We went to Mason City, Iowa on July 6th to see the new statues in the downtown business area. This is a post shortened by the need for travel, but because a picture is worth a thousand words, this must be a nine thousand-word essay.
Category Archives: photo paffoonies
Beloved Books
While visiting home in Iowa, I re-connected with an old family friend. It was in the farmhouse upstairs bedroom where I was being quartered as a visitor. It was an it, not a him… a book, not a man. It was a very old book, published in 1938.
Yes, the Ittle Red H is a child’s picture-book. Of course the first time I saw it, it was titled The Little Red Hen . It was in much better shape then. I was a beginning reader back then. My mother and my two uncles were the first beginning readers who began reading this book. It was in very good shape after it passed on to my generation at grandpa and grandma’s house. Does that mean it was my fault that it got all child-chewed and doggedy-eared? There was, after all, my cousins’ kids, and my cousins’ grandkids in between there looking at the book and possibly eating it too.
Members of my family learned valuable lessons from this old book. We learned that you can tape pages back together as long as you retrieve the page-parts from the child’s mouth before they actually get swallowed and digested. We also learned that a Red Hen can still bake bread even though the top of her head has been removed.
Alternating pages were printed in black and white and pink ink. I can remember studying these pages for a long time and wondering why sometimes the duck and the goose were pink, and other times yellow, and other times black and white. I think that may have taught me that color doesn’t matter… it’s the character of the character that can be recognized in spite of pink ink. A very profound realization I do believe.
I also learned that ducks and geese are richer than chickens, as determined by the fine clothing and the fact that their noses are held high in the air. Monocles in duck’s eyes mean that ducks are supposed to be smarter than chickens too. Apparently if you are smart and rich, you don’t do any of the actual work, yet expect that you are going to get to eat the bread anyway when it it is baked.
You can tell by the many tools and the grouchy face on the Red Hen that she is a chicken and expected to do all the work, even though she has kids to support and is the same pink color as the duck and goose sometimes appear.
When the Red Hen is in full color, she’s kinda brown in color. That is certainly telling too.
I love the comical comics in the illustrations of this book. I traced them and copied them many times in my misspent youth.
Perhaps I have blathered on a bit too much. Maybe I should just shut up and show you the rest of this precious old book.
As I go back and edit and re-read, I am just guessing, but it may be easily apparent that I was watching the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup while writing this loopy post. But it is, after all, mainly about using my meager photography skills to preserve this beloved old book.
Filed under humor, old books, photo paffoonies
Homely Art, Mom-Style
I am assuming, probably incorrectly, that you have seen enough of my art work to come to the conclusion that I am a bit of an artist. Amateur, of course. You have to make money at it to be professional. I used a great deal of my artistic abilities in the classroom as a teacher, and while you come eventually to an appreciation for that small sacrifice, you can’t really call that making money at it. And I am good enough at drawing to know where the mistakes are… the flubs and the flaws and the not-so-happy little accidents (I truly appreciate the genius of Bob Ross, and I know I am not Picasso or Da Vinci… but I can draw better than he ever could.) I know my artistic junk is kitschy junk in so many, many ways. But I believe that some of the best art is homely art… the art you keep in your house… not gallery quality, but irreplaceable to you yourself. And the point of this article (dreamed up while spending some alone time in my octagenarian mother’s house due to illness) is that I got my love of homely art from my mother’s house, the house I grew up in.
These two goofy dinos are an example of what I am talking about. These two revered family art objects were bought as greenware porcelain from a mold at an Austin pottery-art store. Mother fired them in her kiln. I painted them in acrylic. They are now living happy lives in my Mother’s dining room. Oh, and they are made to be displayed together like this;
Most of mother’s art gallery-like house is filled with items just like this. No value to the history of art. Not museum quality. No more important than any other item of homemade functions-more-as-a-token-of-love-for-the-person-who-gave-it artwork.
Let me show you more of the many wonderful grandma-treasures that fill my mother’s house.
This was our Grandma Beyer’s glass doo-dad cabinet that for many years held sacred glass gewgaws and thingamajigs from the the thirties and forties. Mom inherited it and put all new grandma-treasures in it.
The cabinet holds all manner of precious vacation souvenirs, graduation photos of my sisters and brother and I, weird animal salt-and-pepper shakers, candle holders, souvenir plates, Precious Moments figurines, Hummels, pictures of long-gone relatives, and a variety of other things that each has a story behind it, a long and lovely story of years and tears and fears and more years. It is a cabinet full of memories and celebrations. Collectibles and corny joke items. There is no price that ever could be put on it, and one day it will all be given away.
