See you in September.

And now we are on the brink of October, overall a pleasant enough month, but we all know it leads directly to October, which has its cookies to hand out, especially Halloween at the end, but even before that the leaves, my God the leaves.  And for those of us of a certain age there is the memory of the aromatic odor of burning leaves at the curbside as we passed from neighborhood to neighborhood.  Oh I suppose all in all it was bad for us, but still...

 I don't want to be that guy, another cranky old fart, crabbing about the way things should have been.

A little late for us not to be that guy I think.

A fellow artist once told me the story of a visiting granddaughter who was left alone in her studio and when she walked in there was the moppet elbow deep in her art tools, splashing around on her pad then ripping out the page and declaring, "Another Masterpiece," and she was on to the next page and masterpiece, and the one after that until she had a stack of them.  That is the way I use the word masterpiece.

Usually I get tired of seeing the same old post every time I click on the Institute and hurry up to post something so that there is something newer to click on, but I liked the photo of that piece of heavy equipment and the ambitious title The Marsh Project, but most of all the smell of all that mown hay.  Or is it grass?   Hay is grass (or legumes like alfalfa) that has been cut, dried, and stored for animal feed, while fresh grass grows live in the ground Grass I guess then.  But remember when you could accomplish something in God's own open air, and never go even near a computer to fill out some kind of form?

The Marsh Project

 Here's an example of a project that was never completed.  I guess you could call it abandoned, although it hardly qualified as art.  The plan was to restore an overgrown marsh to the condition that it was a few centuries ago, using the dredgings to build a road through it.  I still think it's doable, but not by me anymore.  Like some famous guy once said, "Man's reach must always be beyond his grasp.  Else what's a heaven for?"

As you can see, the eternal drive works just fine.  Thanks for the tip.

Dog days

What?  August already?  The months have been slipping by with hardly a notice from me as I enjoy the summer, goofing around with my toys, the latest of which is a document scanner (for the archives, don'cha know).  It's an odd piece of kit, a high-def camera on an articulating arm but the tech and software are amazing.

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Those are nice images of Beaglesonia you've uploaded, Mr. Beagles.  Any luck with that external drive I mentioned?  Part of my scheme is to make digital copies of more than fifty years of crap; photos, gadgets & gizmos, artsy-fartsy stuff and things of that nature.  For what purpose, I'm not sure.  There's an ongoing inventory I'm trying to get through and I've fallen down many a rabbit hole but some stuff is fascinating and my be worth revisiting.  I think Picasso said something like art is never completed, only abandoned.  Something like that, could have been another guy.

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I don't remember us discussing Asian Carp.

Not an actual discussion but I made a mention of it four years ago, in June.  You can look it up.

Glad to see you making a few sales with your watercolors, Uncle Ken, but I wouldn't call them "masterpieces."  The old meaning of masterpiece was an artists or craftsmans best piece of work, one per customer.  But to be fair, words and their meanings change over time so I guess it's fair use.  I don't want to be that guy, another cranky old fart, crabbing about the way things should have been.

A Man with a Plan

 I don't remember us discussing Asian Carp.  I guess I  mainly thought it was funny, fish jumping up out of the water and slapping fishermen silly and knocking that beer can right out of their hands.  I think we have some kind of electric fence somewhere between the Mississippi and the lake.  I guess there were none in your old fishing hole because there are none in Lake Michigan and I believe if they got into it they would be in all the great lakes.  

I took some of my cormorant paintings to the senior center and got into a discussion of would cormorants be able to take care of those Asian carp and I believe they would, they are a hungry crew.  When they get to the mouth of the Chicago river and turn westwards they are wearing bibs with fish on them.  I reckon we could sneak up on them and make the generic fish into Asian carp and I figure that would take care of the problem.  Don't know why I never became governor.

Don't know why I never became much of anything.  Oh that's right I was going to be a famous author, and to make sure I never sold out to some corporate job, I tended bar for most of my Champaign years, oh, and drank a whole lot too.  But then I have just watched Mad Men and those corporate types drank way more than I ever did.

But I was thinking of people who had a path in life from their early days.  In 7 UP it seems like most of the rich kids had plans that they followed and the poorer kids tended to drift.

