In Town

So much on my plate, supposed to rain after midnight, straight through, turning to snow by Thursday, figured I'd stay in town. Dealt with trash and the bathrooms this morning, then pulled hardware, patched and repaired the two upstairs galleries. I'll do the main gallery tomorrow, then paint the rest of the week. I need a bunch of roller covers and trays. After work TR goes over for a beer with me, and it's weird because Astra is leaving for the day and Lindsey is our barkeep and it's usually the other way around. Lindsey has become a bank person and we'll probably only see her one evening a week. So we're sitting there, in an Irish pub, drinking our pints, he's having a pretzel with hot cheese dip, I'm eating a bowl of chips to galvanize my salt intake into an electric field. Wild-ass theories are my stock in trade. And we're talking about totem poles, what asses who needs to kiss. We try to look like two guys talking about sports, but TR's hat and his jackets, with patches at the elbow, are a dead give-away. Then the owner comes over to talk with us, and we're no longer invisible. I like having a beer to unwind, and that cold first swish of a draft is magic. And I also enjoy conversation. A perfect evening. I thought about going back out, meeting with TR and a few of his friends, but I bailed, and read a year of Mary's letters, 1945, to see if there was mention of that painting that is called "La Salle Blades" in the watercolor, but "Tidewater" in the oil; no mention, you have to start reading between the lines. Just saying. Read more...

Some Commotion

January 10, 2012 2:47:18 AM CST

Some kind of commotion. Rabid coons playing king of the compost pile, or something. Enough to get me up and throw some rocks. When your adrenaline stirs at three in the morning, the night is lost. I resurrect a fire from a hand-full of coals, hang around the stove, reading an essay about Picasso and Braque. Cubism was all about the space between things. For a long time I look at Picasso's Les Demoiselles d' Avignon. Iconic. One of the greatest paintings ever. Originally he was going to call it "The Avignon Brothel", those harpies, rip your heart out and eat it raw. I finally drift over to the computer. I hadn't even turned it on, it was so far away, and I was busy, reading, at the other side of the room. Everything, really, is just an excuse for getting another drink and rolling a smoke. I consider it a good evening if I can enjamb a particular verb against a specific noun. A ringing in my ears. Not nothing, palpable. Did someone die? a butterfly give up the ghost in Australia? someone trying to tell me something? I go sit in my tattered writing chair and start a post to you, I don't know what else to do. It's how I respond to circumstance. Two coons singing in the dead of night. Doesn't mean anything, but it signifies, how's that new baby? Read more...

Walking In

The most important thing is to stay focused. Relative safety, and all that. I forget the number of art works I've shipped, it's a large number, probably in the hundreds, no wonder I can't keep track, who's counting anyway. After a while you're jaded and a painting by Bellows or Whistler is just another object worth a lot of money, to someone, somewhere. The world on a string, sitting on a rainbow; I wouldn't bet against Tebow, he seems to have a lock with the gods. Brady, on the other hand, sleeps with a goddess, so it's anyone's guess. I assume Eli can't beat the Packers, but I only watch the highlights and don't understand contact sports. Nice drive in this morning, had to stop on Mackletree for a convention of turkeys to cross the road; they were headed for the clear-cut, to work the mast. Had to be at work early because I knew the art shippers (Brian, crazy Irishman with braids in his beard) would want to be in and out quickly. Waited a couple of hours. TR was there, and when they showed up, Brian had a helper, we had them unloaded and re-loaded in fifteen minutes. Late lunch and a beer at the pub, went back to the museum and watched an episode of "Unforgettable". I like the show, and Carrie Wells is hot. Got back home, drove in (supplies tomorrow), got a fire started before sunset, read The New Yorker from cover to cover, fixed an open face roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. Stayed seated at the island and thought about things. Full moon tonight and the sky is clear. My truck is dying and I need to get a cell phone for when I get stranded. Yes, the pieces for the Folk Art show were hardly wrapped at all, and we will have to devise packing. I need an occasional relationship, someone I'd see just once in a while, I'd do all the cooking. Wondering who'll find me when I'm dead, especially if I continue to live this way, as remote as possible and barely connected. I'd be stinky dead by the time someone found me, probably D, coming out to see why I hadn't reported in. Lists take many forms. My calves are sore, from hiking in, a muscle group in my lower back, and my feet are sore, from standing on the tile floor. Read more...

