Recognize her? Probably not. But I keep trying to do portraits.
Tik Tok dancers.
Urchins on a fence
Homely Art – Part One – Thomas Kinkade
These images can be found at http://thomaskinkade.com/
I honestly have a thing for artists that critics hate and common folk like my parents and grandparents loved. Norman Rockwell is a bit like that. He enjoyed commercial success as a magazine illustrator. That is about as far from avant garde art as you can get. But what can I say? I don’t call myself an artist. I am a cartoonist and all around goofball. I don’t do serious art. So the questions surrounding Thomas Kinkade bounce off my tough old non-critical hide like bullets off the orphan of Krypton. I love his pictures for their gaudy splashes of color, his way with depicting puddles and water of all sorts (splashes of splashes), and his rustic homes and landscapes of another era. This is a man who does lovely calendar art and jigsaw puzzle art. He is roundly criticized for factory production of “original” oil paintings which are actually a base he created and made a print of painted over by an “assistant” artist or apprentice. But I don’t care . I like it. And you used to be able to see his originals without going to museums, in art stores at the shopping mall. He is unfortunately dead now. For most great artists, that makes their work more valuable and more precious. Kinkade’s art hangs in so many homes around the country already that his fame has probably already reached its peak. Look at these works that he did for Hallmark and Disney and various other mass-market retail outlets. I dare you not to like it.
Filed under art criticism, oil painting, Thomas Kinkade
The Truest of Magicks
Okay, life is like this; you are born, a lot of dumb stuff happens that you are mostly not in control of, you suffer a little bit, you are happy a little bit, and then you die. That is a pretty gloomy prospect, and most of us spend our entire lives obsessing over it, examining it with microscopes, doctoring it with needles and potions and chainsaws, trying to make it last a little longer, wailing and complaining about our sorry allotment, and wasting what little time we have. So what secret exists that could ever make a difference? Could ever open up our eyes… even just a tiny bit?
The secret, as far as I can tell (and I am certainly one of the dumber and more random among you because I am cursed with insight and wisdom won through suffering and making huge mistakes), is reading the right books.
I am not alone in this sort of thinking. There are those who believe that if you gather the best books together into a personal library and read them, they add experiences and knowledge to your life that you would not otherwise have. (Of course, one must acknowledge, especially if you read fiction, that most books are filled with lies and misinformation, and some, Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus leaps to mind, might leave you stupider than you were when you started.) It deepens, broadens, and intensely colors the experience of life.
People who read books a lot… really read them, and re-read them, and collect them, and study them, and think about and write about them… are called wizards. Wizards are wise men. It is what the word means. Being one does not make you better than anyone else. In fact, wizards are generally weaker than normal men. It comes from all that ruining of eyes and fuddling up brains with too much thinking. You don’t want a wizard to back you up in a fist fight. You will certainly lose. And you don’t want a wizard to tell you how live your life. They are not good role models. But if a wizard tells a story, you should listen. Because if you really listen, and the wizard is really wise, you can expand the borders of your life, and push on nearer to immortality.
Bird is the Word
Birds are always talking,
And birds are always squawking,
And they are using bird-words,
These are the words I heard.
Twitter-pated – this word comes from the owl in Bambi and means not being able to think straight because you’re in love.
Aviary – is a great big bird house, big enough to fly around in
Feather-dusted – to you and me it means clean, to a bird it means the feathers are dirty
Bird-brained – don’t be insulted if a bird calls you this. It is a compliment.
Fume-fluttered – you gotta fly and get away from that bad smell.
Wing-walking – it’s how you get from here to there if you’re a bird… Duh!
Wakka wakka – it’s those dang ducks again, always telling jokes!
Egg-zactly – as precise and perfect as an egg.
Coo-coo-karoo – that stupid rooster wants us to get up again at daybreak. It’s like a bird can never sleep in!
Clucker butter – Can you believe that KFC place? Butter on improperly cremated dead chickens (ah, well, they were only chickens after all).
Now that you have less than one per cent of the bird vocabulary, please don’t try to tell me what they are saying. I really don’t want to know!
Art from Mickey’s Digital Obsession
I love the fact that I can so easily turn old pen-and-ink drawings like this doodle into a digital art masterpiece. All I had to do is trace the old drawing on the touchscreen with the digital tools available to me now. My electronic stylus and the free drawing app make re-inking the old drawing like a painting. The brush, line, or effect that you lay on the old drawing takes only a swish of the stylus. And it is so much cleaner and more stylish than the old way of inking a pencil drawing with a ballpoint pen.
Take for instance this digital drawing called “The Skinny Dipper.” It begins as a simple drawing filled with color. And then you can layer details over and under, blend in more colors, shapes, and shadows. It can become much more detailed and realistic. I used a photographic background under it, and then continued to make it an original drawing by painting over both the figure and every detail of the background.
