Mousie Must Die

Bucky, our black and white tuxedo cat, is most active first thing in the morning, and then again about feeding time at night. In between she saves energy by napping on our laps, in a patch of sunshine or at the foot of the bed. When she's active, she tears the place up. Her favorite toys are little metallic fabric mice that crackle a little, like paper. I found this pathetic critter with no eyes and a tail amputated and reduced to a pile of shredded neon pink fluff. I briefly thought about heading out of the house to buy a new one, but then reconsidered and just sewed on knots for eyes, and a bit of shoelace for a tail. The universe provides, though. Our neighbor walked over with a plate of cookies and a little white fur mouse. This is my latest quick entry for the illustrated journal.
On a more serious note, today the media will be in Janesville to record the last day of production at the General Motors plant. The facility, which has operated in this town for 80 years, and has employed thousands of workers - and also workers in associated industry - closes for good. When I moved to Janesville in 1973 the two signature industries were Parker Pen and General Motors. Now both are gone, and I'm not sure how the city will find a new identity. It will though, I'm sure. It just may take a while, and in the meantime there's going to be lots of economic pain. It's going to be a bittersweet Christmas for lots of families.

http://www.channel3000.com/money/18343477/detail.html

Indulging My Obsessive Side

EDM 119 - Draw some rocks

EDM 200 - Draw something lucky

I owe the topic of this post to Jana, who wrote about the same thing: a desire to fill all the empty pages in unfinished sketchbooks.  In many ways I am an ultra-organized person, with model paper and computer files, a closet organized by season and color.  But in my sketchbooks I am very very random.  I grab whatever book is at hand, and in a size I don't mind carrying. Some are small, some tiny, some larger, some in a spiral format, many not.  I started drawing for the Everyday Matters group in a set of four little books given to me by a friend when I retired.  I'm sure he thought that I'd write diaries or The Great American Novel or something literary. But I only write personal things in cheap lined notebooks that I don't mind filling with drivel. These gift books are small, the opened spread is only six by nine inches, which at first appealed to me.  Now I like to work slightly bigger.  The paper is thin too; ink bleeds through. Watercolor makes the pages curl.  Still, I started them, and I need to finish them.  Plus I've been reading about all these other keepers of sketchbooks in Danny Gregory's new book An Illustrated Life, and person after personal talks about filling all the pages.  I have a shelf of sketchbooks and none of them are completely filled.  I feel shamed here, unworthy.  OK, maybe a little lazy.

There is another issue.  I was interested in the Everyday Matters group because of the emphasis on daily sketching.  I draw most days, but not all.  It seemed to me that I could do the weekly challenges as they came up, but some didn't appeal to me.  I don't have a dog, for example, and (gasp) don't even like them much.  I didn't want to draw a dog.  I was horrified at the idea of drawing a shopping cart with all those angles and straight lines.  I try not to eat carbs much, so ice cream, noodles and baked potatoes seemed like a tiny bit of personal torture.  But, there is a part of me that wants to finish what I start,  really wants to do them all.  Other people have managed; I can too.

So, I'm taking a cue from old Nike ads and "just doing it".  I discovered that adding gesso to the thin pages allows me to do more than just pencil work, or just pen.  I've been craving color, so acrylic paint thinned with gel medium seems to work fairly well on the prepared pages. We'll see if I can at least finish one of these little format books before I break out the two new Moleskines I bought for myself last week.  

Everyday Matters #34 Leaf (and a poem)

The Everyday Matters online group started by Danny Gregory has been a gift to me.  Through that group I've made virtual connections with other artists, had an opportunity to see how other they interpreted a weekly challenge, and it prompted me to look at my home and my life as source material for art.  Often seeing other people's work inspired me, and just as often it humbled me.  At first I wanted to do all the prompts (draw your shoe, draw dinner, draw some organized chaos in  your life), but filling notebooks with ideas for sketches and writing chosen by other people eventually became a chore - certainly not the goal of doing illustrated journaling.  Every day matters, and it's my job to find subjects that interest, delight, or concern me.  Now I cherry pick ideas, looking for subjects to share with others that they may also have tackled, but ignoring the ones that leave me staring stupidly into space.  I used to try to draw every day, put I've modified that.  Now I try to draw, or paint, or cut and paste, or take a good photograph every day.  