Winter Walk

A garble of crow sounds from beyond the outhouse draws me into the woods. You can't get lost around here, but you can misplace yourself. Read Charles Frazier's new book "Nightwoods" today, and it was a treat; then the mid-afternoon walk, to clear the cobwebs. Early dinner of an steamed artichoke and a large hunk of good bread, both dipped in olive oil. Walked over to the graveyard, then over to the next ridge and down to where the church used to be. Nothing there now but a flat spot. There's a rock that may have been a cornerstone, which is a good place to sit if you carry a butt pad in your pack. When I get back home, just at sunset, there are orange striations in a sandwich with clouds in the west, and a looming yellow moon in the east. I carry my Selma Alabama chair outside and position myself so that I can see them both by just turning my head. It's a lovely sight. But even in my bathrobe, with Linda's hat pulled down over my ears, I get cold, go inside and build a fire. Junk mail isn't a great fire-starter, but if you move a chair over to the stove, and tend the blaze carefully, you can get rid of a lot of crap. I salvaged another oak table from the trash at the furniture store next door, excellent firewood. So, between junk mail and salvaged office furniture, I'm doing nicely, thank you. Elementary school chairs are great firewood, and at auction they often go for 50 cents each, which is a cheap heating bill, when you think about it, a hundred chairs and you're ready to go for a very cold month. All you need is a hatchet and a match. And these pallets I'm getting from the board member's plumbing supply house are perfect, all oak, 4x4 skids and 1x4 slats, eight feet long. I can spike the stove for several days with one of these, and I don't need to spike the stove so often anymore, now that I've learned to be cold. It's not that bad, except for the fingertips. I start missing keys. One thing leads to another. Next thing you know, you're writing fiction and mistakes plague you, wondering who you are in the face of things. There was a French guy at Janitor College, Maurice, he was cool, he smoked Lebonese Gold Seal hash in a small Adena pipe he'd found in a recently plowed corn field, and he spoke perfectly several languages, including at least two that required a different alphabet, a different language, different characters, a whole different mind set. I tried to pick his brain, but that first year and last year he was there, I was seeing someone, and my recollections are spotty, other occupied, as you might say, knowing you. He died in a hellish flame that erupted from an oxygen bottle too close to an open flame. What, I have to ask now, what questions before I build a fire in a tree-tip pit? Read more...

Divination

Never much for tea leaves, but I can tell from the leaf-drifts which way the wind is blowing. Whenever I gut anything I always look closely at the liver, I'm not sure if that counts, since I'm mostly thinking about pate at that point. I ran out of horseradish jam and they actually had some roots at the store, so I bought one, some apple juice and some pectin. This day and age, of course, what you should do is go on line, do a little research, but I remembered my Mom's approach to making jam (she could make jam out of dirty sneakers): equal quantities of whatever ingredient and sugar, pectin, boil until it jells. It's not that I don't like recipes, I read them all the time, occasionally use one. But divination: if I'm really perplexed about something, I get out "The Joy Of Cooking" and randomly put my finger on a sentence. Usually it's something like 'mince the onion' and that's enough to pull me back from whatever edge I was walking. Like up the driveway. Sometimes, I swear, I feel like a Sherpa scaling Everest with a bunch of tourists. It's not too terrible, because I'm alive, moving about in the world, but when I first start walking the driveway, I wonder why I have to live this way. I've grown so used to isolation that I need the walk in to acclimate. Chances are I won't die. Walking in to my unfinished tar-paper shack. I got an MFA in Janitorial Studies, if you can believe that, and did post-doc work with mites. I have problems believing myself, but I suppose we all do. Here's a header. The phone rings and I almost don't answer it. Finally do, and it's my older daughter (consider the comparative) asking me to come visit, party with her friends. Chalk it up to whatever. It may be a kind of destiny, which I say with a certain amount of hesitancy, because I'm a nuts and bolts kind of guy. I do have to go and party with her friends. Besides, new horizons, a different set of ankles.

Tom

I make myself laugh, sometime today, trying to write what happened. It's hard to stay on top of this, the way the rock rolls downhill. Plowing new ground. Read more...

