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 |  "Putting on the Game Face" |
  This blog is a doorway into the mind of Percy Goodfellow. Don't be shocked at the lost boys of Namby-Pamby Land and the women they cavort with. Watch as his caricatures blunder about the space between audacious hope and the wake-up calls of tomorrow. Behold their scrawl on the CRT, like graffitti on a subway wall. Examine it through your own lens...Step up my friends, and separate the pepper from the rat poop. Welcome to my abode...the armpit of yesterday, the blinking of an eye and a plank to the edge of Eternity. Note: This blog is my journal. I've no interest in persuading anyone to adopt my views. What I write is whatever happens to interest me when I start pounding the keys. |
| Another day on the Farm Today Linda and I worked in the yard and after lunch we went shopping. It was a rather uneventful day although we had some good conversation. Sometimes she insists I make conversation and I try and think up some interesting topics to talk about. However, despite my best intentions the lapses creep in and I find my mind drifting to other things… like my class, my hobbies and the books I have been reading. If I don’t talk she turns on talk radio and listening to that never fails to get my blood pressure to climb a couple of points. Three of my students failed to meet the Thursday deadline for their vignettes. This tells me either they are bored, have other priorities or are in over their heads with the assignment. It is an advanced class and every effort is made to warn them of the commitment. Still I hate to see them fall behind because the course builds upon the earlier lessons. Still, if past students managed it then so can the current crop. Last year we had some landscaping done and the contractor brought in a load of great topsoil. He filled the raised beds with this dirt and in most planted flowers. However there were some where the flowers died and I replanted them with Stella-Doros and strawberries. Actually I only had four strawberry plants but they loved the soil and started taking everything over. The winter had little effect on them and this spring they took off where they left off in the fall. They were full of blossoms and to make a long story short we have a bumper crop right now. These are huge red ones with the most wonderful flavor you can imagine. We had them on some vanilla ice cream (There goes the diet) and they were mouth watering. Tomorrow at the RC flying club there is an event called an “Electric Fly.” For those of you that might not know, in recent years electric motors have risen in favor with the model airplane crowd. They can do about anything a gas engine can do and have plenty of advantages. They are quiet and they don’t sputter, just when you need the power most. So our club is having a weekend where only electric powered airplanes are to be flown. I don’t have an airworthy electric model right now but Linda and I will be going to the flying field anyway. She is a good sport and even though she isn’t interested, tags along on my many adventures. Once in a blue moon the ink runs out on the printer and it is always an adventure remembering how to replace the cartridge. Well, I am happy to report that we accomplished that task with little to no frustration. Earlier today the folding doors to the wash room fell and Linda with it. Luckily she wasn’t injured although she might be feeling it in the morning. I will be putting Lock-Tite on the screw that came loose. |
| The Antagonist I hit a low on my weight yesterday. That was encouraging. My overweight condition while not excessive came upon me slowly and it will no doubt come off me in the same manner. Today I was back up a bit and so it goes. My students who have been with me awhile, those who have taken my courses in the past are sounding more and more like writers. I am seeing that blend of exposition and dialog in their work and that is encouraging. Every novel needs a bad guy. Many, myself included, didn’t or don’t really appreciate the importance of a vile antagonist. It is my belief that everyone has good and bad and characterizing a character as bad to the bone is not something I do well. However, readers like to hate the antagonist and writers need to keep this in mind. I don’t give this the emphasis I should in the Exploratory Writing Workshop and I need to do a better job with it. This upcoming weekend the RC Flying Club I belong to is holding an event. My job is to provide the bottled water. I bought four cases yesterday and Linda and I will be delivering it today. I checked out the airplane I bought and everything works. The battery is charged. Maybe this weekend I can get some lessons in with the club’s flight instructor. George Martin has an annoying habit of killing off a character, or appearing to kill them off and then bringing them back to life. In other words you would think they are dead but low and behold, they turn out to be not really dead but risen again. I suppose it is OK to do this once in a novel but to keep doing it over and over again is to my thinking not such a good idea. I finished his last book so far (Book Five) and he is still nowhere close to closure. I have to admit that I am curious and will no doubt buy his next book when it comes out and continue watching the episodes on HBO. The last show of the season is this week and having read the books have a fairly good idea of how it will turn out. Teaching the One Act Play and now the EWW has taught me a lot and made me a better writer. Teaching takes me away from writing but that is a good thing. It helps fill up the pitcher of creativity just like reading does. Seeing others make the same mistakes that I have in the past, reinforces in mind those things I need to fix when I start writing again. Templating a favorite author has proven particularly useful as has reading for understanding as a second read after a first one for pleasure. Martin is a bit tedious at times but he also hits his stride with some of the characters he creates and writes in a most captivating manner. |
