tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809788992699967302024-03-18T23:23:36.592-04:00ScribletsA scrambled scribble of hodgepodge scraps, ragbag thoughts, an all-around mishmash about pens, inks, books and…well, whateverBleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.comBlogger1027125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-36087668858926905372016-07-23T23:59:00.000-04:002016-07-24T09:52:49.274-04:00A Bridge Party of OJ<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCd40p_fUKnY6nNyHqmkF0d8gnuPpT3nrMVVzVsIfdUdmj-apXefdPnGlhe5vN-TKDXetgEuT4wdgMQ0jcHpGCMZvSK8Yx9GHF3sz4rYLlWS7u4e37zi0OrxL2HJvWSaiC-wq_UhvbMdqB/s1600/Hot+Dog-Works.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCd40p_fUKnY6nNyHqmkF0d8gnuPpT3nrMVVzVsIfdUdmj-apXefdPnGlhe5vN-TKDXetgEuT4wdgMQ0jcHpGCMZvSK8Yx9GHF3sz4rYLlWS7u4e37zi0OrxL2HJvWSaiC-wq_UhvbMdqB/s1600/Hot+Dog-Works.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 24px; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 24px; line-height: normal;">N</span>ot long ago I was behind an elderly woman at a fast food snack bar and overheard her order to the teenage boy working there. Listening to what went on between the woman and the boy was a funny and curious example of the generation gap and the slang that has grown up around food and food orders. The woman wanted a hot dog. Easy enough, until the boy asked what she wanted on the hot dog. “Give me the works,” she answered. For a few beats the boy stared blankly at the woman and then, as if she had not heard his question, repeated, “What do you want on your hot dog?” The woman looked at the boy as if he were an idiot and barked, “The works, I said! Give me the works!” Flustered and totally in the dark, the boy excused himself and walked over to the girl working in the kitchen. The woman looked back at me and asked, “What? What’s the problem? Am I speaking French?” The girl appeared in place of the boy and sweetly asked, “I’m sorry. What would you like on your hot dog?” Really put out at this point, the woman snapped, “What’s with you people? Do you understand English?” Figuring it was time to intercede, I leaned forward and explained that the woman would like to have everything on her hot dog, whatever relish, mustard or topping was available. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
Thinking later about this misunderstanding, I recalled a time when a group of us had a custom of eating Sunday breakfasts at a particular diner in Los Angeles. The diner (some called it a coffee shop) was a popular spot on La Cienega Boulevard called Ships that lasted from 1968 to 1996 before being torn down. It was one of those boomerang-shaped places with a futuristic neon sign that served American favorites at reasonable prices. Most times we had breakfast at Ships we were served by the same waitress, a jolly, bustling woman with the diner-typical name of Thelma. Boy, did she have a colorful vocabulary of slang to describe their menu. Four glasses of orange juice was “a bridge party of OJ” and once when I asked for some syrup for my pancakes she told a passing bus boy to bring some “motor oil” to the table and to put some rollups (silverware in a rolled napkin) on table 12. It took us a few Sundays with Thelma to figure out only a small amount of the shouted slang passing between the waitresses and cooks.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibGTZWBCke7MSf9Rfa5HAZIQDCQr866whq_GNHRyGBNaLDsYP1pCU2-SiNKT3gOrUOpY78B9v37CFO2OE7swWXQiaRiHoa_Sh6-hk4kHUZtJqd2OtA9UBafhn_zjDQcGjME-LgZWx68KJF/s1600/Ships.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibGTZWBCke7MSf9Rfa5HAZIQDCQr866whq_GNHRyGBNaLDsYP1pCU2-SiNKT3gOrUOpY78B9v37CFO2OE7swWXQiaRiHoa_Sh6-hk4kHUZtJqd2OtA9UBafhn_zjDQcGjME-LgZWx68KJF/s1600/Ships.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; line-height: normal;">
Food and the language we use to talk about it is often weird and interesting. American food vernacular was largely shaped by the working lingo of the waitresses and cooks in diners that spread across America in the 1940s and 50s and the earliest examples of their lingo go as far back as the nineteenth century. The men and women working in those diners used a vivid slang to communicate a customer’s order to the kitchen, <span style="font-kerning: none;">expressions that were lighthearted, at times nasty, occasionally biblical and often just plain screwy</span><span style="color: #252525; font-kerning: none;">, but in many cases served as mnemonic devices for cooks and staff. It may vary from place to place across the country, but you will rarely if ever hear this type of slang used outside the US.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #252525; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #252525; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">American diners are a purely American invention that grew out of the early twentieth century lunch wagons that roamed the streets in many New England cities. Owners of these lunch wagons eventually got the idea of making their wagons into stationary lunch spots that came to be called diners. By the 1920s many of the diners began taking on an art deco look which by the thirties became modern and streamlined. The post WW2 years were a golden age for diners which saw interior decor with</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"> mirrored walls, stainless steel accessories, formica countertops in pink and beige, black and white checkerboard or tangerine and charcoal.</span> By the late 1940s the American classic diner in all its curves, shiny chrome touches and glowing neon had arrived.</div>
</div>
<div style="color: #252525; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMRMeukzGf5L2kg8vGeZLmbRy1bNhc2QTq8zEptvuYIHZ_Q-WIKe0tUT5jqpxwj8D6w_ObMKyJly5WO23IholZcc0We78xPwqlri0cQOdRJ-PMtL3dfieBV59aRDQFp_154yxkUt0S0HCb/s1600/Diner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMRMeukzGf5L2kg8vGeZLmbRy1bNhc2QTq8zEptvuYIHZ_Q-WIKe0tUT5jqpxwj8D6w_ObMKyJly5WO23IholZcc0We78xPwqlri0cQOdRJ-PMtL3dfieBV59aRDQFp_154yxkUt0S0HCb/s1600/Diner.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
Soon, customers were hearing shouted orders of, “A radio, a 51, a stretch and squeeze it!” code words telling the cook to prepare a tuna sandwich on toast, hot chocolate, a Coke, and to make it fast. Such colorful language has all but disappeared in this age when servers named not Thelma but Sage or Brittany, carry electronic pads with pictures and names of the menu items that in one touch communicate a customer’s order straight to the kitchen. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
For me at least, these “dinerisms” are a sad lose to our tradition of eating out, a cultural heritage hugely more interesting than a disconnected face focused on a row of electric buttons that just might overlook a diner’s request to ”hold the onions” <span style="font-family: "lucida grande";">and leave no customers smiling over a dish bizarrely nicknamed, </span>a “cowboy with spurs.”</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; line-height: normal;">
Here are a few of the old slang terms now mostly lost from American restaurant culture:</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Flop two</i> / two fried eggs over easy</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Eve with the lid on</i> / apple pie</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>High and dry</i> / a dry sandwich with no condiments</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Put out the lights and cry</i> / liver & onions</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Wreck a pair </i>/ two scrambled eggs</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Abbott and Costello</i> / franks and beans</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Fifty-five</i> / root beer</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Bowl of red</i> / bowl of chili</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Cremate a blue, bikini cut</i> / dark toasted blueberry muffin cut into quarters</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Nervous pudding</i> / Jello</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Beans to go </i>/ coffee to take out</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Black bottom</i> / chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Bloodhound in the hay</i> / hot dog with sauerkraut</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Brown down</i> / wheat toast</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<i>Family reunion</i> / chicken and egg sandwich</div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
And my personal favorite diner breakfast…a western omelet with French fries, or in the lingo of Thelma, <i>a cowboy with spurs</i>.</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-37539611879084381802016-07-09T18:07:00.000-04:002016-07-09T18:07:11.436-04:00Neighbor from Hell<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 24px; line-height: normal;">E</span>veryone is familiar with the ads that these days populate nine out of ten pages on the Internet, popping up and jiggling or blinking, sometimes expanding to overlay the entire page and drive you mad. Last week I came upon a book advertised in one of these pop-ups and while most times I want to scream, in this case something made me click on the ad. It turned out to be the most satisfying page link of the month, introducing me to a book by Swedish writer Fredrik Backman titled <i>A Man Called Ove</i>. Backman is a blogger and journalist who published this first book in 2012. An English translation followed in 2013 and the cover of the book now boasts translations into twenty-five languages. A stage version of the book opened in January 2015 in Stockholm and a film was released in December of the same year. Backman has published two additional novels since <i>A Man Called Ove</i>. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUoPt_YaVYGuRYFr6yUUJfvKWnRM55OvWwxnUIk1yfGdaXdCyl7q-rha4HB_Kr4HWEVFqTG7N342_TWjxZcZXdpSP-FZHddcwZKn5eVWnoFuIJqS69Ij1Y8yU02TZFBVHyXc79WgHPWY6_/s1600/A+Man+Called+Ove+novel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUoPt_YaVYGuRYFr6yUUJfvKWnRM55OvWwxnUIk1yfGdaXdCyl7q-rha4HB_Kr4HWEVFqTG7N342_TWjxZcZXdpSP-FZHddcwZKn5eVWnoFuIJqS69Ij1Y8yU02TZFBVHyXc79WgHPWY6_/s320/A+Man+Called+Ove+novel.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
The main character of <i>A Man Called Ove</i> is a 59 year-old extra salty curmudgeon, a crusty Jack Nicholson type of cantankerous and antisocial old bulldog with little patience for the ways of others, especially his neighbors. And then one day a boisterous new family moves in next door, an Iranian woman named Parvaneh with her Swedish husband and two girls. It is a hard road at first but the feisty and undeterred Parvaneh eventually succeeds in making Ove a friend and with her “interference” in his life opens him up to expose a heart we never suspected.</div>
<div style="color: #252525; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #252525; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ove (o-veh) is a man who views life in a black or white, right or wrong framework. He has unwavering principles, strict routines, and a hair trigger when it comes to other people. He dislikes most of the people in his neighborhood and is often ‘the neighbor from hell.’ He is annoyed by computers, iPads and cell phones and disparages anyone who can’t repair his own car or broken radiator. But there’s always a backstory and behind the crabby exterior is a very human story of fortitude, loneliness and loss. One day Parvaneh and her family move in next door—and accidentally crumple Ove’s mailbox with their trailer. This provides the doorway into a comic and touching story of unexpected friendship, one that shakes a cranky old man and the neighborhood residents right down to the roots.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #323333; font-kerning: none;">Ove’s wife Sonia was the person who brought color to his world but Sonia died four years ago and all that color has drained away. She was the love of his life and her absence, along with his forced retirement has Ove making plans to join Sonia by way of a noose. The only problem is every time he’s on the verge of making it happen someone knocks on the door. </span>Backman has created a marvelous cast of diverse characters to surround Ove, and while none of them is invited they one by one weave themselves into his life.<span style="color: #323333; font-kerning: none;"> </span>The book is easy to read, filled with colorful characters and funny from start to finish. What surprises most is that under the rough exterior, Ove has unexpected understanding and acceptance of those with marginal or alternate lifestyles. We see this part of his character in his treatment of the heavyweight Jimmy, bad boy Adrian and gay Mirsad. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
If you’re looking to be charmed, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-Called-Ove-Novel/dp/1476738025">A Man Called Ove</a></i> is the perfect book, and one that offers a thoughtful reflection of love and loss and the profound impact one life can have on others. The bonus is that it comes with a big dose of laughter.</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-91188330617408044122016-01-28T14:00:00.000-05:002016-01-28T14:00:00.143-05:00The Eye of the Camera<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlnw2875Rf5aY_ep-8KWecMPtqICufXv7GNC1CwrXH_lQlaBN5kCYkOE9zXy_Drjr58r3pK8ucebAB5CrWqAk_YEOqKGmLyi352y2L3H_7bWOOEX8raTEFVzIJFws59IGAzoazZC4XGOt8/s1600/Wakui+10.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlnw2875Rf5aY_ep-8KWecMPtqICufXv7GNC1CwrXH_lQlaBN5kCYkOE9zXy_Drjr58r3pK8ucebAB5CrWqAk_YEOqKGmLyi352y2L3H_7bWOOEX8raTEFVzIJFws59IGAzoazZC4XGOt8/s400/Wakui+10.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 24px; line-height: normal;">W</span>e all have memories of special places. For one it’s a particular spot in the old hometown, and for another it may be the jungles of Borneo or a high school trip to New York. The recollections of places we’ve spent a part of our lives, be it long or short, are not mere static images frozen in the imagination but something often enriched by the passage of years. This happens especially when memories of a place are pleasant and characterized by a happy time of life. Over time the memories become romanticized and take on an aura of specialness that becomes almost holy. At least that’s always how it’s been with me.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZpLfHqqVKJLxFYZHBXCyJzPSnnHGwBH7mNMIsDam-YNkKOuiWLZPfjWI3NMhU7t6cZRRje_Ap-ebexAltflShJxJD3X3wYxMOW1skQ9Om-B0lRKMnmcuvaiVy2bPxVlCWwXpis7drt-5N/s1600/Wakui+9.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZpLfHqqVKJLxFYZHBXCyJzPSnnHGwBH7mNMIsDam-YNkKOuiWLZPfjWI3NMhU7t6cZRRje_Ap-ebexAltflShJxJD3X3wYxMOW1skQ9Om-B0lRKMnmcuvaiVy2bPxVlCWwXpis7drt-5N/s400/Wakui+9.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
Businessmen stop for a bowl of noodles on the way home.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
Anyone who has spent some time flipping through the pages of Scriblets will know that once upon a time I lived in the faraway land of Japan. Seeing as how I spent more than a year and a day there, my memories of it are about as tactile as thought can be. But a funny thing happened. It wasn’t long before those aspects of life in Japan that had once bothered me—the packed trains, the crowds and constant dodging of oncoming bicycles, the bureaucracy—all these gradually turned sweet in memory and now I’m thinking, “God, how I miss the loud and constant chatter of five housewives over coffee!” All of it has been embellished and set fondly and romantically aglow by the yearning for a place in memory.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNt_Cu9uUFZJcwjr-iOs7PLeanCoTuPBITzwv9RFeYZz0MyNB532HRfbkMI2cVl-fSfx13Vr6_BFKerY68SPcfoVf6qHjHXzG2bjUI4lIO_9oHEhWPRfDGgiLIW3zFtY6YcdHRAdyGxJ2H/s1600/Wakui+8.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNt_Cu9uUFZJcwjr-iOs7PLeanCoTuPBITzwv9RFeYZz0MyNB532HRfbkMI2cVl-fSfx13Vr6_BFKerY68SPcfoVf6qHjHXzG2bjUI4lIO_9oHEhWPRfDGgiLIW3zFtY6YcdHRAdyGxJ2H/s400/Wakui+8.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
Early morning bicycle</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
The photographs of Masashi Wakui bring to life the city in my mind. Though they catalog actual places, Wakui’s photographs give Tokyo a surreal, cinematic quality. Photographed at night, mostly among the backstreets and alleyways of Shibuya and Shinjuku, in their neon richness the photos are almost kaleidoscopic in their portrayal of the city. Wakui’s photographs have been called, “big-budget anime come to life.” <span style="color: #323333; font-kerning: none;">It is the result of processing his photographs to give them the tinged look of oversaturated colors seen in Japanese anime—it is what some have begun calling the Masashi Wakui Look. Unlike other cities, light illuminates Tokyo at night to give it a dreamlike dystopian atmosphere and it is through this nocturnal city that Wakui’s camera eye wanders.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #323333; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBGJiIOQCsiWmmpy-Lbdmn3PfJui9OSKd2-UF0bOgtD7iPkt-xlhjYjbI4NCI5sOmS-03xDbL9MaTcMMdBqyMrIykLSV6LRSMwjWjBOQPDu1XtInF54Z3Cgg9jM6SUPFC_gIHyyta8b0WJ/s1600/Wakui+6.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBGJiIOQCsiWmmpy-Lbdmn3PfJui9OSKd2-UF0bOgtD7iPkt-xlhjYjbI4NCI5sOmS-03xDbL9MaTcMMdBqyMrIykLSV6LRSMwjWjBOQPDu1XtInF54Z3Cgg9jM6SUPFC_gIHyyta8b0WJ/s400/Wakui+6.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
3232-4301</div>
<div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #323333; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #323333; font-kerning: none;">Despite the many, many visitors to his Flicker and Tumblr pages and the popularity of his work, information about the photographer is hard to find. He is a self-taught photographer who wanders </span>the streets at night with high-performance compact cameras (Sony RX100 and Ricoh GR) in search of nighttime cityscapes. Perhaps it’s that he prefers to let his cameras do the talking and so remains in the background. Certainly a humble touch that his Tumblr account includes the brief phrase, <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Hiragino Sans'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">本当に馬鹿でした。</span>(“It’s just foolishness really.”) In fact, Wakui’s photographs are anything but and are marveled over by more than a few amateurs and professionals. You can find his work at <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://masa-photo.tumblr.com/">http://masa-photo.tumblr.com</a> and <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/megane_wakui/">https://www.flickr.com/photos/megane_wakui/</a></span></div>
<div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black;">Have a look. It’s a safe bet to say you will be fascinated by this man’s view of Tokyo.</span></div>
<div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZfys6_ekVjhbcZ6CYBXAEKLy33oy01eP9G_1KZIF5i-xOxFZe3mLdAFDbt3L0CujKsNs0K3eAwcy8v8pe5GxRaasdexV39EQNbkaa7LrFzjd1XZ4rrgok2TDQdxK_5mtFbGmM0qobsBqE/s1600/Wakui+3.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZfys6_ekVjhbcZ6CYBXAEKLy33oy01eP9G_1KZIF5i-xOxFZe3mLdAFDbt3L0CujKsNs0K3eAwcy8v8pe5GxRaasdexV39EQNbkaa7LrFzjd1XZ4rrgok2TDQdxK_5mtFbGmM0qobsBqE/s400/Wakui+3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
Alleyway Bar</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievTmU3vQdU9I61EGrMXu83sQRyc4OhkEtl96m9KgUhYGWkT_4XZeUTjQKcdu3Tz5lvhAfWase8Os_xc17CkN908UQG5H5dAxKbj6KzAltC4e4f2r1FoM_9VQDHr9AbowV4fjQqAosCaVM/s1600/Wakui+2.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievTmU3vQdU9I61EGrMXu83sQRyc4OhkEtl96m9KgUhYGWkT_4XZeUTjQKcdu3Tz5lvhAfWase8Os_xc17CkN908UQG5H5dAxKbj6KzAltC4e4f2r1FoM_9VQDHr9AbowV4fjQqAosCaVM/s400/Wakui+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
Shibuya Crossing, one of the most heavily trafficked crossings in the world</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA3hdxfkd_YPp4Fgt-3xdZ5Dj7fiGMWIeHnBXEQnnZCPv53r4ZwqU1LMBWZZrmdyTVihXJ9iFYybwcQKdRUYG6f1ol1Uz0cZr6yYYYCk3iMlR9etfe6F4Lkmsg6RbiRaTENKcuehd37Pet/s1600/Wakui+1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA3hdxfkd_YPp4Fgt-3xdZ5Dj7fiGMWIeHnBXEQnnZCPv53r4ZwqU1LMBWZZrmdyTVihXJ9iFYybwcQKdRUYG6f1ol1Uz0cZr6yYYYCk3iMlR9etfe6F4Lkmsg6RbiRaTENKcuehd37Pet/s400/Wakui+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