Getting Home

The walk in is all uphill. I have my place to park, at the bottom, and I usually climb over the gear-shift and out the passenger-side because of the blackberry canes. There's usually a session of readjusting my clothing and repacking my pack before I attempt the last three hundred vertical feet. It's not a technical climb, more a slog, for the first half I mostly just watch where my feet fall. We're careful not to improve the driveway until after the first curve, so it looks impossible from the road. After the upper culvert, it's not bad, except for the mud, during the freeze-and-thaw cycles. I always carry something in, tonight it was a half-gallon of orange juice and cream for my coffee. You make a list, It's not brain surgery. After the last hickory on the left, the understory clears out; I always stop there, and admire the view. It's the first place I can see across the hollow, and I'm always struck with the distances. After the last hickory, when the hollow opens out, every step becomes more clear, a certain play of light. I keep a set of crampons in the truck, and another pair at the house, same with walking sticks (aluminum broom handles, very good for poking at scat). I always carry a pack and I'm fixing to change over to a better, newer one that D gave me. My old army sack is completely worn out. I rarely hurry on the walk in, as there are roughly 25 events, or things, on any given day, that I'm keeping an eye on. There's wildlife, maybe the fox. There's a stump I can sit on, maybe two thirds of the way up, where I can roll a smoke if I'm watching something. I seem to watch things a lot. Remember, we are deep in the woods here, about as deep as you could be, east of the Mississippi, and except in extreme circumstances, there's almost always something going on. This time of year I can see so much further, half the year I live in a green cave. I love crows, they're usually around, and this is the season for Red-Headed and Pileated woodpeckers, which I always stop and watch. Anyone in decent shape can probably do the walk in five minutes, I take between ten and thirty, maybe averaging fifteen. I also keep an umbrella both places. The mud can be very bad, slick, sometimes deep; I often wear work boots and keep my shoes around my neck. I don't like to carry anything in my left hand, so I could break a fall. I've often thought, walking in, that I could well die on the driveway, B would find me, going in or going out, know immediately that it was me, and that I had died on the driveway. In deep snow, whoever breaks trail establishes the length of stride; I have gaiters, that I keep in a milk crate near the door, along with other weather specific apparatus. And of course, the walk in provides transition between one world and another. I'm always aware of this, when I shut the door of the truck and start hiking up hill, that my house is there, and I'll be there soon. I always think about where the various firewood and kindling piles stand, what I need to do first my next day off. I have to go in on Monday, because the shipper arrives with part of the Folk Art show, and hauls away most of "Wet Paint". Does that affect anything? I don't think so. I have a huge supply of food at the house; if I'm stuck in town, Kroger is right there. Unseasonably warm, from 25 to 55 in two days, the shock is almost too much. I poke the driveway with my stick and decide I can bring in drinking water tomorrow, or Monday, when I'll be in town anyway. I think tomorrow I'll just flop on the sofa and read. Did I mention I hate irregular verbs? A regulation assent requires confirmation, you have to sign the guest-book or something. It occasionally happens that I can't get to the top, have to turn back and return to town, not often, but it happens. I feel bad about myself for a few minutes then relish in the hot running water. Read more...

Like, Then

Pretty sure I'd get a rise from Sara about that. I was talking with someone yesterday about what constitutes art, whether or not the word itself carried any weight. I don't pretend to know. The wind is tearing some new ground right now, I have to kill the breaker for the fridge. It's new-age Bach, a touch of Cage: a prepared organ, and a raving maniac. Fortunately it's not very cold, and I can listen with a certain dispatch. Maybe quilts are different, because they serve a functional need. But I rest my case on the learning curve issue, lightning or not. The fox was at my compost heap, I can see her tracks clearly, she seems to favor egg dishes and cooked cranberries. Go figure. I'll not lose my head over a fox ever again. I like living alone, not compromising my time. Foxes require attention. The wind is like a voice from the past. Nothing you can fix, just another broken neck, and something you have to hear over and over. When it's really quiet, I hear the rafters adjusting. Another beautiful day, 55 degrees (25 high on Wednesday), and later the waxing moon, close to full, in a clear sky. Finished packing up the paintings for Fed Ex freight. We didn't like the crate two paintings came in from Reno Nevada. We rebuilt it. Done. A world of patch and repair to be done, then three or four weeks of painting. Fun working with both D and TR, we can do Three Stooges routines. I need to go in for half-a-day tomorrow, then half-a-day on Monday to take delivery on most of the next show and ship out the bulk of Wet Paint. We have to unpack the Folk Art show because D has to photograph everything for the catalog. I sense some awkwardness, but maybe not, we can probably just glom everything together in the center of the main gallery. The ladies almost got to me today, Trisha and Pegi; they kept asking questions about the Folk Art show that are not answerable yet, because the show doesn't exist. I can't tell you how many panels or pedestals are going to be in play, and I certainly can't project the configuration. Cardboard smells nice, a hint of old books. My calves were a little sore, standing on the tile floor is tough enough, but then I remembered I'd been walking in, carrying a pack; and I'm surprised I'm not more impacted by the dramatic change in routine. Walking in is a whole lot different from driving in. Not just the hike, which is cool enough, but something I mentioned last year, the mediation the hike provides, between the inside and the outside. The museum is public, the ridge is incredibly private. This time of year, the people who would show up at my door are (is) a severely limited list. Only those willing to use a room temperature toilet seat and take the hike are allowed. Read more...