Yes I can.

At any rate, the leaf idea is an old one, but it's fall, and leaves have been an issue here.  We live on a lot in an old established part of town, full of maples, walnuts and oaks.  I call it squirrel heaven.  We built our deck around a maple, which I now know is a romantic but not practical thing to do.  In the spring its red blossoms and helicopter seeds, in the fall it's wet leaves.  So I drew one.  

Here's an autumn poem from the Wisconsin Poets Calendar I won by answering the Midday Quiz on our local public radio station.  Actually, it might inspire a good collage.

A Visit to Lands End

by Liz Hammond Rhodebeck

The rich colors of an autumn catalog

warm my eyes on a darkening afternoon;

plum and chocolate,

the words roll in my mouth

like edible stones.

I can almost feel the sureness

of the herringbone and tweed

in tones of memories,

and the deep hum of the earth,

relish the sound of houndstooth in

its sturdy complexity of olive and rose.

What else but a camel plaid

can set the world right

and promise the peaceful glow

of a scarlet wood cardigan,

knowing the storms of life are no match for wide-wale

corduroy and a bulwark navy turtleneck.

A New Palette

5x7 inches, Pitt pen and watercolor

12x16 inches, watercolor

The colors in my favorite watercolor palette hadn't been touched since the snow was on the ground, and I had a burning desire to try some new color combinations, so I dipped into my Stephen Quiller book on color choices (Color Choices: Making Sense Out of Color Theory).  I soaked the old dried blobs out, squeezed in some fresh paint, and gave it a go.  The colors he typically uses are much brighter than what I have been using, but I thought learning to use new colors might be good.  My old palette had more colors, and was arranged by light values, medium values, and dark values, but this one has cool colors on one side, warm on the other. The colors include permanent green light, viridian, turquoise, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, ultramarine violet, magenta, permanent rose, cadmium red, cadmium orange, cadmium yellow light, burnt sienna and cerulean blue.

The top one was small, just playing with a Pitt pen and color washes. I photographed the scene from a Washington ferry when we visited the San Juan islands last September.  The original was much paler and more misty.  The bottom sketch of a local railroad bridge was painted  on an Arches block, and the colors were mixed much more.  I'm not so sure about the ultramarine and violet I used as darks in the shadows, but I could learn to like it.  I wouldn't normally choose a bridge as a subject, but it was the challenge for this week in the Everyday Matters group.  I wanted to drive to the site and paint outside, but southern Wisconsin is in a rainy pattern this week, so I used a snapshot I took a couple years ago.  Such a wimp.

Every Day in May, III

I'm still plugging away at my daily "every day in May" sketches, though I keep asking myself if it is worth the time. I feel comfortable working on pieces like the Mardi Gras sun from  yesterday.  I took the picture, and I know how to graph it out and work in up as watercolor or colored pencil, and I know I'll get results I like.  

This drawing on the fly, on location, is less predictable, more risky.  But I want to get comfortable drawing or painting in public, and I want to train my eye better, so this is how I'm choosing to do that. Drawing in the coffee shop showed me two things.  First, I need give myself enough time to complete what I start.  Second, if I'm just using a pen and notebook, nobody pays any attention to me.  That is a relief.  I suspect, however, that if I had my little watercolor kit it would attract notice.  Drawing outside showed me that I am going to have to pay attention to things like insects.  I was in the shade, so no problem there, but mosquitoes and little gnats left my neck and arms itching.