| Duh! Well, the Memorial Day Weekend is behind us now. I remember how before I retired how I looked forward to being able to escape from my job for a couple of days. It is great not having to step back into the grinder. Then again I’m growing old and aches and pains remind me of times of full health when I took my vitality for granted. I have a truck over at a consignment place off the interstate and I went there yesterday in my Studebaker pickup to see how it was doing. The owner told me I needed to put it all in primer. There is a “Thresheree” coming up which features old farm equipment and vendors. They will be trying to sell it there. While we were talking I noticed an old Yard Statue made of cement. I bought it and will try restoring it using some to the modeling techniques I use. One of the things I asked my students to do in the Exploratory Writing Workshop (EWW) was to template their favorite authors. What emerged from this exercise is a validation of the obvious. This is that good writing uses many devices and components but the King and Queen are exposition and dialog. DUH! In a novel exposition tends to tell and exposition tends to show… DUH! Thus it is reasonable to expect that in a favorite novel most of what a reader should expect is exposition and dialog. However… most aspiring writers tend to provide the reader with one or that other but not both. I find myself telling them over and over that the best writing has a blend of both. A novel is not a stage or screen play. In either of these the audience or reader gets to see the characters actually moving about on the stage or screen. The big difference between the two seems to be that in a stage play the language is more important while in a screen play the imagery is more important. In a novel however, there is no stage or screen, only the reader’s imagination that that must be illuminated by both exposition and dialogue. “Telling” has become a bad word to many and I suppose the reason for that is because novels that depend too much on telling can be ponderous. There is however… exposition that both shows and tells. For example exposition can show what is happening in the world of the story just as it can show what has happened in the past. Both are necessary but backstory provided in blocks gets boring and most successful writers intersperse it with current action and dialogue. This is the art (Duh!) of good writing…. Some writers do it better than others, but the science is that some careful thought needs to go into the structure of how the words are going to be presented, to optimize the utility of the form. Good novels don’t just happen by accident as writers merrily write down the first things that pop into their minds. That’s what I’m trying to get across in the EWW and there is a systematic approach that has been planned to get students to realize the importance of both spontaneous writing and getting that spontaneity to accept the form of time tested techniques in writing. |
| Center Punched Mail Box If I don’t do my blog first thing in the morning I tend to let it slide. After supper I do the chores, feed the cats and curl up with a good book. I am convinced that if you want to be a good writer you have to be a good reader, that writing pours out the pitcher of creativity and reading fills it back up again. I have to do something with Linda every day. Some sort of activity. She is pretty good at keeping herself occupied but we need to get out of the house, go somewhere and do something together. Otherwise she is like a pressure cooker building to a big venting. Having worked the past few years is part of it but I am part as well, having interests she doesn’t share in which get translated as I ignore her. Oh well, if that is the extent of my worry I must be leading a pretty low stress life… don’t you think? After this class I’ll be getting back to my novel. I’m fascinated by how George Martin has written Game of Thrones. Instead of chapters covering events he writes chapters on his characters. They are then loosely arrayed in a time order and the reader sees through the POV of the chapter character. If a reader is plot oriented and wants to stay focused on story line the experience of reading him must be frustrating. I will say that many of his characters are rather uninteresting and he goes off for pages on events that are boring compared with other characters in his work. Then what else is new. As a reader you have to get used to long pages of boredom separated by an occasional oasis of interest. It’s almost as if he has written hundreds of character vignettes, some better than others but has included them all. Maybe he is being paid by the word. Then almost realizing the story is moving slowly and going nowhere, he kills off abruptly some of the more intriguing characters he has tried so hard to create. Sometimes I forget to take my pills. Linda gives me a hard time when I do but missing one every now and then is not a war stopper. However, to a retired nurse it is a big deal. I am reminded of a Stephen King novel of a writer that is held captive by a nurse who is one of his fans. I found a great deal of sympathy for the poor guy she had chained to the bed. My big golden doodle likes to lie next to me as I write my morning blog. She drools on the pillow. Fortunately it will often dry up before its time to get up and go do the chores. Yesterday morning on our walk Linda and I saw Mark's mail box was down and there was a wrecked scooter lying next to it. We called it in. That must have hurt, center punching a mail box with a scooter. Ouch! |
