New Years Eve Crazy & Sawaya's Art of the Brick

Love this red fellow on the right who is busy rebuilding himself as we all hope to do each New Year's. And the one below who is witnessing something from behind his grey curtain, a new view that makes him gasp - we don't know why.

The images are LEGO sculptures I viewed in the Vero Beach Art Museum in November. The show was called "Art of the Brick," and the creator is American artist Nathan Sawaya. All are made from LEGOs.  He is interviewed in the documentary LEGOS, the Brickumentary, which is actually quiet an odd and interesting film.

Don't quite know what to hope for the world in the coming year. The property of crazy expands with each passing day. I don't know that it's getting larger though. Might be diffusion. Maybe it's just spreading out which will have the effect of dilution. Maybe. Or it might be infection. Ah well.

Have already watched several sets of glitzy techno-tainment fireworks with totally unappealingly overproduced music tying it all together. From several different countries. Is there just one school of fireworks showmanship in all the earth? Probably taught at Neilson Ratings. Ha ha. Actually I really liked the fireworks just not the music they are saddled with....

Anyway, happy new year. It's now 2 am. I was supposed to go somewhere at 11PM to ring in the year. Off to a questionable start.  But then the future always is an open question isn't it. (Determinists you are excluded from this thought) Ting-a-ling.

GO GET YER DARN FLU SHOT FER PITY SAKE!

Well, I'm having a little opinion. It's like a dizzy spell or a feverish dream where you yell a little.

You know I love you - but nonetheless I have seen so many crazy posts in the last few days. So I advise you to proceed and read with caution and a grain of salt. Just remember to read the OMGs REALLY LOUDLY.

Planes get safety checks before every take off but OMG some still crash so let's just stop checking those planes cause obviously checking is the cause....People who wear seatbelts get killed in car crashes every day - yet we still wear seatbelts. OMG!! People who breathe the air are constantly dying every day yet we still breathe the air!!!\

Warning!! Warning:

Prior sequence does not equal causation. Doing something followed by death is the condition of every human being - every single one. (OMG!!) We're all going to die of something. Sometimes it'll be flu. Flu can kill - that's why we get a flu shot and most of the time it prevents or lessens the course of the flu. Sometimes the person might die anyway - the vaccine targeted a different strain, or the person had a compromised system and immunity was not conferred.

But I know that you know what you know, driven as you are. So go ahead. Throw away one of the readily available and inexpensive benefits of modern research and skip your shots. And drive without your seat belt, represent yourself in court, refuse to breathe this contaminated air!!! LIFE IS JUST TOO Dangerous!

I'm so sorry. Please accept this big cyber bear-hug.
Oh wait. I had a flu shot a few days ago. Maybe you better not.....

Soprano Claire Stadtmueller at the Richter House

I really enjoyed this concert. It took me away from my loss a bit.  The soprano was personable, the music introductions were readable and funny. And things got even better as they went along. You don't get the full overtone effect from this video's sound. It was quite spectacular!

 I also was surprised to find Richter had a YouTube Channel!

Things can change so suddenly

Thinks sure took a turn since April. Not with the program even yet though I guess I will eventually be okay.

In May, we found out Mom was at the end stage of one of her conditions. Only 19 days later, under the gentile  in home care of hospice, she died just the way she had wanted to go - at home. Not many get that wish. It was the hardest, saddest month of my life and June was a close second to it.

We didn't have a service right off. To accommodate various folks who wanted to attended but had some problems with timing, Mom's graveside memorial service wasn't for another month, finally held in the middle of June.  It was a service full of difficult poems, thoughtful metaphor, woven together by Master Integral Coach Reggie Marra who officiated. My cousin Jim did a really stellar job on the eulogy, commemorating Mom, not as she was most recently - but as she was in her hey day.  And then there was music by fellow poet and songwritter, Shijin member, former director of the CT Folk Festival - Alice Anne Harwood Sherill. Amazing Grace and Simple Gifts. I cried and cried.

I am doing okay. Finding out what I have to do. Frankly when nobody is around my face is still stuck in deadpan - even when I am not feeling badly - it seems to be the underlying condition for now. I take little steps. I carry little boxes. I breathe in. I breathe out. One foot follows the other. And so it goes.

Can't say enough good things about Regional Hospice and Home Care. I couldn't have lived through May without them. Hugs to everyone.

Words inspired by Susan Green's cool art

BLUE ORGANICS, PRIMORDIAL

A flotilla of single cells pressing together.

A splash of lifesavers and belt buckles 

or donuts with sprinkles here or there.