All this is leading up to a challenge I set for myself for next month.  I just sent in my entry fee for a plein air painting event to be held in Beloit in June.  A painter friend twisted my arm (a little) and said we could work together.  There are some prizes, and according to her a fairly limited field of entrants.  There are cash prizes, and a sale of completed paintings.  I've never done anything like this before, and I am nervous.  But I'm also determined to try.  So these informal sketches are a start in a new direction.  If I bomb, I bomb.  But I'll never know unless I try.  If you want to read about the event, check it out here:

http://www.friendsofriverfront.com/plein_air.htm

Every Day in May, II

Doing "quick and dirty" sketches every day is proving difficult.  I allow myself to be sidetracked by all sorts of things.  The paperwork for my upcoming library show needed completing and delivering, no time like the present.  I realized I haven't backed up anything on my Mac since the new year, so I did some of that.  A friend called and asked if I had ferns to share, so of course I went out, grabbed a shovel and dug.  There is a fussier drawing that is taking a few hours. Then there is my goofy vision.  The last couple days I actually taped an improvised patch (a folded tissue held in place with masking tape) over my bubble-filled left eye so that I could concentrate better on my sketchbook.  Looking at distant things is much easier than reading, drawing, or even walking down steps which requires I look downward through the gas bubble. Finally there is my dreaded inner critic telling me that these informal drawings are worthy only for the bottom of the birdcage.  But hey, this is what I decided to do, so I'm sticking with it.

The first drawing was completed as I sat in a lawn chair at the back of our garden.  A friend gave me a birdhouse kit ages ago, and I assembled it and painted it shades of gray.  Every year a wren comes and sets up housekeeping, cussing me out whenever I come too near.  She's back this year, and she did not appreciate me sitting drawing her house.  The rest of the garden is in riotous disarray, filled to overflowing with spring flowers - and spring weeds.

The second sketch is of a wee vase of grape hyacinth.  I enjoy the bright purple of these hardy spring bulbs along side the bright yellow daffodils and tulips.  I put the little container on an upended plastic tub that once held potato salad, but now serves as a water container when I paint, and the results are here.

Every Day in May

I decided to do a series of informal sketches of odds and ends here at my house each day in  May, nothing too detailed or obsessive. No half sheet watercolors or crazy detailed drawings. Nothing gridded off from one of my gazillion photos. Just quick and dirty sketches. Truth be told, that's about what I can capable of doing right now. Yesterday I was trying to paint and add detail to an acrylic gel transfer of a sketchbook drawing, and the gas bubble that is helping my eye heal swam into the middle of my visual field, bouncing, glinting light, magnifying parts of the paper, distorting others. I tried holding my left hand over the eye, but besides being awkward, it fogged up my glasses. It occurred to me perhaps I should tie on a red bandanna, and add an eye patch, and become Sherry, the Painter Pirate. Arrrrrgh! Anyway, the two wee sketches here are from yesterday and the day before.

Other than that I am preparing for my first solo show at our public library in June, writing and rewriting a biographical statement and artist's statement. For a former English teacher I am finding it surprisingly difficult to write something that is true, brief, and readable. I'm making an inventory of the paintings I plan to include, and have begun to fret about if I need extra insurance to cover what is essentially all the best artwork I have done the past decade. Having my own show has been one of my goals, but lately it is seeming more and more daunting.

Style

Part of me is not very happy about our spring snowfall, and part of me is grateful that I have a good excuse to stay inside and work on my painting. I have to say that my biggest worry with regard to my artwork is that I don't see any one personal artistic style emerging. I am just as happy to design a playing card featuring Stephen King's face for the EDM group as I am experimenting with abstract paintings. In either case the payoff for me is a sense of discovery and surprise.



This little design was the result of a challenge for the Everyday Matters group. "Draw a pack of cards, or design a new face card." I don't play cards, but I like looking at their designs, so that was the approach I took. I don't draw a lot of faces, and have never tried caricature, so I searched around the internet for tips on getting started. That led to my looking at my old high school yearbook, and attempting to draw familiar faces, then moving on to the master of horror fiction. After a couple false starts I managed to come up with a design that reminded me of King. What I have learned from making myself do even the challenges that don't speak to me right away is that they don't have to be automatically appealing. Pretty often the unappealing ones are the ones that end up having an interesting and surprising result.