| Dark Literature Yesterday was Friday and my port got a lot of hits. Some is attributed to my students but even so, 186 views are exceptionally high. Maybe because my blog had been deferred as I wrote the EWW reviews can account for the inflated numbers. Whatever the reason I was surprised because the views tend to run around one hundred or less. I read some more of George Martin last night. His writing is a study in good story telling. The recent books have not been on the same par with his earlier ones but they are still good. Maybe I am becoming calloused to the dark side of his writing. Dark writing has an elemental power. It comes from the darkness rather than the light. For example a dark writer describing a sexual liaison would not focus on the warmth and euphoria but rather on the pain, carnal aspects and medical consequences. For the dark writer joy and happiness is replaced by pain and suffering. Socrates said that people have a natural inclination towards good and that people don’t deliberately set out to do bad. I define good as trying to make the world a better place. For the dark writer the pursuit of good is a hope, a naracotic used to get through life, an existence strangled by hopelessness and terror. Most of my readers won’t read truly dark literature, but there are examples here at WDC that show it, and adherents who are drawn to the dark vortex, that disdains happy endings and sees the life experience through the lens of “Badness”… It is a claim that doing otherwise is a delusion and those who believe it are only fooling themselves and refusing to see life for what it really is. My experience is that life is not always such a nice place and knowing what lies beneath the façade of the fanciful and politically correct are truths we need to know, however a person should strive to keep the good inside their hearts in dominion over the darkness. That’s probably the best we can hope for. Literature for most is an escape from an ‘oft ugly reality and if it gives relief, comfort and hope to the downtrodden it must be a good thing indeed. |
| Getting Behind in my Blogs I fall behind in my blogs when I am doing reviews of the vignettes the students submit in my Exploratory Writing Workshop. The biggest problem I encountered this week was tense. Two of my students wanted to write in the present and the third went back and forth. I had not encountered this before and was taken aback. I have a bell shaped curve in my student’s professional development this term. This is to be expected but it is skewed in the direction of talent. Nobody is a weak as students in my previous classes. The attrition rate has been higher than expected but in both cases the students realized that the work would require more time than they were able to invest. I have two on the borderline and I hope they will stick with it. Today I did a couple of reviews and went out in the yard and did some work. Last year I planted several strawberry plants in a shrub border and they have really spread. The past two morning Linda and I have gotten to eat a plump strawberry and it was delicious. Last night I finished book four of Game of Thrones. George Martin is a rather dark writer and a lot of his books are dark indeed. Linda loaded up book 5 on my Kindel and I guess I will curl up with it when I finish this blog. I have to know what happened to some of the characters I have grown attached to. After finishing in the yard I was bored and Linda and I went out to the model airplane flying field. I do like to see the RC models fly and didn’t really expect to see anyone because the wind was blowing so hard. There was a member named Ron, who was there and he just soloed a couple weeks ago. He did well and despite the gusts didn’t crash while I was watching. Tomorrow I will take some more pictures and have something to go along with my blog. |
Stalking Artistic Excellence Ewell Gibbons, the famous naturalist, wrote an essay, stalking the Wild Asparagus. I have always liked a double play on words and his title amused me. Yesterday on our morning walk Linda picked a whole handful. It grows wild along the road and at this time of year people are out in hoards, walking the back lanes in search of it. We ate it last night for supper and it was delicious. In the EWW class I posted my example submission and example critique. I try and use examples wherever I can. The down-side is that a student might read one and conclude… That Percy is not such a hot-shot writer, if this is any example of his work… The upside is that they are unlikely to be overwhelmed and will more likely conclude… Shucks! I can do what he is doing and maybe even a bit better! The pictures seem to be boosting my blog views. I have been running about 50 views a day but since the photographs it has nearly doubled. I guess it proves the adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” It is either that or readers like the analogies between figurines and writing. Well art is art. Today I am showing a close-up of the right side of the desk. Yesterday I took a figure we picked up on the Kansas trip and put her into a green pin cushion base. Let me talk a little about this piece. If you can see the eyes they are extremely well done. So is the composition and the glaze, except for the hat. I hate the hat and am tempted to cut it off with a Dremmel saw and fill the hole in with auto body filler (Bondo). Women used to use these dolls in their sewing and the old porcelain ones are very collectable. This one however is not old. She is too good to be true and I thought so at the time. Then down the road I saw another that was an exact copy. That is too much of a coincidence and I suspect this cushion figure was reproduced recently in a studio shop in Europe or Asia. The fact remains however that the figure is of high quality and shows that knock offs are often rendered better than the real antiques. The search for excellence in natural foods, figurines and writing is an unending task and it is amazing how our writing is influenced by the beauty of the environment and the full range of artistic media and accomplishments. |
