It has been a good long while since I last wintered in Iowa. Temperatures below zero for multiple days in a row… ooeee! Given enough time, my Viking blood will redevelop. But Ariel and I will be piling on the blankets for a while until it happens. She has the advantage of being made of plastic.
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It doesn’t matter what you believe in. This time of year is special. People are generally in a good mood, upward turns at the corners of the lips, singing out loud, or even singing in the heart alone. The magic we all believe in comes from the people we love and turning our attention to them.
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I haven’t celebrated Christmas since 1994. This will be the first in thirty years. So, what will I do to prepare? Well, artsy stuff is my usual. My sisters came up with plaster ornaments to paint, and I am busy in the paint wars, sloshing color onto dwarves and things in spite of limited ability due to arthritis in my hands. I am living in my Grandfather’s farmhouse now with my sister. My wife, the Jehovah’s Witness, who doesn’t celebrate the formerly pagan holiday that Witnesses find offensive, is still living in Texas, completing her Teaching career, not planning to retire for four more years. We are not divorcing, only separated, me for health reasons, and her for the continuing paycheck.
Dwarf #1 is not complete yet by a long shot. Only his face and hands are actually in place. (And a face does include a beard.)
If I needed a positive omen, this bald eagle came to sit in our farmyard as I was painting the dwarf’s face.
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If you cruise the bargain sections in an old used book store like Half-Price Books, eventually you are going to find something priceless. This book I am showing you is that very thing for me.
It was copyrighted in 1978. The inscription inside the front cover says this was a Father’s Day gift on June 19th, 1988. Someone named Gary gifted it to someone named Claude in Burleson, Texas. It was probably a cherished book until someone passed away and the book changed hands in an estate sale.
Howard Pyle
The book chronicles the height of the publishing era when being able to print books and reproduce artworks began entertaining the masses. Always before painters and great artists worked for a patron for the purpose of decorating their home in a way that displayed their great wealth. But from the 1880’s to the rise of cinema, magazines and books kept the masses entertained, helped more people to become literate than ever before, and created the stories that made our shared culture and life experiences grow stronger and ever more inventive. The book focuses on the best of the best among a new breed of artist… the illustrators.
These are the ones the book details;
Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Frederick Remington, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, Norman Rockwell, Charles Dana Gibson, Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg, and John Held Jr.
N.C. Wyeth
Wyeth was most famous as a book illustrator for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, other books by Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, and a famous volume of tales about Robin Hood.
Frederick Remington
Remington is a name you probably know as a maker of Western art. He was a famous painter of cowboys and Indians and the American frontier.
Maxfield Parrish
Maxfield Parrish is my all-time favorite painter. His work is something I gushed about in previous posts because I own other books about his fanciful works painted in Maxfield Parrish blue.
Also Maxfield Parrish
J.C. Leyendecker
You will probably recognize Leyendecker’s work in magazine and advertising illustration as the standard of the Roaring 20’s. His paintings set a style that swept American culture for more than a decade, and still affects how we dress to this very day.
More Leyendecker
Even more from Leyendecker
Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell and his work for The Saturday Evening Post is still familiar to practically everyone who reads and looks at the illustrations. As you can see he was a master of folksy realism and could do a portrait better than practically anyone.
Also Rockwell
I have also written about Norman Rockwell before too. I have half a dozen books that include his works. My wife is from the Philippines and she knew about him before I ever said a word to her about him.
Charles Dana Gibson
As you can plainly see, Gibson was a master of pen and ink. His work for Collier’s and other magazines thrills in simple black and white. More cartoonists than just little ol’ me obsess about how he did what he did.
Also Gibson
James Montgomery Flagg… with a name like that, who else could it be?
John Held Jr.
The work of Held is stylistically different than all the rest in easily noticeable ways. He’s the guy that made all the big-headed Pinocchio-looking people in the 1920’s. You may have seen his work before, though you probably never knew his name.