I think many people who draw and paint are frustrated by their inability to loosen up and be experimental. I certainly have been unhappy by many of my tight, literal paintings. In an attempt to portray real beauty in the world I often can't see the big picture because of my concern with detail. Personal emotional response, even composition, takes the back seat to picky-picky detail. With that in mind, I decided to try different materials (illustration board, gesso, acrylics) and a different approach. I'm happy with the process, which seems less like work and more like exploration, and the results. But here's the thing - the response I get at home and online where I post on Flickr, is lukewarm at best. It's not the responses I get, which are supportive, but the lack of response, as gauged by the number of times the photo is viewed or marked as a "favorite." What comes to mind is Mom's warning, If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. My assumption is that people are mostly keeping their mouths shut. I never know if lack of response because viewers don't like a loose style, or because I'm just not doing a very good job. Maybe it's some of both of those factors. Or maybe I need to include the abstract work in a different group.

Anyway, I feel the need to try new things, even if they aren't enthusiastically received. At some point I need to just usher my inner critic to the back row, and try to ignore her. I can only hope that way I can continue to grow, and in the end develop a recognizable personal style.

Valentines Day

Valentines Day this year in Janesville is overcast and 26 degrees. Snow blankets the ground and has narrowed our street to one lane; more is predicted for this evening. Here is my Valentine to all those folks who sweeten my days: my husband, my kitty, all those friends here "in the flesh" and those online friends who challenge and encourage me every day.

Having eaten rather a lot while we were in Texas, I am trying to stay away from sweets for a while, but I enjoyed drawing these message hearts. I'm curious, what would you have your candy hearts say, if you could choose? I'd love to hear from you.

This poem is from the Wisconsin Poets' Calendar. I won it last month on the Midday Quiz on Wisconsin Public Radio. I'm really enjoying the artwork and the poems.

Pinball Lover
by Richard Swanson

He

better than you and I

knows how to

when to

tilt her

Some Recent Sketches

For the past few months I have participated in an online sketching group called Everday Matters, and have made an effort to draw their weekly challenges. I'm never, ever caught up. Of course they started a couple years before I joined, and I face an apparently impossible self-assigned job of drawing every challenge. That isn't the point of the group, I know. The point is to draw as often as possible and to realize that ordinary objects in our everyday lives are worthy of being sketched.


I have a tendancy not to draw from life. Readers here already have seen my whining about being nervous when people watch me draw. Heavens, I admire other people's loose and breezy travel watercolors! Some day I'll be able to do them myself, but not yet. The first two pictures here are of the sketchbook work I did on our Thanksgiving week in Jamaica. It worked out well for me, because I was able to draw some things from the privacy of our room, with its balcony and comfortable chairs. At the beach I had to work fast, but so many people were reading or asleep that they were unaware of me with my sketchbook. My new Moleskine probably could have just as easily been a diary, I suppose. I gave up trying to do watercolor sketches on this trip for a couple reasons. First, it involves hauling the materials around, even though I have a very small case with a tiny set that works fairly well. But the kit itself draws attention, and the other reason is I don't really want a crinkly warped page in my sketch journal. So, I've been concentrating on pen and ink or pencil.


The drawing of the tree was rendered from a photo I took up in Door County. I photographed this tree with its wonderful horizontal branches and textured bark at The Ridges environmental sanctuary. Lately I have been combining colored pencil with my graphite work, and I'm liking the combination. In fact some of my favorite artwork has been done in this very small format. Part of me like a little book of detailed drawings like this, and part of me knows if I'm going to do detailed work I should probably do it bigger.