 Left Side of the Desk One of the things I have noticed in reading the Game of Thrones series by George Martin is that he uses essentially the same approach to novel writing that I am following in the Exploratory Writing Workshop. That is that his chapters are a series of vignettes. What he does is combine what I describe as character vignettes. This approach has some strong advantages. First it gives readers a close look at his characters and there are many in his novel. Second it takes the reader to many story worlds giving a reader a broader scope. Finally by having several stories working at the same time he has more than one central character. By focusing on character rather than story line he is not hard to follow despite the large number of characters and different settings. For a writer there is ‘oft the chicken or the egg question which translates, does the story beget the characters or the other way around? For George Martin I suspect it all begins with characters. That is the first Lesson in the EWW and by the end of the week I should see what the students have come up with. Today I am showing the figurines on left end of my workstation. I think of them as characters and no single one is particularly remarkable. Most cost less that $10 and all were under than $100. Some were broken when I found them but each one had a unique quality which I call the “Wow!” factor. That is the overriding criteria I use in buying a figurine. Most are female but one is a cowboy. For some reason I get more WOW out of the female ones. Anyway when I see them together it has a synergizing effect almost like they are trying to tell me stories. Part of what I stress in the workshop is using imagery and writers are drawn to different mediums…For some it is statues, others fine art and still others photos. Publishers understand the importance of this and come up with some compelling images on book covers. In the future I want to share some of my writing imagery with blog readers and talk about some of the aspects of the figures I find compelling. Eventually interest in my ramblings will begin to wane (I will see it in the views) and I’ll move on to other aspects of what interests me. |
 Know who this is? Images are a great help to me in character development. They give my subconscious something to latch onto. Today’s image is a well know Icon of the screen. She is a Resin Figurine which is a rather common type used in everything from toy soldiers to action figures. Many would distain to call these “Figurines” at all but quality comes in all forms of media. When I examine a figurine the first thing I look at is the treatment of the eyes. It is in the eyes that a thread of the spirit is captured by the artist and imprisoned. Next I look at the overall composition. All compositions are not equal even by the same artist. If I don’t like the composition I don’t go any further. The same is true of writers. Sometimes they hit the lotto and sometimes reading them is a waste of time. Then there are the interludes which can be incredible boredom spiked by writing that blows your socks off. It is like a term paper my brother once submitted with an introduction and conclusion stuffed with meaningless filler in the body. This is what I am finding in book four of the Game of Thrones. There is too much back story and little that moves the story along. Still I know that things will pick up eventually but does that justify several hours of tepid reading? After composition I look at painting. Even on a resin model sometimes the painting is incredible. It is sort of like Shakespeare who had some rather thin story lines but his monologues and dialogues were then and still are captivating. I entered my Play Andromache into a College Contest where the winner gets a production. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Wouldn’t it be something to see a play I wrote actually produced? Yesterday I bought a Chinese piece at Princeton for $1. It is really quite nice and the detail is exquisite. The lady who sold it said she it came in a lot with some other things and wasn’t “Her Cup of Tea.” Chinese and Middle Eastern figures are full of that elusive spirit. Those from India of the girls dancing with a multitude of arms seem to exude it, compared to Western Art that, while often beautifully rendered, seems asleep by comparison. Their art can be seen in resin action figures produced for export and if you know what to look for there is excellence for a pittance on the dollar. What I am getting at that a work of literature must contain both the science and art of writing. I can help with the science but the art must come from the writer. Both are necessary and they must be combined in a way that brings together the synergism of both. |
 Trying to Keep my Eyes Open Several readers had trouble zooming in on the details of my writing workstation so I took some more pictures. I am having a hard time getting them sized right so the images will import to WDC. I think the key is that when my software asks me the maximum dimension I need to reply “300.” That seems to get the outside dimension of any one plane and also the size of 100. Finally I got a couple to transport. There was a comment on my Oscar Morten Dogs. Today I found another one and it is included in the close-up. Morten was amazing and his dog figures are exceptional even though he did horses and nudes as well. His nudes are rare and not nearly as impressive as his dogs. There is a lot of activity on my lounge and classroom forum. I hope this means that my students are busy. I have one, “WinnieKay,” who is an instructor at New Horizon’s Academy who has taken a term off to catch her breath and also take my course. She has been a real help and given me a host of good ideas. I am trying to keep up with them in order to update the workshop when it ends. I won’t really know much more than I already do until the first vignettes start coming in. That is always an exciting time. My daughter called and said my grandson finished 4th at Regionals and will be going to State in Track and Field in Kansas. He did better at Regionals than he did in the local qualifications. He’s only a sophomore in High School and will be competing in the state Championships…fancy that. I told him when I was visiting how to use his nose as a regulator when he runs. Pretty cheeky of me don’t you think? He was very polite, however, and listened without grinning too broadly. Today Linda and I went to Princeton where they have a big outdoor flea market in the summer. One never knows what might turn up in those piles of junk. Afterwards we went to the Blue Moon and had a French Dip sandwich. It was good and so was the cold slaw. I am tired today. Last night I finished book three of Game of Thrones. It was a heady reading experience. Anyone who wants to read some good writing needs to read these books. They are awesome. |
