engine head put in - but the repair left some metal fragments in one cylinder - and after a few weeks it started making a terrible grinding noise. There went another $1,500. It was never right after that. And neither was I after wasting that much money.

After a while I replaced it with a 2003 Toyota Echo a car I really loved driving - I had it for three years, then an idiot in a magenta jeep rear-ended me at a stop light. I was completely stopped - he was going 40 while yaking it up on a cell phone. JERK. I remember how wistful I felt when I learned it was totaled, when I went to the body shop to clean it out and say goodbye.

I liked that Echo so much I got another 2003 Echo. It wasn't quite the same but It worked well until this year. Frankly, I have had my calculator out. I have spent $1,105. on my car since January.

Despite this, Tuesday morning it refused to start. It clicked spastically while sounding anemic. It's already had TWO NEW BATTERIES, new front brakes with rotors and new front tires THIS YEAR and alternator belts replaced and the subsequently readjusted. It went all the way to New Haven Monday night so if its surly little alternator was working at all it should have charged. I asked the mechanics about this twice. I was assured the alternator was working. I have a love hate relationship with this car. There is NO love involved in my relationship with the dealer's service center.

So, I rolled it out of the garage, down onto the street to get the 13-year old car, (which still RUNS) - into the garage. I left the Toyota on the street. because I simply didn't know what to do. Saturday morning I discovered it had been hit by a passing car. The street was littered with headlight glass from the other car. My car sported a giant dent, and a street-side front tire bent all out of whack ( with attendant damage to the tie-rods, steering assembly etc etc.. SIGH.

Lucky though, while the nice lady cop was writing up the accident, a tinkerer from down the street was walking by with his granddaughter and their puppy Bobby.  He is now the proud owner of a new project -with full disclosure of its odd problems. At least doing the work himself he won't have to pay some pricy mechanic. He managed to roll it down the hill.... So at least I didn't have to pay to have it towed...

That's a lot of scrap metal I have left behind - I'd like to know the tonnage and multiply it by the number of drivers in the world.. I think we need more trains. .

Drawings: two dancers in motion

The figure in motion - that's one thing I am always interested in catching in a drawing... I envisioned these as a matched pair, and lines do seem to go well together.

Mixed Media: Blue Tears, an oil pastel

This work, drawn during my brief residence in Brownfield ME, (1991?) is done with oil pastel and water colors on paper. I love the huge blue tears.

OIL PASTEL: contemplating nature

This oil pastel and watercolor on paper shows a poet i knew in Maine. I imagined him thinking about the various wonders of nature. The mountain becomes her knee.... etc. This was years and years ago when I made this drawing. A little stormy sky, a bit of visual play, a little mental/hormonal steam....

2 Poems relating to immigration in different ways

A friend asked my opinion on illegal immigration - at this time I have only a few posts on the topic of immigration and I thought I would add these poems to the list. All of my posts address very specific narrow points within in the subject of immigration and are not conclusions but more points to to mull over.

The first poem points to the irony that the children of immigrants - us - now seem so willing to say - 'go away.' The sentiment 'give me your tired and your poor' is really on the rocks these days.... The argument is a bit of a strawman really though, as always some were rejected, and many were reviled. Getting in was not assured in the days of Ellis Island either nor was being welcomed.

the get away

Outside
=============
a locked gate waiting.
Socked-in, Statute of Liberty's
harbor gone grey
Ellis Island, your sentimental
push-button displays,
sepa-toned icons, a memory
of distance and desperation,
clutched burlap bundles, dented
suitcases, hand-written name tags,
befuddled seekers, almost home.
Now, you welcome
only tourists. Neon bloodies
your halls of remembrance:
no-vacancy - no-vacancy - no-vacancy

CLOSE THE AIRPORTS!
CLOSE THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE!
The children of the children
of the formerly oppressed
want to seal the borders
with invisible force-fields
with infallible alien-detection devices
and declare:
CLUB AMERICA - MEMBERS ONLY!

So, take back your tired and your
poor, your huddled masses yearning
Give them a cell
with room service, limited menu
meticulously kept steel bunks.
Stop - Pack up
Fold your love of freedom,
tuck it in. Fold your sweat up
with your dreams. Forget
about your son in Cincinnati.
Do not pass Do not collect
Go directly Go back
=============
Outside

- Mar "Mistryel" Walker,  published in A First Tuesday in Wilton Anthology, 2005 

                           

---

This second poem contrasts two war widows who visit "the wall," (the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. - but one of them settled here after the war ended.