Mom has collections of stuff everywhere. Christmas stuff, Thanksgiving stuff, and stuff on display just because Mom likes it sort of stuff. Much of it is antique simply because the people are old and have kept this stuff long enough to make it antique. It is displayed in every available nook and cranny and corner of the house.
And, of course, what every visitor to Mom’s house most wants to see are the dolls.
She was a very talented porcelain doll maker.
The art that is most important of all in my mother’s house, though, are her greatest and most valuable creations. That would be US.
Filed under autobiography, doll collecting, humor, photo paffoonies
The Uncritical Critic
The Lyric Theater on Main Street, Belmond, Iowa
My family took me to the movies last night. We went to see Jurrassic World. We went to the local hometown theater in Belmond, a place that I first went to movies at in the 1960’s for I don’t remember what… well, I’m old… you can’t always remember early childhood when your old brain is clogged with fermenting memories and nostalgia on steroids. I saw Battle for the Planet of the Apes here. I saw Tarzan and the Valley of Gold here. Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Gnome-Mobile, The Love Bug… Disney movies, Christmas movies, musicals, cartoons, westerns… science fiction… This was an important feature of my Midwestern Iowegian childhood. I watched all kinds of movies here, and they were all the best movies I have ever seen. Even the really bad ones. Even Harum Scarum with Elvis Presley. I love movies with the uncritical heart of a seven-year-old boy.
I know in my stupid old head that some movies are better than others. I know enough about movie-making and story-telling to know that Jurassic Park was a better movie than Jurassic World. I know that these two movies are better than Jurassic Park, the Lost World and infinitely better than the hot mess that was Jurassic Park III. But I love them all. Formula or not. Consistent plot or not. Humor that is actually funny or simply sad enough to make you groan. I watch practically anything that flickers with an uncritical eye. I have never walked out of a movie theater before the Best Boy and Key Grip’s names have appeared in the credits. I would especially never walk out of this particular theater. Who I am is pretty much shaped by the movies I have seen..
Why does this poster-saurus want to eat the pretty red-head’s head?
And Jurassic World is a good movie. The characters are engaging. You are sucked into the drama to the point that if either of the two kids are eaten by dinosaurs, you will be totally devastated and may actually die in your seat because you have been jumping and flinching with every scare they get, and for at least part of the movie you are seeing everything through their eyes. And the heroic Chris Pratt character allows you to stride boldly through the dinosaur-infested jungle with deadly velociraptors at your side. You get to be a bit of a bad-ass… er… bad donkey, as you tackle the man-made monster dinosaur at the center of the monster-movie disaster. Movies are supposed to surprise you and give you something new. (But I don’t mind when the story hits certain predictable patterns and cliches.) This movie let me have the pleasant surprise of the villainous velociraptors of the first movie transforming into the heroes of this movie (but they did eat a few minor characters along the way… and one human villain… though I hope the poor velociraptor didn’t get a stomach ache from that icky old guy). If you are looking for a reliable movie review to gauge the quality of the movie, you probably shouldn’t be looking at this article. I am not really a critic. I love movies beyond the point where sanity, reason, and critical thinking can actually protect you from cinematic evils.
Filed under humor, movie review, photo paffoonies
Butterflies and Blossoms
A Red Admiral butterfly…
I am temporarily at home in Iowa, visiting the farm where my grandparents and great grandparents have owned the land and raised crops for over 100 years. My parents live there now in retirement, and while somebody else tends the corn and rents the land, they maintain the yard and grow flowers. Retirement is hip deep everywhere around the place. My old retired self and my wife and my kids are all descended upon them just like the butterfly who came to sample the purple flowers on the porch trellis. Little work gets done. My wife and eldest son have jobs and contribute to society still, but we retired folks putter and stutter and watch the butterflies flutter. We watch the kids and the flowers grow.
The Family Farm House
Watching stuff grow has always pretty much been what farming-family Iowegians do. Corn and soybeans, watermelon, pumpkins. cucumbers, string beans, sweet corn, pop corn, strawberries, potatoes… at one point or another I have helped to plant, tend, harvest, and eat all of those things… well, not seed corn and field soybeans… you can’t directly eat those… but you know what I am talking about, making things grow to feed myself and my family. There is satisfaction in working the land and making things grow… a fundamental feeling of achievement that helps us feel like we are not mere parasites, consuming and wasting and decimating… we build for the future rather than take maximum profit at the present moment. Farmers are the good guys.