But Beagles knew what he was going to do at the age of seven, he was going to live in Michigan, and that's exactly what he did.  Hats off to him. 

Carpe Diem

I seem to remember discussing this subject in the past.  It's been a while, but in case anyone is still interested, here's an article that I stumbled across while looking up something else:

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/eating-most-hated-fish-mississippi-invasive-asian-carp

I well remember something that I did at the age of seven.  We were driving home to Chicago after visiting my grandmother in Stevensville, Michigan.  As we came around a bend in the road, the smokestacks of the steel mills of Gary, Indiana hove into view.  My father commented that it was kind of depressing to be driving into that after spending a few days in clean and green Michigan.  I commented that we wouldn't have to do that if we lived in Michigan all the time.  My dad responded with "Get that idea out of your head right now.  Chicago is where we live, Michigan is where we go on vacation.  That's the way it is and will always be. Nobody lives in Michigan."  I said, "Grandma lives in Michigan."  To which my dad angrily replied, "Grandmas don't count.  Since you will never be a grandma, you will never live in Michigan."  At this point, my mother intervened because she thought that the discussion was getting too heated.  I said, "Fine, I won't mention it again but, mark my words, When I am 21 years old, I will be living in Michigan".                                                                                         

at the fair

 Well here I am at the Renaissance Court Christmas in July art fair hawking my wares.  I was there from 9am to 4pm, kind of a long time to be sitting there with nothing to do but eye a sparse and disinterested crowd and check my email and various posts every five minutes.  Well that was the morning, at noontime things began to pick up and I sold enough stuff to make up for those slow and boring morning hours.

Was not able to unload my tiger though, or my of the other 18x24 paintings which I had modest success with (sold maybe 1 out of 16) back in my hay days at the Ten Cat.  It was a party then.  I would be drinking beers and regaling my guests and serving them some kind of vittles.  My corn muffins were a big hit among those who didn't mind a little burnt spot or two.  I was kind of a moderate frog in a very small pond.  But I managed to get some of my crowd, those who didn't see it coming and snuck away, out to the front of the joint where my masterpieces were on view and give them a little spiel and get out my message of peace and love, which is what it is all about.

The paintings at the art fair were priced from 20 to 50, but I also had some prints that I sold for 2 or 3 bucks.  That was maybe 25 years ago that I was taking those printmaking courses.  They were kind of fun because instead of pushing a little brush across paper you got to carve, give acid baths, slather ink over a big old stone, and best of all to push a lever crushing your paints into your rock, metal plate, or block of linoleum. 

And of course you get to make 25 or so copies all slightly different due to the amount of media you put out.  But what are you going to do with all those copies?  They are going to sit on the plastic shelving that lines both sides of your bedroom for 25 years and finally haul them out to the big art fair and use them as loss leaders.  Well that's life huh?

Speaking about life I just finished watching 7 Up, which is where these British guys made this doc about a dozen 7 year olds of various economic status and what they thought about life and whatnot.  It was just going to be a one off but then 7 years later they dropped back on those kids again, and then seven after that, and seven more and so on.  

Interesting series because of the changes in their lives every seven years and how they feel about it.  Think about it, what if you had to sum up the last seven years of your life in a 3 hour long interview that you knew would be boiled down to 15 minutes?

Try it yourself, what were you doing and what were you thinking when you were 7, 14, 21, 28 etc?  And what does it all mean?

I don't know either.

Just wanted to talk a bit about the art fair, and about that tv series (hard to find anywhere but You Tube) and then I thought I would sneak away so that I didn't have to admit that at 81 years I'm still a bit fuzzy about what is the meaning of life. 

Those Were the Good Old Days

These photos date back to 2006 or 2007.  In the first one, I am mowing one of our hunting trails and my faithful companion Splash is running security patrol out in front.

Here's a better close up of Splash.

 Ah, those were the days!

My wife came home from the rehab hospital Friday.  The bad news is the opening in that assisted living facility in Charlevoix did not pan out for us.  Apparently, the current occupant decided that he wasn't as ready to leave as he thought he was.  The good news is we're still next on the list for any openings that do occur.