This is my workstation. What’s the Problem? I hate it when Microsoft does an update and you lose the document you are working on. That is one of the reasons I bought an Apple, even though I am not using it now. I am using an old laptop because it enables me to size and import a photograph to a size required in WDC images. I know the Apple can do this as well, however I haven’t figured it out yet. Tomorrow the EWW course will begin. I am starting to get the templates the students have submitted. Some get it more than others. I suppose that for many aspiring writers the focus is still on reading for pleasure. A writer needs to do this, certainly on a first read, but on a second needs to shift into some variation of the templating mode. By this I mean they need to not just enjoy a read but understand why they enjoyed it. This requires dissecting some of the components and spreading the parts on the examining table. It means gleaning several things. These are, the components that were used, the degree to which they were distributed and the art with which they are presented. It is like reading a sentence in grammar school and diagramming the parts. (UGH! You say. Admittedly it can be a bit of a sterile exercise but one that a writer needs to undertake, leading to the realization that writing is as much a science as a stream of conscious from our imagination.) I remember teaching at the Command and General Staff College--- the beginning of the Commander’s Estimate of the Situation. It is a problem solving process which begins with the definition of the problem. To show the student how important this step is we gave a vignette showing a young officer caught up in a typical stream of events and asked… “What’s the problem?” I remember that as many times as I handed out the vignette, I never got the same problem statement twice. It is the same with templating. Most of the student’s sort of get it but no two students get it the same. Today I have a treat for my readers. I am including a photo of my desk and the top shelf is full of figurines. Hanging above is a print by a famous artist. If you are a fine arts person you will not doubt recall seeing examples of his work. I love these images and use them in character development. Unfortunately you can’t look as close as I can but in each the artist succeeded in capturing what I perceive to be a sliver of the spirit of the subject. This is much the same thing as a writer capturing the spirit of a character. Anyway I like to start with an image and go from there. |
| The Trip Home Coming home from Kansas we tried to take it easy. My allergy came back and my face and ankles swelled. It wasn’t too bad though. We stopped in a number of antique shops and as usual I looked for good high quality porcelain that is cracked or broken. This is the only way I can really afford the quality, high-end stuff. I took a picture of my desk with all the pieces I had acquired in the past year but my camera is 16 pixels and the photos didn’t want to load. Today I will try loading them on my older laptops which have older edit software that might be more WDC friendly. I might have to use an older camera. I would like to start using more images on my blogs. My students are starting to send in their templates. I remember in grammar school, my teacher chiding about my sentence diagraming. Templating is sort of like that. You try and figure out what component the writer is using in a given sentence. It is a basic tool a writer needs to become familiar with in learning the difference between pleasure reading and understanding the utility of the tools a writer is using. For some it is an exercise in frustration and for others provides some useful insights. I have found that a teacher in an E-Class has to try and help each student develop to the extent possible. What this means is that for some the help you provide might be termed, basic , advanced and very advanced. You identify what you perceive to be their most obvious weaknesses and get them to do some things each week to work on these shortcomings. While there are certain things emphasized each week, the ability of the students to grasp and apply them, varies depending on their education, experience and talent. Everybody is at a different point in their professional development and I’m challenged to help each one where they most need to improve. I guess what I’m trying to say is that one size doesn’t fit all and I need to understand early on the strengths and weaknesses of each student. I am taking an art class approach where the teacher circulates and tries to provide specific guidance relative to the projects the students are involved in. That seems to work best for a workshop class. When we arrived home Felix was nowhere around. Today she showed up and is curled next to me on the bed. I know I am allergic to cat dander but it doesn’t seem to bother me if I don’t pet her. Felix isn’t all that touchy feely a cat and so we seem to get along OK. |
| Flashbacks and Demons Today I will be working on my grade book for the EWW class. Is that a contradiction in terms (conundrum) or what? The class is ungraded and I’m working on my grade book. The reason I have one is to keep myself posted on all the things I am learning about my students to keep them vivid and distinct in my mind. In a classroom, where they are seated and in front of you, it is easy enough, however, in an E-class it is a bit more of a problem. This evening will be my Grandson’s graduation ceremony. It is an opportunity for the family to get together and we have had a great time the past couple of days. I can’t believe how different my daughter’s sons are and the young men they are developing into. Tomorrow and Tuesday we will be traveling back to Wisconsin so I won’t be doing any blogs those days. I only mention this in the outside chance anyone out there will wonder where I am. My daughter says that people don’t really notice all that much what we do. Often I will have a