This bit of someone else’s treasure hoard will now become a part of my own dragon’s treasure, staying by my bedside for quite a while, while I continue to suck the marrow from each of its bones. I love this book. It is mine, and you can’t have it… unless you find your own copy in a used bookstore somewhere.
Last night I had a dream. It is hard to get my head around it. But it seems to be clear.
My life’s purpose is done, if only I accomplish “ONE THING MORE.”
But what is that one thing to be? A new novel? An essay? A speech given to the right listener?
And what happens once it is done? Is that the thing that causes my death?
But whatever it is, I face it without fear. One thing more, and my life is complete.
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In 1945, the physicist beheld Trinity.
Would it eat the world that day?
Would it stop the Rising Sun and end the World’s strife?
But it was magnificent, horrifying, and in a terrible way… beautiful!
In 1985, she waltzed into the room.
Was she truly only fifteen years of age?
Was she not wearing anything under that skimpy undershirt?
But she was magnificent, horrifying, and in a terrible way… beautiful!
So, I stood today in 2025, wondering what it means to be beautiful.
It is a profound idea that is somehow impossible to get your head around.
And you have to see it, hear it, feel it, or somehow perceive it.
And it is magnificent, horrifying, and in a terrible way… beautiful!
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I do use AI tools for making art. Look at the elf above. You can see how my arthritis and poor eyesight have affected my work. The eyes no longer line up like they did in the pencil copy. And the nose lost some of its cartoon charm as arthritic hands left the rough draft line and wandered into the bad art swamps of mediocrity. The elf below has those two things corrected by using an AI overlay tool called AI Mirror. Yes, it makes minor changes that I don’t want, but they are easily corrected in a simple Microsoft Paint file, or a more extensive edit in Picsart AI Photo Shop Editor.
Some artists bristle at me for using AI at all, but I want to point out that I am using it to work on my own artworks, not asking it to create something by giving it a word prompt and expecting it to go steal images from other artists. I use it much the same way I used digital art apps for drawing on computer screens, then modifying the picture with the many erasures and smooth replacement lines that digital art tools allow. The pictures I make, even the AI-assisted ones, are pictures made by me.
I fully agree that AI programs who make prompted art from stolen artwork are morally wrong. And nobody ever asked me about training their AI artificial artists on my work, though from WordPress and Facebook, and Instagram, they probably already have.
I will continue to experiment in using AI tools for making art projects. But I will also try to do it the right way.
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No, that is not a typo. I only meant “gifts” in pun form. Sometimes you don’t feel much like talking and, after all, the “picture can be worth a thousand words”, especially if the picture moves.
As you can see, I am spending the day with the Ghost of Christmases Past. Have a wonderful holiday, however you may celebrate it. I will offer more goofy stuff by Mickey after the Ghost of Christmases Future gets done with me.
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Today my sister and I put up a Christmas tree. For me, it is the first one in thirty years. Not since 1994, the last time before I married into the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion. They famously don’t celebrate that allegedly pagan holiday. But now the fact that I am living in a separate state from my wife, at least until she decides to retire… in maybe four years, means that as a Christian Existentialist, I can take part in the pagan holiday once again. As I did both as a schoolboy and a youth.
Some other religions believe I am going to Hell when I die… for being a Witness since 1998. The Witnesses think God will turn his back on me now that I no longer knock on doors with the Good News… Scooby Doo says that means “Cookies!” I like to think that it’s something of a miracle. And God doesn’t really mind what doctrines I follow and songs I can sing. And if I am wrong about that, does it really matter anyway?
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Lucretia is a gifted undead child who lives in Monster Mansion. She is a precocious twelve-year-old, nearly one year since she was brought out of the grave by magical means. Her companion is a talking crow who is not only garrulous but also acerbic in humor.
As a paper doll, she was created with two different articles of clothing attached by paper tabs. She is naked underneath, wearing only a spider web and a spider.
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Catch a Falling Star 