Only, not so much any more. For our family farm, with three grandsons (of which I am one) available to do it, none of us have become farmers. The next generation after us includes no farmers either. So that fundamental feeling of achievement is basically a memory now. Only a memory and nothing more. Feeding the world has become somebody else’s problem now. We are watching the flowers grow.
Is there value in old farmers watching the flowers grow? Of course there is! The land is still functioning farm land. Iowa is still the breadbasket of America. We still feed the world. And we who own the land are at least providing the flowers and the nectar necessary to feed butterflies. The beauty, as well as the meaning and the metaphor, is there for anyone who wants to see it.
Filed under autobiography, farming, humor, photo paffoonies
Winning Easy
Now that Captain Action finally liberated my X-Box from the evil Dr. Evil who was holding it for ransom and not letting me play EA Sports Baseball ’04, I have been able to play Baseball ’04 again. (It happened in this blog; Dr. Evil’s Removable Brain) I have been playing this video game now with a passion, as you can plainly see. You are probably aware that the St. Louis Cardinals are my very favorite team in any and all sports. Notice, please that I have just pitched Matt Morris’ 30th victory against no defeats over stinky old steroid-fueled Roger Clemens. It was also his 9th shut out of the season. This is the first 30-game-winning season since Denny McLain in Detroit, in the 1968 season. I only had to replay the entire 2004 season 4 times to get there. Oh, and Albert Pujols has hit 114 home runs and Scott Rolen hit his 70th and 71st in this game. You are certainly smart enough to figure out by now that I have left the difficulty level of this game permanently set at the Rookie level. Hey, I’m old. I like easy wins.
A close-up of the Flower Wagon’s first bloom.
This is true in so many areas of my life. The flower wagon that I posted about on Friday is another evidence of my dedication to the philosophy of the easy win. It was a victory over many things… depression, tragedy, Texas gully-washers that keep on coming, the tragedy of an old toy that no longer gets played with… things where my decrepit old self with six incurable diseases needs desperately to win.
Flowers in our yard in general are a victory of sorts. This is Texas. A couple of summers back we were in a severe drought with like 99 days in a row of high temperatures of 100-plus. Flowers in June in Texas are a bit of a miracle. Good flower pictures recently taken are another miracle. My cell phone camera takes so much better pictures with all its automatic settings than my digital camera which cost twice as much, that it makes me wonder why I ever bothered with it.
A Yellow Rose of Texas in our yard.
Another yellow perennial that came up due to funky wet weather.
Of course, this is pictures the easy way because I am not trying to adjust the color balance (in spite of partial color-blindness), or the brightness compensation, all by my own little self with my modest-to-insignificant photography skills. (I am just skilled enough at photography to recognize a great work of art photographed by someone else, not skilled enough to take one myself.)
I am retired now. I have had a long hard career as a public school teacher, and I am working hard at being a good writer (professional or not) in retirement. I figure I deserve the odd easy win. Using my writing skills to tackle toxic ideas like prejudice and politics recently I was able to score some real points with some of my very conservative friends. I discovered by concentrating on the things they believe which I agree are very good things, I was able to make them consider a more liberal point of view, and not cling to Fox-News-sort-of faux-Fox-facts. I can even get them to laugh at things like saying “Fox-News-sort-of faux-Fox-facts” because it sounds funny even if you are only reading it silently in your head. It is an example of arguing towards an Easy Win, and I have become an addict.
Filed under autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies
The Flower Wagon
My life has more-or-less become an exercise in making the best out of a bad situation. Believe me, I know yours is probably the same and I am bemoaning the common condition of us all, but we do what we do and it doesn’t get easier just because we do it daily. So today’s post is about the flower wagon.
Now, if you are truly fool enough to read a lot of my purple paisley prose in this basically boring blog, you may have seen references to the flower wagon before this.
Last year, doing yard work, I had an inordinate amount of crushed live-oak acorns from the street near where we park our cars. Our oaks were excessively reproductive that year because, I guess they found the weather unusually sexy or something. So I had copious amounts of crushed acorn. In fact, before I got it all scooped up, a little bit of rain had turned it into the acorn-equivalent of peanut butter… goopy, sticky, and unpleasant to touch. Most of it went into the compost bin, but the last little-red-wagon load got left in the little red wagon to get snowed on, frozen solid, and snowed on again.
We love that little red wagon. When the kids were small, we used it to pull them around SeaWorld in San Antonio and AstroWorld in Houston. It went all over the country with us on summer vacation, and was the Princess’ personal coach and four (provided she allowed the cooler full of ice for water, soda, and fruit to share the ride).