flashback on something I said that was inappropriate and cringe. My daughter says, “Don’t do that! Nobody was probably paying attention to begin with…. Forget it!” It is good advice but I still cringe when the past creeps unexpected onto the video of my imagination. The example she gives is a cocktail party. Everybody is concerned about how they look and nobody pays any real mind to what everyone else is wearing…. Unless it is particularly different or revealing… However, their focus tends to be on themselves and nobody really pays that much attention to what you are saying or wearing unless you really go to the extreme. And yet we come home and analyze everything we said, thinking that others were really listening. She calls it a “Conceit” when we worry about what others think when really they don’t notice or could care less. There’s some truth to that…. Still it’s hard to let go of the demons we create for ourselves. |
| My Grandson’s First Book Review I was at a loss for words for my blog this morning and I asked for my grandson to help me come up with something. He is in the seventh grade and told me the following story. I asked my mom if she could help me with a book project. She said “Sure…. Start out with the power-point,” and so I did… A PowerPoint presentation is a kind of Micro-Soft Office app that allows you to make a slide show. The idea my mom and me come up with was to make the presentation look like a book. So we made the cover look sort of like a book. It was red and gold. The book that I used was Marley and Me and I thought it was a very interesting book. My brothers recommended it and I thought--- why don’t I read it. Actually I had put the homework off and had read Marley and Me at the last minute-- In about forty-five minutes. I knew I was going to need a title, intro, plot, characters and recommendations. So I prepared them the way I was supposed to. In my basement I had to work on my mother’s computer, and suddenly as I was typing, wasps came flowing out of my mom’s desk. It wasn’t a big swarm, just three to five wasps. I quickly ran upstairs and my parents gave me a fly swatter. When I went downstairs it was as if the wasps never existed. So I went to work and thought to myself, “I guess I’m OK now.” And then a bigger swarm comes out of the desk and I start to swat and swat and swat and finally there was only one left and I took off my shoe and threw it at him. With all the wasps dead I could finally return to my project. So for the title I made it have the book cover on the front, and for the introduction, introduced the starting of the book. Then I did the part that was one of my favorites. This was the plot. After explaining I put these dogs to circling around the page, by using the editing buttons that allows you to choose certain effects. After the plot I did setting, which was mostly about New York. For recommendations I gave my honest opinion and said that I recommend the book to dog lovers and girls. After doing the project I shifted to the next level, which was presenting to my parents the presentation, and they thought it was amazing. With that done I went to school the next morning and realized I had four hours to wait before I could give my presentation. When the time arrived, I gave the presentation and the students loved it. They particularly liked how I looked professional in the tuxedo I was wearing. This told me that I did a good job and probably I should do more power points when I did my book reports. However, the teacher told us we could not use the same formats more than once. So for the next project I decided to use Popsicle sticks and cut out pictures. That is another story. |
| Hate me… Hate my Dog Well last night I got to see my #2 grandson run track. I think it was the two-mile he ran and finished 5th in a six High School event. He is only a sophomore and is more of a cross-country that a track and field runner. He floats like I did when I was his age, only better. (My floating days are behind me.) Linda is stressed out and the best I can do is give her room. She was raised in a very controlling family and she had to become independent fast when she met me. It has always been hard for her to spread her wings and soar, although somebody taught our daughters well. (Maybe they learned on their own.) They are very independent and comfortable anywhere they set down. I think I’ll go and read my book, maybe take a nap. If I sound bored I am… bored to tears. I have been taking long walks and they are leaving me physically worn out. That is good. I am always afraid on trips that I’ll put on too much weight. There are nine students in my class this term. I can’t wait for it to get started. Actually it already has with the templating requirement. The first submission I received needed a bit more work. One of my students is a fellow instructor at NHA. She has been giving me a lot of good ideas and advice. In the military I came to value and rely upon good advice from smart people. I was not exactly retarded in my own right, but learning to listen to what others offered, weigh it and apply it where appropriate gave me an edge that carried me well beyond my level of competence. I used to believe and still do that “All wisdom does not reside in a single mind. Surprisingly many people find it hard to apply the wisdom and ideas of others and suffer as a consequence. This is not to say that some of it is laid aside after careful consideration, but rather to weigh each morsel, regardless of its source and apply the good stuff accordingly. This is particularly true regarding people you don’t particularly care for. Ever heard the saying, “Hate me, hate my dog…” Well many think that way and regardless of how good an idea the “Hated One” offers, it is rejected out of hand. Then the fools do the direct opposite. Is that human nature or what? I think I’ll go to work on setting up my grade book. That should be a productive way to spend some of these excess hours. |