Rainy night in the neon jungle</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcXS8ivKsBehQYVuc1CcEYRl3-69CvyHHPX5Y3W7s3vAJA80TfT4wrGlm1E4Z-E6qQh8XrM5U5Dc-_0dLYI9bqQ0enomNQnz5tRlTJBPePPszDQb3XQMm1CjD202gR3sEMRwCf7o13m30w/s1600/Wakui+4.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcXS8ivKsBehQYVuc1CcEYRl3-69CvyHHPX5Y3W7s3vAJA80TfT4wrGlm1E4Z-E6qQh8XrM5U5Dc-_0dLYI9bqQ0enomNQnz5tRlTJBPePPszDQb3XQMm1CjD202gR3sEMRwCf7o13m30w/s400/Wakui+4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
The romance of dimly lit narrow streets colored by neon, streetlights and shadow.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPtqQw0Gwi0ZBkd-SSWZpeafPFuL3pwVb8_XGLBsxnlYB6duV3X3teUQIDmZDkpfc-F6teRTIdMCzvz4fQbVitgqJMkFA_c1sf2A8jK4GXPHdSDtCwKwbR25148oPtd21eklDAdXaFNZxV/s1600/Wakui+5.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPtqQw0Gwi0ZBkd-SSWZpeafPFuL3pwVb8_XGLBsxnlYB6duV3X3teUQIDmZDkpfc-F6teRTIdMCzvz4fQbVitgqJMkFA_c1sf2A8jK4GXPHdSDtCwKwbR25148oPtd21eklDAdXaFNZxV/s400/Wakui+5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
Early morning under the wires</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCR-meUI3l6JldH3No10iN5Hzt2vBXacZgDwZslJuUxymuGMXdSvbU7OBCloJ0FvLHGcKI7Fvm0vn2jj56rWElP-af9dhFGLQjF4Or1MqQoD-d3aZu_61XgLLzeteRhltAhfE9ChVEJqvV/s1600/Wakui+7.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCR-meUI3l6JldH3No10iN5Hzt2vBXacZgDwZslJuUxymuGMXdSvbU7OBCloJ0FvLHGcKI7Fvm0vn2jj56rWElP-af9dhFGLQjF4Or1MqQoD-d3aZu_61XgLLzeteRhltAhfE9ChVEJqvV/s400/Wakui+7.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
Soul Joint</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-77305220869356777532015-08-26T12:13:00.000-04:002015-08-26T12:13:14.228-04:00Green Stamps & Necker Knobs<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">F</span>or one who enjoys reading, the best times come when stumbling upon a book and writer you never suspected would knock your socks off and realizing he has authored a long list of titles you can look forward to reading your way through. Always late to the party, such was the case with me and Ivan Doig who passed away this past April leaving behind thirteen novels and five books of non-fiction. His last novel, published this month is a combination coming of age and road story titled <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Bus-Wisdom-A-Novel/dp/1594632022">Last Bus to Wisdom</a></i>. The protagonist of Doig’s tale is an 11 year-old boy named Donal “Red Chief” Cameron who just might be one of the freshest and most memorable juvenile characters in fiction since Huckleberry Finn.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXfD-btJSkB6D-3wJdGVggHI3JK6ILlMDg948lhCZIf9CynGVzK5ZVMtcCeX8sHot-IOK4rJwbGAkJlriduKwnmLVkbKYoNub2dxRD-weaNBvyXmEhQkqC0idirs_nSe6w2uiMHTeM_MzB/s1600/Wisdom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXfD-btJSkB6D-3wJdGVggHI3JK6ILlMDg948lhCZIf9CynGVzK5ZVMtcCeX8sHot-IOK4rJwbGAkJlriduKwnmLVkbKYoNub2dxRD-weaNBvyXmEhQkqC0idirs_nSe6w2uiMHTeM_MzB/s320/Wisdom.jpg" width="251" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In the summer of 1951 Donal unwillingly leaves Montana and his beloved Gram when she has some “female trouble” requiring surgery and is unable to look after him during her time of recuperation. Donal boards the dog bus, a Greyhound bound for Manitowoc, Wisconsin and the home of his great-aunt Kate. The trip is a memorable one for him, including a first kiss, a run-in with a thief and a scare from one ornery sheriff. He arrives in Manitowoc and is met by the odd couple of all time, Aunt Kate and Uncle Herman. It isn’t long before Donal catches on that his aunt is none to happy with him around and suddenly she is sending him back to Montana and into an orphanage. Donal boards another Greyhound, head filled with nightmares of life in a state home, but looks up to see the person sitting next to him is none other than a runaway Uncle Herman. Together they head west on the road to fun and adventure.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On the road together the two encounter a good sampling of both delight and disaster. Uncle Herman is a great fan of the wild west and anything related to cowboys and Indians and Donal assures him of finding a lot of both. Soon enough they are thick in the middle of it, decked out in Stetson hats purchased with the H&S Green Stamps Donal got for all his Greyhound miles—the 1950s answer to frequent flyer miles. They meet plenty of Indians and a rodeo full of cowboys where Uncle Herman discovers the thrill of wild bronc riding. With their money lifted by a pickpocket on one of the bus rides, the only choice left to them is signing on for ranch work cutting and baling hay along with a family of hoboes. The two are living the life of their wildest dreams until the sheriff turns up looking for an absconded husband and runaway boy.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are more than a few things to praise about Doig’s novel but at the top of the list is the very particular and colorful idiom of all the characters. Donal has a way with words that never fail to surprise and the German Uncle Herman speaks a language all his own that few outside of Donal can follow. But language and style are only two of Doig’s big guns. The characters in this novel—and there are many—are each wonderfully drawn, men and women who walk off the page to sit beside you. There is as well, the character of place and location that revives mid-twentieth century towns and locales so tangibly. </span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqfVktviy-11b8Yuz_zI1W-d_ZTike7ja7SKitPpw-jY-v4Onr3oKb_Dmxo7JLTilhp7WmKEh7gh0We-fQbNKbP-O1Yu0FXciX-xh0TR1lYaBh2n-hgpWmXcaNMsDApbarpDztzY8WYzDk/s1600/Ivan+Doig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqfVktviy-11b8Yuz_zI1W-d_ZTike7ja7SKitPpw-jY-v4Onr3oKb_Dmxo7JLTilhp7WmKEh7gh0We-fQbNKbP-O1Yu0FXciX-xh0TR1lYaBh2n-hgpWmXcaNMsDApbarpDztzY8WYzDk/s1600/Ivan+Doig.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One of the most enjoyable reads of the year. Easily among this reader’s Top Three.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I never knew before reading <i>Last Bus to Wisdom</i> that the knobs often seen attached to steering wheels in the 1950s were known as “necker knobs.” It made one-handed steering easier so the right arm could go snugly around your girlfriend’s shoulder.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw2OhJT29wnSC2JGJYNzRffoVF3btvK12lMQByAlA_qjg9gy1m-As0RXnxFo-wCNGJLfAeE9T-tsOAxiWc44qSXsdCgRbP-tiI6GixRjfeV6b5fRFxjc3g7uZEafm1rRMet6LipKK9Y8ST/s1600/Necker+Knob.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw2OhJT29wnSC2JGJYNzRffoVF3btvK12lMQByAlA_qjg9gy1m-As0RXnxFo-wCNGJLfAeE9T-tsOAxiWc44qSXsdCgRbP-tiI6GixRjfeV6b5fRFxjc3g7uZEafm1rRMet6LipKK9Y8ST/s1600/Necker+Knob.jpg" /></a></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-4631300864079426352015-08-08T15:56:00.000-04:002015-08-13T10:09:44.882-04:00The Act of Survival<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">T</span>his past Thursday marked the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. How pale those words seem in describing an event that in its first moment incinerated 80,000 people and left thousands more to die in the coming days and weeks. For many of us the reality of that iconic Monday morning is far removed and almost impossible to imagine. Details about the annihilated city and its population were for a long time sketchy at best to everyone but the few officials who visited the aftermath. It wasn’t until a year later that a full picture of the tragedy in human dimensions was offered by John Hersey, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer who published his account in <i>The New Yorker</i> on August 31, 1946. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
William Shawn, managing editor of <i>The New Yorker</i>, discussed with Hersey his astonishment that in the millions of words written about the bomb there was nothing that told the story of what happened through the eyes of who it happened to. Hersey spent three weeks in Japan doing research and interviewing bomb survivors in Hiroshima. His goal was, “…to write about what happened not to buildings but to human beings.” The result was <i>Hiroshima</i>, a 31,000 word story published first in <i>The New Yorker</i> and later by Alfred A. Knopf as a book. Hersey chose a dry, calm style free of emotion, allowing the survivors’ stories to speak for themselves. He said in a letter, “The flat style was deliberate, and I still think I was right to adopt it. A high literary manner, or a show of passion, would have brought me into the story as a mediator; I wanted to avoid such mediation, so the reader's experience would be as direct as possible.”</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNFuDApQRpE8wNIwx8Sn5pYMva21doY7ZeAZDbThiDuhsNdByrNcUf1bNCBEZrJLOoMQmFu10nr5iW7QEM55VVA-v8ca76p6VpeLmJ4As3cC4DMI643ixwl2EhfHKwVJJQTUTUdxWyup50/s1600/Hiroshima.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNFuDApQRpE8wNIwx8Sn5pYMva21doY7ZeAZDbThiDuhsNdByrNcUf1bNCBEZrJLOoMQmFu10nr5iW7QEM55VVA-v8ca76p6VpeLmJ4As3cC4DMI643ixwl2EhfHKwVJJQTUTUdxWyup50/s1600/Hiroshima.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
The book begins:</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<b>1 </b>•<b> A Noiseless Flash</b></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<i>At </i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk. At that same moment, Dr. Masakazu Fujii was settling down cross-legged to read the </i>Osaka Asahi<i> on the porch of his private hospital, overhanging one of the seven deltaic rivers which divide Hiroshima; Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, stood by the window of her kitchen, watching a neighbor tearing down his house because it lay in the path of an air-raid-defense fire lane; Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German priest of the Society of Jesus, reclined in his underwear on a cot on the top floor of his order’s three-story mission house, reading a Jesuit magazine, </i>Stimmen der Zeit<i>; Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young member of the surgical staff of the city’s large, modern Red Cross Hospital, walked along one of the hospital corridors with a blood specimen for a Wassermann test in his hand; and the Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, paused at the door of a rich man’s house in Koi, the city’s western suburb, and prepared to unload a handcart full of things he had evacuated from town in fear of the massive B-29 raid which everyone expected Hiroshima to suffer. A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition—a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next—that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything.</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The story continues to follow these six survivors as they make their way through the aftermath of a broken and scorched city. Though the writer’s aim was to keep his own emotions at bay, this new style of journalism nevertheless tips the reader headfirst into the heart and mind of his subjects. The bravery of these six people in the face of such utter loss and defeat makes for a remarkable story.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdvGAv7VYz0_O8T9l0R9X60oOp2yr9Cm9cXez91tl3emcj9nzrioWCh0kcvhJ7gLnF2jjDtIogaHu36jAXOn7g-KZW6Da-C6BH0FtPa3aooOvfrS7mWX5pyQ8ilgc3pMtKB_Mq4TV2uUKR/s1600/Toshiko+Sasaki.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdvGAv7VYz0_O8T9l0R9X60oOp2yr9Cm9cXez91tl3emcj9nzrioWCh0kcvhJ7gLnF2jjDtIogaHu36jAXOn7g-KZW6Da-C6BH0FtPa3aooOvfrS7mWX5pyQ8ilgc3pMtKB_Mq4TV2uUKR/s200/Toshiko+Sasaki.jpg" width="161" /></a><span style="text-align: center;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0E22ABcFoyo1rLJOvJx-R_O7698aRjzW3dblyMOQZ7idByzw6JoNo_6evgpPjgQ8ISyNa65CndCZuDa6VH5_0Pn1iHbS56DcsDFa0_KywF9wqxUKsbm-pcozpXPgKuTm3SYkGMC6LK053/s1600/Masakazu+Fujii.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0E22ABcFoyo1rLJOvJx-R_O7698aRjzW3dblyMOQZ7idByzw6JoNo_6evgpPjgQ8ISyNa65CndCZuDa6VH5_0Pn1iHbS56DcsDFa0_KywF9wqxUKsbm-pcozpXPgKuTm3SYkGMC6LK053/s200/Masakazu+Fujii.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> Toshiko Sasaki </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Masakazu Fujii</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNqt1uhJwfMDu0Xa08un5e3MOJTPSgRpWZK2N2AJaAcxN4EXlvxdvSA422GOwHsKIJowYSlTCfDcz2DFb7mv4btIqcZvrXV1ymI1UBEacdf9tq74LLjbrBtqnhLo8V6cf2ELYsi2dJ6PPa/s1600/Hatsuyo+Nakamura.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNqt1uhJwfMDu0Xa08un5e3MOJTPSgRpWZK2N2AJaAcxN4EXlvxdvSA422GOwHsKIJowYSlTCfDcz2DFb7mv4btIqcZvrXV1ymI1UBEacdf9tq74LLjbrBtqnhLo8V6cf2ELYsi2dJ6PPa/s1600/Hatsuyo+Nakamura.jpg" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxQzEkR9Pq8EK19y2bo_4q-RZlFdd6nBaeEuIayYb-4jE9q56KyOaeoTXmMAUAtuj9Wz88QABhMkEJQLgFt3USySoXRGmKHxHUtmjDIsjceY60-dujzbSZjbShkAcwE7gd8cHjjZBlu-Qg/s1600/Wilhelm+Kleinsorge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxQzEkR9Pq8EK19y2bo_4q-RZlFdd6nBaeEuIayYb-4jE9q56KyOaeoTXmMAUAtuj9Wz88QABhMkEJQLgFt3USySoXRGmKHxHUtmjDIsjceY60-dujzbSZjbShkAcwE7gd8cHjjZBlu-Qg/s1600/Wilhelm+Kleinsorge.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Hatsuyo Nakamura </span><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW4aN9QQxT4zCLEFVSkFLiki85GQX5Yz3I3eFM9HmeGzLw5EVZ7cqlCZsYL1Igf5W0SU4qw7y6qNbGBGYan5-mx9TGP7tgpqkp3zxoHJY0UaR9ovD-HUnfyKjh1K1dkFrV3X7kOr29ZKPo/s1600/Terufumi+Sasaki.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW4aN9QQxT4zCLEFVSkFLiki85GQX5Yz3I3eFM9HmeGzLw5EVZ7cqlCZsYL1Igf5W0SU4qw7y6qNbGBGYan5-mx9TGP7tgpqkp3zxoHJY0UaR9ovD-HUnfyKjh1K1dkFrV3X7kOr29ZKPo/s1600/Terufumi+Sasaki.jpg" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinn___cD6TUjipLOa3jbZV2mvxX3dTSbRiIgSXkCNBKZI-YK-L8dC0sDz05KpZfNPh5dN0iUM1gbOYsXl-vCZKSN6vA09KCSCmv103xHm15VdBH1raRNgLlXJm-5naIvlGLCRfUb5qV59w/s1600/Kiyoshi+Tanimoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinn___cD6TUjipLOa3jbZV2mvxX3dTSbRiIgSXkCNBKZI-YK-L8dC0sDz05KpZfNPh5dN0iUM1gbOYsXl-vCZKSN6vA09KCSCmv103xHm15VdBH1raRNgLlXJm-5naIvlGLCRfUb5qV59w/s1600/Kiyoshi+Tanimoto.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> Terufumi Sasaki </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Kiyoshi Tanimoto</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Realizing this past August 6 was the Hiroshima anniversary, I pulled from a bookshelf my old and carefully preserved first Knopf edition and stood for several minutes rereading the first pages. Hardly raising my eyes, I settled into a chair for the next hour and read the book’s 118 pages with the same fervor of my first reading years ago. This small but powerful book is not one to miss.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">John Hersey’s </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hiroshima-John-Hersey/dp/0679721037/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439062012&sr=1-1&keywords=Hiroshima">Hiroshima</a></i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> at Amazon</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-8005161137666755692015-07-29T09:15:00.000-04:002015-07-29T09:15:01.330-04:00Thoughts on a Famous Book <div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">C</span>hances are high that every writer likes to see his or her book singled out by the press for pre-publication notice. But on occasion the coming of a new book can be marred by too much attention from the press. Take the case of Harper Lee’s new book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/175-3229548-9744057?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=go+set+a+watchman">Go Set a Watchman</a></i>, published on July 14 by HarperCollins. Obviously because of the author’s previous and until then only book, the 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>, excitement and expectations were high when the new book was announced. To say that excitement was high is probably the grandest of understatements considering that the press went wild and the hype began building to ridiculous levels. Credit (or blame) a lot of that on the lawyers and agents involved in bringing to light a book written by Ms Lee even before her iconic <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpI0Y1UnJ-6bDG9y-yWdpE8V-mpdVPVWbv6bBkGfN77dSVF8YSxF6jusAhREgIbPo6GW12On6Ta5kR8-PyIH8_WLmW3o74gEleksVNHTPZEYz7YDOzalSy_UKWZAAadC_AIG_lKJHpw0-g/s1600/Watchman-Mockingbird.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpI0Y1UnJ-6bDG9y-yWdpE8V-mpdVPVWbv6bBkGfN77dSVF8YSxF6jusAhREgIbPo6GW12On6Ta5kR8-PyIH8_WLmW3o74gEleksVNHTPZEYz7YDOzalSy_UKWZAAadC_AIG_lKJHpw0-g/s400/Watchman-Mockingbird.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
As someone who considers <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> one of the more important books in American literature, and also a person who tries to keep up with what’s new and upcoming in books, the pre-publication hype for <i>Go Set a Watchman</i> was overwhelming. And to that phenomenon I attach a negative result. Naturally, as was always intended by the lawyers and agents, the bombardment of press releases created a sure-fire money earning bestseller weeks before printing of the first copy. Little surprise that HarperCollins announced the book set a pre-sale record for the publishing house. It isn’t big news that controversy tends to make money and the controversy regarding this second (or first) book by Harper Lee has been bubbling. The state of Alabama launched an investigation into whether or not the 87 year-old author was being coerced into publishing her “lost” manuscript, concluding that there was no coercion. Following a stroke in 2007 Harper Lee is considered by those close to her as mentally and physically unable to participate in business transactions.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFl3bBNjQIPslm4b-JM75MIi29iuu4p-_q4tSTNv8hvjYGoWwm69heMvJZIjjWJfLtehBPkcsQq7X6n5vqA5BbHVztyazdL_5_tV8IEJeyvP8k_nxFs7DvkVJzfxEQidxjyCOMwvHfUv7T/s1600/Harper+Lee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFl3bBNjQIPslm4b-JM75MIi29iuu4p-_q4tSTNv8hvjYGoWwm69heMvJZIjjWJfLtehBPkcsQq7X6n5vqA5BbHVztyazdL_5_tV8IEJeyvP8k_nxFs7DvkVJzfxEQidxjyCOMwvHfUv7T/s400/Harper+Lee.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Other ingredients in the press release gumbo were articles arguing that the book was an early draft of <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>, rejected with the recommendation for a complete rewrite. Add to that the opinion of critics who wondered how the same person could write such a turnaround story, that the wise father in <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> is a racist in the new book. By the time July 14 rolled around I was full and tired of reading about <i>Go Set a Watchman</i>.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