The Price of a Welcome Mat in Freedom Land

A soldiers wife revisits the wall of war
runs her fingers down stone
panels of chiseled names
a melancholy Braille
searches 'til she reaches his name
her long remembered mantra.
"where are you now?" she asks.

Another soldiers wife, an immigrant,
trembles at the long black wall
with its bunting of flag
studies the endless names
tries to remember their young faces
smeared with dirt, mouths grim.
"Was it you with the hand grenades
was it you with the flame thrower?" she wisphers.
"Were you the one who burned my mother's house
and sent my beloved to a nameless grave?"

She thinks of their son
in college in New York City
She thinks of her job, her apartment,
sighs ambivalent.

- Mar "Mistryel" Walker, published in X Magazine March 2003   

(note this poem is not in the X mag's webarchive  probably because I forgot to send in an authors bio, so  when they uploaded the poems, they probably checked to see that all their listed authors were loaded. But I am not listed in the author section since I forgot the bio. But the poem was in the physical actual magazine. I have a copy..... Let that be a lesson. Send in bios when asked....!!!!)

DRAWING: Face #16

This is another sketch while at a poetry event.

 Usually I am not drawing anyone in particular, just reacting to what is being read. Sometimes it's faces, sometimes just forms. This is a digital cut from a page in one of the little writing books I sometimes bring with me to those events. I

Looking down

One day, quite a few years back, I was walking down the street minding my own neurotic business, when a foreign-looking woman, in a long skirt, grabbed me by the arm . 

She pointedly pushed her face into mine, grinning, her  eyes full of light and amusement.

''Are you looking for money?'' she said. This is an inexplicable question since mine is a  low-budget, shop-at-Goodwill world. I didn't know what to say. I just stared blankly at her in reply.

"If you are not looking for money, then why are you looking at the ground?'' she asked. She grinned and pushed me away as she released my arm. I swayed around on the curb, pondering.

Perhaps to this lady's way of thinking, I should be looking ahead, looking around at this beautiful fierce world. And she was right. Looking down is great if you are in a high place, a place that offers a view. If' you're down in the nitty gritty of everyday, take in the scene. Look at the beauty and the ugliness, the rise and fall of the land, look back at the smiling or scowling faces of your fellow humans, and other breathing creatures. Be here. Look. At least that's what I got out of that encounter....

The eye picture is one of my digital things. It was a color, and slant adjustment on another eye pic I made in MS Paint years ago when I was a PC user.

Box-o-phobia

Sometimes I feel like I am caught in a box. There are certain aspects of my life that I cannot change right now and I fully accept that and embrace that fact. But something somewhere in my world needs to change to ward off the building comatose stagnation in my personal air..
.
My immediate reaction has been to change things that can be changed until I feel that I am out of the box. So lately, I have been changing my blog names and url addresses in a Kaleidoscopic manner. That hasn't really been satisfactory - though I am pleased with the results. Other things may begin changing as well. Everything I am involved with is up in the air with me at the moment.

Stuff on the fridge door

Today, I thought I'd catalog the refrigerator door. There are other items up there but these are my favorites:

"Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand."
"I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!"
"Trust everyone but brand your cattle."
"There are two types of people in the world: Those who leave a mark and those who leave a stain."
"Show me a day when the world wasn't new!" - B. Hance
"You can touch the dust, but please don't write in it...."
"I don't mind sit, but you can forget roll over, fetch and beg."
The text of a poem, Reality TV
"Life isn't about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself."

Mein feline…

This is my kitty Miet who was a little blinky at the flash.

A new link on psychics

Think there is no harm in believing in unprovable claims from folks who seem innocuous but who often have hidden agendas? This site, by a software engineer named Tim Farley, really tells the sad tale. Thank you Tim. He covers many topics.  Here is one on Psychics.   http://whatstheharm.net/psychics.html

Riverwood's Last Hurrah open mic had some gems

This is John Jeffrey with his long long poem very funny, which was published in Bent Pin Quarterly

My Dad's Truck at Molten - a good time and a sketch

My Dad's Truck is a fun and eclectic band that often plays at Molten Java in Bethel. I've heard them several times now, I enjoy Susan Lang's big bright vocals and Leif Smith and Bill Wisnowski's rumbly ones. They each play a whole collection of acoustic instruments to keep the sound changing and lively. (guitars, fiddle, slide guitar, acoustic bass guitar, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, etc.) They call their style "Free-Range Acoustic"

This small mechanical pencil drawing I made in a little book while I was watching the band. I ripped it out of the book and scanned it at home, then digitally tweaked the hell out of it since the lines were so light and hard to see.