So, the neglected little red wagon turned into a rust-bucket lawn ornament this spring, and it was busy growing a bumper crop of weeds in all that acorn peanut butter… fertile stuff, acorn peanut butter. So I decided to plant flowers. I got some Walmart zinnias and some wildflowers, spending about a dollar fifty all told, pulled the weeds by hand, and sprinkled flower seeds all over it. We are all sad to see the lonely little wagon deteriorating and being demoted to lawn ornament status, but it seemed like we had a possibility of new life within reach.
This spring, with the monsoon rains Texas apparently borrowed from Asia and the Philippines, I did not even have to bother myself with watering. If anything, there was too much water… flash-flood-warning-daily sort of too much water. So I have been patient… watching and weeding. And then…
The first blossom bloomed and turned color yesterday while we were picking up number one son from the airport. Old things can produce new things. Decay and age lead to blossoming new life. There has to be a balance between happy and sad. I am trying like heck to be a humorist, but I have learned the lesson that you can’t be laughing all the time. But here is proof that after the rains come the flowers. And I am laughing now.
Filed under autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies
Texas Airport Adventures
Ah, Love Field, the scent of baking asphalt heavy in the air… even indoors where it is nominally air-conditioned (the word nominally here meaning “in name only”), people rushing about like lemmings and hamsters (though not the cool hamster-people of the recent car commercials), and air-port workers moving at the speed of airport business transactions (slower than molasses outdoors at Christmas during a blizzard).
Number One Son, the Marine home on leave, gave me the heads-up when he texted me at 7:45 am that he would be arriving “around 11:00”. I knew he would be flying in… but it didn’t occur to him to give me any details. What is the flight number? What airline are you on? What airport? Remember, there are two big ones in the DFW area. So, like all men who don’t know which end their own heads are attached to, I asked my wife. “Love Field” was all she said.
Now, this is partially good news. Love Field is small… compared to DFW. I could most probably catch him at the cattle-gate where all the passengers come out of the concourse through the same door. If you look carefully at the picture, you may spot the reflection of my be-hatted old head forlornly watching the ramp up to the cattle-gate.
My number-two son, Henry, and my daughter, the Princess, were both waiting with me. While we were waiting, they were bickering again.
“Jeez, Princess, if you bathed more often, you would smell a lot better than you do now!”
“I don’t stink any worse than you do, Henry!” she retorted, “And I bathe as often as you do.”
“I just had a shower last night!”
“Well, so did I. I took a shower right after you!”
Before the blows and the beatings began I said in a grouchy voice, “Can we not have a stink-fight right now, please?” The air-conditioner in the car only works poorly and part of the time… We also had to park out in the sun on the deck of the airport parking garage. And it was a long walk in the sunshine of hot-old Texas to get where we were at that moment. All of that pretty much was the reason for verbal combat and aroma follies.
“Where is he, Dad?” asked the Princess who complains right up to my patience-capacity red-line. “Shouldn’t he be here already?”
“I texted him, but I don’t think that Houston flight at 11:00 was actually the one that he is on.”
Suddenly I got the “Where are you?” text from number one son.
“We’re at the exit waiting.”
“At DFW?”
“Oh, gawd no!” I said. I started to hustle the two stink-warriors back towards the distant car. “We’re at loVe FIeld.” I hate when my finger is too big to hit the right key while texting and not simultaneously hit another key as well.
“Oh, hang on.”
I held my breath.
“That may be the one I’m at,” said the next text.
So, I halted the rushed exodus towards the $6 parking fee and the mad rush across the metroplex to the other airport. I was still holding my breath a bit… and turning slightly purple when… There he was with his guitar case, Marine backpack, and a rather silly grin on his face.
Filed under autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies
Project Updates
Being a divergent thinker and guilty of trying to waltz down seven different paths at the same time, I have various projects going all at once. I can’t always keep track. So, I am going to take time out of planning to haunt people when I’m a ghost to take inventory of a few of the things I am juggling while trying to blog and write novels and draw pictures. You may remember from posts related to playing with dolls that I am a collector with hoarding disorder and a room full of action figures and dolls. You may even remember that I finished a year-long collection of My Little Pony dolls (the twelve-inch Equestria Girls, because the ponies themselves are not within the rules). I took up a bigger collection after that. The prices of some of these are coming down on the bargain shelf, and they are somewhat intriguing in concept for girls’ toys. They are the Monster High dolls.