Recent EDM Challenges

The Everyday Matters group I joined this year has been great for motivating me to draw more. I enjoy having an assignment that takes some of the mental fussing I do away. The other thing I think is good is sketching the ordinary objects that live with me in my house - some game pieces, a toothbrush, a novelty clock. My goal is to interpret each weekly challenge in a way I think will be different from other people, and also to experiment with ways to mix media. All three of these combine graphite and colored pencil; the hand with the Scrabble tiles also has a little acrylic ink. I have experimented with combining watercolor with colored pencil, but my current sketchbook has thin paper that doesn't accept anything too wet. However touches of black acrylic ink seem to make the intense darks I want without curling the paper too much. The other thing I tried was using sandpaper behind the background to make a little extra texture. I probably spend too much time on these challenges. I think the goal is not to obsess, but rather to be fresh, and to draw lots. But right now I'm in my detailed and picky mode, so I think I'll just run with it.

My Studio

I belong to an online art group called Everyday Matters, a group that has encouraged me to paint or draw every day. I have been inspired and challenged by this group of people, and have on occasion seen photos and read descriptions of where they do their work. Many of them work outside on site, but so far I find that I don't do very well working outside. I don't enjoy being watched. I'm a whiner and a wimp about heat, cold, damp and flying insects. I like to have my materials at hand when I work. You get the idea.

My studio (AKA the cabin) is a little room with two gable windows and a funky slanted ceiling. The previous owners of our house used it as the children's play room. For a decade we used it as a guest bedroom for one, since only a twin bed fits in the narrow space. Anyway, once I started really trying to do some art I decided I needed a place to store my materials and do my drawing and painting. The first try at making a studio was downstairs in an enclosed porch. That had good light and enough space. But in the winter it was so cold my hands shook, and the work table tended to accumulate odds and ends intended to be carried to the car, or the garage. So I took down my table and reconsidered.

My decision to take down the guest bed was difficult. I don't have many overnight visitors, but I like having a place for friends to stay in comfort. Cold reality is that my guests only come once or twice a year, and I do art most every day. So, the bed is stored in a deep closet, and the work table went upstairs in its place. There are problems with the space. I risk beaning myself on the slanting ceiling if I don't watch my head. The small gable windows don't admit much natural light, though I have added an Ott light, a tabletop task light, and an overhead florescent shop light. Storage space is limited, but I have two plastic sets of shelves and a small dresser (seen in my baby picture with the pumpkin in a recent post) for materials and books. I have a little gizmo that has speakers and recharges my iPod. Paper is stored flat under my bed. Other odds and ends go in crates under the table. Down the hall I have access to the bathroom sink, so I don't have to run the stairs for water. Not shown in the photos is a comfy chair, a small television. and a doll cabinet I inherited from my mother.

It isn't a palace, and it has its faults, but for now my studio is a place I can go to make art, read, listen to music, and sometimes indulge in some guilty pleasure television. Being retired has its advantages. I'd love to see other people's studios, so if you want to share, please email me with a link to a photo.

Bucky Cat

I wrote about Bucky when we adopted her from the shelter back in spring. Our eighteen-year-old calico went the way of all good old cats, and we wanted a new kitty to fuss over. When she came to us she was a seven and a half pound bundle of nerves, her eyes huge. Usually that's all we saw, because every loud noise sent her scrambling up the stair and under a bed, or into the rafters of the basement. She was a picky eater, rarely touching her bowl when we watched. I wondered if she ate or drank at all. Not even catnip impressed her; the volunteer at the shelter called her a "non-responder."

My, how things change. Over the months she has settled in to the point that not even the heavy equipment out on our street rebuilding the sidewalks and the roadbed rattled her. She no longer hightails it out of the room when visitors arrive. She discovered Meow Mix and has lost her fashion model figure. She's a plushy little fireplug of a cat, who leaps into our laps every time we sit, and who sings and vocalizes very convincingly every morning if we don't come down the stairs and fix her breakfast. Oh, and she responds to catnip very well, thank you.

I always loved the style of calico cats, but this black and white tuxedo cat is also very appealing. I enjoy sketching her, and and thought I might do a series of black and white animals, cats, cows, rabbits. There are more exotic black and white critters, penguins and orca whales, but I generally stick to what I see in my own world. These days I mostly see Bucky.

Poetry Sunday

The drawing was an EDM challenge, to draw a chain. I found a photo and used graphite and colored pencil.