I'm opening at for Riverwood's Last Hurrah! Music, then Poetry

The Riverwood Festival has quite a line up for this year!  Check out the poster on the right, which lists the events the venues, the poets - and the many open mics.

This year I will be opening at the Last Hurrah at the City Steam Brewry hosted by Kathryn Kelly.   Starting around 6PM I will be playing a few tunes. At 6:30 the poetry begins. I will read for around 20 minutes followed the fabulous poet John Surowiecki - That's on Sunday, June 27, 942 Main Street in Hartford. A "MEGA" open mic is planned as well.

"Twice before I was asked, but this will be my first appearance there."

// UPDATE AND ASIDE: Actually this is apparently NOT TRUE.  My previous invites were for the CONNECITCUT BEAT FESTIVAL. THIS last one WAS FOR THE RIVERWOOD. I had thought they were the same but apparently they are not at all, though for a while they seemed to converge..... ///

In 2008 Tom Nicotera asked me to read at the venue he was running for the festival.  I accepted and  two days before my scheduled date, my 34 year old boss, friend and music director/mentor suddenly died. We were all in shock. He wasn't' ill. To boot,  for his funeral, I had to learn the mezzo soloist part to a quartet from  the Mozart Requiem  and I only had three days to do it. (I am not a quick study really at this sort of thing.)  Depressed and stressed out, I asked Anne Marie Marra to read in my place. She was a big hit, as she always was and she had a great time.

In 2009,  Yvon Cormier asked if I'd read  at the Outlaw Poets venue - (How cool is that!)  but that March Anne Marie Marra died.  The date of the reading was the same as a memorial gathering for Anne Marie. This gathering given by her brother Reggie, was held on her birthday in June. It was a terrible loss for us all as we'd also lost poet Terry McLain the previous November.And I had lost Rob the year before.  I was really numb and  I needed to be there at the gathering fully present, not thinking about reading or having to rush off to perform.

So this year, Kathryn Kelly kindly asked me if I would read some poems and also add a little music to the festival's Last Hurrah event.  SOOOO  if I live that long - and though the creek may rise, and winds blow  --- I WILL BE THERE on June 27th to read some poems  and play a few tunes at the Festival's last Hurrah at the City Steam Brewery! WooHoo!

The details of the Last Hurrah:

Hospital cost containment leaves people barefoot with bad breath

At a hospital nearby the new patient's automatic package of freebies apparently has been cut  and I applaud this cost saving measure.  Or maybe they just ran out?

The requisite plastic basin, bedpan, cups, kidney dishes all in hideous matching pink, etc were a useless recycling nightmare.  But there are some notable and useful exceptions ->>>  toothpaste, toothbrushes, and those nonskid slippersocks

When a relative of mine was there this week, she and her various roommates were asked to walk barefoot on hospital floors. After her second night in the hospital she asked for a third time for a pair because her feet were cold and was finally given one. We would have brought slippers in - if we had only been told this was no longer a policy to distribute nonskid slipper-socks to all patients.

In the hospital people leak and staff steps in it. People bleed, puke, have diarrhea, urinate, ooze all sorts of pus which is dabbed at which things that wind up on the floor. Relatives also track in stuff from the street to mix with all of this. Walking barefoot, even on a freshly mopped hospital floor is nuts. (Have you ever looked in a mop  bucket?)  Of course maybe the socks just hold icky stuff close to your feet and carry it into bed with you. No rationale for or against the socks was given.

In addition she went two days without brushing her teeth - we would have gladly provided a brush and paste if we only knew the hospital no longer did.  Dear local hospital -- if you are not going to provide these items - we understand ---BUT YOU NEED TO TELL PEOPLE. Or maybe if she had asked these would have been forthcoming as well. Maybe this is the Don't Ask, Don't Get policy. Fair enough. Just tell us.  Of course some things you ask for and do not get. My relative, whose chart contains a whole era of syncope due to dehydration, asked six times for  water until she got some. This might be the result of understaffing.... But it is a problem....

There were other changes from my relatives multiple previous visits over the last ten years. The method of re-situating people in a hospital bed has changed.  There used to be an extra sheet under the torso, nurses could each grab a side and heave without touching the patient. They have reverted to dragging them by the armpits and asking them to hitch up while pushing - which is sort of futile without nonskid slipper socks.  Another reason to keep the socks. I guess the extra linen was too expensive.

Something happened that has never happened before to us in many life-saving trips - a near miss at a wrong IV treatment.  A person appeared at my relatives bedside early in the morning and said "I have your sugar."  This is my relative who cannot take statins and whose triglycderides are already stellar.  My relative who is not diabetic.  If she hadn't been awake and alert  or hadn't the presense of mind to argue that she didn't get sugar and had never had it before - the drip would have been attached to the pre-installed just-in-case IV Shunt.  No name checking, no order checking, just fill -er up and hurry off to the next mistake.