And then this past Monday while browsing in my local library, the friendly librarian mentioned that a copy of <i>Go Set a Watchman</i> was on the new books shelf. It’s a very small library but I was still surprised that such an eagerly awaited book had not been snatched up immediately. Still, in no hurry to read the book, my head too full of hype and conflicting reports, I told the librarian that I would wait a while. She said, “It’s a wonderful book, when you do get around to it.” We chatted about the book for a minute, me explaining that the reviews and such had discouraged me. In the end, I did bring the book home.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I finished reading it on Tuesday. After all the off-putting hullabaloo that went before, I am happy to say that <i>Go Set a Watchman</i> is a fine read, a worthy book and a very creditable piece of writing, thank you Harper Lee. Her prose is delightful, her sentences crystal and economic, the characters and setting well-shaped and vivid and her dialogue delightful, full of those colorful old southernisms. Something I should have known but didn't, despite several front to back readings of the Bible in different versions—The title of the book comes from the King James version, chapter 21, verse 6 of Isaiah. An excellent and very fitting title. </span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A few things about the book bothered me, but only slightly and not enough to take away from the whole. The ending is what I would almost call a Hollywood ending contrived to leave the reader with a sigh of happy relief. Here and there in the book’s 278 pages are scattered several long immersions into the childhood antics of Scout, Jem and Dill, passages that felt too much like deleted pages from <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>. It is important to grasp or sense from the beginning that a good bit of the young Scout from <i>Mockingbird</i> still holds sway in the 26 year-old Scout of <i>Go Set a Watchman</i>. She is by design immature and naive in many ways, a young woman who wears a thin veneer of New York sophistication, but as her uncle describes at one point, something of a bigot. </span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Most importantly, forget everything you've read recently about the discovery of the manuscript, the embattled lawyers and agents and the stories of long ago first drafts turned down then reappearing as a book similar to <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> set 25 years later. Put all the articles, essays and reviews aside; this book is not what they describe. To be very clear about it, Atticus Finch is <i>not</i> a racist in the second book, he is <i>not</i> a vile reverse side of the father (and man) his daughter thought he was. It’s hard to imagine how a critic from whatever illustrious publication could get that so wrong, like missing the boat completely. If anyone tells you that the character of Atticus Finch in <i>Go Set a Watchman</i> is a racist, then tell them, "You'd better go back and read it again."</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<br />
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Wonderful book. Harper Lee has added a late in life crown to her collection.</span></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-81735001718874909692015-07-16T17:35:00.000-04:002015-07-16T17:35:22.441-04:00Arigatô, Mr. Nagahara<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9U5JIv105e-VYiclfxoXJ67pSz8fhx3JydpVsGYtYVcDWo5Wkn0BznSsdbT0QalBAnO9VUjKjufydHnDeQ4-DH6bmFtCeHPzZT0aVbVkFDzV0C6D5a8V89__6QHKaRnJPiv6AS41Cdkzu/s1600/Nagahara+Portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9U5JIv105e-VYiclfxoXJ67pSz8fhx3JydpVsGYtYVcDWo5Wkn0BznSsdbT0QalBAnO9VUjKjufydHnDeQ4-DH6bmFtCeHPzZT0aVbVkFDzV0C6D5a8V89__6QHKaRnJPiv6AS41Cdkzu/s320/Nagahara+Portrait.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;">
<b>Nagahara Nobuyoshi 1932-2015</b></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="color: #323333; font-size: 24px; letter-spacing: 0px;">I</span><span style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">n 1947 a 15 year-old boy went to work at the Sailor Pen Company in Hiroshima, Japan. He continued to work there for 64 years building a worldwide reputation as one of the finest fountain pen nib designers anywhere in the world. Nobuyoshi Nagahara, known as the “God of Fountain Pens” in Japan, </span>passed away on March 11 of this year. This sad news came to me today with the arrival of <i>Stationery Hobby Box</i> (<i>Shumi no bungu bako</i>), issue 34. Following in the footsteps of his uncle and starting work as a boy in the Sailor factory, over the years he became a master craftsman of unparalleled genius, his reputation familiar to fountain pen aficionados all over the world. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE_ZWotVeLvzrHDvlwgUOBTSzecPYCsIpmnTTIRzZdszOnz1OMfCeze8PyhpBTt123HF1ndj8pOuWvipmMIqkx978UCQZiXdZdjS5z1nM5OCEmtlLocQwrFLqXd2qRGs4QwhsOx1b2Y2HN/s1600/Nagahara+at+Work.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE_ZWotVeLvzrHDvlwgUOBTSzecPYCsIpmnTTIRzZdszOnz1OMfCeze8PyhpBTt123HF1ndj8pOuWvipmMIqkx978UCQZiXdZdjS5z1nM5OCEmtlLocQwrFLqXd2qRGs4QwhsOx1b2Y2HN/s400/Nagahara+at+Work.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
During my years of living in Japan I had several opportunities of meeting Mr. Nagahara at pen clinics and receiving advice about or adjustments to one or another of my several Sailor fountain pens. One might think it out of the question that such a respected craftsman would give ten or fifteen minutes of advice and help to lines of strangers, but that was Mr. Nagahara’s way at all of his clinics. I once asked if he would sign a page in the notebook I carried and with a laugh he took up my newly adjusted Sailor 1911, full of violet ink and dashed off his signature in the notebook.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilfI3-pt3CxHZU8j3iAGAr2cXckHdMPLc077BDVAF1Ofq47cH45XisGEnCdubiTBBXMAVzfRnawEdkzlH4emUtNYpZ0Am8XWfYjruiKNO5FxUx46EHBGe3XzCwlhO_Nz3mgeSLlucAsB2o/s1600/Nagahara+Nobuyoshi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilfI3-pt3CxHZU8j3iAGAr2cXckHdMPLc077BDVAF1Ofq47cH45XisGEnCdubiTBBXMAVzfRnawEdkzlH4emUtNYpZ0Am8XWfYjruiKNO5FxUx46EHBGe3XzCwlhO_Nz3mgeSLlucAsB2o/s400/Nagahara+Nobuyoshi.jpg" width="283" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: left;">
Mr. Nagahara retired in 2011, leaving his son, Nagahara Yukio to take over his work at Sailor. In the true sense of traditional Japanese apprenticeship, there is little doubt that his 14 years of side-by-side work with his father guarantees that the Nagahara legacy is in good hands.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JYVRF3enOxn0_ORD-gVllYnx7c25GFh3rE68G7nsYLc6F4Z7P6SsSasS5sei6jICRuurbcPQMDyhCsiH-zZKIy1bd4UsQYQrUWGg2048kfljVev7EkJw77DwKVHhxncL260ns-9hLjuP/s1600/Susudake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JYVRF3enOxn0_ORD-gVllYnx7c25GFh3rE68G7nsYLc6F4Z7P6SsSasS5sei6jICRuurbcPQMDyhCsiH-zZKIy1bd4UsQYQrUWGg2048kfljVev7EkJw77DwKVHhxncL260ns-9hLjuP/s400/Susudake.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0px;">One of my favorite pens of Nagahara Nobuyoshi’s design is the </span><i style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0px;">susudake naginata</i><span style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0px;"> in which the barrel and nib are encased in smoked bamboo. The process of smoking the bamboo over an open hearth is lengthy, sometimes carried over years at a time. The long absorption of smoke serves to harden the bamboo even more and to add elegant coloration to the grain. The result is called </span><i style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0px;">susudake</i><span style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0px;">, or smoked-stained bamboo. From this hard and beautifully colored bamboo, Mr. Nagahara made what is called the Susudake Naginata. The nib design is of 21k gold, long in body and slightly reminiscent of the old Japanese halberd or </span><i style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0px;">naginata</i><span style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0px;">.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCyQ8cDPE4TVtvCcyDy3QNLLJbC1Sg8Tma1O5-yORJmWT_AxCHKiyY8YK5TCRKVYG74_cq8SAiiZVNpq_15w3eg8Pjk7_hAEbIOFsFJ_cL10poZoqgANE0p52ZQQfm6Ic1AmAS9NDXtdIV/s1600/Sailor+Naginata.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCyQ8cDPE4TVtvCcyDy3QNLLJbC1Sg8Tma1O5-yORJmWT_AxCHKiyY8YK5TCRKVYG74_cq8SAiiZVNpq_15w3eg8Pjk7_hAEbIOFsFJ_cL10poZoqgANE0p52ZQQfm6Ic1AmAS9NDXtdIV/s400/Sailor+Naginata.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another Sailor favorite is the Sailor Profit 21 with its Naginata nib. What first caught my eye was the striking red and black body with gold trim, though it is not truly a red, more of an orangish red similar to persimmon—eyecatchingly beautiful in its elegant jet black, orangy-red and shiny gold trim. About the nib…One evening in Tokyo I was cleaning the pen and as will happen horribly on occasion, the pen slipped out of my hands and dropped like a missile, nib first to the hardwood floor. Any sharper and it would have stuck up quivering in the floor. I stood frozen in shock for half a minute imagining the newly blunted nib. No question it was badly damaged by the fall, and in a condition that required professional help. Three weeks later Mr. Nagahara was making an appearance at a pen clinic in Tokyo and I took the pen to him for repair. Apparently it was a simple fix for him, and within fifteen minutes he had the pen back to mint condition—and of course, no charge.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The article on Mr. Nagahara’s passing in <i>Stationery Hobby Box</i> suggests that for many, March 11, 2015 marked the end of an era.</span></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-90741459315826443032015-06-17T17:21:00.000-04:002015-06-17T17:21:44.976-04:00Unwelcome Visitors<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px; letter-spacing: 0px;">M</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">y time here at the edge of the woods on Old Dixie Lane has been full of chasing down squirrels in the house, removing at least a dozen frogs that squeezed inside and shooing away a hundred dirt daubers, lizards and beetles from the kitchen. Almost as if the walls between inside and out temporarily vanish to provide new hunting grounds that beckon scores of crawling, flying and slithering things, free access to sample the domestic life in my living room. Last Sunday brought a new and disturbingly more heart whomping visitor.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJM4XdF-gBcOzu24XC2OmLHvcLOO1m3inRVM2W9Dof1s6JAEimnBy4E3sCdJL_47tJerAHAgEvR5EDq3AiDQEbTTYeFFU2lyLX2ZVmMmXLmyy-qawnYZ7LWYPNOmJfXmVEmfsFCLGEwGz7/s1600/Dawg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJM4XdF-gBcOzu24XC2OmLHvcLOO1m3inRVM2W9Dof1s6JAEimnBy4E3sCdJL_47tJerAHAgEvR5EDq3AiDQEbTTYeFFU2lyLX2ZVmMmXLmyy-qawnYZ7LWYPNOmJfXmVEmfsFCLGEwGz7/s400/Dawg.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Repainting was underway in the spare bedroom and leaving painter Jim with his brushes and buckets of paint, with Farina dawg in the backseat I went off to the market for some groceries. Ordinarily on my return from shopping, groceries get carried in through the front door but since Jim had the entrance hall stacked with his supplies I headed with the bags of groceries to the back screen door. Farina was at my heels and five feet inside the porch she froze, suddenly erupting into snarls and growls, eyes focused on the floor below her long, screen-level perch, a couple of giant plastic bins weighted and piled with dog cushions. Eight feet away a 4-foot snake lay coiled on the floor, head raised in a threatening pose. Knowing the dawg’s tendencies, first thing I did was force her outside and shut the dog door.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD_dEd3Y5YstIAzbYW5DlFiviN-rZ2u3FdX7ekmc93Qs4S2MeQjS93onPwLFd3xGIpGuzuyPP3Md_eI1b6KRMR-cnCSBwIbxZse4HtMEw7ELkkYFiey-QDLEo1VTF7Co9_V6SXsaCDnoFG/s1600/Black+Snake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD_dEd3Y5YstIAzbYW5DlFiviN-rZ2u3FdX7ekmc93Qs4S2MeQjS93onPwLFd3xGIpGuzuyPP3Md_eI1b6KRMR-cnCSBwIbxZse4HtMEw7ELkkYFiey-QDLEo1VTF7Co9_V6SXsaCDnoFG/s320/Black+Snake.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Eyeing the evil serpent closely I eased the bags of groceries to the floor and inch by inch reached for a broom and the long-handled litter grabber I keep by the door. Not sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me, I could have sworn I saw venom dripping from the snake’s open mouth. I called Jim to drop his paintbrush and come out to the back porch pronto. He took the squeeze handle litter grabber and moved to one end of the porch while I circled the dawg perch to flush the snake from behind with the broom. Jim was moments away from wetting his painter pants but with maybe the longest lifetime stretch of his right arm somehow snagged the snake with the grabber. Before I could take the grabber from him the snake wiggled loose, snapping furiously at the air. Trying to avoid my lunges with the grabber, it slithered toward the door end of the porch with me snatching at it with the picker-upper and dodging strikes from what I hoped was a non-venomous head. I caught it; it got away. I lunged, it lunged back and then began squeezing itself into a wide crack between the floor and the wall paneling. On the verge of a heart attack I managed to work the hysterical serpent out of the floor crack. It began to snap at my arm furiously before I was able to get its head in a solid rubber grip. Painter Jim had finally just let go and peed his pants while Farina outside the screen door was leaping two feet into the air and barking 911. The head secure inside the rubber grips, I held the writhing snake with outstretched arm and took it across the road. By then I knew it was a harmless black snake, the kind we are encouraged to leave alone because they are “good” snakes. I flung the good snake into the woods opposite my house. Venomous or not, good notwithstanding, my heart was beating like I’d just witnessed a serial killing. Jim went off to dig a change of clothes out of his truck and Farina went off looking for another snake.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzNCa22Oh5SALKjvqVE75O-gjRVl9ncs6awcMxajuFGubJExz8_Q-qwEsNII2WyU6dhlhlaTAuwNgfhLIcwrATEGtl-kWeZoOOypENDwmvuUQkWJN-NnYKZCFIScDd1uMjpEz0lubgo_cZ/s1600/Snake+Handling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzNCa22Oh5SALKjvqVE75O-gjRVl9ncs6awcMxajuFGubJExz8_Q-qwEsNII2WyU6dhlhlaTAuwNgfhLIcwrATEGtl-kWeZoOOypENDwmvuUQkWJN-NnYKZCFIScDd1uMjpEz0lubgo_cZ/s320/Snake+Handling.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My guess is the snake wiggled into the house under the somewhat ineffective door sweep at the bottom of the back porch screen door.</span></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-87277365838044786622015-06-08T16:50:00.000-04:002015-06-08T16:50:22.938-04:00Hiking the Appalachian Trail<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">I</span> don’t hike. Off the top of my head, best guess would be the longest distance walked at one time is four miles, and that on a pristine beach, flat, soft and easy on bare feet. For one reason or another hiking has never seemed like an activity well suited to my style of physical activity. Walking down the block or strolling city streets has never given me a moment’s pause and I can also last a good while on a treadmill, but heavy boots and heavy backpack on a wooded mountain path never caught my fancy. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Until I read Bill Bryson’s 1998 book, <i>A Walk in the Woods</i>.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4bNoJwIgLIra-LCUBlT_BqVEKcr1GNqMkItDQxt7eo6VcTQxJDFwF262M4f2ZAG0mkVkiVl4TfGxP3pj1JT4KuhqU_DN3J1kl7xWWLFtK2sfDzMF34SyX4NTYNxk4Qa-enm6JgkqsrTsA/s1600/Appalachian+Trail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4bNoJwIgLIra-LCUBlT_BqVEKcr1GNqMkItDQxt7eo6VcTQxJDFwF262M4f2ZAG0mkVkiVl4TfGxP3pj1JT4KuhqU_DN3J1kl7xWWLFtK2sfDzMF34SyX4NTYNxk4Qa-enm6JgkqsrTsA/s400/Appalachian+Trail.jpg" width="178" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
The Appalachian Trail running 2,100 miles from northern Georgia to northern Maine is a series of connected hiking trails traversing fourteen states and half a dozen mountain ranges that was completed in 1937. The elevation gain in hiking the entire trail is equal to climbing Mt Everest sixteen times and every year something like 2,000 people attempt a thru-hike of the trail. It is also popular with day-hikers and between 2 and 3 million walk a portion of the trail every year.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXzUkrmdyoxHl5VpEhyeY9KXPz3-Qyieo-VKpNWCH0wnPZaD_ZsJR3XRx8cfNWdPAOgwAbjt7hyphenhyphenF4Mrv6V7YP91QcCz8fk53x3V0gbtr8BjWRlGxRKxMy9O-YcSRs4nNEuKfcCj4IyHfFk/s1600/Walk+in+the+Woods.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXzUkrmdyoxHl5VpEhyeY9KXPz3-Qyieo-VKpNWCH0wnPZaD_ZsJR3XRx8cfNWdPAOgwAbjt7hyphenhyphenF4Mrv6V7YP91QcCz8fk53x3V0gbtr8BjWRlGxRKxMy9O-YcSRs4nNEuKfcCj4IyHfFk/s400/Walk+in+the+Woods.jpg" width="258" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Along with a friend, writer Bill Bryson hiked 500 miles of the trail and wrote a book about his experiences. He wrote about living on instant ramen noodles and Snickers bars for days at a time, about walking an incline in the pouring rain for hours on end with 45 pounds perched on his back and about some of the people they met along the way. His pages are brimming with historical anecdotes about both the trail and the people who helped develop it to what it is today. He writes of a Pennsylvania coal mining town along the route that is home to an underground coal fire that has been burning for decades. One chapter tells of the numbers of birds that at one time filled the trail with song but are now no more. Another describes the geological formation that created this particular stretch of eastern America. Each successive chapter, whether it be about blight, wildlife, characters along the trail, fatigue, odd little towns or staring contests with a moose is a surprise, each is an essential part of the experience told with humor and insight.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
On every other page of the book I kept telling myself that this was a hike I wanted to take. Of course, that thought also came with the knowledge that the boots, backpack and ramen noodles would defeat me a half mile down the trail. The thing about the really good travel writers is that they make you feel as if you’re walking right beside them. Bryson never once falls down in that respect.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Like so many good books, this was another gem a long time coming to my attention. For years I’ve been familiar with Bill Bryson and have even read one or two others of his books, but <i>A Walk in the Woods</i> found a special place among my list of books not to be missed. Grab up a bowl of trail mix, a canteen of water and go for an armchair hike with Bryson and his friend Katz.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