Pairs of chromosomes considering the future. 

A random collection of empty picture frames in storage.

The nested shells of whirling electrons.

A jumble of jellyfish or curly fries in colors.

Every planet or light switch in all the universes known or not,

as seen from an angle in a singularity, 

All converging to a single rectangle.  Tangle.

Everything.

                                                    - mad mar mistryel walker

This artwork called Pastel Wonder by artist Susan Green was displayed at ARC of Westchester Gallery 265 in Hawthorne in their Side by Side exhibition and is included in the show's booklet. I think it won some kind of award at the reception on April 19 2015.

The reception was quite a lot of fun with host Zork Allen, a bunch of poets, artists, ARC clients and their families and some wonderful art and a couple fun film shorts. Hope they do it again next year.

Sheridan & Klar perk at coffeehouse show

Cosy Sheridan at the Groovin in New Fairfield series coffeehouse at the town's senior center. This series offers some good music, good food on the cheap (from Brunos) and an attentive audience. Below is Jake Klar who opened the show with his trademark growls and grins along with some fine tunes. Then Cosy Sheridan came on -- I really loved the humor in Sheridan's songs. She's lived, she's thoughtful, does some clever writing with a sensor of humor too. That's aside from the music itself which had real nuance.  

Happy Openly Secular Day!

The work below is a recent SpinArt mandala. I like its bright colors and eccentric sort-of symmetry.

However, Nothing magical is involved in the mandala. Here on earth, as in the fictional realm of OZ - there is often a human "behind the curtain" of change, a human who is imagining things could be a bit different and manipulating, enhancing or wreaking havoc to make it so. Even so with the architectural beauties of a cathedral, a work of sacred music or art - behind the curtain is human imagining.
I believe in wonder which is really a form of imagination. Take a long look at trees waving their gorgeous limbs, clouds ever-changing, the sky or a puddle or stream or the ocean or the cat, or a work of art or some human being, smiling at the wild, random universe.. Those are the natural views that transport me, with nothing "supernatural" in the picture at all.

And so I am posting this picture and wishing you a happy "Openly Secular Day"

One View

The world is odd, expansive and beautiful; generous and mean. It kicks you, hugs you, is maple with bitters.
— mad (@FecklessFlea) March 25, 2015

SCAN demo with Rick Daskham

It never ceases to amaze me - how a roomful of people silently follows the artist's every move. You could hear a pin drop. SCAN members are a great audience.

Beginning 2 new paintings, then dropping the class

Started a painting class in January. I was full of hope and foolishness I guess, but I am a person of vague goals and missteps.  I lasted four classes followed by several weeks of being snowed out or in. During that time I started two large paintings which  are NOT finished and may look very different in years to come.

Once I got the second one going, it became obvious to me that getting two wet canvas back and forth twice a week in my little Fiesta was untenable. I can't leave them elsewhere because I am a slow painter and need to live with what I am working on.

So I withdrew. Heavy Sigh. I really like the old WCSU painting studio on White St. much better than the new one in the Visual and Performing Studio building which feels cramped and sterile. I do miss the advice of the instructor though Marjorie Portnow who is very helpful and I know I missed much by leaving. Besides the artistic feedback, she has a technical tips to offer. For example there is some use for Murphy's oil soap when brush cleaning, and that one tip has helped immensely.

The first canvas, at the right, is partially derivative from a portion of Seurat's The Circus, at least composition wise. I liked the grandstand lines and the bareback rider. It needed something so first there was a large clown to the right, then a ringmaster now a smaller running clown lower right which I really dislike as the body is awkwardly drawn for reasons of line rather than anatomy. And so the poor awkward clown may disappear.  (has disappeared and been replaced with a giant clown head) Again. Colors will change to, dots may reappear.

The second is above. It borrows the form of the grandstands but nothing else. Not sure where either is going. We shall see.

Awaiting the invention of the laser plow

NOTE: I wrote this humor column in 1990 and it appeared in 12/5/90 issue of a now defunct weekly newspaper in North Conway, New Hampshire. It was on my website, the METAPHORatorium for many years as well in several locations. It seems seasonal so here it is again.  I've changed the uncle's name several times also. Originally it was Henry. The graph about my father is true.

-----------------------------------------------------

My Uncle Henry reported having an incredible dream this week. It was a revelation so simple, so ingenious, he said, that once somebody invented it, the world would change. And nobody would ever go to Florida for the winter again.