| Sign-up Day for NHA Today was registration day for New Horizon’s Academy and I got six students. Two were students I have had before (Is that an endorsement or what?) I expect there will be a few more over the next few days, however if there aren’t then six is a good number for the workshop. In the welcome letter I ask them to template a chapter from a favorite novel and turn that in before the term officially starts. Was that a sneaky way to cram in more material without having to cut into the course? I hope Karen doesn’t get wise and chide me  I had to go into my lessons and revise the dates for this term. I have the dates posted all over the place and I probably could have gotten by with just the Lesson numbers in most cases… but hindsight is always sharper than foresight. We go to Kansas tomorrow to see my Grandson’s high school graduation I am going to have my daughter show me how to take a picture with a digital camera and download it into my computer. Then I want to take a picture of my desk, like Karen has, and show everybody what it looks like. I have twenty-one figures on the shelf that I consider “Grade Two.” Still I love to look at them and each one evokes a recollection and special sentiment. From left to right there is a girl I think came off a lamp who is amazingly well rendered. She is striking a classical hand and arm pose. Behind her I have one of these wooden artist manikins about the same size miming her pose. Holding my reference books on writing are a pair of painted bronze romantic figures of a young man and woman. Left front are two women representing prewar and occupied Japan figurines.Then I have the two “Nudies” that are not nude but wearing bathing suits and sitting in an oyster shell. In the middle is a resin girl from Asia that are popping up everywhere. I practice on her before taking on my miniature soldiers. Then there is a Capodimonte angel playing a fiddle. Waiting to be painted is my nude from Thailand. On the right I have an action figure already painted of a well endowed Amazon and next to her an unpainted Marx Cowboy with a broken lariat. Then is a big bisque cupie like doll I will be practicing on and finally a “Nudie” by a table used to hold a writing implement. Can you visualize all that? I think I will check out the ports of my new students and see how far along they are in their professional development. Many of my past students have been remarkably advanced and I hope this is the case once more, however I don’t want to count my hatchlings before I hear them crow. ( I once heard a truism that sounded remarkably similar to that one--- I bet you can guess what it is |
Poems, Prayers and Promises. “What do you get when you fall in love-- Enough germs to catch pneumonia. After you do they’ll never phone ‘ya….” I always liked those lines. Imagine rhyming “pneumonia” with “Phone ‘ya.” My favorite poet is Rudyard Kipling. He wrote some great stuff, but the gate keepers of contemporary poetry have panned him. They call him a racist because he used the “N” word. Read Gunga Din and tell me a racist wrote that poem. Hesiod said that those who can’t create excellence or know it when they see it are worthless. My wife hates it when I draw hot water from the house and take it outside to mop up the garage floor. I tend to slop it about as I carry it outside. So I use the eye on the gas grill to heat it. By “eye” visualize my grill. It has a cast iron cover over the grid to cook the meat, but it also has a gas eye for things like heating up other foods. (Like a pot of beans to go with the hamburgers) So I use that eye to heat up a galvanized bucket of water that I get from the 55 Gallon drum under my roof’s down-spout. When it is on the verge of boiling I pour it into a mop bucket atop the degreasing liquid. My garage/shop is cluttered at times but I try and keep the floor clean. Linda chides me often that I am slow to finish many of the projects I start. So they accumulate. She laughed when she pointed it out yesterday because she does the same thing. In my old age my attention order deficiency is a greater concern than Alzheimer’s. Linda has me taking a pill to prevent that… yeah, right. Yesterday we had our annual cemetery meeting and I gave the treasurer’s report. I hate that job but the steering committee is not large. I did get them to break my job into two positions. One is the treasurer and the new position is someone to coordinate with the director of the Local Funeral Home as well as the grave digger about the precise location for digging a grave. I spend altogether too much time with my tape measure saying “dig here.” It is an old cemetery that dates to before the Civil War and it hasn’t exactly been maintained by stewards who were surveyors. The lines are not “Dress Right Dressed” and tend to meander about from one family plot to the next. It isn’t exactly like Arlington Cemetery. There is one marble headstone that is elegantly carved marking the grave of a young girl who died at seven. I can see the family, in my imagination, gathering around the spot eighty years ago and feel their grief. I try and not get too close. There is a spiritual dimension to life that our ancestors knew that has been pushed into the background by all this science we embrace today. That is not all bad because spirits are frightening but pretending there is nothing to them is ignorant. Just because we haven’t figured out what they are is no reason to dismiss them. |