We can also look forward to a movie version of the book coming out in September starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte.</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-47790928855560038202015-05-21T18:57:00.000-04:002015-09-13T09:29:24.023-04:00The Times & Travails of Manny<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px; letter-spacing: 0px;">G</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">ot out of bed, poured a cup of coffee, added a splash of half & half and looked on unbelievingly as it instantly curdled. Not a good start to my Thursday morning and despite a Christian tongue I did let loose with a few loud “Damn! Titty-Titty, Damn Damns!” Nobody wants to get in the car to drive five miles for more half & half when they’re standing at the kitchen counter in nothing but a pair of ratty shorts at 7:00 A.M. </span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thirty minutes later a fresh cup of coffee with a splash of good-until-next-month half & half erased my sour temper. </span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By anyone’s count it has been much too long since I gave some attention to writing in this blog. Not surprising how practice can easily dwindle away, every day aims becoming once a week goals and soon enough something that was once a week diminishes to an infrequent trickle. I have to hope it isn’t the nature of life in these woods around Old Dixie Lane that has turned my head from spending more time in Scriblets. It prompts the question, what is the nature of life in these woods? </span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Manny and Jimmy were barbecuing Mexican sausages across the fence late yesterday before sunset. Back at the edge of the woods where Jimmy’s trailer is set up, it’s nasty to imagine what the mosquitos must’ve been like around their picnic table. Jimmy’s sister, Jean threw him outta the house because she had company coming, told him he could buy a trailer to park out in the backyard. And he did. Then she upped his rent from 400 to 500 a month, her own brother. Since he had that quintuple bypass surgery last summer, and with an assumed prognosis of little time left, he’s busy drinking himself to death, trying to spend the 50,000 in savings he’s got left. Jimmy is a Vietnam vet living off his pension, which seems to do him okay. Thin as a rail, somewhere in his early 60s, I guess. Along those jungle paths back in the day he got shot up and came home with a Purple Heart. Now he smokes funny cigarettes and drinks all day long every day. I don’t see much of Jimmy but sometimes hear his 70s rock booming out of the trailer. Manny says he plays it so loud they can’t hear each other talk inside the trailer, have to go outside and sit in the mosquitos.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Speaking of Jean, about a week ago I walked over with Farina to say hello around 4:30 and stayed until 7:00 sipping on Randy’s nasty Canadian whiskey and ginger ale. Jean sat across from us throwing back Southern Comfort on the rocks. At one point Manny came tooling down the road on his lawn mower pulling a baggage cart, come to pick up some laundry Jean had done for him (a bedcover she said later hadn’t been washed in 36 years) and without even the foam off of one beer managed to drive his mower and cart bang into Jean’s car, a broadside to the passenger door. In her state, Jean didn’t give a damn but Manny was discombobulated. Conversation came around to pests in the area and Jean announced she wouldn’t harm a single pink hair on an armadillo’s belly and even enjoyed watching two babies play out in her yard. Two seconds later she told us if she ever got her hands on one of those guys who raise fighting dogs she wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet through his medulla oblongata and walk away like she’d just swatted a fly. Me and the dawg didn’t get home until after dark, treading carefully along the dirt road, eye out for night vipers.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hard to understand Randy and Jean getting all over Manny for fattening a wild hog in his pen down the road. Not sure how they did it, but they badgered him into letting the hog free, saying it was cruel to pen it up for fattening and eventual death on the chopping block. Wild hogs are popular with hunters in these parts, a delicious meat for the table which is what it’s all about for Manny and his small government pension, barely enough to live on. Missing the point, Randy and Jean tell him if he wants to eat roast pork to go to the supermarket and buy it. Not the first time they’ve freed his catch, last year they sent Jimmy down to Manny’s place when he was gone and let loose another wild pig he was fattening. Well, Jean is a forceful kind of animal lover, but she’s given up on me and the pesky critters. I told her she better make sure those not so cuddly armadillos stay on the south side of the fence because I’ll blast them to smithereens without blinking an eye and go off hunting more of them.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Manny had a roadkill cookout last week but nobody showed up so he was unhappy about that. Walked up here later, grumbling, bringing his insurance guidebook and needing help picking an eye doctor out from the list inside. I looked at the book for ten minutes and told him I couldn’t find any eye doctors, full of dentists, orthodontists and periodontists, without an eye doctor in the bunch. So he took the book on next door to have Jean, a former blood technician study it. Last time Jean drove him to the doctor, the doctor was head down over Manny’s lab report when Jean snatched it out of his hand to get a look at it herself. The doctor told Manny when he was leaving not to bring that woman back again. </span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hallelujah! The county tractor came to mow down the head-high weeds on the verge of our road. Farina had a conniption fit, running up and down the fence line barking her fool head off. We’ve needed those weeds chopped down for a while now. The last time they sent a guy out here who’d never done it before and he drove his ginormous tractor halfway down into the canal and came out of it with a dozen water moccasins coiled around the underside. </span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Big mufflers on muscle cars are rumbling hard across the way. Haven't laid eyes on another person today but the air has been seasoned with gunshot and roaring engines, pow! and vroom! all day long. Doesn’t bother me much, all part of the soundscape out here. Distant airplanes, trains, birdcalls, barking, lawnmowers, and who could ignore the goats that at a certain time of day conduct goat talks that sound like recess at the nuthouse.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">……………</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Life gets serious around here once in a while and there are always a few books to enjoy in the cool of my back porch. A couple of good ones here of late that I’ve given thought to writing about but always falling short in my distraction with dawg, yard or visit from Manny. Here is a list of some recent good reads that have impressed me.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsnzww1pNqpMWXWcoDOyKLGL4iYiPtJ25P4P5MOx-UrEgNbL9sYxhxrGXJV4bi_WW0rdaTU4KN_Laivv5g9eHOE4cBhX36z2xcChletG85OZ4jxJsHXy71aeYDw9ZYX9ClNw3-nmtapWRa/s1600/Deaver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsnzww1pNqpMWXWcoDOyKLGL4iYiPtJ25P4P5MOx-UrEgNbL9sYxhxrGXJV4bi_WW0rdaTU4KN_Laivv5g9eHOE4cBhX36z2xcChletG85OZ4jxJsHXy71aeYDw9ZYX9ClNw3-nmtapWRa/s200/Deaver.jpg" width="134" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc1FOYMD3xgIKKZ81YRT-sdJjlfZCAPTYoFU00IgzlPy1jBtz8jbFQjajsBJ4wd-LPxqh19VS5r_OuVLsqU5Hf6XF0xibs3OpioGjcHwZKMXKDpCDlCmjvwUylBsvBdLPaE8exObL0f-Oc/s1600/Alan+Turing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc1FOYMD3xgIKKZ81YRT-sdJjlfZCAPTYoFU00IgzlPy1jBtz8jbFQjajsBJ4wd-LPxqh19VS5r_OuVLsqU5Hf6XF0xibs3OpioGjcHwZKMXKDpCDlCmjvwUylBsvBdLPaE8exObL0f-Oc/s200/Alan+Turing.jpg" width="130" /></a> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYYaATrD9eQsBo-xMf084k0Tn-klDRRVyMfLRD1-kfmdrXfFfCQJ7-HSpjyUHpxfJtIRM0082poBdInrGcFGCAtbI4HmRBtJWK7VhMovl4PFwu2SMCR2q5Iq4gXtgLDP-i5gboN0o9xsNz/s1600/The+Martian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYYaATrD9eQsBo-xMf084k0Tn-klDRRVyMfLRD1-kfmdrXfFfCQJ7-HSpjyUHpxfJtIRM0082poBdInrGcFGCAtbI4HmRBtJWK7VhMovl4PFwu2SMCR2q5Iq4gXtgLDP-i5gboN0o9xsNz/s200/The+Martian.jpg" width="131" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB_q2lMo0w9LR3YQB4gZ7iCvWXee42wRsqfUP_PprglxQQuPTOPEJQlpS2dc0z9OpoMmfg2_ix0Eo7t9kzMhCs8YrKa5T0wmMifAqG6kgOLukaCZE_goS8r4NhWNpz3y8MdzsgefEH2kTQ/s1600/All+the+Light....jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB_q2lMo0w9LR3YQB4gZ7iCvWXee42wRsqfUP_PprglxQQuPTOPEJQlpS2dc0z9OpoMmfg2_ix0Eo7t9kzMhCs8YrKa5T0wmMifAqG6kgOLukaCZE_goS8r4NhWNpz3y8MdzsgefEH2kTQ/s200/All+the+Light....jpg" width="133" /></a> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJFhPB9tGPFTgeRZUSqLS1vO_1JsEyyTwtb3gzOYm00bA8So4WHUQ238p3VSU5eERCInQcPRsqxHj0_VquSfk1cTzrys0adWY57_aDPqpmq4xgkkymX-6HcPiG8LDdRIYcIE2T9QfeIAhA/s1600/Mewshaw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJFhPB9tGPFTgeRZUSqLS1vO_1JsEyyTwtb3gzOYm00bA8So4WHUQ238p3VSU5eERCInQcPRsqxHj0_VquSfk1cTzrys0adWY57_aDPqpmq4xgkkymX-6HcPiG8LDdRIYcIE2T9QfeIAhA/s200/Mewshaw.jpg" width="132" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The Bone Collector</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> (1997) by Jeffrey Deaver — This first in a long series featuring forensic criminologist Lincoln Rhyme is surely one of the best and most compelling crime novels ever. It offers a fascinating look into the history of New York City as well as introducing a devilish serial killer pitting himself against a bed-ridden detective.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Alan Turing: The Enigma</i> (1983) by Andrew Hodges — A big book of 800 pages about Alan Turing, the man who helped break the Nazi Enigma codes in WW2 and was also the first to conceive of thinking machines (computers). An awful lot of math, logic and physics but nonetheless a satisfying look into the man Turing was and the tragedy of his short life.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>The Martian</i> (2014) by Andy Weir — No, not science fiction, but an incredibly convincing tale about a fictional astronaut’s time on Mars. This first novel by a software engineer-space hobbyist is funny, compelling and believable down to the last tiny piece of space hardware. This one went from blog to Kindle to bestseller to movie deal in a matter of months.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>All the Light We Cannot See</i> (2014) by Anthony Doerr — A Pulitzer Prize winner and National Book Award finalist, this one tops my list of books read this year, an exquisitely written story of a young blind girl finding her way through the rubble of WW2. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Sympathy for the Devil</i> (2015) by Michael Mewshaw — The latest biography of the iconoclastic and prolific writer, Gore Vidal. With such a colorful life to work with, the writer has balanced well both the serious and outlandish sides of his subject. Vidal was a remarkably intelligent man who could turn his words from reason to scandal in the blink of an eye and Mewshaw catches all the colors and shadings.</span></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-31117350323693105852015-03-18T18:52:00.002-04:002015-03-18T18:52:56.616-04:00Gin & Tonic Hitchcock<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">T</span>ake an idea from Alfred Hitchcock—the one about looking in windows—stir in a moderate to heavy mix of paranoia, obsession, loneliness, drunkenness, lying, cheating and self pity, spice it up with a heavy dose of psychological twists, then write it all down. What do you end up with? Well, if you’re an experienced writer and possess a certain skill for plotting, you just might end up with a bestseller that goes through ten printings in three months, selling 1,000,000 copies—and that’s just getting started. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
I live in a very small town with a public library the size of my second bedroom but when I asked to reserve <i>The Girl on the Train</i>, a new book by Paula Hawkins, the librarian said, “Okay. You’re number 338 on the waiting list.” I got lucky though and a week later came across an “express copy” the library circulates without taking reservations. If you can grab it off the shelf before someone beats you to it, it’s yours for two weeks. But I doubt anyone would take that long to read this book.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-m6B8T8KT7sqpa4-MzSk5Xy7OktujZVFfYWf19zlcLg7qPD7sOtzU49f-WGGrxGZj8QHAupyxc-Z35qDY_D0ms0zC1IIGHgq7_1xSqsrunglRAK6ED5lce6mB_ekfqHQNV1h5s5VzVfFX/s1600/Girl+on+the+Train+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-m6B8T8KT7sqpa4-MzSk5Xy7OktujZVFfYWf19zlcLg7qPD7sOtzU49f-WGGrxGZj8QHAupyxc-Z35qDY_D0ms0zC1IIGHgq7_1xSqsrunglRAK6ED5lce6mB_ekfqHQNV1h5s5VzVfFX/s1600/Girl+on+the+Train+Cover.jpg" height="400" width="263" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Readers of <i>The Girl on the Train</i> have been comparing it to Gillian Flynn’s 2012 megahit, <i>Gone Girl</i>. The comparison is understandable but not something that occurred to me at any point in reading the Paula Hawkins book. <i>Gone Girl</i> is a suspense novel and <i>The Girl on the Train</i> is another suspense novel that, like the earlier book uses psychology to build a story. There is a good deal of flashiness in <i>Gone Girl</i> that you will not find in the Hawkins book. And there are a good many things in <i>it</i> that you won’t find in <i>Gone Girl</i>.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Rachel Watson, a thirty-ish woman living in a small village an hour outside of London rides a commuter train every morning at the same time, and at the end of the workday takes the train back to her suburban village. She likes to look out the train windows and observe the doings of people living in the houses along the train’s route. The problem is, she shapes what she sees into romantic imaginings that ultimately become her undoing. Those fantasies aren’t helped by the fact that Rachel is half-drunk most of the time, commuting to a non-existent job, and seriously pining for her ex-husband. Oh, and she also has trouble remembering things, has blackouts and often staggers home mysteriously bloodied. Five pages into the book you already know that Rachel Watson is a mess and heading for worse.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
With multiple narrators, non-linear time jumps and the writer juggling so many moving parts, getting into the story was slow for me but as it reached midpoint the suspense took hold. We follow Rachel’s progression, turn the page and are suddenly seeing it through the eyes of the woman she’s watching from the train. Five pages later it’s back to Rachel, and in a sudden switch the story is being told through a third narrator, Rachel’s ex-husband’s current wife, Anna. Who is to be believed? Who can we trust? Again I am reminded of the Hitchcock technique. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
In Rachel’s fantasy the woman she sees from the train is named Jess and her handsome and loving husband is Jason. Rachel imagines them living the life of a happy couple, the very life she herself always dreamed until that dream was shattered. One day, Rachel sees from the train the woman kissing someone other than her husband and a part of her fantasy is badly rattled. It appears that Jess, who is really a troubled wife named Megan, is not who she appears to be. This is the first clue that no one in <i>The Girl on the Train</i> is who they appear to be. Jess-Megan disappears and Rachel becomes obsessed with what happened to her. A day or two later the tabloids announce that Megan Hipwell is missing and Rachel realizes it’s “Jess” the woman of her half-drunk fantasies. She becomes desperate to help, to inject herself into the investigation. Meanwhile, she has been late night drunk dialing her ex-husband and sending nasty emails to him. The big complication is that her ex-husband and his wife live just three doors down from the missing woman, in the same house that Rachel lived in when she was married to Tom, her ex. And believe it or not, it gets even more complicated. She goes to the police to tell them what she saw but they dismiss her as an unreliable drunk who can’t stay away.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYHO40Jxr8cWr8sLCUhGznXX4d2e_Jt0L5dD5MAG8fIdFRA4gwW0afId6MY2c6AU-ZckgWBQfE5WPFdckZY8qL6BUZTa4aqGYRhQljJaaoHf9o2pjogcBQTz2OZ-8hgGu0pbke0mXhc0AL/s1600/Paula+Hawkins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYHO40Jxr8cWr8sLCUhGznXX4d2e_Jt0L5dD5MAG8fIdFRA4gwW0afId6MY2c6AU-ZckgWBQfE5WPFdckZY8qL6BUZTa4aqGYRhQljJaaoHf9o2pjogcBQTz2OZ-8hgGu0pbke0mXhc0AL/s1600/Paula+Hawkins.jpg" height="320" width="228" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
It is hard sometimes to like or find sympathy with such a flawed character as Rachel Watson, but that can be of no concern to the book’s author for whom Rachel’s discomposure serves to heighten suspense. In Ms Hawkins’ story, preconceptions of who people are and the sense of identity are built upon shifting sands. No one is who they seem to be in this novel. By the end of the book Rachel has become a sympathetic character, someone unimaginable in the book’s first half. It is growth and development like this that earmark the writer.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
But don’t take just my word for it. Have a look at what Stephen King tweeted after reading <i>The Girl on the Train</i>… The Girl on the Train <i>by Paula Hawkins: Really great suspense novel. Kept me up most of the night. The alcoholic narrator is dead perfect.</i> —January 26, 2015.</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-29675202745825744062015-02-27T13:28:00.004-05:002015-03-01T12:29:14.564-05:00Brushstrokes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIxXdSQ9J6EXmiznBturcaMCJykviJv5YHUIFAsnXaizerdisvSXXm03GlMqmV3ECzRZc-dEulnSuzHkdAkDiqHKL9py4QwMn3a61g8FcVDNu9MeJBdJ2xit0lnzcaS0EeSIUITmgdrwKa/s1600/Duck+1940.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIxXdSQ9J6EXmiznBturcaMCJykviJv5YHUIFAsnXaizerdisvSXXm03GlMqmV3ECzRZc-dEulnSuzHkdAkDiqHKL9py4QwMn3a61g8FcVDNu9MeJBdJ2xit0lnzcaS0EeSIUITmgdrwKa/s1600/Duck+1940.jpg" height="293" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 24px; letter-spacing: 0px;">F</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">rom the early 1880s, as Japanese painters began finding their way to Europe and beyond, they brought back to Japan on their return the Western influences that in many ways modernized the Japanese tradition. The practice of careful observation and sketching from nature was ultimately combined with contemporary Western painting practices and led to an innovation in the <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonga">nihonga</a></i> style of painting.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One of those who returned from Europe with new ideas was Takeuchi Seihô, considered by many to be a leading modern <i>nihonga</i> painter.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1zlQkbp9A8kNoo9JS-jGyhoQOZDhHJ4zgmgteFWDJGsOkIU5T_pAiAHwTStLNbCOzAow7_-2EyXCaZOqOL54rvSRXaMl1Tj5jQ-IGtONVN8gTPEMzp6ryIfdBKtvrkRepChXh9BNHEvwA/s1600/Seiho%CC%82.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1zlQkbp9A8kNoo9JS-jGyhoQOZDhHJ4zgmgteFWDJGsOkIU5T_pAiAHwTStLNbCOzAow7_-2EyXCaZOqOL54rvSRXaMl1Tj5jQ-IGtONVN8gTPEMzp6ryIfdBKtvrkRepChXh9BNHEvwA/s1600/Seiho%CC%82.jpg" height="320" width="281" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Takeuchi Seihô (1864-1942) was born in Kyoto and even as a boy loved drawing, leaving little doubt he would become an artist. At the age of sixteen he began studying traditional painting with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dno_Bairei">Kôno Bairei</a>, a well-known master of paintings depicting birds and flowers. Two years later, in 1882, two of Takeuchi’s works received awards at a prestigious painting competition and that was enough to launch the young artist’s career. He made a European tour in 1900 where saw the Paris Exposition, visited art schools and made the acquaintance of Western painters. The young man’s greatest impressions came with the work of British painter, J.M.W. Turner and the French, Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot. After his return to Japan Takeuchi developed a style combining the realism of traditional Japanese painting with Western realism as he saw it in the techniques of Turner and Corot. Takeuchi’s new style became one of the principal principal influences in modern <i>nihonga</i>. Though noted for his landscapes, the artist more often turned to drawing animals in amusing poses and it is in those drawings that we see his commitment to capturing sometimes in only a few brushstrokes the essence of his subject.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-8g3WNAZuK1c1nKMimxSo6sHFtLcwSSrZNinJhWOF9wUviAA_LS4HppG9uLhZ9kcug1J7L88c6ns5dkUlARk7597Y8h3xeqIwQYfLgVi7PhsrpKF4PW9wdhqQPGjqWQib_oZcDdVZEuiL/s1600/Galloping+Horse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-8g3WNAZuK1c1nKMimxSo6sHFtLcwSSrZNinJhWOF9wUviAA_LS4HppG9uLhZ9kcug1J7L88c6ns5dkUlARk7597Y8h3xeqIwQYfLgVi7PhsrpKF4PW9wdhqQPGjqWQib_oZcDdVZEuiL/s1600/Galloping+Horse.jpg" height="336" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Easy enough to count the brushstrokes in a drawing that perfectly captures horse and movement.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiRZtTTe9cCeeRup2eKSuneEZ0Z-xRkfzimWYXdDXrBsUwR6qypM-dZ-822e_w1mKeUAuoUufEkJykk-cy120x7GA9P5jjGGrTcoTPSpeRQZT4TLGYmcxOyN2UTiSawj8jAye41AbW2bYm/s1600/Monkey+w:+Pole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiRZtTTe9cCeeRup2eKSuneEZ0Z-xRkfzimWYXdDXrBsUwR6qypM-dZ-822e_w1mKeUAuoUufEkJykk-cy120x7GA9P5jjGGrTcoTPSpeRQZT4TLGYmcxOyN2UTiSawj8jAye41AbW2bYm/s1600/Monkey+w:+Pole.jpg" height="320" width="221" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">One in a series of twelve animals from the Zodiac; done sometime in the 1920s, this painting is good example of the artist’s whimsey.