Learning Curve

Pegi asked me to define Folk Art. I said it was art that showed no learning curve. Except for quilting, which does, and is far and away my favorite folk art. Waked in again, got a fire started before sunset, which is critical. Taking a week of my vacation time by leaving work an hour early. The walk down this morning was stunning, still a coating of snow and I'm amazed every year at how that reveals the actual lay of the land. I study this in detail. Sidebar: it's fifteen degrees warmer and I had to go put on my sword-fishing cap, it has a extra long brim, so I could block the rays of the setting sun; which happens, this time of year, right outside my writing window. Warm enough that I don't need Linda's hat. Pegi's office looks so much better that she wants several other zones painted, plus I have some to do in the Carter galleries, plus patch and repair and paint the main galleries. The apple crate I keep at the museum for books that accumulate for me there, is full AND in D's office and I need to bring them home and do something with them. My book accretion tendencies. I'm thinking about turning the smaller bedroom upstairs into a library with a single bed and converting the downstairs room that was supposed to be a studio but became a junk room, that I call the chainsaw room because there are three dead chainsaws in there and one that is alive, into a downstairs bedroom. Pink clouds outside, lit from underneath; two orange jet contrails, over Kentucky. Reading some of Mary's letters every day, and now the diaries. It's interesting, constructing a life and a relationship just from what's said on the page. Not unlike you and me, though I probably dip into the 'creative' side of Creative Non-Fiction more than Mary ever did. There it is again, Jupiter, Mac says, and I trust him in these matters, blinking because of a branch in the breeze. Or wind, if you felt 'breeze' was too much. I swear, I was not consciously aware of building up that alliteration, it's something my writing self does to see if I'll notice. Devious bastard. He knows how I feel about elevators. Safe assumption that you're not going to die, but nonetheless I always send freight and take the stairs. There's a learning curve, I was trapped in an elevator twice. There's no place to pee. Now, when I find myself in a big city, and I have to use an elevator, I carry an empty one gallon pickle jar, with lid, nobody can miss a gallon pickle jar. And I always carry a book, whenever I might be caught between floors. Come on, would you rather hear about the medical history of an entire family, or read a good book? I carry a copy of Ken Warren's HOUSE ORGAN everywhere I go, that way I can always read some good poems. He's a great mediator, for me, between the plethora of shit that's published and what I have the time to read. We all have filters, I did a survey, once, and it was concussive. Like with the eye-color hazel, the jury is still out, and we shouldn't talk about that either. What's not said is at least as important as what is actually said. This is the Bridwell Rule, and I thought everyone knew we weren't working on the metric system. Fucking grips from Australia. They all have that weird accent. Listen, mate, I'm trying to be offensive, it's the bowl season, after all. Read more...

Dead Mice

The last step in suiting up for an evening around the house, I check the mouse traps. I feed the dead mice to the crows that frequent the dead poplar NW of the outhouse. It's an arrangement. Mice. If they were neat, like pigs, they'd shit in the same place, and I wouldn't have to kill them, we could come up with a compromise. But they're simple, not to say stupid, and they shit all the time, on everything, and you have to trap them. Fucking dead mouse in my slipper is wit's end. How improbable that you'd have to deal with that? I was actually fast enough, still, to not come down completely with the weight of my body (each step, when you think about it, is a point load) because I sensed something was wrong. My callous heel felt something. Not unique, I'm sure, but really, how many people slip on their slippers and realize, in the instant, that if they put their weight on the heel of their left foot, they would squash a small dead rodent? Just asking. This shit happens to me and I don't know how to respond. First, I think, my train of thought, is isolate your feelings, what do you really (Glenn, please, cut me some slack) think you're saying. Dead mice. Consider the lilies of the field.

Tom

"Once I was a weaver." Read more...

Phone Restored

Good day at work, TR and I almost finished taking down all three shows, just a couple of things left to do with D on Friday. Town was dry, sunny after a brief flurry, so I left my usual (winter) hour early and headed home. The lake was frozen, pockets of snow on the north side of hollows, and as I gained the last few hundred feet of elevation I knew the driveway would be impassable. Managed to get into my winter, bottom-of-the-hill, spot, and walked in for the first time this season. Scant half-inch, and it hasn't been above freezing for a while. The first walk in is the hardest. Not carrying much, a light pack, and I stop several times to look around and let my breathing catch up. Have to start the winter routine of prioritizing a list of things I'll be needing. Get out the crampons and put a set in the truck. The biggest problem with this latitude is that the freeze-and-thaw cycle happens so often. Must be Venus in the southern sky. Might not be, I don't know: you go through all this and they give you one fucking star. I changed into my winter writing outfit as soon as I came in the door, actually did the top part before I left the museum, so when I got in the house all I needed to do was take off my jeans, put on long underwear and the thick sweats I got at the Goodwill. I added a layer of socks and slipped into the oversized slippers I also got at Goodwill. Pulled Linda's hat down around my ears. I had to review the posts that were backed up here, there were actually three, but I threw one away because I didn't like it. Too nasty. What right do I have to be judgmental? I'm a janitor, I clean bathrooms professionally. As a profession, I mean. I got a very good fire going, starting with a chair, then some red maple then some red oak then some osage orange. My best fire of the year. I'm ok, I think; I was very careful, walking up the hill, using a sassafras staff I had broken off at the bottom. Me and a branch run the gauntlet. I'm hoping to reestablish contact with the fox, she might see me as a seasonal source of apples. Is everything always so tentative? I hate posting things out of order because it messes with the narrative. And there is one, which surprises me, at times. Narrative is strange at (wrong? collected) that point where a motif is selected. Call it what you will.

I have to go, Tom. Read more...

Stage One

Finished ahead of the cold front. The last area, under the various drains and service entrances involved a lot of cutting and fitting, so I took my time, longer than I expected, but the results are gratifying. I'm peeling off layers of clothes, as the house warms. Before I get too comfortable I put three gallons of water on the cookstove to heat, put on an outer layer and take a walk down the logging road. My phone is out, surely another dead-fall on Mackletree, so I don't know when I'll be able to post. Brutal, under the house, a couple of times I had to laugh. I looked like the village idiot, in my blue jumpsuit, duct-taped at the wrist and ankles and a sacrificial knit hat that I had picked up at a thrift store for a buck. The hat was Hunter Orange. No one wears orange well. And I was muttering, at first, then launching into full-scale tirades against anything that crossed my mind. To say I was contrary hardly skims the surface, but I was doing good and necessary service, and felt somehow ennobled by such direct contact with all the molds and literal crap that collects under a house. A lot of dead spiders and several small skeletons that I'm pretty sure were moles not mice. My neck is killing me, from the unnatural positions I had to assume. Crawl spaces are a form of hell, and I'm digging fiberglass out of every pore. Stage Two is exactly half done, take me and D four hours; Stage Three is me alone and should require just an hour, expanding foam to fill all the crevices. What I'm after, more than insulation numbers, is the complete absence of air infiltration from below. One reason igloos are effective, another is that a single walrus blubber lamp can bring temps above freezing so you don't freeze to death. Insulated by ice, how strange is that? Why did the Eskimo tribes go north, where the living is not easy? Those acorn eaters, along the corridor, were reputed to be cannibals, better to hang a sharp left and eat rain-deer than end up in the stew-pot. I don't have a calendar for next year, so I'm officially off the map after midnight. I don't care what day it is, as long as I have cream for my coffee. The rest of it is all nonsense. Time, we know, is relative. Insulation, in the corner of my eyes, is driving me crazy. I finally dunk my head in ice-cold water and wash the silt away. Fuck whatever protocol. Still no phone, talk with you maybe tomorrow, though that is doubtful, given the holiday, holed up on the ridge. Read more...