And it didn’t stop there. I gave the boy, or possibly girl, a scuba suit to preserve his or her modesty and allow a deeper dive.
Filed under Uncategorized
Reading Assignments
Yesterday I revealed that I have no earthly clue how to be a best-selling author with a blog and a brand and all those other things that marketing racketeers keep pettifogging at me about. I may not know anything about marketing and being an author, but I do know how to be a writer. I have learned to say things flat out when they are on my mind and I know how to do the two essential things that a writer has to know how to do… I can practice writing every day, and I can read.
If you are one of those few who actually read my blog regularly, you may remember some talk about the classic novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Believe it or not, I know how to read and understand great books. You can find me on Goodreads.com to see some of the wonderful things I have been reading, and to decide if you might like them too. If you are not on Goodreads already, why not? That is now your next assignment, young reader. Oops. You know what they say, “Old English teachers never die, they just lose their class.”
Today’s little self-imposed book report is about a book that I read my senior year in high school, 1975. It is called The Other by Thomas Tryon. It is a book that was made into a movie. The author is also a Hollywood actor that has been in many films. He wrote the screenplay for the movie version. But I have to tell you, the movie pales in comparison to the book itself. Movies simply cannot give you the rich depth of atmosphere and the delicate psychological nuances that a book can. Movies show you something. A book can explain something in detail. And that is a key difference.
This is a fascinating book for it’s ornate description of long-ago New England life, and the eerie way old houses and long-gone people can twist and mangle our lives. It is a psychological horror story about twin boys, Niles and Holland Perry. They are polar opposites. Niles is warm and loving. But Holland is distant, cold, and sinister. Their grandmother Ada, a lovely old woman with deep Russian roots, has taught the boys to play an ESP-sort of game, reaching out with their minds to feel what a bird feels, or a squirrel, or a magician to find out how he did a certain disappearing trick. She has no idea that the mind-game will have such a devastating effect on both the twins and ruin so many peoples’ lives. I cannot say more without revealing the magic the author uses to bring this book to a totally unexpected and devastating conclusion. This book is not everyone’s cup of tea… and it may be many readers’ cup of arsenic… but it worked its spell on me. I recommend it if you wish to be chilled to the bone marrow.
I am reading this book now for the third time. It is rare that I read a book more than once, because every time through changes your perception of it and risks making you dislike it. But certain books are immune to that effect. And I am re-reading it now because I want to closely analyze the techniques he used to create his surprise ending. There-in lies the reason for this reading assignment that I have given myself. That is how I roll as a writer.
Filed under book review, NOVEL WRITING
Into December… Remember?
Susu, my imaginary granddaughter, is looking forward to her first Christmas. As I invented her less than a year ago, this will be her first. I, myself, have foresworn the celebration of the holiday for more than twenty years as I participated in my wife’s Jehovah’s Witnesses’ beliefs. They reject the holiday as a pagan invention. I don’t argue with their right to believe what they choose to believe. But as I can no longer conform to their strictures, I have reignited my interest in the cherished memories of the holidays in my past. Particularly relevant now that my parents are both gone from this world.
“So, you are going to play Santa and give me a present, Grandpa?”
“Yes. But since you are an imaginary child, Susu, it will probably be an imaginary gift.”
“Oh, good! That means I can ask for a purple hippopotamus… with wings!”
That, of course, makes me laugh. She has her father’s sense of humor.
This will be a December to Remember. There’s a song in there somewhere.
Filed under Uncategorized
Toonerville, a Place I Once Lived In
There is a place so like the place where my heart and mind were born that I feel as if I have always lived there. That place is a cartoon panel that ran in newspapers throughout the country from 1913 to 1955 (a year before I was born in Mason City, Iowa). It was called Toonerville Folks and was centered around the famous Toonerville Trolley.
Fontaine Fox was born near Louisville Kentucky in 1884. Louisville, of course is one of the two cities that claims to be the inspiration for Toonerville. Apparently the old Brook Street Line Trolley in Louisville was always run-down, operating on balls of twine and bailing wire for repair parts. The people of Pelham, New York, however, point to a trolley ride Fox took in 1909 on Pelham’s rickety little trolley car with a highly enterprising and gossip-dealing old reprobate for a conductor. No matter which it was, Fox’s cartoon mastery took over and created Toonerville, where you find the famous trolley that “meets all trains”.
I didn’t learn of the comic strip’s existence until I was in college, but once I found it (yes, I am the type of idiot who researches old comics in university libraries), I couldn’t get enough of it. Characters like the Conductor, the Powerful (physically) Katrinka, and the terrible-tempered Mr. Bang can charm the neck hair off of any Midwestern farm-town boy who is too stupid to regret being born in the boring old rural Midwest.