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDVl7sUjx88LHOIH4E6RdWZHJO6VtgM8_DncQnbXq9RixWCaG3nPZqWZsqK20IYBLJoh3zn9stABt0xfolhrDuHP6tAhfneO6tCpm2_vu0hz7Hh86NfhKnK4w9DO_67g1NeFNoqRY72XeB/s1600/Elephant+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDVl7sUjx88LHOIH4E6RdWZHJO6VtgM8_DncQnbXq9RixWCaG3nPZqWZsqK20IYBLJoh3zn9stABt0xfolhrDuHP6tAhfneO6tCpm2_vu0hz7Hh86NfhKnK4w9DO_67g1NeFNoqRY72XeB/s1600/Elephant+1.jpg" height="178" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7c9S1e3822g4fec6J33EY2vbPXHwsGZ7V5QnFvV8riFJg2TwUfcAOrPeI1Z-KrrpjBkSIjjOfVzDQQIDcVwnvFvIyxrBXjD79kbj6S0ydzdozxgFT_HxtPRKlHFkSnB-ogbHo4cjTVWlD/s1600/Elephants+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7c9S1e3822g4fec6J33EY2vbPXHwsGZ7V5QnFvV8riFJg2TwUfcAOrPeI1Z-KrrpjBkSIjjOfVzDQQIDcVwnvFvIyxrBXjD79kbj6S0ydzdozxgFT_HxtPRKlHFkSnB-ogbHo4cjTVWlD/s1600/Elephants+2.jpg" height="177" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Striking in this large work covering two six-panel screens is the precise anatomy and musculature of the immense animals. Note the monkey perched on the back of one, reaching for the birds in the top left; notice too the eyes of the elephants. Painted in 1904, the work is in black ink on gold paper.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijxGlHhi1tutUNYMmMGGZqvD7ccKuw1Q2gh6hp-P-WIFsgTMSASyg5ilYGiu6Oys83MsFzccoBFHnhTbo0gg_5CEhmX9MOuk32M9oUgIWELB1ay1JRj_itChUg7riyHHZQcJJX_7-aVfQg/s1600/Takeuchi+Sudan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijxGlHhi1tutUNYMmMGGZqvD7ccKuw1Q2gh6hp-P-WIFsgTMSASyg5ilYGiu6Oys83MsFzccoBFHnhTbo0gg_5CEhmX9MOuk32M9oUgIWELB1ay1JRj_itChUg7riyHHZQcJJX_7-aVfQg/s1600/Takeuchi+Sudan.jpg" height="288" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">A very different example is the oil painting <i>Suez Landscape</i> painted in 1901 after the artist’s return from Europe. The work </span><span style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0px;">is based on a postcard from the collection he gathered while abroad. The influence of Turner and Corot is obvious in this landscape, especially in the palette and the painting of the water.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #323333; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHT9JvZL9oZ1_7SBrEttBuRRqrBo1Wfnl-DMyuk6cMay9WXHEYsdW1-2GirOoO1sOEj5JfEOYJ0jvY31OqF6mUU0JDX8C3IfD96Sp0DJb16Fn4q-XC8EG40H6dEtHO3qZ0TYyJrWm42Bzy/s1600/Red+Lantern+w:+Mouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHT9JvZL9oZ1_7SBrEttBuRRqrBo1Wfnl-DMyuk6cMay9WXHEYsdW1-2GirOoO1sOEj5JfEOYJ0jvY31OqF6mUU0JDX8C3IfD96Sp0DJb16Fn4q-XC8EG40H6dEtHO3qZ0TYyJrWm42Bzy/s1600/Red+Lantern+w:+Mouse.jpg" height="340" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Most striking in this undated ink and color painting is the use of space. The artist has placed the focus in the lower right, leaving a broad and largely blank space. The red and black in that large space is Takeuchi’s seal and signature. Once more the touch of humor is there with the inquisitive rat.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhlWAKACUVS9IH74zm7euMZIIbSjavhQ_nzYSgcGVSc0sp9Je4VkEpVJEd0ka2PBLN2i4h0fVnk_yKYXMrLGOaYLlEO-g3591csCj26vizsCZ_AHaJeidh1c8KPfxmPOzYFdGTsiVQD-0V/s1600/Watermelon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhlWAKACUVS9IH74zm7euMZIIbSjavhQ_nzYSgcGVSc0sp9Je4VkEpVJEd0ka2PBLN2i4h0fVnk_yKYXMrLGOaYLlEO-g3591csCj26vizsCZ_AHaJeidh1c8KPfxmPOzYFdGTsiVQD-0V/s1600/Watermelon.jpg" height="305" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Simple but impressive watermelon; undated</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrxXRYTEVwnHsGS3GJoGMMp6vyDeERy4qHvS2e_VpsI-zUT9h2RXk6rVxj1yQPjT7B57AjmjYXXqnpJ9hje_emL7Ux7FiMBKxyw_oI129yEbgxMlgbHDCZ5m_2MnB9Tnqu1Sub_JZI1Xuw/s1600/Seal+and+Signature.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrxXRYTEVwnHsGS3GJoGMMp6vyDeERy4qHvS2e_VpsI-zUT9h2RXk6rVxj1yQPjT7B57AjmjYXXqnpJ9hje_emL7Ux7FiMBKxyw_oI129yEbgxMlgbHDCZ5m_2MnB9Tnqu1Sub_JZI1Xuw/s1600/Seal+and+Signature.jpg" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_nBCAdkj-r69yRC3JzVS4O9ztzIlSfQK2ZKQBptwqgtMq8Dn63vrupr4DK9AzxCSCnPhKgZdOG3qE4QxiEb_OiDk2ZwJ4FBFuAv47kNswhZDPlx8c_ZL4ZlLEQzJLgE4iiGKOFmmyyQHV/s1600/Signature+and+seal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_nBCAdkj-r69yRC3JzVS4O9ztzIlSfQK2ZKQBptwqgtMq8Dn63vrupr4DK9AzxCSCnPhKgZdOG3qE4QxiEb_OiDk2ZwJ4FBFuAv47kNswhZDPlx8c_ZL4ZlLEQzJLgE4iiGKOFmmyyQHV/s1600/Signature+and+seal.jpg" /></a> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzEC4qXKRJjQwYJQethDoQi6qgofHvybOKgQA9CJ9jv_B6B_adEnnE_alaWvJ-3HA9l6LZLRVEQOXJpvbj5tJbmJj7I9-eR4ZT7sE4y1hxW2k4Vvpd4iEFNeUTMHG2NEq6BxQW9NFygCin/s1600/Signature+and+seal+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzEC4qXKRJjQwYJQethDoQi6qgofHvybOKgQA9CJ9jv_B6B_adEnnE_alaWvJ-3HA9l6LZLRVEQOXJpvbj5tJbmJj7I9-eR4ZT7sE4y1hxW2k4Vvpd4iEFNeUTMHG2NEq6BxQW9NFygCin/s1600/Signature+and+seal+1.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Seals and signature used by the artist</span></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-42754809743676639102015-02-18T19:08:00.000-05:002015-02-18T19:08:36.286-05:00A Piñata Store & Gardenias<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px; letter-spacing: 0px;">T</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">exans recently looted a demolished piñata store and a woman in Boise, Idaho, was arrested for attempting to convert a Jewish acquaintance by pulling her hair and stepping on her neck, screaming that she accept Jesus. The victim had no alternative but to comply, temporarily.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In a small town north of New Delhi, a 32 year-old Indian woman described as 95 percent genetically male gave birth to twins last week, and in Hong Kong doctors reported the case of an infant diagnosed with fetus-in-fetu after discovering two siblings gestating in her abdomen.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
A 1965 poem by Elizabeth Bishop…<span style="font-size: 16px;">“Filling Station”</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Oh, but it is dirty!</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">—this little filling station,</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">oil-soaked, oil-permeated</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">to a disturbing, over-all</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">black translucency.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Be careful with that match!</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Father wears a dirty,</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">oil-soaked monkey suit</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">that cuts him under the arms,</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">and several quick and saucy</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">and greasy sons assist him</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(it’s a family filling station),</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">all quite thoroughly dirty.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Do they live in the station?</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It has a cement porch</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">behind the pumps, and on it</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a set of crushed and grease-</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">impregnated wickerwork;</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">on the wicker sofa</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a dirty dog, quite comfy.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Some comic books provide</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">the only note of color—</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">of certain color. They lie</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">upon a big dim doily</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">draping a taboret</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(part of the set), beside</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a big hirsute begonia.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why the extraneous plant?</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why the taboret?</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why, oh why, the doily?</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(Embroidered in daisy stitch</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">with marguerites, I think,</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">and heavy with gray crochet.)</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Somebody embroidered the doily.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Somebody waters the plant,</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">or oils it, maybe. Somebody</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">arranges the rows of cans</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">so that they softly say:</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">ESSO—SO—SO—SO</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">to high-strung automobiles.</span></div>
<div style="color: #323333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Somebody loves us all.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">English Crime novelist Ruth Rendell once said, “Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Rain for most of Tuesday night in Oak Hill. Wednesday came around dry and sunny but chilly until the afternoon. </span><span style="color: #232323; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The new gardenia freshly planted on the east end of the carport is flourishing and heavy with buds the size of peanut M&Ms. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This past Saturday a longtime Tokyo friend and I passed an hour wandering the aisles at the weekend flea market up the road. She wanted to buy something for the yard and found a gardenia bush she decided would be just right in a spot behind the carport. Home later, we planted it, admiring the number of buds not too far from opening. Gardenias most commonly bloom in spring but I’m not sure we’ve crossed that line yet here in central coastal Florida. Makes me think the gardenia was coaxed along by greenhouse conditions before landing in my yard. I noticed today one bud among the many just starting to show a bit of unfurling white.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhteA0jAjV8DxsHn1TtSH-7TFx4ed07zEpRQuki0W3zRXHsRZzo9O-kvjSbaIguHooTU9xqG2CUd-dX_AMVCWklfPrujGHnawelj998dXe25rzWNORsRzLWX6Pm4Li1wVQkj6s0l9MRKTbX/s1600/Gardenia+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhteA0jAjV8DxsHn1TtSH-7TFx4ed07zEpRQuki0W3zRXHsRZzo9O-kvjSbaIguHooTU9xqG2CUd-dX_AMVCWklfPrujGHnawelj998dXe25rzWNORsRzLWX6Pm4Li1wVQkj6s0l9MRKTbX/s1600/Gardenia+1.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Didn’t know until now that gardenias are in the Rubiaceae family, the same as a coffee plant.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU4wULxVYmERGueWjz_VY4hn21koKfLPwWKiC-8ePNrqbpdbGKtiFvVs72J1efX1mbulg1eWdHF4W2sYUo_t2gHtEhQdhczZ3-6lZ2xz6FdGFqXHXxoskYByg3JOcX9jia7iibV0adIIqC/s1600/Garedenia+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU4wULxVYmERGueWjz_VY4hn21koKfLPwWKiC-8ePNrqbpdbGKtiFvVs72J1efX1mbulg1eWdHF4W2sYUo_t2gHtEhQdhczZ3-6lZ2xz6FdGFqXHXxoskYByg3JOcX9jia7iibV0adIIqC/s1600/Garedenia+2.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">K from Tokyo is now recently departed—I pause over the words ‘recently departed’ thinking it might imply death…but then I’m certain it doesn’t always have to carry that meaning. She’s back now at her life and routines in the city I continue to miss particularly. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I knew it would happen; when I got home from taking K to the airport, Farina was her usual excited self but seeing only me at the door she ran to the car trying to see inside, to see if K was there. She turned in circles whining, looking back at me, then back to the car and finally barking, as if to say, "Where is K?" I think it took about an hour for her to realize her new friend had gone away. (K gave me the gardenia plant but she gave Farina a whole pumpkin pie.)</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I haven’t seen my down the road neighbor, Manny in several days. He called a few days back wanting a ride to the store but K and I were just leaving for a drive into Orlando. I felt bad about not being able to help him out, called him the next day seeing if he still needed a ride but got no answer. Last time we spoke out at the gate I said whenever he was ready I would take him to the social security office for some business he has there. The folks who live across the road from him want to charge him $50 for a ride there but I got the impression he told them to go straight to hell. Where do they come off anyway asking a near penniless and seriously ill old man for $50 to drive him twenty miles up the road? In my opinion, someone needs to pull their hair while stepping on their collective necks and ask them in threatening tones, “What would Jesus do?” Hallelujah Lord, I’m converted! Go get in the car.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Books at my elbow these days are Gillian Flynn’s <i>Gone Girl</i>, one I’m rereading after seeing the slightly unsatisfying movie version and Michael Connelly’s <i>The Gods of Guilt</i>. I’m also reading a big thing from poet, Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) called <i>One Art: Letters</i>. I read somewhere recently that she was an exuberant and delightfully articulate letter writer who once wrote forty letters in one day. A collection of her lifelong letters was selected and edited by Robert Giroux and published in 1994. It sounded like something for my book collection and I got lucky, hitting upon a first edition hardback for a paltry $7.50 from a bookseller in Texas. Less than halfway through now and never a hesitation over the 668 pages ahead.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTM5m-lKQ5LO3ji78cMBIELe2ZynBcZZJUj8vjKdA7n5zRHAOco3RgULpP-6G5izwTfzI3_dkYgtSCJKF5315O1eTvA3JVALGb5IFRV1THIa6r6n3NKtVtraUgTNQ4LVdSV5dF4zc609q9/s1600/One+Art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTM5m-lKQ5LO3ji78cMBIELe2ZynBcZZJUj8vjKdA7n5zRHAOco3RgULpP-6G5izwTfzI3_dkYgtSCJKF5315O1eTvA3JVALGb5IFRV1THIa6r6n3NKtVtraUgTNQ4LVdSV5dF4zc609q9/s1600/One+Art.jpg" height="400" width="333" /></a></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-37532185715922645162015-01-30T19:15:00.000-05:002015-01-30T19:15:17.743-05:00The Library with a Big Mouth<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">F</span>irst, due homage to the guys at the source of this post: One of my favorite websites is put together by Joshua Foer and Dylan Thuras who produce something called <a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/about-us">Atlas Obscura</a>. Always fascinating, their latest offering includes a page on the secret libraries of Rome. Among those “secrets” The Bibliotheca Hertziana instantly grabbed my attention.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYEh548UexpRTI8Ro-9Cl7TS97yHRM1wkGSL7upUaqrGlZnc_0iO0WOsc6zVNr3IJZLs7jJE3XuUYIzaZqjtShDVsc7FZg3XLiO4YahxWpICwu7GbYFTptB5mctzUtEX-GDy6C67gzYxfb/s1600/Atlas+Obscura.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYEh548UexpRTI8Ro-9Cl7TS97yHRM1wkGSL7upUaqrGlZnc_0iO0WOsc6zVNr3IJZLs7jJE3XuUYIzaZqjtShDVsc7FZg3XLiO4YahxWpICwu7GbYFTptB5mctzUtEX-GDy6C67gzYxfb/s1600/Atlas+Obscura.jpg" height="106" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Palazzo Zuccari is a 16th-century building in Rome located near the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Steps">Spanish Steps</a> at the crossroads of via Sistina and via Gregoriana. The house once belonged baroque painters, Taddeo and Frederico Zuccari who started work on the house in 1590. Two years into construction of the palazzo they decided that both door and windows would be designed as huge gaping mouths, and the ground floor of the house painted in frescoes.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS_TvOsKIunGDIGmGHsVHLN_4TDyKU-2tXnYfItgalw6FHyZx0W_ZJ3lPnSheWwclFQUB4wInVsejCV3j3gyAFI23mtr4PAQnJ-vj850U70iSeIfL-j5H0az3uFnQj66-c6UGjrr8RjMMB/s1600/Palazzo+Zuccari+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS_TvOsKIunGDIGmGHsVHLN_4TDyKU-2tXnYfItgalw6FHyZx0W_ZJ3lPnSheWwclFQUB4wInVsejCV3j3gyAFI23mtr4PAQnJ-vj850U70iSeIfL-j5H0az3uFnQj66-c6UGjrr8RjMMB/s1600/Palazzo+Zuccari+1.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
In the early years of the twentieth century a German woman with a love of art arrived in Rome with the idea of establishing a library to encourage research and study of the city’s ancient and modern treasures. Her name was Henrietta Hertz and she came with the support of a wealthy German industrialist who helped to acquire the Palazzo Zuccari situated in the heart of Rome. Hertz began putting together a collection of books on Italian art as a private library. The Bibliotheca Hertziana welcomed its first art historians and research scholars in 1912.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Y47HHrSoHQVnXiF1JJJD60VBp7eLiWsmr4GKudcuL_Ht867FtnKv4czZS-bVpuMUIsoNa9JAZVdVdkMbrnRWCaZ6henRpyum4Zk9noed6cw9e7zf7kI0CTKYXGq5m5bSX_NBrgoY1CPt/s1600/Zuccari+Window.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Y47HHrSoHQVnXiF1JJJD60VBp7eLiWsmr4GKudcuL_Ht867FtnKv4czZS-bVpuMUIsoNa9JAZVdVdkMbrnRWCaZ6henRpyum4Zk9noed6cw9e7zf7kI0CTKYXGq5m5bSX_NBrgoY1CPt/s1600/Zuccari+Window.jpg" height="400" width="271" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Still owned by the German government, today the library’s collection includes 300,000 books and 800,000 photos on the history of Italian art and architecture. In addition, researchers have access to computers at eighty work stations with a view out over the rooftops of Rome.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
The Bibliotheca Hertziana is probably the only library in the world with a front door shaped like a giant mouth, where inside the Bibliotheca Hertziana, visitors step into a modern glass-walled atrium with white marble floors displaying three floors of open-stack shelves. Upon entering the library, the sharp contrast with its entrance and the surrounding architecture is quite the surprise.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbfBJ9f62F7VngqUTh-388_2iFw8FpfrG5wAWvBta0kzfbMnxNfiKZ99M0Xsgdq3n5jADC-jJvuN07K40Q5AdNB90AdFmCuD3pL7d31mKWl6AGTNFZPXlCvktGwDWkjLePR1WduTIryu-G/s1600/Palazzo+Zuccari+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbfBJ9f62F7VngqUTh-388_2iFw8FpfrG5wAWvBta0kzfbMnxNfiKZ99M0Xsgdq3n5jADC-jJvuN07K40Q5AdNB90AdFmCuD3pL7d31mKWl6AGTNFZPXlCvktGwDWkjLePR1WduTIryu-G/s1600/Palazzo+Zuccari+2.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-76068392801619000792015-01-26T17:45:00.000-05:002015-01-26T17:45:09.837-05:00Onboard the HMS Beagle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFXOCqHErX9mXzTw-vwo04g38LPIPN-5b6SWk0cAJXPPToYISXNWvXEw-vzEkqDAoGONUDlfshvKw2fJFoywQKNHfmELpB_7Smq41RG9MXjFdAezWmQDcUHz_udjkailDJcTrFtE9CQFA5/s1600/Martens+Self+Portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFXOCqHErX9mXzTw-vwo04g38LPIPN-5b6SWk0cAJXPPToYISXNWvXEw-vzEkqDAoGONUDlfshvKw2fJFoywQKNHfmELpB_7Smq41RG9MXjFdAezWmQDcUHz_udjkailDJcTrFtE9CQFA5/s1600/Martens+Self+Portrait.jpg" height="320" width="242" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: start;">Conrad Martens, self portrait, 1833</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Conrad Martens sketchbooks from his voyage with Charles Darwin on the <i>HMS Beagle</i> have recently been added to the Cambridge Digital Library. The drawings were done between 1833 and the summer months of 1834. It was on this voyage that the first seeds of Darwin’s book, <i>Origin of Species</i>, were planted.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/8D1K22Rbc20" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Conrad Martens (1801–1878) was a London born painter, best known for his landscapes. He trained under prominent watercolorist and teacher, Copley Fielding. In 1832, at the age of 32 Martens joined the ship <i>Hyacinth</i> as a topographical artist. On that voyage while at a stop in Montevideo near the end of 1833 he met Robert FitzRoy, captain of the <i>HMS Beagle</i> and obtained the position of draughtsman, replacing the ship’s artist who was leaving the ship for reasons of illness. One member of the ship’s company was Charles Darwin. The young Darwin was serving as a naturalist and companion to the ship’s captain and during their time together aboard ship he and Martens became lifelong friends. Some critics suggest that it was aboard the <i>Beagle</i> that Martens developed his particular style of artistically imagined but geographically accurate landscape painting. But his time on the <i>Beagle</i> was not long and he left the ship at Valparaiso in the summer months of 1834. His eye has been drawn farther west and he booked passage on a ship sailing to Sydney via Tahiti.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNXTegqEA25BKbJAPI05aQA7Lpsy9mSgHFQbaTxZW4Np-52E7pAy8gKlU0uaLrKLLNvpP3-5tkHAk9Rsoz18-8S4aUqeO4e1huZ1biig50GCrH_VpwU_zsaS2hKx-jnzPO3sOzLiwFUeXK/s1600/HMS+Beagle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNXTegqEA25BKbJAPI05aQA7Lpsy9mSgHFQbaTxZW4Np-52E7pAy8gKlU0uaLrKLLNvpP3-5tkHAk9Rsoz18-8S4aUqeO4e1huZ1biig50GCrH_VpwU_zsaS2hKx-jnzPO3sOzLiwFUeXK/s1600/HMS+Beagle.jpg" height="220" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