Slanted Light

Amazing, how different things can look, depending on the angle. It's supposed to snow, so I may go into town tomorrow, three shows to take down and a litany of things to do. D will be back at school, TR and I have to pack and send things all over, not a problem, because we've been over this, what gets shipped where and how. But I don't exactly remember how those small painting were packed. I'll figure it out, I'm a professional after all. After my foray under the house, and a walk to clear the cobwebs, I dined on cheese grits made with feta, medallions of tenderloin, the sauce, two perfectly fried eggs, and toast with horseradish jam. One drink and a smoke and I was out like a light. Just woke up and it's next year by several hours. I missed the festivities and because the phone is out, I didn't receive any calls. Someone probably tried, my daughters, or Linda or Glenn. Though maybe not, everyone, actually, has their own house to crawl under. A scattered few stars, rare enough here, and I remember the night sky in western Colorado, where the Milky Way was prominent 300 nights a year. The sauce has transformed into a dark, rich, unspeakable substance; next time I tend it, I want to add some lime juice and a bottle of beer. What happens to the sauce when I'm gone? Six months after my body is exhumed from a tree-tip pit (sorry, couldn't resist that) someone has to clean out the fridge. It happens, people die, their refrigerators have to be cleaned out. Fiberglass burning my eyeballs, what was I thinking about? right, the sauce. I've worked on this variation for nearly a decade. A sauce. I can't believe myself. I insulated the rim joists exactly the way I intended. Sometimes things work out right. There is a god, or gods, I got the first drink of the new year and rolled a smoke. All best to you and your's. Something about routine settled whatever that question was. I'm thinking an egg on toast would be perfect right about now. Read more...

It's Cold

When the temperature is 18 degrees and it's blowing a full gale, light snow skittering, it's hard to get comfortable. I google the weather and see that Mac is probably getting hammered with Lake Effect Snow. We live where we do for one reason or another. I'd rather be someplace warmer, but here I am. Walking in a winter wonder land. It's not easy, but I'm not dead, and it's beautiful, the way white blows across your face. It's winter, come on, you should be used to this, a fact of nature, buck up, no one promised anyone a free ride. Phone company says I should have phone tomorrow, so I elect to work late and go home early tomorrow. Temps are dropping like a rock. Even a below zero day, with six feet of snow on the ground, was more comfortable in western Colorado. When I talked with Sara she mentioned Mary's diaries and where they were. Got them out today and started poking around. TR and I started packing up the painting show. Three shippers (the "three friends" in Chinese art are bamboo, plum blossoms, and pine) and over a dozen destinations; we tried to keep things as simple as possible and label everything clearly. It's difficult to remember how every single thing was packed, so we end up making some improvements. Handling it all again, I'd have to say that subjective art springs from the inner personality, which means that all psychotic art is subjective, just a thought. I read today that a paidogeron is a symbolic picture (a symbol of what?) that depicts a child, with, for instance, a beard. After work I went to the pub for a beer and ended up talking with some guys I know by sight, but had never talked to. They were interested in my life, what brought me here, and I gave them the short version, which hardly does justice, and wondered how they could believe anything I'd say. I don't believe my life, I can't imagine anyone else would. I have several dead skinned animals in the back of my truck that I intend to eat, with gravy, on toast. It's not a statement, just dinner. Eat local. Read more...

Out of Order

Came back to town because of forecast snow and I must be here Tuesday, to start un-installing three shows. D's back at school. Me and TR. No phone at my house, so I have a couple of posts backed up there that will be out of order, they were the 31st and early morning of the 1st. Huge winds. Got the insulation done, ate well. Wanted to stay home, but the rule is that, in winter, if I absolutely have to be at the museum, I have to come to town before a weather event. In addition, we should get one of the new Carter's tomorrow. I read Mary's letters all afternoon, 1927 - 1930, interesting. I'm hooked. It's instructive to read what was going on in their lives when a particular painting in our collection is mentioned. All those early money worries. The other artists they knew and spent time with. The occasional letter written by Clarence, mostly when he was visiting Portsmouth, to Mary. Found out that the model for two early paintings that I like quite a lot, was Italian, from the year in Europe; just before he met Mary, on the trip home. My favorite painting in the permanent collection, "Serenity" (that model), because I could live with it, you glance at something ten or twelve times a day, you want to like what you see. I'm not a critic, not even well informed. If I hear art glass being referenced as a good investment, I'll shoot someone. I did beat the snow, a skiff, blowing hard. Walked over to Kroger and got a couple of things I could nuke. They have dramatically improved the science of flash-freezing, some things are quite good. I don't usually eat like this, but it's interesting to sample some things I wouldn't normally fix for myself. The first Carter son, John, was born in 1930, and the number of letters increases. Mary was prolific. Found a small connection today, between one of the photographs Clarence took of a specific painting, it was a little exciting. Sara called, and we had a great talk, as we are capable of, and discussed the provenance of another painting that we had been asked about. She asked me to mark any passages that drew connections, which I was already doing. It was Glenn, I think, who left me a pad of Post-Its and said "just start marking things". Which I do now, when taking a walk. Mark the occasional bush. I can't be convicted, just because someone peed on the flowers. I hate that these will be out of order. Read more...