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.

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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.

Weir Farm Pond Loop - a gorgeous fall walk

Went for a bit of a short walk with a friend at Weir Farm National Park - the Weir Farm pond loop. The day was bright and crisp, and the scenery was rustic and lovely. To view these and the rest of the album: https://plus.google.com/photos/100545602569648912341/albums/6080980231467734241