His ship arrived in Sydney in 1835 and the artist remained there for the rest of his life. Captivated by the sea and landscape of Sydney Harbour, he began sketching even as his ship approached the wide harbor. He was fortunate to gain an introduction to members of the gentry in New South Wales and quickly built up a clientele of the social elite. He painted watercolors and oils of their estates as well as landscape views. One of his more famous works is the 1866 watercolor below.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSzQdaU62Q-OLAI3N1B14b8tyPduuroXa0bEQ97xFeaQ0tx3n8g0JLpD6YmO7o2Dh07PNaaQ7TGi56wf979he2UT3PRLa_tJ5yWHWWcGODtsHU3Lu0Y0n45KIsZaAWigJIk1UZzdixfpbj/s1600/North+Head.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSzQdaU62Q-OLAI3N1B14b8tyPduuroXa0bEQ97xFeaQ0tx3n8g0JLpD6YmO7o2Dh07PNaaQ7TGi56wf979he2UT3PRLa_tJ5yWHWWcGODtsHU3Lu0Y0n45KIsZaAWigJIk1UZzdixfpbj/s1600/North+Head.jpg" height="253" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>North Head from above Balmoral, Sydney Harbour</i>; watercolor 1866</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU5VA5sh2WCLWeJY7eAJukHQ-1WK1LSJRuf8TnsGtmh-c6FvTBmRM7l4uBLyvJqeU-vmyAU3RPykZ54QrS3BdbW3Iyf0Ki-KzpmznidIbcU-jtE5V7mbTjDWEQQcxoNMyDUsbG2LzbaUH4/s1600/Martens+Indian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU5VA5sh2WCLWeJY7eAJukHQ-1WK1LSJRuf8TnsGtmh-c6FvTBmRM7l4uBLyvJqeU-vmyAU3RPykZ54QrS3BdbW3Iyf0Ki-KzpmznidIbcU-jtE5V7mbTjDWEQQcxoNMyDUsbG2LzbaUH4/s1600/Martens+Indian.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>A Patagonian Indian</i>, 1834 sketch</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-20697070598465853122015-01-14T15:29:00.000-05:002015-01-15T15:45:49.054-05:00The Nature of Emergency<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHOY7cR_N61PJPpcmuipIuWvnIdvzuNjIR88r2T7D5FiqkQTKDR7tQBeFqR7DAaKLCe6x5z_PB_jQs8dLkY_vmqTQbxIVKY3NH_FrvZtJ2OMb2RIkkt_gXlckWVKIgF1HL_mN11aqMMtY4/s1600/911+Phone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHOY7cR_N61PJPpcmuipIuWvnIdvzuNjIR88r2T7D5FiqkQTKDR7tQBeFqR7DAaKLCe6x5z_PB_jQs8dLkY_vmqTQbxIVKY3NH_FrvZtJ2OMb2RIkkt_gXlckWVKIgF1HL_mN11aqMMtY4/s1600/911+Phone.jpg" height="309" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">A</span>n article in <i>The Japan Times</i> the other day had me laughing again over nutty 911 emergency calls. Funny 911 stories are about as common as lawyer jokes but it’s a good guess that most of us haven’t heard the ones coming out of Japan. Until reading the article in Japan’s English language daily, I naively imagined that most of those oddball “Help” calls came from people in the US. Apparently the same thing goes on in Japan where police have complained that “unsuitable” emergency calls increased between January and November of 2014, raising the number to over two million. According to the National Police Agency non-emergency calls to 110 accounted for 24.3 percent of the total number of calls. Here are a few examples…</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
One woman called police about there being no toilet paper in a public bathroom. Another caller wanted assistance with a forgotten smartphone password. With Japan being the world capital of roadside vending machines it isn’t too unexpected that at some point a person would call complaining that a vending machine did not return the correct change; in fact, many have. Then there was the caller who must have been on the edge of insanity when he called begging police to <span style="font-size: 12px;">PLEASE</span> come and remove an insect from his ear. Never having heard of plumbers, a housewife tried getting police help in unclogging her home toilet, while another caller asked for a police cruiser to be dispatched to clear congested roads allowing her to drive a sick child to the local hospital faster.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Best though that we not point fingers too laughingly at Japan’s weird calls and perceived emergencies. Conceding that I live in a land where alligators and armadillos roam the nights and vehicles with the largest tires have the right of way, luckily, I’ve never had to call 911. But out here you never know what tomorrow holds. Some months back the county Sheriff’s Office contacted me with news that my address had been changed for the sake of 911 calls. Pinpointing my location was the problem. Maybe they’ll be able to find me now should I call asking for help subduing a wild pig.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Judging from a list I collected, Florida residents seem to dial up 911 for a variety of quirky reasons… </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
One man called 911 because he had been splashed by a car driving through a puddle. Another complained of too many onions in his takeout. An outraged woman called because her new rabbit did not have the floppy ears promised in a newspaper advertisement.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
In Jacksonville, a man was so peeved when a sandwich shop left the special sauce off his hero that he called 911 twice. The first time to ask if officers could make sure his sandwich was made properly, the second to complain that the police weren’t responding fast enough to his first call. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Hysterical voice: “My car will not start! I’m locked inside my car and nothing works and it’s getting very hot in here! Plus, I’m not feeling well." The dispatcher suggested pulling up the lock. The woman tried, undoubtedly surprised when the door opened.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Angered that her local McDonald’s was out of Chicken McNuggets, a Florida woman called 911 three times to report the fast food emergency. She called police to complain that a cashier would not give her a refund. When they arrived at the restaurant, the woman told them, “This is an emergency. If I had known they didn’t have McNuggets, I wouldn’t have given them my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don’t want one.” She was arrested for misusing 911.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
A Sarasota man being followed by police tried to sidetrack the officers by making a fake 911 call. The police car suddenly got a call from dispatch alerting them to an armed robbery happening several blocks away. The plan seemed to work at first when the police car sped off to answer the armed robbery call. Unfortunately for the man, another police car followed him into a parking lot and spotted the gun in his car. After his arrest, officers discovered the bogus 911 call had come from his cell phone.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_njbASE0opj_IRdtsLJfog_HT5PxQf1j-4tKFGT1tzcOWF6aomMuuzATZNU9Sp8GuJtrrMF0Edf0xfzZuVgHzLZAm_ejZQI2bi5qGOOtuE8nZzpr441wLNFkj64aHwnNyVWHaX5i6EBq6/s1600/911+for+Dummies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_njbASE0opj_IRdtsLJfog_HT5PxQf1j-4tKFGT1tzcOWF6aomMuuzATZNU9Sp8GuJtrrMF0Edf0xfzZuVgHzLZAm_ejZQI2bi5qGOOtuE8nZzpr441wLNFkj64aHwnNyVWHaX5i6EBq6/s1600/911+for+Dummies.jpg" height="400" width="317" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
A couple of funny 911 call transcripts:</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What is your emergency?</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Caller: I heard what sounded like gunshots coming from the brown house on the corner.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Dispatcher: Do you have an address?</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Caller: No, I’m wearing a blouse and slacks, why?</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What is the nature of your emergency?</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Caller: I’m trying to reach nine eleven but my phone doesn’t have an eleven on it.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Dispatcher: This is nine eleven.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Caller: I thought you just said it was nine-one-one</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Dispatcher: Yes, ma’am, nine-one-one and nine-eleven are the same thing.</div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Caller: Honey, I may be old, but I’m not stupid.</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-78675429590492232732015-01-08T22:49:00.000-05:002015-01-08T22:49:46.015-05:00Lesbian Shoes<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">O</span>ne of my friends tells me that my favorite shoes are a style favored by lesbians. He says that all I need to complete the picture is a tall tumbler of vodka and grapefruit juice with salt around the rim. According to memory, 1995 was the year he attended the ladies Nabisco Dinah Shore golf tournament in Rancho Mirage, California where the fairways during that four day event were crowded with lesbians wearing my shoes and toasting each other with big salty dog vodka cocktails. I had a big laugh hearing that and told everyone I saw for the next few weeks that my Palm Street Fisherman sandals were all the rage among golfing lesbians.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7R-Z_K49R20QI8I24o9i0nGZcB_qKrNxNCrIZvWCvuVR8Fesiy5yaHGl2vOz0m5-vvfAL_-vq0cW9uCoJm3PZ9X7L1IA7zjGQqhyphenhyphen_oZYO6e99s2Moppkc3CVokB6OgVpglRCkxsRc96I/s1600/Rockports.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7R-Z_K49R20QI8I24o9i0nGZcB_qKrNxNCrIZvWCvuVR8Fesiy5yaHGl2vOz0m5-vvfAL_-vq0cW9uCoJm3PZ9X7L1IA7zjGQqhyphenhyphen_oZYO6e99s2Moppkc3CVokB6OgVpglRCkxsRc96I/s1600/Rockports.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Rockport has been making shoes since 1972 and a few years later came up with a sandal they called the Palm Street Fisherman sandal. The first Rockport shoe I bought was the Palm Street Fisherman, enough to convince me that I had found a totally comfortable and durable shoe. Most of my shoes since have been Rockport. Hard to remember when exactly it was I bought the Palm Street sandals, but I’m certain it was no later than 1990 and possibly even earlier. Twenty-five years and those sandals are still pounding the roads, still babying my feet. The style I bought way-back-when is slightly different from the one available now. Originally, they were designed with buckles but the buckle has since been replaced by a more convenient Velcro strap.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Last week the right sandal suddenly began feeling loose, though not to the extent it was falling off my foot. The buckle strap had broken free of the leather side-piece it was stitched to. Right off I could see it was the kind of break easily repaired—that is, if you could find one of those rare people who were at one time called a cobbler. Being a Net savvy kind of guy, I googled ’shoe repair’ and came up with a fair number of hits for my area. Only problem was, none of them turned out to be shoe repair specialists. One of the stores I called suggested trying a motorcycle-leather goods store a few miles down the road. My response was, “Huh? That store is all Hell’s Angels and Harley Davidson!” The lady encouraged me to give them a try.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM9u-7nVAkvU9nbgjIxZ7LGD7WxKR0nYE21e9oSxt87n3KsRaYTjPt-akTXWKl6ueQcyhlWthGq43A5FtFi49U9hyeJqRexNfFimTYRUMGy-Pu8WyxmwWV0rDRDLPd61CuB5NQTs0nRZOj/s1600/Saddle+Shop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM9u-7nVAkvU9nbgjIxZ7LGD7WxKR0nYE21e9oSxt87n3KsRaYTjPt-akTXWKl6ueQcyhlWthGq43A5FtFi49U9hyeJqRexNfFimTYRUMGy-Pu8WyxmwWV0rDRDLPd61CuB5NQTs0nRZOj/s1600/Saddle+Shop.jpg" height="292" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
This sign is a bit deceiving. Maybe once it was a saddle shop. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
These days it’s a motorcycle shop.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
So I took my broken Rockport sandal there and met a cool, laid back motorcycle mama who looked at the sandal and said, “Sure. Give me a few minutes. You can wait or come back in a while if you’d rather.” I took the dawg for a walk and returned about thirty minutes later. Perfect fix, perfect price: $4.00. At first she said five, but when it turned out I had only four singles apart from a twenty, she said, “Let’s make it easy. $4.00 is fine.”</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Sometimes you get the feeling that everybody is trying to take advantage of you and then suddenly up pops one who surprises you.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
I came home from the repair shop and mixed myself a big salty dog vodka cocktail.</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-86833270523302280152015-01-06T17:20:00.000-05:002015-01-06T17:20:43.160-05:00Neighbors<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px; letter-spacing: 0px;">U</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">p around 7:30 the morning after Christmas, I was outside ten minutes later yelling at Farina to shut up her non-stop barking. She ignored me, barking and snarling at nothing I could see. Everything looked normal, no squirrels, birds, armadillos or passing cars to spark her excitement, she mostly paced back and forth barking her fool head off at the high wooden fence that separates us from the neighbor’s house next door. </span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7uTwrKRuDX1j_173BUYDtUUakSE5gPSDB6b32NJ49ph62WbTv2h_hpcUBny4ZvAS2V0YEuZBG9sve0hl07pUUiTGoPkJEJvqGMXqLfCsfKOdj-pYy3wq5JIP4hiiBo5f7XjG4FTx0EgxI/s1600/Fence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7uTwrKRuDX1j_173BUYDtUUakSE5gPSDB6b32NJ49ph62WbTv2h_hpcUBny4ZvAS2V0YEuZBG9sve0hl07pUUiTGoPkJEJvqGMXqLfCsfKOdj-pYy3wq5JIP4hiiBo5f7XjG4FTx0EgxI/s1600/Fence.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZOHo1yWN7EVDWSIOGHV1Ru-Pwlc1jlsq2Z5nQwI5GzgmxN_AC-Yd8KfhSLN5uZ9RyA-O0Uv14RO4w7l1PNtJGvxiaBP1NCeSS-oZCTzoDeQo3HM-iHW3_xvavGm0lZT3H9jwy5tBUAIoo/s1600/Farina+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZOHo1yWN7EVDWSIOGHV1Ru-Pwlc1jlsq2Z5nQwI5GzgmxN_AC-Yd8KfhSLN5uZ9RyA-O0Uv14RO4w7l1PNtJGvxiaBP1NCeSS-oZCTzoDeQo3HM-iHW3_xvavGm0lZT3H9jwy5tBUAIoo/s1600/Farina+5.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One of Farina’s calmer moments</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometime around 10 o’clock, thereabouts, Farina long over her noisy barking, neighbor Randy came over wondering if I’d seen or heard anything out of the ordinary around 7:30. Said he had gotten up and left in his truck to go fishing about 6:30 leaving his wife and brother-in-law asleep in the house. Once out in his boat, he remembered the Friday trash pick up and called home to tell Jeannie to put the trash and recycle bins out on the road. She told him to forget the trash and skedaddle home, the police were on their way, her car stolen out of the driveway and Jimmy’s truck tossed for valuables. The thief walked through the wide open gate in broad daylight, rummaged around in Jimmy's truck, then found Jeannie's car also unlocked but with the keys on the driver's side floor. He jumped in and made a getaway with Jeannie looking out the window just in time to see Santa Claus speeding out through the gate in her car. And there the source of Farina’s barking is revealed. Unfamiliar smell in the yard next door and she stood at the fence sounding an alert the whole time. In most cases out here, if a stranger walks silently through an unlocked gate and up to the house—even one in a Santa suit—he can expect someone from inside to step out the front door either shooting or waving a gun.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY1HgYPFNiAFSzNnMEzk4u2K6iAgRQgeYtVXqCZtUPfyerOn-bN0sYXgPGav4DKp6PVV6USgNrDDmEceWvZiS0J3rnvo6DB52IwD22VxiBDimVze8jYMX6nxj6vddsKfvXU61bhZzOe2pF/s1600/Randy's.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY1HgYPFNiAFSzNnMEzk4u2K6iAgRQgeYtVXqCZtUPfyerOn-bN0sYXgPGav4DKp6PVV6USgNrDDmEceWvZiS0J3rnvo6DB52IwD22VxiBDimVze8jYMX6nxj6vddsKfvXU61bhZzOe2pF/s1600/Randy's.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Gate & garage open and nobody home </span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have wondered half a dozen times about Randy’s & Jeannie’s habit of always leaving their gate unlocked and wide open, garage door yawning wide and nobody at home.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">……………</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">You might remember my neighbor down the road. He’s the good guy always willing to help out, always full of backwoods tales, the one with the gap in his front teeth who said he has a “dentist” that works out of the trunk of his Pontiac Le Grand and uses laughing gas as an anesthesia. That’s Manny. We were chatting at the gate the other day, him telling me, “Hell, I'll shoot the *!!%#^!&*^%#. I ain’t got long to live anyways.” He was talking about the rednecks over the way with their giant killer dogs, muscle cars, all night Loretta Lynn parties, and Sunday afternoon Iraqi war re-enactments. In fact, for the past couple of months the dogs are rarely seen, the parties diminished and the big gun shoot-outs even rarer. Seems most of what they do over there these days is run heavy duty equipment like road graders and other Caterpillar giants. Hard to tell what it is they’re doing with all the big yellow machinery, but what used to be invisible behind the trees is now a house revealed by the gouging out of trees and brush. Kind of like they are preparing the command post in a jungle hot zone, 500 feet on four sides of the house denuded of all but flat grassless dirt between them and an encroaching enemy. One thing easy to see without the wall of enclosing trees is the enlarged alligator pond and the rough and tumble 4-wheeler track running around the property.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4_1aX9PD5FJblXH0ybLhgkrpcOVSXHdWtq5YS8pKDOopdo3EI6jIyh4JJB0HhtNaF-cFyOGhfxUMZ33koy3xkkT7aG5LjIRKZv8OSRMOPTQkqR07L8Cqtg_6pD6TvEPf6zsvIUn5h2bT/s1600/Corner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4_1aX9PD5FJblXH0ybLhgkrpcOVSXHdWtq5YS8pKDOopdo3EI6jIyh4JJB0HhtNaF-cFyOGhfxUMZ33koy3xkkT7aG5LjIRKZv8OSRMOPTQkqR07L8Cqtg_6pD6TvEPf6zsvIUn5h2bT/s1600/Corner.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">View of ploughed up ground once blocked by trees</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Couple of days after our conversation, the whole area a chilly mess of mud and mist, I was hoping there would be no need to go out. Manny called needing a ride to the store for some smokes. I appreciate his no car, no driver’s license situation and try hard not to turn down his infrequent requests for a ride. So, we drove south two miles to the Kangaroo Store where gas is down to $2.20 and three packs of Manny smokes cost $15. He told me that word from Randy was there's been no news from the police about Jeannie’s stolen car. Doesn’t surprise me. If they haven't found it by now, it's probably long gone, a diminishing blip on the radar headed for the North Pole.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDImJaeq_Fo3b2Rj97dXYRzh6iMftGuszdkT6msUWhuI54DCTeD4RnHdnxMiSr62lP-Rymv9RB5QWwmqa-uIJRHqw9pYh2-0Z6i4-y0giVOuO6qdyjJKhi3gUEF772grOadSJwPXQkhsAf/s1600/Manny's%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDImJaeq_Fo3b2Rj97dXYRzh6iMftGuszdkT6msUWhuI54DCTeD4RnHdnxMiSr62lP-Rymv9RB5QWwmqa-uIJRHqw9pYh2-0Z6i4-y0giVOuO6qdyjJKhi3gUEF772grOadSJwPXQkhsAf/s1600/Manny's%2B1.jpg" height="400" width="340" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Far down the road Manny’s small trailer sits snug under the trees. </span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yep, that’a toilet just to the left of center.</span></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-44743559160529598572014-12-24T15:53:00.000-05:002014-12-24T15:53:43.814-05:00Happy Christmas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX4QvxBDltgh8-mSJzeVsNKwVU4teWXWqxhl5d0YB1eP3Q4H9HqCFK2juHpgnquUITRKCzn2W2ovDQXTgH-TzBnTrPnS25Z9lNhsEJkqL6tc1ehkku2HLbtp86X819UfWaQk0yWLx4Ipei/s1600/Farina+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX4QvxBDltgh8-mSJzeVsNKwVU4teWXWqxhl5d0YB1eP3Q4H9HqCFK2juHpgnquUITRKCzn2W2ovDQXTgH-TzBnTrPnS25Z9lNhsEJkqL6tc1ehkku2HLbtp86X819UfWaQk0yWLx4Ipei/s1600/Farina+1.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
Farina wishes everyone a merry, merry Christmas!</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyBBFnD3xFKbwfHQF5cYCJJdjsdDmKv-kqnX1GlPE7qBqS1s0BQhvILnH4B1bqB2s8WML7nQrAfEyQ9CbGdxy9j5g8FiVdk7azfokb9iMRrcLxHjgJkQRknKgD_zu_6UJ2StrPTRZOH7Uu/s1600/Leaves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyBBFnD3xFKbwfHQF5cYCJJdjsdDmKv-kqnX1GlPE7qBqS1s0BQhvILnH4B1bqB2s8WML7nQrAfEyQ9CbGdxy9j5g8FiVdk7azfokb9iMRrcLxHjgJkQRknKgD_zu_6UJ2StrPTRZOH7Uu/s1600/Leaves.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
The carpet of leaves in our Old Dixie Lane front yard</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
If you squint it might look a little like Christmas ornaments.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9M0Q__qhNA3peoMro7PqLY4sWJYHS_kN200b4akV4rlhjN2uEfEIOYG-T04TzI9ric-6bwiJf0ySraQGFs93LnWR_eE82XOLwPp9sK1MaTaWqbfYJTL20JleEDGw3ZHvtByl0YjA6G43W/s1600/Tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9M0Q__qhNA3peoMro7PqLY4sWJYHS_kN200b4akV4rlhjN2uEfEIOYG-T04TzI9ric-6bwiJf0ySraQGFs93LnWR_eE82XOLwPp9sK1MaTaWqbfYJTL20JleEDGw3ZHvtByl0YjA6G43W/s1600/Tree.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
Not exactly a Christmas tree but it’s almost as pretty as one.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
Thanks to all those readers who have been faithful browsers among the pages of Scriblets. I wish (along with Farina) all of you the best, the merriest and happiest of Christmas seasons.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-81488400870787294782014-11-22T16:48:00.000-05:002014-11-26T09:14:47.858-05:00Rain & Snow: Kawase Hasui <div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px; letter-spacing: 0px;">S</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">ometime in the early 1930s, a young man named Robert Muller noticed a woodblock print in a New York shop window and went inside for closer look. He ended up buying the print, using his meager monthly student allowance of $5. The print was Kawase Hasui’s 1931 work, <i>Kiyosu Bridge</i>. Later in his life, Muller opened a print and framing shop in New Haven, Connecticut and became an astute collector who over the years stimulated renewal and development in the art of Japanese woodblock printing.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
One of the blogs I always look forward to reading celebrates the old <i>shitamachi </i>district of Tokyo and is written by a young South African woman living and working there. My great enjoyment in her writing (and photos) comes from the fact that I lived in Tokyo myself for 28 years, yet never fail to learn something new in blogposts from Rurousha. A week ago her post opened <span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">with a photo of Kawase Hasui’s woodblock print,</span> <i><a href="http://www.rurousha.blogspot.jp/2014/11/kiyosubashi-in-print-and-real-life.html">Kiyosu Bridge</a></i>. The artist’s name was not new to me and in line with other Japanese art posts I’ve done, with encouragement from Rurousha it seemed a good time to devote some space to this woodblock print artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQP-3xG8rilqfQMuZ7Zmm0Siy0kJ7rV-hR3GhYJk5BwDoH3Usp3dQoMWxxAisUcsp4nL0vLzoRaIlK-6sZuo5N_B2lWn5DGNHsDHBFpeX6vuKhf_1c-KnqfjUw73VgOJqqE7T-cm1NLNRh/s1600/Kawase.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQP-3xG8rilqfQMuZ7Zmm0Siy0kJ7rV-hR3GhYJk5BwDoH3Usp3dQoMWxxAisUcsp4nL0vLzoRaIlK-6sZuo5N_B2lWn5DGNHsDHBFpeX6vuKhf_1c-KnqfjUw73VgOJqqE7T-cm1NLNRh/s1600/Kawase.jpg" height="320" width="214" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) was a leading figure in the <i>shin-hanga</i>, or ‘new prints’ movement of Japanese woodblock printmaking. As a young man he studied with Kaburagi Kiyotaka, the man who founded the <i>shin-hanga</i> concept. Hasui traveled frequently, filling sketchbooks with drawings of scenic places around Japan. Many of his print designs are based on his watercolors, many of them done a year or two before the appearance of a first print, but in some cases years, even decades passed between the original work and the print version.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1RiK3asbS38fxyDvTUQGcQ_2xRh27b0YOmIb6FLQm7u52X0wsI5eThgrziteGcEWAv9AxTqflVBKDALUH3Br-ma5voIhdltS-3eYMFoOM3tzcAuIIL88G9BVHKcASy3ZOSgufdQOn28Z8/s1600/A+Tea+Plantation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1RiK3asbS38fxyDvTUQGcQ_2xRh27b0YOmIb6FLQm7u52X0wsI5eThgrziteGcEWAv9AxTqflVBKDALUH3Br-ma5voIhdltS-3eYMFoOM3tzcAuIIL88G9BVHKcASy3ZOSgufdQOn28Z8/s1600/A+Tea+Plantation.jpg" height="298" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>A Tea Plantation</i>, 1941; watercolor in preparation for a woodblock print</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Most of Hasui’s prints appear to be based on beautiful, atmospheric watercolors, probably done on location. His sketchbooks include what look like preparatory sketches for either a watercolor or print but it is hard to say much definitively about his creative process as it remains somewhat shrouded in mystery, and for now at least, lacking in very many substantiated facts. Through his teacher Hasui met Shôzaburô Watanabe, a driving force behind <i>shin-hanga</i> printmaking. Watanabe ultimately published most of Hasui’s work.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwn_fViVrJS_jG6c8-eq-QEu54mUlwSmSXuv-MNhr-s9F-tC9VmYG0ZH3ldx7qjS1QuhVi-TuIW2lH0Jkksn0WjA7fy9Pu4jJ8nnx-2VgiNi7TSs5yIXmUWC5xiSBGHbKp17xJTAC-fwVA/s1600/Amagasaki.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwn_fViVrJS_jG6c8-eq-QEu54mUlwSmSXuv-MNhr-s9F-tC9VmYG0ZH3ldx7qjS1QuhVi-TuIW2lH0Jkksn0WjA7fy9Pu4jJ8nnx-2VgiNi7TSs5yIXmUWC5xiSBGHbKp17xJTAC-fwVA/s1600/Amagasaki.jpg" height="400" width="270" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Daimotsu, Amagasaki in the Rain</i>, 1940</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
In the print above we see not an old rural Japan but the blossoming industrial Japan of Hasui’s day. Despite that, it is an unmistakably Japanese setting.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Hasui is highly regarded for his exquisite color, perspective and ambiance in a wide range of woodblock prints. Over his lifetime he created over 600 different prints and is recognized as one of most prolific <i>shin-hanga</i> artists of the period. In 1953, the Japanese government decided to commemorate traditional printmaking and commissioned Hasui to make a special woodblock print. The result was <i>Snow at Zojoji Temple</i>, a work later designated an Intangible Cultural Treasure. The year before his death in 1957, Hasui was named a Living National Treasure in Japan.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghvjkd6YKMwybgF5Vbn-0IJYvIjv4n28ANyM8Hj2GQp2R0Lv6preD7pcG8OUnoBrDX1YzmDjHrfcTmWl8q5iItRgxRT4BtFbmnkjNugOCF7aZByT-LfKI-39WXKZ5um1leqTJlgBV1Nnvy/s1600/Snow+at+Zojoji.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghvjkd6YKMwybgF5Vbn-0IJYvIjv4n28ANyM8Hj2GQp2R0Lv6preD7pcG8OUnoBrDX1YzmDjHrfcTmWl8q5iItRgxRT4BtFbmnkjNugOCF7aZByT-LfKI-39WXKZ5um1leqTJlgBV1Nnvy/s1600/Snow+at+Zojoji.jpg" height="312" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Snow at Zojoji Temple</i>, 1953</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqrsbwSrFMq1xXcNlMCeltrlPSFsIfdMnIWKFnu1xCqapZAAaJxLbPRVghEsWJyVFm5aEHzXrWQwyXBEmcJPIuXehuhfHA7rbPBVZxaAZObUzIXmSIjcdurCKNNEw4dADqckSfdBxq7CG8/s1600/The+Pond.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqrsbwSrFMq1xXcNlMCeltrlPSFsIfdMnIWKFnu1xCqapZAAaJxLbPRVghEsWJyVFm5aEHzXrWQwyXBEmcJPIuXehuhfHA7rbPBVZxaAZObUzIXmSIjcdurCKNNEw4dADqckSfdBxq7CG8/s1600/The+Pond.jpg" height="262" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Pond at Benten Shrine in Shiba</i>, 1929</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxcxcKceyB8sIGFhSNHGKXpkcBcGjeVwI-sSL_L7gmNcXozNLbFEtrc97AR772sDBlPieQu2lHnu74Q9QwsHzKX5-2QMa5PJOkOWZn0dJiDGkFe2QDREgMK5KvWEZ-iwDM-zhGMbdSeo0/s1600/Road+to+Nikko.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxcxcKceyB8sIGFhSNHGKXpkcBcGjeVwI-sSL_L7gmNcXozNLbFEtrc97AR772sDBlPieQu2lHnu74Q9QwsHzKX5-2QMa5PJOkOWZn0dJiDGkFe2QDREgMK5KvWEZ-iwDM-zhGMbdSeo0/s1600/Road+to+Nikko.jpg" height="400" width="277" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>The Road to Nikko</i>, 1930</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnNjZOGWRlaKQB0SVDF7sdI8GRrqgqWgoQc1vwmLZL7Qw4EXwH1YqyTF3IlFmT-RqJF-6xlhSXfRbKo2XUFu-pC2B2JshwtshoGoMFzW80Z-V9Bk9jYSJtu20QNLYPdn1RPDTi4BipuA6E/s1600/Cloudy+Day.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnNjZOGWRlaKQB0SVDF7sdI8GRrqgqWgoQc1vwmLZL7Qw4EXwH1YqyTF3IlFmT-RqJF-6xlhSXfRbKo2XUFu-pC2B2JshwtshoGoMFzW80Z-V9Bk9jYSJtu20QNLYPdn1RPDTi4BipuA6E/s1600/Cloudy+Day.jpg" height="291" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Cloudy Day, Mizuki Ibaragi</i>, 1946</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOQR1wV5vjlQJ6Raa0zQjZQAEKvOd84cTGu6SKI8vUVYKQwNghKM7UfH3eKsatUo88ePIxp7T87_YQ8Wj_CLSgkJC5FEH8MgYd_-wZAq-MNfxGZlV-NzYF0QA5WtBj3ibh6TiqSTBojMIV/s1600/Mandarin+Ducks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOQR1wV5vjlQJ6Raa0zQjZQAEKvOd84cTGu6SKI8vUVYKQwNghKM7UfH3eKsatUo88ePIxp7T87_YQ8Wj_CLSgkJC5FEH8MgYd_-wZAq-MNfxGZlV-NzYF0QA5WtBj3ibh6TiqSTBojMIV/s1600/Mandarin+Ducks.jpg" height="272" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Mandarin Ducks</i>, 1950</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh17_j9og6Ul1LwIP3X1N_OawxCsWsbacVZiUI8oeAbw3Vqbo2Pj56mZ47xRQJVPF6ceO1dMzVlEsryaZBNHTTd7_0Tbnffr6Dhs_2OimNT61e4307ssu2t8nGDUKd-6n6CIVb_toGLJxuj/s1600/Night+Rain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh17_j9og6Ul1LwIP3X1N_OawxCsWsbacVZiUI8oeAbw3Vqbo2Pj56mZ47xRQJVPF6ceO1dMzVlEsryaZBNHTTd7_0Tbnffr6Dhs_2OimNT61e4307ssu2t8nGDUKd-6n6CIVb_toGLJxuj/s1600/Night+Rain.jpg" height="400" width="273" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Night Rain at Kawarako, Ibaragi</i>, 1947</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzmI-tvDsYNZ8YZBMRY7-Sam4TS-INxhaL655d1Qq75xmReF_hA-JgkcaNVaeL7cbHTcdD2cNUHm9ckMRcBnzl8cRsa4Wt4xhPWk36TrlbGpxvm9wBulF6hfppZ6ES4k_SoHkajWKPcQwD/s1600/Dahlias.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzmI-tvDsYNZ8YZBMRY7-Sam4TS-INxhaL655d1Qq75xmReF_hA-JgkcaNVaeL7cbHTcdD2cNUHm9ckMRcBnzl8cRsa4Wt4xhPWk36TrlbGpxvm9wBulF6hfppZ6ES4k_SoHkajWKPcQwD/s1600/Dahlias.jpg" height="400" width="272" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Dahlias</i>, 1940</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
The print of <i>Dahlias</i>, along with <i>Mandarin Ducks</i> above are examples of Hasui’s few non-landscape compositions.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
For more about the art of woodblock prints see an earlier post <a href="http://wwwscriblets-bleets.blogspot.com/search?q=autumn+grasshopper">here</a>.</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-18730676255076901052014-10-04T14:29:00.000-04:002014-10-04T14:29:28.331-04:00Muddy Dogs & Arks<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">P</span>aradise is wilting. For long months I sang praises of the beauty and the beasts of a green homestead ideally situated along a country road. Three or four weeks ago the rains came and the beauty (though not the beasts) began to sink beneath a daily onslaught of monsoon-like weather. Everything outdoors has become a swampy bog of rain battered grass and mud stirred up by swimming armadillos. The drainage canal running under the drive outside my gate is rising to the top of its banks while great ponds of water the breadth of swimming pools stand in three or four places around the yard. During the brief times between rain, trees shiver in a wind shaking off cascades of water that drench me still and deepen the squishiness beneath my shoes. Yesterday my nearest neighbor and I were joking about building an ark to save us and our dogs, but not the mosquitos and armadillos, nor the water moccasins looking for high ground. Closer to Indian River Lagoon, Manny’s yard is more flooded than my own and to step outside his house he needs rubber boots and a snake bite kit.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEi6KX4OOaNHBpJcIxqGD6qYNx7B88L1AY6SITIYIyQ-fGuGp9ap-D5hWXVfrQqzHlFKcHXBu3P1sYqG2ypr1YFK2VK1QPxWt1irbOzwihvwHqJg-xoFJyHo5n_JLCJIkzyyQzTZNBqYCY/s1600/Wet+Yard+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEi6KX4OOaNHBpJcIxqGD6qYNx7B88L1AY6SITIYIyQ-fGuGp9ap-D5hWXVfrQqzHlFKcHXBu3P1sYqG2ypr1YFK2VK1QPxWt1irbOzwihvwHqJg-xoFJyHo5n_JLCJIkzyyQzTZNBqYCY/s1600/Wet+Yard+1.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
My yard is less threatening. Apart from the swarms of mosquitos that fasten on to me and Farina dog and hitch a ride into the house, my concern these days is keeping Farina out of the pools of standing water. Like a six year-old child who thrills to a romp in the summertime splash pool, Farina loves nothing more than to zoom in high speed circles through one pool and on to the next, finally plopping herself down to pant and drink the muddy water. Naturally she comes back to the house soaking wet, covered in mud and with a big grin on her face. She would love to run and jump on the bed to wallow herself clean but instead gets confined to the back porch until I can wipe her down. Given total freedom she would do this until I ran out of towels, happy that the next time she could stay dirty. That Farina is a caution. For the time being she’s making do with leash only outings, not allowed near her pleasure pools.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM_CKX-2F9kiaNc0Y4kziCDKqL3P_QK0xMEALX76xU1irVx785FK1G2Z6kf_gv62IayueEFgiItH4Ylh_sVY6dgezi8GXqJAOtl_wZU_P1xihpBLvEXiRkShqmzS26UESnttYdQpI4Gw6E/s1600/Wet+Yard+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM_CKX-2F9kiaNc0Y4kziCDKqL3P_QK0xMEALX76xU1irVx785FK1G2Z6kf_gv62IayueEFgiItH4Ylh_sVY6dgezi8GXqJAOtl_wZU_P1xihpBLvEXiRkShqmzS26UESnttYdQpI4Gw6E/s1600/Wet+Yard+2.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
What do you do with grass that grows super fast under a pall of rain? Anybody will tell you not to try and mow a wet lawn, especially if you’re riding a 300 pound lawnmower on less than dry ground. For the past two weeks I’ve been sitting on my back porch watching the grass get taller and taller as it gets wetter and wetter. A large area reaching out from the porch about 100 feet is slightly higher than the surrounding area and last Thursday we had a miraculous clearing of skies that brought warm sunshine for three quarters of the day, me watching and testing that high ground for dryness every hour. Around 4 o’clock I decided the ground and grass were dry enough to run the mower and cut down the burgeoning grass with all its hiding places for snakes.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT8s6i87qCXq6CwQ0Jv29P4zM1oy-SRxjxyFgedm3ghE25FJTjFlv-EK9M_-uAkuXrGSsXVRSk0LeusrxGeaOyIcHPMQ5tboMJTp8Ns-FHlznBlGhZkjYYVgC-otCGmG_bV_-YJVcurpIX/s1600/Wet+Yard+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT8s6i87qCXq6CwQ0Jv29P4zM1oy-SRxjxyFgedm3ghE25FJTjFlv-EK9M_-uAkuXrGSsXVRSk0LeusrxGeaOyIcHPMQ5tboMJTp8Ns-FHlznBlGhZkjYYVgC-otCGmG_bV_-YJVcurpIX/s1600/Wet+Yard+3.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
Red Ants Flourishing in the Rain</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
I probably have the worst reputation anywhere for luck with lawnmowers and have encountered every mechanical dysfunction there is at one time or another. It would help if I knew the fuel line from the brake pedal but since I don’t repairs have been costly. I finally broke down and bought a “new” machine but on occasion have managed to stall that one too. Appears to be no limit to my jinx. So, out in the exhilarating sunshine motoring through the tall grass, I had almost finished cutting the area of high ground when I either turned too quickly or too suddenly and heard an ominous SNAP! And in that second I lost my steering. No need to dither or sit there scratching my chin. Obviously I was once more thrown into the hands of a repairman.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
I’m beginning to think there must be something anti-mechanical in my blood. About a month ago in the space of seven days and with no particular stress, first my vacuum cleaner broke and a day later the rice cooker; that was followed two days later by the death of my printer and on Saturday the passing of my DVD player. I mean, hell, what’s going on with a string of tragedies like that? As I said to a friend later, “I’m wearing a helmet around the house these days because I expect the roof to fall down on me any day.”</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHPulmF2iD6AlUV7UHeNSdh36wUd9mydiYoUxoNLP5Fpe7g5cKPDq2xq4WQdhppGkilY-_KHV6H-k_KvI_IBCnCp59_o10r6cH1uHE6nj07VA8ugM51aGoNB6gecaBFwtP8q8OGrrUHJA2/s1600/Crossed+Legs+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHPulmF2iD6AlUV7UHeNSdh36wUd9mydiYoUxoNLP5Fpe7g5cKPDq2xq4WQdhppGkilY-_KHV6H-k_KvI_IBCnCp59_o10r6cH1uHE6nj07VA8ugM51aGoNB6gecaBFwtP8q8OGrrUHJA2/s1600/Crossed+Legs+2.jpg" height="400" width="273" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Yes, I still love life in the country on my muddy dirt road just west of Indian River, but it does have its challenges. But most of all I would never take my dog away from the heaven she’s found out here.</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-76521752438907250982014-08-25T18:39:00.000-04:002014-08-25T18:39:29.999-04:00Collector of Souls<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV82HWT6uwcpsiYPWSwS7PnyKkforvkOo7pFWjl0B-YdRIEAtdl20A2MlUlPrhfdDUyEQTaHGmKN-lyC8geSpM1G9m7wPM-3Li8F8QdFPzUso9XQXD3OA6RaGnNrC7RSw2OH4ZC-qiYblw/s1600/A+Neel+10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV82HWT6uwcpsiYPWSwS7PnyKkforvkOo7pFWjl0B-YdRIEAtdl20A2MlUlPrhfdDUyEQTaHGmKN-lyC8geSpM1G9m7wPM-3Li8F8QdFPzUso9XQXD3OA6RaGnNrC7RSw2OH4ZC-qiYblw/s1600/A+Neel+10.jpg" height="317" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">W</span>ith a career that spanned from the 1920s into the 80s, Alice Neel is widely regarded as one of the greatest figurative painters of the twentieth century. Born on January 28, 1900 in Merion Square, Pennsylvania, the third of four children, she was raised in a straight-laced middle-class family at a time when expectations and opportunities for women were limited. After graduating from high school, Neel took the Civil Service exam and got a well paid clerical position that helped support her parents. After three years of work and art classes at night, she enrolled in the Fine Art program at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women in 1921, graduating in 1925.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Xly8ZLOKw8GSVJ-GrJwEPSjjRWlvPLld1u6tlVfYfcUV37yR-vilIeOz7Rj46xJzTXD3Z84PgFN6t2uSniOcehDrHoYvMUNVdAKQia7vNe7qvLTGPzjHouHi2Q2atbeSYKXdqJjNxSf4/s1600/A.+Neel+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Xly8ZLOKw8GSVJ-GrJwEPSjjRWlvPLld1u6tlVfYfcUV37yR-vilIeOz7Rj46xJzTXD3Z84PgFN6t2uSniOcehDrHoYvMUNVdAKQia7vNe7qvLTGPzjHouHi2Q2atbeSYKXdqJjNxSf4/s1600/A.+Neel+1.jpg" height="400" width="302" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Still Life, Rose of Sharon</i>, 1973; Whitney Museum, New York</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
While in art school, Neel met an upper-class Cuban painter named Carlos Enríquez and married him in 1924. She eventually moved to Havana to live with her husband’s family and was there embraced by the Cuban avant-garde, a group of young writers, artists and musicians. It was in this environment that Neel developed the foundations of her lifelong political consciousness and commitment to equality.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCqjZ-KQbrAybXUhJ3BqWxdFV_VLKYEuWRciwyufpSGLvbpmKcA8MVtzTEJ7GZkofeSV04-H_S4rG3UmxzJ-P5sXZzHjeIJGR6WxFHCc7t15gypHEpZX5GtQelsFBoRUgTFQ8IgINAZOp-/s1600/A.+Neel+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCqjZ-KQbrAybXUhJ3BqWxdFV_VLKYEuWRciwyufpSGLvbpmKcA8MVtzTEJ7GZkofeSV04-H_S4rG3UmxzJ-P5sXZzHjeIJGR6WxFHCc7t15gypHEpZX5GtQelsFBoRUgTFQ8IgINAZOp-/s1600/A.+Neel+2.jpg" height="320" width="267" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Pat Whalen</i>, 1935; Whitney Museum</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
A daughter, Santillana, was born in Havana in December of 1926. The couple returned to New York where one month short of her first birthday, Santillana died of diphtheria. In November of 1928, a second daughter, Isabella Lillian (Isabetta) was born in New York City. Barely two years later, Carlos returned to Cuba, taking Isabetta with him. Mourning the loss of her husband and daughter, Neel suffered a massive nervous breakdown, was hospitalized, and after a suicide attempt doctors placed her in the suicide ward of Philadelphia General Hospital.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqW4yzsmxs1AU4_8FqEK8wH5ewcYAiT9bkiCRYOKGJd1864dm-dilUk0P5wZG4TzpORm8-pb4iDl1Dm4UyM0IaBBEyvPBil41baxld2HQi8sjY7izvtjiMwED8BL-5rMQcPxGDV0GUcuNj/s1600/A.+Neel+9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqW4yzsmxs1AU4_8FqEK8wH5ewcYAiT9bkiCRYOKGJd1864dm-dilUk0P5wZG4TzpORm8-pb4iDl1Dm4UyM0IaBBEyvPBil41baxld2HQi8sjY7izvtjiMwED8BL-5rMQcPxGDV0GUcuNj/s1600/A.+Neel+9.jpg" height="400" width="291" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Self Portrait</i>, 1980; National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Released in 1931, Neel moved to New York where for many years she remained poor and unrecognized as an artist. And yet she was a pioneer among American women artists, living a life devoted to her art despite any and all circumstances. For decades she chose her subjects from family, friends, and a wide assortment of local writers, poets, artists, students, textile salesmen, psychologists, cabaret singers, and homeless bohemians, a selection of subjects that was a portrayal of, and dialogue with the city in which she lived. Neel thought of herself as a “collector of souls” and it is clear that she honored those she chose to paint, portraits oftentimes more real than the people themselves, full of restlessness, vulnerability and imperfection. In an interview shortly before her death in 1984 she said, “I could have been a great psychiatrist but it’s more fun being an artist. I see what’s here; I don’t look for anything, I just look…I love to paint people torn to shreds by the rat race of New York.”</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeXutEX5bD5GPkpfejBqOewj0Pgj5kItRnYJKtQidgqKyJuMQEJ4FXiMxmQBcOeUpdWA-SgAri218Rrw5TqcslgvkCPkKScQqXYzx_hchKc0KS9cZ_O03JfcSj-xlmBjDdH8zgyQ7twOal/s1600/A.+Neel+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeXutEX5bD5GPkpfejBqOewj0Pgj5kItRnYJKtQidgqKyJuMQEJ4FXiMxmQBcOeUpdWA-SgAri218Rrw5TqcslgvkCPkKScQqXYzx_hchKc0KS9cZ_O03JfcSj-xlmBjDdH8zgyQ7twOal/s1600/A.+Neel+3.jpg" height="200" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Peggy</i>, 1949</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Notice the unnaturally lanky arms that stretch out and double back, hands (one open, one curled closed) at rest on either side of the face, fragile but insistent arrows pointing to the cut above one eye, bruises beside the other.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Alice Neel’s obscurity ended when the woman’s movement discovered her in the 1970s and brought a success closely tied to gender equality and feminism. Her portrait of Kate Millet for the August 31, 1970 cover of <i>Time</i> magazine was the result of her new found recognition.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnemaA2q2i0a6jpe2pkSGx95tJoKaXPO6ELunjrqCgHUoAHIXqWxSZtrk9ljPTfHjB1jQUo03JhmI3-b0PFU7BUrvT-SaeDtu-mnzD4VQeftkz5bO5tO5itEnHcXpWi3PTwL6252L3gui4/s1600/A.+Neel+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnemaA2q2i0a6jpe2pkSGx95tJoKaXPO6ELunjrqCgHUoAHIXqWxSZtrk9ljPTfHjB1jQUo03JhmI3-b0PFU7BUrvT-SaeDtu-mnzD4VQeftkz5bO5tO5itEnHcXpWi3PTwL6252L3gui4/s1600/A.+Neel+8.jpg" height="400" width="321" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>My Mother</i>, 1952; private collection</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
How does one define the painting of Alice Neel? As realist, expressionist, psychological portraitist, or what? Some might tag her as a social realist but her art is as far removed from social realism as it is from pop. An astute critic may see in the artist’s roots a mixture of the Northern European tradition, New York’s Ashcan School, and American primitive, but there is something about Neel’s art that defies categories. <i>The Art Spirit</i>, a book by the Ashcan School’s Robert Henri was Neel’s bible. Art critic Jeremy Lewison has said that Neel’s realistic approach to the human form at a time of growing abstraction among her contemporaries confirmed her as an outsider. Looking at a collection of Neel’s work the viewer is made to see something fresh, vital, moving, amusing, tender, cruel, mournful, grotesque or sparse. Impressions can be contradictory in the work of Alice Neel, but almost always a visceral experience that plays with the emotions.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuh8vs-riKz-G-5vhFyz3-EkX_vjTMU4UNO_5sd7y_MUU4oLAVgX0n-RBQsGSoWgw2Y9NWhvRUtB9c2z7E0MKuBYJQFL7Js9XzNIZqYoPnwpAji-X4Jzon1WT6bZ_BO46CNFWccg2Gfr4c/s1600/A.+Neel+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuh8vs-riKz-G-5vhFyz3-EkX_vjTMU4UNO_5sd7y_MUU4oLAVgX0n-RBQsGSoWgw2Y9NWhvRUtB9c2z7E0MKuBYJQFL7Js9XzNIZqYoPnwpAji-X4Jzon1WT6bZ_BO46CNFWccg2Gfr4c/s1600/A.+Neel+7.jpg" height="400" width="308" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>Virgil Thompson</i>, 1971</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8k4LiLESdvg7xrAmTd51WyT-r8KaexcdE3IsQ0b08aRGYPS_bz1MgiJ1lPT7DMp3RC3PAnAEDQBZLMyAKxN5hfV799xrgcSBj6M4v92g_3aH7DmUfla-_RCfRQtY5ufhHQQ2jENMSQwpo/s1600/A.+Neel+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8k4LiLESdvg7xrAmTd51WyT-r8KaexcdE3IsQ0b08aRGYPS_bz1MgiJ1lPT7DMp3RC3PAnAEDQBZLMyAKxN5hfV799xrgcSBj6M4v92g_3aH7DmUfla-_RCfRQtY5ufhHQQ2jENMSQwpo/s1600/A.+Neel+4.jpg" height="307" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>George Arce</i>, a neighborhood boy Neel sketched and painted on several occasions</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBKF2ri5hwr7A-thCQARa8GVtk2Puiee6do6rFKR8noVNYRAbRcInN_0xxwCzSzO_wENaxbP3-32j5bI2NV_vezZIKI6ljQ1b1yu7azoGhK9smOYHW0jKDyquiM3XMW-PyrwGxsgFsSg8l/s1600/A+Neel+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBKF2ri5hwr7A-thCQARa8GVtk2Puiee6do6rFKR8noVNYRAbRcInN_0xxwCzSzO_wENaxbP3-32j5bI2NV_vezZIKI6ljQ1b1yu7azoGhK9smOYHW0jKDyquiM3XMW-PyrwGxsgFsSg8l/s1600/A+Neel+5.jpg" height="400" width="276" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<i>George Arce</i>, a few years older</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-49484187534529066642014-08-08T19:12:00.000-04:002014-08-08T19:12:30.342-04:00Pockets & Watches<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7b4gCLr9yPGcR1XNy-AzqLDA2pP754wFjij6uEUHQczM_TghyphenhyphenE8M0gaSi_RRXjjzpN67Ic9j9Ru8GNnxANKGKemYfjSJdGJ-VS2SQ0x58vEIktrLZ9yb_YQwHgSyJCmkKV_RkBcpvIPx/s1600/Levis+Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7b4gCLr9yPGcR1XNy-AzqLDA2pP754wFjij6uEUHQczM_TghyphenhyphenE8M0gaSi_RRXjjzpN67Ic9j9Ru8GNnxANKGKemYfjSJdGJ-VS2SQ0x58vEIktrLZ9yb_YQwHgSyJCmkKV_RkBcpvIPx/s1600/Levis+Poster.jpg" height="400" width="308" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">T</span>hinking back to what many of us wore to school as kids, blue jeans and white T-shirts were right at the top. Along with a pair of US Keds high-top tennis shoes it was practically an unofficial uniform, making the combination easily the most familiar articles of clothing in the closet and dresser of my boyhood. At the time I never paid much mind to the details of those daily trousers, never thought about the trademark rivets or the button fly, just something I pulled on in the morning and kicked off at night.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
I read today in my West Virginia friend’s blog, <a href="http://wwwareaderslife.blogspot.com/2014/08/play-it-again-sam.html">A Reader’s Life</a>, that she was surprised to discover a lot of people these days don’t know what a watch pocket is. Hey, I’m surprised too. Aren’t many guys out there who still carry a pocketwatch and I have to believe a lot also who didn’t or don’t wear blue jeans. In those days when jeans were a daily custom, I didn’t carry a pocketwatch but I did know that the little pocket in my Levis was made to hold one. I guess, “What’s this little pocket for?” was a question I asked the man in the department store one day. But yeah, I too am surprised that not so many people today know what that little pocket was originally for. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT8cuMheuF5MvrPcomFko7471qL2iMsf2okJy9F9l10HVwo2sr-BUNHifkvSkYKfXCVh6xlilRA_UgX3BfCwoNsureJZDLcAzIx2KmyIBmXng3vsPq4vPchC9N97Xz4N1CpTdRuc-A9FSa/s1600/Pocket+Watch+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT8cuMheuF5MvrPcomFko7471qL2iMsf2okJy9F9l10HVwo2sr-BUNHifkvSkYKfXCVh6xlilRA_UgX3BfCwoNsureJZDLcAzIx2KmyIBmXng3vsPq4vPchC9N97Xz4N1CpTdRuc-A9FSa/s1600/Pocket+Watch+1.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
In the late 1800s cowboys, miners and other outdoor workers often kept a watch on a chain in the pocket of a waistcoat or vest. And then in 1873 Levi Strauss introduced a small pocket designed expressly to hold a pocketwatch. The first blue jeans had four pockets—one in back and two in front with the addition of a small pocket stitched and riveted to the top of the right front pocket. The smaller pocket was included as protection for pocketwatches and thus the name, watch pocket. Since its first appearance this extra pouch-like pocket has had many functions, evident in a few of its other names: frontier pocket, condom pocket, coin pocket, match pocket and ticket pocket. Not surprising that many people today have no real idea of what that little pocket is called or what the Levi Strauss company had in mind when they included it in their denims. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Yef38GAjibX45j4Q-uSqgKXDS_SVUJHIFevwRx_9Riot98QDbvpxOTPIc1ra-OsM7IiGPvYaxX1LlU2R9BPJ1LQvP45CMLTpe_1UQCoZmmHlXk_043ruNjVvLR0eI5hjOnYx3go53Nx8/s1600/Pocket+Watch+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Yef38GAjibX45j4Q-uSqgKXDS_SVUJHIFevwRx_9Riot98QDbvpxOTPIc1ra-OsM7IiGPvYaxX1LlU2R9BPJ1LQvP45CMLTpe_1UQCoZmmHlXk_043ruNjVvLR0eI5hjOnYx3go53Nx8/s1600/Pocket+Watch+2.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
The thing is, I do have a pocketwatch, but one that hasn’t spent much time in that special little pocket on my blue jeans (Yeah, still wearing them almost every day.) but these days rests in a dish on the coffee table. Not the first time to mention the watch in these pages; it has found space a couple of times in my scribbles about this or that. I got the watch not too many years ago at a secondhand shop in my old Tokyo neighborhood, a conductor’s watch commonly used by drivers and conductors on Japanese trains. The watch has for many years been made by the Japanese watchmaker, Seiko, with upgrades every few years. Mine is one of the 7550 quartz series made in 1978—thirty-six years old and still keeping accurate time. At the time of production, Seiko advertised the watch as having an accuracy within 15 seconds per month. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
………………</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Before my head got turned by watches and pockets this morning, I was stopped by the sight of my new and flourishing guacamole tree on the back porch. About a month ago, in the business of making a bowl of guacamole, I cut open an avocado and noticed that the seed was slightly split and with a tiny white root coming out of the bottom end. It was the first time to see that in years and I right away did the old trick of sticking the seed with toothpicks and resting it half in-half out of a glass of water. In two weeks another tiny three roots had grown out and down into the water. At the end of the third week I planted the seed in a pot of soil and put it in a sunny spot near the screen door. Here’s what it looks like today…</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib8ayR-awLh1btpbPai5-pkVKBhDX5RmEhzw9N9BOP5_74-D-ujcuN_0NY_Fxmz7N-T1lc6x0ObOYPEKd9FS2yGe7VlDLU-OZXN0Xj89187aVkTkNGRzo9tk_pn0YZrHlXvP3POT4APdZB/s1600/Avocado.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib8ayR-awLh1btpbPai5-pkVKBhDX5RmEhzw9N9BOP5_74-D-ujcuN_0NY_Fxmz7N-T1lc6x0ObOYPEKd9FS2yGe7VlDLU-OZXN0Xj89187aVkTkNGRzo9tk_pn0YZrHlXvP3POT4APdZB/s1600/Avocado.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
In the wild growth of summer my backyard is in some spots an explosion of green. I keep a compost heap for leaf litter, moss and the smaller branches that drop from the oak trees and from the backend of the compost has grown up a wild mix of plants. I can’t identify half the plants and have to wonder what they will grow into. As the picture below shows, the walls of the unpainted enclosure are old and weathered and though it’s hard to see, soon to collapse. The project for next week is to replace those walls.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAvV3JgCPDG2N_xI_syIQFP6PytD4wgf3hvDzw9CP55wvdeU1ty9MHZLhHJooutpp1leEC4BOkjlOZv7ofbbcgqMfVvUqH_JKpDkaHVzK1cIcoq0Xykjg4Yt1g7K5hGj-mD3ImCotj118q/s1600/Compost+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAvV3JgCPDG2N_xI_syIQFP6PytD4wgf3hvDzw9CP55wvdeU1ty9MHZLhHJooutpp1leEC4BOkjlOZv7ofbbcgqMfVvUqH_JKpDkaHVzK1cIcoq0Xykjg4Yt1g7K5hGj-mD3ImCotj118q/s1600/Compost+1.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-3515209057615068682014-07-30T17:17:00.000-04:002014-07-30T17:17:36.829-04:00 A Sad Time<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">N</span>ot long after I’d returned to the US from Japan, I met a couple living a few doors away from my place at the beach. There was something about our meeting that first time that assured me we would become good friends. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
And that we certainly did. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
At the time, Fred and Kathleen were good medicine in the sense of helping me through the re-acclimation to American life, something I’d long been away from. It wasn’t long before I was calling them best friends, always happy to share dinner or a bottle of wine or nothing more than an hour of good conversation on the patio. Over the past four years there has never been a day I wouldn’t be grateful for time together with these friends.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
About three weeks back Fred and Kathleen went to south Florida to spend time with family at the Club Med Resort. During their days there they renewed their wedding vows for the third time. Nine days ago I had lunch at their beach condo where I practically slavered over a casserole that took the place of the cold cuts she hinted we might have. Twice this past week I have made that dish, something I now call Kathy’s Kasserole.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Between March 2012 and November 2013 she wrote a blog called <a href="http://wwwremission-recurrence-resilience.blogspot.com/">The Three Rs of Cancer: Remission-Recurrence-Resilience</a> about her experiences of dealing with cancer and about the importance of remaining positive and upbeat in the face of a difficult battle. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
I am heartbroken to report that our good friend-wife-mother-sister and grandmother passed away early this morning. Fred, you and the entire family are in our thoughts and prayers.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyBRSqQ2rtbq0N-33hJ82zPJqD9JrczfL4-dA9W7R12i3cWU1DJ6lQawmvJr7VKVdN5xYxOO-If1UJ_Uf-MTotXbTN2Tz4YuHSss94zosEtXasjloS6valzeIspD8MlN38cpMEqGi9rDkT/s1600/Kathleen+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyBRSqQ2rtbq0N-33hJ82zPJqD9JrczfL4-dA9W7R12i3cWU1DJ6lQawmvJr7VKVdN5xYxOO-If1UJ_Uf-MTotXbTN2Tz4YuHSss94zosEtXasjloS6valzeIspD8MlN38cpMEqGi9rDkT/s1600/Kathleen+2.jpg" height="400" width="315" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
Kathleen 1945-2014</div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-580978899269996730.post-68524602264606017422014-07-27T19:20:00.000-04:002014-07-27T19:20:18.990-04:00The Aftermath of Cleopatra <div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 24px;">I</span>t took recommendations from different people over a long period of time but several months late I finally got around to Jess Walter’s 2012 novel, <i>Beautiful Ruins</i>. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1uPkicSTKxe7gz5e1j1ougZP5G4A7w65W6xwQafr4N4BdQL4OFoweTK3evwVMk3UjUPTsJXVdfpEPf56zyZtvhI1v1iAfxZ99VZt6bWSu23jEqZVN67V4kmf1Tk8ae1eFPRCM9anmsy8a/s1600/Beautiful+Ruins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1uPkicSTKxe7gz5e1j1ougZP5G4A7w65W6xwQafr4N4BdQL4OFoweTK3evwVMk3UjUPTsJXVdfpEPf56zyZtvhI1v1iAfxZ99VZt6bWSu23jEqZVN67V4kmf1Tk8ae1eFPRCM9anmsy8a/s1600/Beautiful+Ruins.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Hard to recall a book I’ve enjoyed as much in the last half year. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
With a book buying budget teetering on the brink of calamity, I opted for the local library but discovered the book was on reserve—good sign for one published over two years ago. The paperback came out in April of this year, so finding a copy on store shelves shouldn’t be hard. And of course, there’s always Amazon who can get an inexpensive copy to readers anywhere in a week or two.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
Author, Jess Walter lives in his hometown of Spokane, Washington with his wife and three children. His most recent book is a collection of short stories titled, <i>We Live in Water: Stories</i>. He has written six novels as well as two non-fiction books. His novel <i>Citizen Vince</i> won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2006, <i>The Zero</i> was a National Book Award finalist and <i>Beautiful Ruins</i> was included in the <i>New York Times</i> 100 Notable Books of 2012. HIs books have been translated into twenty-eight languages.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnSfi7anljzFeCs_rkGhMEyNK3hXg9MEuICnlrYMgxag8CYE14Uafdbo_NrudnR9L3vjgRDP-UWcXG-AuxZxeRsrhQkoaWwXVspKMGD3W-ruNvxyp5n1fjh1wbwumA6uTz0gHGCsfyveZs/s1600/Jess+Walter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnSfi7anljzFeCs_rkGhMEyNK3hXg9MEuICnlrYMgxag8CYE14Uafdbo_NrudnR9L3vjgRDP-UWcXG-AuxZxeRsrhQkoaWwXVspKMGD3W-ruNvxyp5n1fjh1wbwumA6uTz0gHGCsfyveZs/s1600/Jess+Walter.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
<i>Beautiful Ruins</i> brings a story that jumps here and there across fifty years from Italy to Hollywood, on to Seattle, London and places far and in-between. It begins with the arrival of a striking young woman in a tiny village on the coast of Italy. While filming the epic movie <i>Cleopatra</i> in 1962 Richard Burton “trifles” with the beautiful young bit-part actress who is later bundled off the set with a story that she is dying of stomach cancer, her symptoms very like those of early pregnancy. None the wiser, she is taken to a tiny village on the coast of Italy where she meets a young Italian named Pasquale. From there we follow a boldly entertaining cast of characters across fifty years to a little theater in present day Idaho. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
For all its color, its richness of character and bravura storytelling, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Ruins-Novel-Jess-Walter/dp/0061928178/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406502658&sr=1-1&keywords=beautiful+ruins+by+jess+walter">Beautiful Ruins</a></i> is at heart a novel of social criticism offering the reader much more than mere superficial entertainment. Each of the writer’s characters shows us another side of what it is to dream, to lie, to take advantage, fail and then ultimately understand what we are. Two of Walter’s central characters—the actress and the young Italian, Pasquale—are set apart in their goodness and honesty, but are forced to find their way through a world of others serving only themselves, feeding their own misguided selfishness. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 13px;">
From here forward this reader’s eyes and ears will be tuned to anything by Jess Walter. </div>
Bleethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16886801464672049870noreply@blogger.com0