Another thing was going on - rooms I noticed were being scrubbed out by people in disposable blue suits.  My relative was not allowed to use the bathroom in the second room she was in (which is why she was asking for water)  --  and she believes that was because the rooms other occupant was contagious and was already using it.   The doctors who visited this patient spoke to her with masks on....  One can only imagine-  and still they were all walking barefoot.  It makes you wonder for sure.

I will give kudus for niceness. People were very pleasant.  And to the transport people who repeatedly asked for names and dates of birth to make sure they were wisking away the right patient. Of course this is academic for me, as this hospital which is a three minute drive from where I live will not take my Charter Oak Insuranse. I have to drive to Waterbury, Hartford or New Haven. After this recent encounter -  I don't really mind.

Oddities: The British Invasion 40 Years Later

This incredulous expression, on an aging brit face with pursed lips and plentiful bags under crossed eyes - is worn by one of my polymer clay sculptures currently hanging in the Artwell Rocks Show in Torrington. The colors are acrylic and permanent ink pens mostly. The hair is a doll wig..... The theme was music. So this is the British Invasion, 40 years later.....

"False Faces" - masks (1916-1948) by W.T. Benda were at WCSU

W.L. Benda's amazing masks were shown at Western Conn. State University's Alumni Hall this past week, by his grandson Thatcher Taylor who is a theater student there, with the assistance of Elizabeth Popeil an associate professor. Taylor is a personable sort and was there to act as a tour-guide. He is studying set design and theater tech at the college.

Alumni Hall is full of glass and has a chandelier. The masks were all in plexiglass cases. This arrangement made reflections difficult to avoid. So instead I gave in to them and tried to position them in the photo frame with some mixed results.

GOLDILOCKS >

THE EXECUTIONER:

What I find odd, thinking back, is that male masks could have the full range of humanity, could be old or evil However, female masks were all idealized as youthful, beautiful, unblemished.

I wish I had seen a wider variety of the women characters so I could know if this was an artistic choice or just the whim of the curator. I think I will paint some women as they are, warts and all. I really enjoyed this exhibit.

Pansies on a sunny day

I couldn't resist photographing these bright flowers.

Poet Jason Labbe recommends daily writing discipline

Waiting for inspiration won't help you find some, according to Jason Labbe, who read at Wednesday Night Poetry last week at the Blue Z Coffeehouse in Newtown.

It's important to write every day, and out of that discipline discoveries come, he told the Wed. Night Poetry crowd during the Q & A following his reading. (I think that might be good advice for practicing almost any skill or art form - a discipline of playful, purposeful exploration.

Labbe has an unassuming, understated reading style. His work is evocative, surreal, yet somehow spare and stoic. I really enjoyed his featured reading. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Vigrinia and a chapbook called Dear Photographer (Phylum Press, 2009) which is out of stock already. He's also a musician and drummer actively involved in performing and recording. Visit his website for details of his doings www.studyinblue.com (If you run the cursor towards the top of the page a menu will appear.)

Tom Flynn of Free Inquiry Magazine spoke on statistics of unbelief

When someone rattles off statistics 
ask about source and method

Information - on the demography of unbelief -was exactly what Tom Flynn (shown in my rather blurry picture) was sharing at a meeting of The Humanist Association of Connecticut this past Monday evening. Flynn is editor of Free Inquiry magazine, and executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism. Flynn is a lively speaker and gave a very interesting talk with lots of laugh lines as well as some terrific insights into the meaning of statistics. He looked at multiple sources, and also looked into their methods.

I came away with two things: 1) the number of unbelievers is indeed growing and 2) comparative statistics don't mean anything unless the methodology by which they were created is objective and consistant. This brings to mind a story I've heard from a administrative assistant for a statewide organization whose representatives were sometimes called on to speak before local civic groups. After typing up a speech for one - this admin asked where his statistics came from. "Oh I just make them up - people don't question...."  he said adding he'd never been challenged. The lesson is when someone, even someone who should know, rattles off statistics:  ask about their source and its method.  People are free to say whatever they like - that does't make it true.

Thanks to Tom Flynn and to HAC for the opportunity to hear him speak.   Flynn is author of a number of books, among them a debunking of modern Christmas traditions called The Trouble with Christmas and two science fiction sagas: Nothing Sacred and Galatic Rapture. He is also editor of the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief.