So, here is one secret recipe for baking a Paffooney with some humor in the process.
Step 1 : First you have to get a stupid idea and draw a witless drawing of it on a nice fresh piece of paper. Here the Princess is holding step one, a portrait of what I believe Valerie Clarke, the main character of Snow Babies might look like. She is supposed to be the most beautiful little girl who ever lived in Norwall, a small Iowa farm town.
Step 2 : Then you must get a good digital picture of it. Here I used the Princess as a makeshift picture stand and took the picture in sunlight muted by clouds.
Step 3 : I must then remove all clutter and background from the image using the big old eraser thingy on the Microsoft computer paint program. sometimes I need to erase pixel by pixel until I am thoroughly pixelated.
Step 4 : This gets me ready to use my handy-dandy cheap-o photo program (I always wanted to use both handy-dandy and cheap-o photo in the same sentence! Item 128 on my bucket list.) I can layer the image over any of a number of stolen and parolin’ background photos.
And so, I thus become a pretend world-renowned unknown clown artist with a penchant for multiple uses of internal rhymes as well as multiple uses of the same boring, wretched sketches.
This is my library, the place where I keep my books. It is also a place for my doll collection and the Dungeons and Dragons game that I’ve been playing with my kids for more than a decade. It is a place to read and think and… oh, yeah, there’s an X-Box also. Well, that’s one way to get the kids to spend time there too.
I do realize what a jumbled mess it is. The shelves are all cheap Walmart kits that I built myself. Some have been damaged over time and travel. I have rebuilt them, restocked them, and rearranged them time and again.
This reading nook is currently being used to display parts of my Captain Action collection. The Captain America costume on the left is my original property from Christmas 1967. The Steve Canyon costume next to it is an E-bay purchase and a rare find from a decade ago. Aquaman is a combination. The mask, trident,conch horn, and swim fins are from my original set from Christmas 1966. The suit itself had to be replaced from E-Bay because I played with it until it was no more than a mass of frayed thread. The gloves come from a innovative toy company called Classic Plastick run by Wes McCue. http://classicplastick.proboards.com/ You may notice cups and junk left by kids in my library. Cheetos wrappers from food that my daughter the Princess loves are often found crammed in between the books.
This alcove is where I store my customized Star Wars’ Twi’leck Barbie which I made myself with acrylic paint, Sculpey plasticine, exacto-knife, and Crazy Glue. It also is where I store my antique book collection, some of which are a hundred years old or more. (I have books from my Grandparents’ libraries as well as some from my own childhood.)
Let me show you the Star Wars shelf. (It is not big enough for all my twelve-inch Star Wars action figures, but… oh, well.
Here is the back side of the shelf. (How did topless Mermaid Barbie get in there?)
I also have a corner for the X-Box and the TV it is attached to. (But Dr. Evil is holding it hostage at this writing.)
And finally, let me bore you with the fact that the small upstairs bedroom that is now the library does not have enough room to contain all my books. The library also fills up the upstairs hall and large portion of my bedroom/studio.
It has been said that my library is as cluttered as my mind is. But don’t you believe it. My inner world makes this manifestation in the outer world look Spartan by comparison.
On days when I am still recovering from life-altering blows, I often try to find new realms, alternate realities to live in. (Retreating into a fantasy world is one of the reasons she gave for leaving.) And since, as a youth in Iowa, I raised rabbits for a 4-H project, I know rabbits better than I do human people. Rabbits are people too. So, I have been walking among the rabbit people. Seriously, bunnies are better people than most human people. They are not trying to profit off you. They are not trying to get everything they can off you. They are merely there to wiggle their whiskers, sniff for food, poop, gnaw on stuff, and make more bunnies.
I often see myself as a rabbit person. In cartoon form, I am the bunny-man teacher known to the Animal Town School System as Mr. Reluctant Rabbit.
As a teacher, I am always pulling out carrots of irony and gnawing on the ends of them in front of students. If they complain that eating food in class is supposed to be against the rules, I ask them, “Do you want a carrot of irony?”
“Oh, no, thank you sir.”
“They are good for your eyesight as well as your insight. You really ought to chew on healthier things like that.”
“Oh, no sir,” they say. “We prefer Hot Cheetos.”
And so, I taught on like that… like a rabbit, fast and frumious (a Jabberwocky sort of word), and never really bit anybody. Teaching is like that. You offer the good healthy stuff to nourish their little animal minds, and they always choose the junk food instead.
And so life goes on like that. Looking to rabbit people to ease my pain and need for good, wholesome carrots of irony.
I have recently run a free-book promotion on The Bicycle-Wheel Genius.One of the main characters in the book is Tommy Bircher’s pet rabbit Millis. During the course of the story about invading aliens, Secret Agent Robots from the CIA, and making friends when you need friends, Millis is turned into a rabbit-man by a lab accident. He teaches Tommy that you don’t have to be human to be a good, caring, self-sacrificing person. He also teaches him to eat his carrots and greens like a good boy should.
So, I will spend more time with the rabbit people and heal a little bit. That is what you do with the tragedy that life brings you. You spin it into whole cloth, making humor and poetry out of everything bad that happens… wrapping yourself up in a comforting blanket of lies (you can also call those fiction stories), and eating a little chicken soup on a cold day to heal your soul. (Oh, I forget, rabbits often gag on chicken soup. Let’s make that bean soup with carrot chunks.)
“Dad?” asked the Princess, “I heard a funny word in school today. What does Fuddy-Duddy mean?”
“Oh, that’s a good word,” I said. “It means an old fogey… a stick-in-the-mud.”
“A what?”
“A fussy old guy who likes to have everything his way. Like, if you accuse your father of being one… which you often do… he’s a fuddy-duddy daddy.”
“Ooh! I get it!” said Henry, chiming in. “And if your father is evil, then he’s a fuddy-duddy baddie daddy!“
“Yes,” I said, “and if it makes him sad to be evil, he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie daddy!“
“If you are not sure he’s really your father,” said the Princess adding a one-up, “he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe daddy!“
“Yeah!” said Henry. “And if you suspect he may have fallen into a time machine and been turned back into an infant, he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe baby daddy!“
“Now that he’s a baby again he will surely want to watch his favorite TV show again,” I said with a tear of nostalgia in my eye, “he’ll be a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe baby Howdy Doody daddy!“
“What’s Howdy Doody, Daddy?” asked the Princess.
“No,” said Henry, “now you’ve spoiled it. It just ain’t funny any more.”
“Yes it is! He’s become a funny bunny fuddy-duddy hoo-dad doo-dad saddie baddie maybe rabies hoo-dah doo-dah…”
“Just stop,” said Henry. “You always carry things too far.”
“Right you are!” I said. “See this grin? It means I win!”
One really weird thing that teachers do is think about thinking. I mean, how can a person actually teach someone else how to think and how to learn if they don’t themselves understand the underlying processes? Now that I have retired from teaching and spend all my time feeling sorry for myself, I thought I would try thinking about thinking one more time at least. Hey, just because I am retired, it doesn’t mean I can’t still do some of the weird things I used to do as a teacher, right?
This time I made a map to aid me in my quest to follow the twists and turns of how Mickey thinks and how Mickey learns. Don’t worry, though. I didn’t actually cut Mickey’s head in half to be able to make this map. I used the magical tool of imagination. Some folks might call it story-telling… or bald-face lying.
Now, a brain surgeon would be concerned that my brain maps out in boxes. He would identify it as a seriously deformed brain. It is not supposed to be all rectangular spaces and stairs. It probably indicates a severe medical need for corrective surgery… or possibly complete amputation. But we are not going to concern ourselves with trying to save Mickey from himself right now. That is far too complex a topic to tackle in a 500-word daily post. We are just discussing the basics of operation.
You see the three little guys in the control room? They are an indication that not only did I steal an idea from the Disney/Pixar Movie Inside Out, but I apparently have too few guys doing the job up there compared to the movie version. (It probably makes sense though that a young girl like the one in the movie has a much more sensible configuration in her brain than someone who was a middle school teacher for 24 years. Seriously, that job can do a bit of damage.) The three little guys are not actually Moe, Curly, and Larry, though that wouldn’t be far from descriptive accuracy. They are Impulsive Ignatz, currently in the driver’s seat (or else I wouldn’t be writing this), Proper Percy the Planner, and Pompositous Felixian Checkerbob, the fact-checker and perfectionist (also labeled the inner nerd… I am told not everyone has one of these). They are the three little guys that run around in frantic circles in my head trying to deal with a constant flow of input and output, trying to make sense of everything, and routinely failing miserably.
I shouldn’t forget the other two little guys in my head, Sleepytime Tim in the Dream Center, and little Batty up in the attic. I have no earthly idea how either of them function, or what in the heck they are supposed to do. But there they are. The other three run up and down stairs all day, locating magic mushrooms and random knowledge in the many file cabinets, record collections, book stacks, and odd greasy containers that are stored all around in the many nooks and crannies of Mickey’s mind. They collect stuff through the eyes and ears, and it is also their responsibility to chuck things out through the stupidity broadcaster at various inopportune times. It is also a good idea for them to avoid the lizard brain of the limbic system in the basement. It is easily angered and might eat them.
So now you should be able to fully understand how Mickey thinks. (Or not… a qualifier I was forced to put in by Checkerbob.)
When I was still alive and still teaching, maximizing and managing time was an incredibly important part of the day. You had to activate learners with an attention step, a lesson focus that grabbed them. Usually that had to follow a warm-up, something you got them to do as soon as you had smiled at them at the doorway, offered to shake their hand, and then pulled them into the classroom to do some work for you. fifteen minutes at the start of the class to rev up mental engines and get the gears turning… shake out the rust and the cobwebs that accumulate the instant the final bell rang in the previous class. I timed that part of class down to the second with my pocket watch… or phone in later years. Then, once the engines started, the focus is in place, you introduce the learning objective. Never more than ten minutes… timed to the second… you give the explanation, the road map of the day ahead, the instruction. Then for the next ten to fifteen minutes you let them discover stuff. In groups, with a partner, teacher to class, student to class, or (rarely) individually, they must apply what you pointed out and figure something out. It could be complicated, but probably it was simple. All answers are welcome and accepted… because all answers will be evaluated and you learn more from wrong answers than you do from correct guesses. Evaluation comes in the five to ten minutes at the end when you evaluate. “What have I learned today?” You try your hardest to pin something new to the mental note-board hanging on the brain walls of each and every student. Depending on how much or how few minutes you are given before the final bell kills the lesson for the day, you have to put the big pink ribbon on it. That tightly-wound lesson cycle goes on all day, repeated as many times as you have classes. In that time you have to be teacher, policeman, friend, devil’s advocate, entertainer, counselor, psychotherapist, chief explainer, and sometimes God. And you time it to the second by your pocket watch.
I miss being the rabbit holding the BIG PENCIL. Now that I am retired, I am no longer on the clock… no longer subject to careful time management. My pocket watch is broken and lying in a box somewhere in my library. I live now in non-consecutive time periods of sleep and illness and writing and playing with dolls. I have entered a second childhood now. Not really a simple one because of diabetes and arthritis and COPD and psoriasis and all the other wonderful things that old age makes possible. But a childhood free of school politics and mandates from the school board and from the State. A childhood where I can once again dream and imagine and create and play. That’s what this post is if you haven’t already figured it out. I am playing with words and ideas. They are my toys. Toys like this one;
This, of course, is Tim, the turtleboy of irony, holding his magic flatiron that he uses for ironing out irony. He is flattening it out now with a cartoony Paffooney and wickedly waggled words. Ironically, I have often taught students to write just like this, making connections between words and pictures and ideas through free association and fast-writing. Have you learned anything from today’s retired-teacher post? If you did, it is ironic, because you were never meant to from the start.