The Eternal Rebel
by Eve Gore Booth

1914

The phantoms flit before our dazzled eyes,
Glory and honour, wrath and righteousness,
The agèd phantoms in their bloodstained dress,
Vultures that fill the world with ravenous cries,

Swarming about the rock where, chained apart,
In age-long pain Prometheus finds no rest
From the divine flame burning in his breast,
And vultures tearing at a human heart.

Not yet the blessed hours on golden wings
Bring to the crucified their sure relief,
Deeper and deeper grows the ancient grief,
Blackest of all intolerable things.

Eternal Rebel, sad, and old, and blind,
Bound with a chain enslaved by every one
Of the dark gods who hide the summer sun,
Yet art thou still the saviour of mankind.

Free soul of fire, break down their chains and bars,
Drive out those unclean phantoms of the brain,
Till every living thing be friends again,
And our lost earth true comrade to the stars.

Poetry Sunday

The Everyday Matters challenge a few weeks ago was to draw somebody doing something. I went to the fair and photographed young people on rides. This little drawing was completed in Graphitint colored pencils.

The Circle Game
by Joni Mitchell

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, when youre older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it wont be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
Therell be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Everyday Matters Challenge #128 - A View into a Room

It has been a while since I posted an EDM challenge picture. I become absorbed by projects, like my family history project, and other interests shift to the back burner. I haven't worked out. I've left drawings half finished, books half read.

Anyway, this challenge was "Draw a view through a doorway." The sketch is done with colored pencil, and is a view into our study. This is where I spend hours, reading, working on the computer. It's a comfortable room, but nothing very decorative. In the picture you cannot see my oversized office desk with all my files and my Mac computer. What you can see is our favorite comforatble chair, a gold corduroy Lazy Boy recliner, bought for our first house in 1980. There is the old lamp that came from my grandparents house, that I had rewired by a shop teacher where I taught. There's a little half moon end table for the piles of books checked out of the library, and you can see our bookshelves. The dictionary stand with the huge unabridged dictionary was built especially for us by a friend of my parents when we were first married. It holds our collection of dictionaries, including one my husband published (The Portmanteau Dictionary). We have many books, both of us being English majors in college. One holds mostly classic fiction and cookbooks, the other poetry, drama, and nonfiction. The sketch was hard. I left out the patterned carpet, and didn't attempt the reflections on the varnished wood door. In general I am not confident about my ability to render architectural detail, but I suppose that is a reason to draw that sort of thing more often.

Drawing in public

One of my goals has always been to be able to produce interesting travel sketches. I adore looking at illustrated travel diaries, and want to be able to do my own. However, there are some problems for me. First, I am just shy about having people look over my shoulder at something unfinished, and comment. My face burns, and sometimes my hands shake. I know in my heart that nobody is going to be critical or cruel, that in fact people are fascinated by artists. Still, I am uncomfortable in public.


I did draw on this Ohio River cruise, but only from photos I had prepared. I had some reasons for that. First, when we were touring the towns where the American Queen stopped, I was with my husband. He wasn't interested in sitting and waiting for me to finish a sketch. In addition, it was high summer hot most days. We walked and dripped, then returned to shower and cool down. I mostly wanted to see what I could see then get back into the shade near our stateroom. Finally, I am not very skilled, or even interested, in drawing architecture. I probably need to work more on drawing houses, barns, shops and so on. Oh well.


It was interesting to me that when I was working on these sketches, mostly in public, very few people interrupted or commented. However when I got out my little travel watercolor set and tried wee paintings of the shore (death by greenery), every other person stopped to look and comment. The watercolor sketches were intended as gifts for our partners at the dinner table, and I added our names and addresses as a little souvenir. They weren't very large or detailed, but they were one-of-a-kind, and our new friends seemed pleased.