These are twelve-inch dolls for under $20, and so they qualify, even though they are totally deformed with Chibi-like big heads. They are supposedly the teenage children of the Universal Movie Monsters. Starting on the left, Howleen Wolf is the daughter of the Wolfman. Then I have two Cleo de Niles, the daughter of the Mummy. One is the Black Carpet movie-maker version, apparently being played by a very young Gloria Swanson. (The one on the left.) The other version is wearing the family mummy-wraps. Then I have Howleen’s sister, Clawdeen. Unfortunately, the bargain shelf at Walmart is often ravaged by little-kid pilferers. I am short a pair of golden shoes and a couple of undetermined accessories that were pulled out of the bottom of the box. I am grateful to the thieves, because although there are no mint-in-boxes here, I was able to get the dolls at a reduced-for-damage price. Now, you probably realize that this collection is not finished. I have reason to believe there are other movie-monster children in the series. Dracula has a daughter. The creature from the Black Lagoon does too. So does Frankenstein’s monster. I believe there may even be a daughter of the man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors. How can someone with my mental diseases and disorders possibly resist that?
The next project to check on is the flower wagon. Last year, while cleaning rain gutters and raking up acorns, I managed to leave the kids’ little red wagon full of the stuff. The unnaturally wet spring we had led to a bumper crop of weeds in the organic mess that I left there over-long. Not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth for fear it may be filled with tiny, angry Greeks, I decided to pull out the weeds by hand, and plant flowers. I got zinnias from Walmart (Yes, I know what kind of poopy people the Walmart owners and pharaohs are, but I can’t really afford to shop anywhere else. They didn’t leave anybody else in business.) I planted carefully. I let God do the watering. (And prayed he wouldn’t drown them,) And then I waited. The last time I checked on the wagon, the flowers had made it this far;
I can’t wait to see if anything dares to bloom. I want to post the happy little flower faces on my next update. And I promise to get back to plotting future hauntings. I have already chosen as my target the worst principal I ever had (a hard choice to make from a rogues gallery that puts Batman’s to shame).
Filed under humor, new projects, photo paffoonies
Sent to My Room and Sulking
Well, my family is packed up in the RV and headed to Florida, looking for beaches and fun, and going to see my eldest son graduate from his Marine MOS schooling. I would’ve gone too, but my lungs have been very naughty and I can’t get that far away from doctors that my pirate health insurance will actually pay for. So, I am stuck in my room. It sucks (in the sense of a vacuum cleaner, because as a former middle school teacher, I am not allowed to even think about a less G-rated meaning; my teacher brain would blow a bad-word filter-gasket). My family members, of course, are concerned about leaving me here alone, but I don’t want one of my six incurable diseases to be victorious over any of them. It is enough that COPD can ruin my life, and it does not need to impact them. Besides, I have the consolation of staying in my room with the carefully conditioned and filtered air and playing with my toys, like the old days when I was a kid (the really old, old days!) and got to stay home with Captain Kangaroo and my toys to play all day, even though I felt like regurgitated dodo-bird food… and I have a lot more toys now than I had then.
You can plainly see in the picture of my bedroom studio that I have stuffed animals all over (left over from my 2007-2008 online store days when I sold repaired and reconditioned stuffed animals from Goodwill), plenty of dolls… erm, action figures, a cardboard castle, a DVD player, laptop computer, books galore, and lots and lots of drawing paper. I am prepared to be home-bound and left out of things. I can draw and write stories and blog and draw some more. And I will, too. Besides sulking about having to miss out on the fun the rest of the family is having, something I am not only good at and thoroughly practiced at, but very efficient at producing words and ideas at the same time I am hurting, or woozing, or gasping for air, I intend to advance at least two of the three novels I am working on rough drafts for at this time. I am working on When the Captain Came Calling, and Star-Dusters and Lizard-Men. The first is about learning to see through lies, an invisible man who comes back to Iowa from a cursed voyage in the South Seas, and how a family deals with unthinkable loss. The second is a star-faring science fiction tale of a planet dying of both pollution and corporate abuse that can be saved if the species of intelligent lizard-men living there are actually worthy of being saved. So while I sulk and pout and feel sorry for myself, I have plenty to do. And I will continue to make light of the situation even after it kills me. Death won’t know what he did wrong to get hold of an ornery old Iowegian-Texas transplant like me who will laugh in his face until the old Bonehead is properly and resolutely perplexed.
Filed under humor, photo paffoonies, studio
Catch a Falling Star 