“Kaw-Liga”
KAW-LIGA, was a wooden Indian standing by the door
He fell in love with an Indian maid over in the antique store
KAW-LIGA – A, just stood there and never let it show
So she could never answer “YES” or “NO”.
He always wore his Sunday feathers and held a tomahawk
The maiden wore her beads and braids and hoped someday he’d talk
KAW-LIGA – A, too stubborn to ever show a sign
Because his heart was made of knotty pine.
[Chorus:]
Poor ol’ KAW-LIGA, he never got a kiss
Poor ol’ KAW-LIGA, he don’t know what he missed
Is it any wonder that his face is red
KAW-LIGA, that poor ol’ wooden head.
KAW-LIGA, was a lonely Indian never went nowhere
His heart was set on the Indian maiden with the coal black hair
KAW-LIGA – A, just stood there and never let it show
So she could never answer “YES” or “NO”.
Then one day a wealthy customer bought the Indian maid
And took her, oh, so far away, but ol’ KAW-LIGA stayed
KAW-LIGA – A, just stands there as lonely as can be
And wishes he was still an old pine tree.
The quirky movie I reviewed, Moonrise Kingdom, reconnected me with a song I loved as a child. It was on an old 45 record that belonged to my mother’s best friend from high school. When the Retleffs sold their farm and tore down their house and barn, they had a huge estate sale. My mother bought the old record player and all the collected records that Aunt Jenny still had. They were the same ones my mother and her friend Edna had listened to over and over. There were two records of singles about Indian love. Running Bear was about an Indian boy who fell in love with little White Dove. They lived on opposite sides of a river. Overcome with love, they both jump into the river, swim to the middle, lock lips, and both drown. Together forever. That song, it turns out, was written by the Big Bopper, and given to Johnny Preston to sing, and released the year after the Big Bopper died in a plane crash along with Buddy Holly and Richie Valens.
Kaw-liga, by Hank Williams, was a wooden Indian sitting in front of a cigar store. His love story is even worse. As you can see from the lyrics above, he never even gets the girl. Dang, Indian love must be heck!
But I have come to realize that these aren’t merely racist songs from a bygone era. They hold within them a plea for something essential. They are a reminder that we need love to be alive.
When I was young and deeply depressed… though also insufferably creative and unable to control the powers of my danged big brain, I knew that I wanted love. There was one girl who went to school with me, lovely Alicia Stewart (I am not brave enough to use her real name), that filled my dreams. We were classmates, and alphabetical seating charts routinely put us near each other. She had a hypnotic sparkle in her eyes whenever she laughed at my jokes. She was so sweet to me… sweet to everyone… that she probably caused my diabetes. I longed to carry her books or hold her hand. I cherished every time she spoke to me, and collected the memories like stamps in a stamp album. But like the stupid cigar store Indian, I never spoke up for myself. I never told her how I felt. I was endlessly like Charlie Brown with the Little Red-Haired Girl. Sometimes you have to screw up your courage and leap into the river, even if it means your undoing. Because love is worth it. Love is necessary. And it comes to everybody in one way or another over time. I look at pictures of her grandchildren posted on Facebook now, and wonder what might have been, if only… if only I had jumped in that stupid river. I did find love. And I probably would’ve drowned had I done it back then. Life has a way of working things out eventually. But there has to be some reason that in the 50’s, when I was born, they just kept singing about Indian love.
Despite my skepticism about the accepted wisdom in regard to the historical William Shakespeare, I do deeply love the body of work that is Shakespeare. My most favorite play is The Tempest, the final play in the canon. I also have read and loved As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Othello,and King Lear. I know that is not all of the plays, but that is probably more than most people have read. And of course, as an English major in college, and later as a teacher, I have actually analyzed, compared, studied, and taught some of these plays. So, the Shakespeare I know is the Shakespeare of the writer’s own mind, his communicated wit and wisdom, imagination and intellect.