Everyday Matters challenges#26, #125

These summer days, the very same ones that seemed so long when I was a child, seem to fly by. I try to sketch most days, but housework, gardening, and visiting with friends and family here for visits seem to fill my days. Still, I managed to complete a couple sketches for my Everyday Matters drawing group. The first is a mallard drake, photographed at our beautiful Rotary Gardens, and the second is the skull of a whitetail deer. The skull was found by a friend in his woods, and kept as a curiosity. It has one broken antler, and a small shred of skill still adheres to the bridge of its nose. It is a challenging and interesting thing to look at and draw. I'd like to draw other angles before I return it to my friend. Actually, I think it would be fun to draw items found on walks, both for the challenge and for the record of time spent.

Headed Out (EDM #37)

This morning I'm headed out of town, for my annual solo journey up to Algoma to see my aunt, attend a doll and teddy bear show, and tour the art galleries of Door County. The pen and ink drawing is of my key ring, complete with Bucky Badger. I love this yearly journey, a chance to savor the beauty of Wisconsin, from rolling farmland to the sparkle of Lake Michigan. My aunt, whom I have always loved, is my surrogate mom now that Mother has passed away. A former phy-ed teacher, she knows everyone, still loves to do water aerobics, and is perfectly willing to sit up late to talk and join me in an old-fashioned (recipe follows), and a snack of crackers and cheese. She always bakes brownies for the doll show, which is fund raiser for her church. I have bought lots of old Barbies, Kens and Skippers from her basement, the ones my cousins left with her, and no longer have any interest in. Even though I am trimming my own collection these days, I wouldn't miss the chance to visit, talk dolls and family, and sip a summer cocktail.


Aunt Ellen's Old Fashioned Cocktail


Take a bottle of bitters, and shake enough in to cover the bottom of a tumbler.
Fill the glass with ice.
Add a shot of brandy.
Top off with diet Sprite.
Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry.

Poetry Sunday

The drawing is of coins from a collection my Grandpa Pierce gave me when I graduated from college in 1973. It was a wooden cigar box labeled "Standard Whiffs" filled with a crazy assortment of foreign and American coins, even Confederate scrip. Here are a couple silver dollars, a wheat penny, a Civil War token that says army and navy, and a cent from the 1800's. I didn't draw a nickle, but that's what todays poem is about.

Money
BY HOWARD NEMEROV

an introductory lecture

This morning we shall spend a few minutes
Upon the study of symbolism, which is basic
To the nature of money. I show you this nickel.
Icons and cryptograms are written all over
The nickel: one side shows a hunchbacked bison
Bending his head and curling his tail to accommodate
The circular nature of money. Over him arches
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and, squinched in
Between that and his rump, E PLURIBUS UNUM,
A Roman reminiscence that appears to mean
An indeterminately large number of things
All of which are the same. Under the bison
A straight line giving him a ground to stand on
Reads FIVE CENTS. And on the other side of our nickel
There is the profile of a man with long hair
And a couple of feathers in the hair; we know
Somehow that he is an American Indian, and
He wears the number nineteen-thirty-six.
Right in front of his eyes the word LIBERTY, bent
To conform with the curve of the rim, appears
To be falling out of the sky Y first; the Indian
Keeps his eyes downcast and does not notice this;
To notice it, indeed, would be shortsighted of him.
So much for the iconography of one of our nickels,
Which is now becoming a rarity and something of
A collectors’ item: for as a matter of fact
There is almost nothing you can buy with a nickel,
The representative American Indian was destroyed
A hundred years or so ago, and his descendants’
Relations with liberty are maintained with reservations,
Or primitive concentration camps; while the bison,
Except for a few examples kept in cages,
Is now extinct. Something like that, I think,
Is what Keats must have meant in his celebrated
Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Notice, in conclusion,
A number of circumstances sometimes overlooked
Even by experts: (a) Indian and bison,
Confined to obverse and reverse of the coin,
Can never see each other; (b) they are looking
In opposite directions, the bison past
The Indian’s feathers, the Indian past
The bison’s tail; (c) they are upside down
To one another; (d) the bison has a human face
Somewhat resembling that of Jupiter Ammon.
I hope that our studies today will have shown you
Something of the import of symbolism
With respect to the understanding of what is symbolized.