My Aunt May had a different opinion. "What you had was indigestion , you old fool," she said. Aunt May, after 37 years of marriage, says that Uncle Henry is a mostly good man of few words, except when he's been drinking brandy and then he is a man of a few too many words.

My uncle affected a hurt pose for second, rolling his brown eyes pitifully. After a moment he cleared his throat .

"As I was sayin' - I was awakened in the snow by a heavenly blue light,'' he said quietly. "The snow kept comin' down all around and the light got brighter and brighter." He paused with a faraway look in his eye, then glanced at me sideways to see how I was taking all this.

"Is this a Christmas story or a flying saucer story," I asked suspiciously.

"No it ain't. Now listen. That blue light kept coming closer and closer and I knew in my deepest heart it was going to roll right over me - right through me even. And it began making a fearful noise roaring like the great god-awful fires of hell. That's sorta like DeSoto engine all outa oil and damn near throwin' a rod," he explained. "When that light was almost on topa me, suddenly a horn was blastin' and I heard a voice and the voice was saying HENRY! HENRY, GET OUT OF THE WAY!"

By now he was breathless, his voice rising. Uncle Henry was possessed. He was pure unsalted ham baking at around 450 degrees. "As it rolled over me in my dream, I saw the snow was melting away before that blue light and at that very moment I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS. It was a laser snow plow..." he concluded in hushed tones still obviously amazed by his own idea.

Well, Buck Rogers move on over. "No rocksalt needed, no knockin down mail boxes, no diggin up the tar, no knickin the trees, no filing' down the blade. I figure a smaller model could replace snow shovels for about $24.99. It'd be kinda like a weed wacker only with light beams."

Uncle Henry comes from a long line of nutty inventors - Yankee ingenuity carried to its final insane extreme. My father suffered from these same fits of madness all his life but he was especially obsessed with the little everyday problems - like birds that hog the birdfeeder. You know the ones I mean. Like blue jays - they sit and eat and eat until a whole line of chickadees backs up on the clothes line behind them waiting patiently for dinner.

My father couldn't stand that sort of injustice. Once morning during breakfast, just after he filled the bird feeder, he called me over to the window. A purple finch was hogging the perch. When pop figured its time was about up - he pressed a little red button. All of a sudden an arm came up and swept out over the perch pushing the startled bird in to the air. "I call it a 'Bird-get-off' he announced with a triumphant grin.

I'm afraid there hasn't been much market for this invention. The laser snow plow might do a lot better, Henry says. On a straightaway you could melt a mile of snow at once. Of course, tulips by the road side might bloom out of season and wild animals might wander in front of the plow to their deaths just trying to get warm.

Mere glitches Henry says.

Remembering our terrible human flaws

Yes this is Remembrance Day, a remembrance of the suffering of "the six million Jews and millions of others murdered"* during the Holocaust. It was a terrible unthinkable suffering on an unprecedented scale engineered by the Nazi regime which mechanized the dehumanization, suffering, and deaths of people it did not value. This day of remembering in particular, commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz death camp by allied forces during World War II when the horror of starving and gassing and cremating millions of people first began to be known.

On this day of remembrance we can rightly consider our peculiar human blindness that leads a people of any persuasion or ethnicity to take power and crush another that is different without mercy almost as a privilege born of their belief in or assertion of their own "special" place in history, their so called destiny - by dehumanizing and blaming the other, stripping them of their homes, goods, social rituals, food, neighbors, stealing their labor also, and finally cramming them into cattle cars, express to the "showers" a euphemism for communal gas chambers, and subsequently incinerating the evidence leaving only piles of shoes and eyeglasses - so many that the sight is heartbreaking to look at as if the starving skeletal bodies were not enough.

And we say #neveragain and over and over it happens with other groups, over and over, in and out of the light, seen and unseen, large scale and small scale. Sometimes the abused and the abuser (assuming there are survivors) might switch roles over a generation, over a governmental coup.

Don't kid yourself that we as a nation are above this. Consider who this land belonged to only a few hundred years ago. Consider Guantanamo. Consider how it still has to be said that "black lives matter." Consider your favorite political or spiritual enemy who you think is ruining or threatening this country, the economy, the world. How easily each of us could be lead into the dark. How easily we could turn a blind eye while someone else is lead..

And don't you dare say say oh that was a group of Nazi monsters that has nothing to do with us. According to one of the Smithsonian's web pages, the genetic difference between human beings is around %.01. That is, one hundredth of one percent. In other words, we share 99.99% of common DNA with Adolf Hitler. We can embody brave compassion, horrific cruelty, callous indifference.  All of us.