And I do not have any disdain or disrespect to give the Stratford guy. To say that, in the Elizabethan world, the actor son of a tradesman with only a grammar school education could not have been the mind behind the literary masterworks is foolish. The Stratford guy owned and operated the Globe theater at a time when “the play was the thing”. All of London society, rich and poor, gloried in the theater, and Shakespeare did for Elizabethan plays what Babe Ruth did for baseball. He was a good enough business man to make himself a decent fortune. Although, apparently, this world-shaking author didn’t spend any of his money on owning books, which in my experience is extremely rare among writers. His life, bound up in an urban existence that never traveled outside of the country also somehow produced great works that were set in places in Europe, especially Italy, that described those settings in accurate detail. As a working actor, he also apparently had the time to study law and somehow learn the inner workings of the royal courts of more than one country. And the plots were not original. He took existing stories that already were a part of European literature and lore and wove them into rich tapestries of human striving, laughable foibles, and a deep understanding of basic human character. But I do have doubts that the businessman and actor from Stratford was the real writer of the plays.
I have already told you that I don’t believe Sir Francis Bacon was secretly Shakespeare. Christopher Marlowe wasn’t either. And I have unsuccessfully made a case against Shakspere, the Stratford guy. So who could possibly be the real William Shakespeare? Well, I am not going to be able to make a decent case for him in the 100 words that I have left to end this essay with. So there has to be more to come. (And stop screaming obscenities at the computer screen. I am going to reveal the name before the end of this essay. And I promise not to make my case for him in coming days too boring and horrible.) I have to show why I believe that the true heart of Shakespeare could only have beaten within the body of Edward deVere, the Earl of Oxford.
I have discovered things about being an artist by blogging. I have discovered things by learning from other artists. I have also discovered things by trial and error. I have also discovered things by random acts of God. So let me share some of the ill-gotten picture secrets that I have added to my vast bag of useless incunabula-juice squeezed out with my arcane-secret juicer and internet blogger good luck.
#1. Save everything arty… as you see above, I have three different pictures of my Catch a Falling Star character Dorin Dobbs, all made from the same pen and ink line drawing. All the color is digital paint from my computer’s own paint program. Simple and cheap to do. Save functions multiply the pretty.
#2. Splice stuff together and make new stuff… I have the cheapest possible photo-shop program, but using its entire $7 value every time I paste with it, I am able to create new art out of old.
New art out of old;
#3. Weave things together to create unity… My art is not for its own sake. I am not Picasso or Van Gogh. My art is very much tied to the stories I tell as a writer of Young Adult novels. (Snow Babies is awaiting its turn with the editors of PDMI LLC Publishers.)
#4. Promote the art and writing of others… I have spent a ridiculous amount of internet time stalking artists like Loish and sharing their work on my blog. Writers too. I do my little book reports in order to connect the reading and the literary influences I have completed (or stolen from) and show where much of my own style and je nais se quois comes from. If the artist or writer is still living and notices what I have done, they will often return the favor (hopefully, if they don’t find my work to be an offense against the gods of art). If they can’t return the favor (because they are quite dead or thoroughly disgusted by me), I have at least associated my work with theirs in the minds of my readers,
#5. It’s all about digital photography… In order to share my colored-pencil menagerie of live Paffoonies on the internet, I have to get better at photography. I have taken far more photos of drawings in the last two years than I have drawn drawings. That has not been a life-long way of things. I love color, and poor photography skills turn out various shades of gray. Sunlight? Incandescent? Fluorescent? I haven’t discovered that secret yet, but it will never be uncovered if I don;t keep trying.
#5. Find connections that help pull your work together in one big, messy bundle… Facebook, WordPress, and Deviant-Art are all better forums if you can connect them. I did this by labeling everything Mickey with a meaningless made-up word that no one else in their right mind would use. The word is Paffooney.
A picture search on Google using the words “Beyer Paffooney” gives you an almost complete gallery of my artwork and nonsense. Googling the word itself yields a link to a plethora of my old blogs. Do you not know what plethora means? Try it and you will learn that very good word.
Catch a Falling Star 