I fancied myself to be just like the infamous Mickey (himself) McGuire. After all, we have the same first name… and I always lick any bully or boob who wants to put up a fight (at least in my daydreams).
So, this is my tribute to the cartoonist who probably did more to warp my personality and make me funny (well, at least easy to laugh at! ) than any other influence. All of the cartoons in this post can be credited to Fontaine Fox. And all the people in them can be blamed on Toonerville, the town I used to live in, though I never really knew it until far too late.
Filed under art my Grandpa loved, artists I admire, cartoons, Toonerville
Prudes and Prejudices (Part 1)
I mean no disrespect to the bright spirit of Jane Austin by titling this thusly. But I do have an evil itch to confront these never-ending gremlins of public behavior. There is a need to regularly chastise the shoulder demons with the red suits, horns, and little red pitchforks. And if we listened more to the shoulder angels with the white robes, halos, and harps we would be talking these things out more carefully and logically with a view to how other people besides our bilious little little lizard-brains are affected.
Part One… Prejudice
When I started teaching in the 1980’s in South Texas, a popular TV show watched by many of my students was The Facts of Life. It was about a girls’ boarding school, specifically, one house mother and her charges. Not a very realistic depiction of the reality of schools in the 1980’s. But even though real house mothers would probably have at least 25 more girls to worry about and drive her insane than this TV version did, it did have a feature that gave me hope as a teacher. This show had a girl of color, something that kind of school, even in the north, would have less of than the 20% representation in this show. And, miraculously, through all the weekly girl-dilemmas for a harried house mouther to deal with, and the occasional social-issue shows, that one black girl was treated as just one of the girls. No more important nor any less important than any of the other girls. That was an ideal to strive for in the world of education.
The character of Tootie (Dorothy “Tootie” Ramsey played by Kim Fields) was a perky and positive character, sweet and charming, and possessing a high degree of emotional intelligence. I remember wishing I had more students like that. But I did have a number of girls exactly like that, though they were Hispanic and Anglo. We had no “black” families in Cotulla, Texas during the 80’s, and only two families and one teacher in the entire 23 years I taught there.
But prejudice is not about what color a kid is. Or what color any human being is. As a teacher, I learned early on that you have to try to love every kid you are given no matter what their personal details are.
I remember teachers saying that, “Black kids are noisier than any other group, and more likely to be aggressive.” Or they also tried to convince me that, “Hispanic kids are too mature for their age and become sexually active sooner in life than they should.” Of course, there were usually examples they were talking about. But those examples weren’t proof that the prejudice is based on reality. They were proof that generalizations based on race, first language, or culture are potentially hurtful. I could point to examples that might indicate that, “White kids are more likely to say racist things than non-white kids are.” That is also an unfounded conclusion that is easily disproven by a majority of examples.
The real problems a teacher has dealing with students don’t come from any prejudicial generalizations. They come from students having to endure things outside of the classroom including poverty, homelessness, physical and emotional abuse at home, malnutrition, or untreated mental or medical conditions. And sometimes the misbehavior is caused by the teacher forgetting or skipping the essential practices necessary to controlling the classroom environment.
Everybody has prejudices. My favorite color is red. I favor it almost always whenever I have a free choice among colors to use. But the problem with prejudices is how we act on them. If I burn down my neighbor’s house because he painted it green rather than red, then I have been morally reprehensible. Not racism, but still an evil act based on my prejudice.
The teenager who got away with hunting protesters and killing two white ones in Wisconsin with a “self-defense” verdict is guilty of acting on a prejudice that people who are protesting a racially motivated police shooting are properly and justifiably shot and killed for protesting in favor of their side of the controversy. He crossed a State line to a community he did not live in to be involved in that opportunity to kill someone he disagreed with using his illegally purchased AR-15 even though the victims were unarmed. Maybe you can’t prove racism. But how about prejudice against protesters who believe they shouldn’t be killed for their beliefs?
In Texas, the conservatives are using a hatred and an anti-Critical Race Theory law to exert their racism in Texas schools. The Southlake School District has fired a beloved principal because he had the poor judgement to be married to a white woman and speak his mind in an email about being against the killing of George Floyd. Apparently, he was guilty of promoting Critical Race Theory in the school even though Critical Race Theory is a law-school process for examining systemic racism in law enforcement. That, of course, is NOT taught in any Texas grade school, middle school, or high school. He was actually fired for having the opinion (while black) that George Floyd should not have been killed by policemen in Minnesota. They are transparently acting on their racism and proving the need for law schools to continue examining Critical Race Theory. Their excuse is that white kids are being taught to feel guilty of the atrocities their ancestors committed because of racism. So, apparently, how black kids feel about the same things don’t count.