| Euphemisms One of my goals for this weekend is to be caught up on Book 2, Clash of Kings, which is the second of a three part book written by George Martin. I really like the way it is written even though it is a bit outside the window of conventional writing wisdom. Martin’s books contain an earthy sort of sensual prose that is almost “clinical.” There is no aspect of the physicality of intimacy that he fails to include, however it is lacking in the spiritual aspect. By spiritual I mean how the crudeness of the various acts is redeemed by a hormonal euphoria that raises the base to the sublime. He sticks to a stark imagery keeping the reader aware of what is happening while showing some restraint once he feels the scene is grasped by the reader. I met an RC modeler who is interested in First Person View flying. He invited me over to his house and showed me a shop full of models. He had just undergone a divorce and is still suffering the transition. The things we take for granted… Unfortunately “love” does just not simply take wing and the relationships we form go deep and painful recollections remain long after. I know I take my marriage for granted at times but I try and find ways to include my wife in certain common activities. I know that sounds like a dreadful and sterile characterization but a husband and wife need to tend the bonds they share as the heat begins to taper off. What a marriage is left with is hopefully two people who still like one another enough to find and share common interests outside the bedroom…. Not that that ever stops altogether. Why am I talking about this? Because I felt my new friend’s pain… it was like a cloud of oppression and while I tried to be a supportive caring human being… was glad when it was time to come home. Linda and I will be going to our grandson’s graduation in Kansas next week. How the time flies. We had to make sure our dogs have the right immunizations to get admitted into the Kennel (Spa?) One lady was holding a dog that I suspect had “Anaplasmosis” which is a tick born disease. She was crying and I suspect the dog was about to get euthanized (Put down). We use a lot of euphemisms (put down, spa) these days to cushion the jolts and hard reality of life. I hate to think about losing my dogs but have been through that as all pet owners must. Today I will be working in the shop and yard cleaning things up. I got the split rail fence fixed and the tractor is running fine now. It is overcast and rainy and cold outside. A great day to curl up with a book, but that kind of luxury can be habit forming and there is a long task list that goes with living in the country. |
| Resin Models and Restorations Today Linda and I took our walk. It usually stretches 3-4 miles. She is a good walker. Today to add a little variety I led her off the road and we went over a bluff. Going up a bluff is tiring and my sweet wife shot me some dirty looks and I heard a lot of muttering under her breath. Then she quit talking to me altogether. That is usually a sign that she is ticked off. We have a golden doodle. A mix between a standard poodle and a golden retriever. She is pure white and we call her Honey. She has really started to muscle up since we started our ranging walks. Our old Labrador is bushed when we get home but Honey is just hitting her stride. I am the treasurer of a Cemetery Association. It was founded around the Civil War and many of my family are buried there. Tomorrow is our annual meeting and I had to get the report written. I hate the job and keep hoping that someone will volunteer to take it. I took accounting when I went back to tech school and hated it. Everything has to be accounted for down to the penny… imagine that…. Spending half a day looking for a frackin penny. Anyway I do something I call an annual adjustment. If I can get within a dollar I adjust to the number on the bank statement. I am hoping to make somebody mad so I can dump the job on them, but that is an old trick and the other members are a wily bunch. Yesterday we went antiquing and I found a couple of pieces but what I was looking for were some porcelain or bisque that was damaged and cheap. I need some things to practice my airbrushing and restoration techniques on. Anyway on the shelf on a second hand store there was a Jesus carrying a boy across the sands, leaving two footprints….You know the story… “Why were there only two footprints if we were together the prayerful one asks and the response… because I was carrying you…“ It was marked “Free” and had a fractured base making it a perfect candidate for my remedial skills. I turned it over it happened to be a piece of Lenox, bone china. To restore it I first take some auto body glaze and fill in the cracks. Then I primer it with enamel and wash it. Next I will airbrush the flesh parts and begin hand painting from there. This big stuff is much easier to hand paint than some of the dinky miniature soldiers I often do.. I also found a cowboy which was an unpainted resin piece. It was cheap because the lasso was broken off. Finally there was this rather large qupie like doll. Anyway I will be practicing on these before I try doing my expensive resin nude. On U-tube there are tutorials on how do this stuff but that will only take you so far. Just because you are a good reader does not mean you can become a good writer. It’s the same with doing models or restorations. It takes a lot of experience and a deft touch. A modicum of talent doesn’t hurt either. |
| Walker Recall Election Many across the country have no doubt heard about the Recall Election in Wisconsin, involving Governor Scott Walker. What many don’t realize is that Walker may soon cease to be a contender. Let me explain how the recall election will work. There are two phases. In phase one both parties list candidates for consideration. Once the field is narrowed to one Democrat and one Republican there is a final election in phase 2. The way politics work around here, voters can vote for both a Democratic and Republican candidate. Now, many might assume that Walker will be the only Republican on the ballot… after all the election is all about his recall. However there is also a “Pretender” who has gotten his name on the Republican ballot. So when a voter steps into the booth he/she first votes for a Republican choice and then for a Democratic. What is bad about this is that many Republican voters think Scott Walker is the only Republican candidate. They don’t know about this other guy who has slipped in quietly. Come Election Day voters will get to vote for both parties. The Democrats will likely vote for the Republican pretender and if there isn’t a good Republican turnout it could well happen that Walker will not even be on the phase 2 ballot. Is that not the most convoluted thing you ever heard of? In the event of such an outcome, and it is not unlikely, we will see another example of “Gamesmanship” trumping reason. |
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