Through prejudices, teachers will no longer be able to teach tolerance during Black History Month in February. The novel Beloved by Toni Morrison can no longer be taught in high schools. The book Ruby Bridges wrote about her experience with integrating the white grade school in Little Rock, Arkansas can no longer be taught in history classes.
Explain to me why this fundamentally racist prejudice is to be tolerated! But be warned, my personal prejudices are telling me to protest this crap. And you can’t fire me for having taught these things in the past since I am now retired from teaching. You’ll just have to get a teenager with an AR-15 to kill me.
Filed under angry rant, Paffooney, politics, racial profiling
Catch a Falling Star 
Prudes and Prejudices (Part 2)
Who is really qualified to judge people? The Bible says only God makes that judgement. But who tells us what God’s judgement actually is? Especially if Nietzsche is right about God being dead?
Prudes
Not long ago I posted a short-short story about me wanting to see girls get naked while we were kite flying, and then, by verbal tricks backfiring, I ended up being the only one flying the kite while naked. I look back on that story now with laughter about my own personal foibles. But if I am completely honest, the church ladies with gray hair, wagging fingers, and tongues that are even waggier… Well, I am glad that the ones I knew as a boy are all now dead and can’t possibly read that story and shame me all over again.
And I know that I draw an awful lot of pictures and write an awful lot of stories that involve naked children. As a survivor of a traumatic sexual assault when I was ten (a thing that happened after the kite story was already in the past) there is a level of discomfort over recognizing that trend in myself. Not because I became a sexual predator of children. I clearly did not. I still am determined to prevent such things from happening in any way I can, though in retirement I no longer have access to children to talk with to find out about bad things that may be happening in their lives.
I write stories in which there are kid characters who are naked at times. Sometimes because of curiosity and developing sexuality, sometimes because of growing up in a nudist household, sometimes in their dreams, taking baths, and many other normal functions where clothing is optional. In The Baby Werewolf novel, I included a character who was trying to exploit a young nudist girl to make child pornography. He was the kind of predator I have always resolved to be against, and the book is intended to make readers aware of that kind of dangerous person and recognize where the opportunities to avoid such people lie.
And some of the nude young characters I create like the two fairy girls depicted in the illustration from The Necromancer’s Apprentice merely represent the liberating feeling you can get from embracing your own nude self, a thing my attacker deprived me of during childhood through trauma and fear.
I, as an adult human being, fully accept readers’ rights to be critical of my work and make prudish judgements about my writing. I don’t like that one critic of The Baby Werewolf who said things about my work being creepy for the wrong reasons (it is a horror story after all) and suggesting that maybe I as the author am bad and villainous instead of feeling that way about the villain of the story. It was fiction, not my personal life story. The villain character is not me.
But prudes being prudish and judgmental can do more damage than just hurting an author’s feelings.
I have had two students that I know of who were transexual.
One was raised a boy because he was born with a penis, but in grade school was discovered to have a womb and ovaries. I didn’t know such a condition existed until I saw an episode of Marcus Welby MD in the 70’s about a young boy who had to transition because he was actually a girl. The child in my class was from a poor Hispanic family that didn’t understand the problem and couldn’t really afford to deal with it. The prudes, judgemental as always, were not kind. This he/she hermaphrodite was forced to grow up as a flamboyantly gay male even though he was capable of physically changing into a woman who could conceive a child. I followed his development for as long as I was able. I did spend one long and awkward evening talking to him/her about his/her crush on me. I could’ve gotten the prude finger-wag over that strange conference too, if anybody had bothered to care about that poor child. I certainly wasn’t going to kiss him, and I had to send him home at the end of that discussion because of what he/she wanted from me. I suspect there were other men who took advantage of him/her. But I wasn’t close enough to help him in any real way. And I lost touch soon after he/she left my class. Based on that bizarre discussion we had, I have no confidence at all that the poor child is still alive. Nobody seemed to care about this child That is the most tragic of things teachers sometimes have to deal with.
The other trans student I had in class for a year was a girl as far as she was concerned. It was not a question open for debate. She was quiet and a good student. She only had a couple of friends, but they were good friends and stood by her. At the time she was in my middle school class, she already had breasts thanks to hormone therapy. By now she has probably transitioned by surgical means. Her life was a lot easier than the boy with ovaries. But prudes in Texas abound and provide a lot of sour fruit.
I personally find it offensive that anyone would deny either of these two people the use of whatever restroom was comfortable for them.
What gives the typical prude the right to pass judgement on anyone else’s behavior? Prudes can cause repression of natural behaviors for the benefit for no one but themselves. I find prudishness to be reprehensible. But the rub is… being judgemental about that makes me a prude too.
I try never to be judgemental. I would much rather accept everyone for who they are, or who they think they are, than rely on what I think they are. And I do listen when others judge me. I have changed things in my books and drawings because of observations by others. And I take everything seriously… especially comedy.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, nudes, Paffooney