Or gardening, or eggplant parmesaning, or winterizing the housing, or cleaning the cat littering, or fraternizing with inevitable dooming…
I believe Covid-19 is portents from a higher power. Most natural powers are higher than human, but I suspect big mama Gaia is behind the pandemic. Humans were polluting and overfishing her watery parts, so she sent in the infected bats to mingle with those fishmongers pushing shark fins to bottom feeders. My 3-year-old granddaughter’s favorite video is “Baby Shark Dance” with 7.5 billion views (the highest on YouTube and coincidentally the approximate human population on planet earth). At $.05 per view, this cinematographic embarrassment has garnered $37,500,000 for its creators. Elementary graphics, and kid actors an adult might want to elbow in the eye, have made some very untalented people stinking rich. If I told any sensitive child the process by which shark fins are harvested from Baby Shark’s parents and grandparents, she would literally cry her brains out. I know that many of you reading this have no idea how fresh shark fins end up at a Wuhan fish market. But everybody wants to be an emperor, and in America we raise 50 million turkeys to pretend once a year that each of us is a Presidential Lincoln chopping wood in the crisp November air and setting the table with mom’s best China and real silver silverware.
100 million wild sharks are killed every year so Chinese men can achieve soft skin and lasting boners. I’ve rewritten the lyrics for my first Tik-tock jingle (coming soon to ennui near you) explaining how Baby Shark’s Daddy Shark meets his maker:
Daddy Shark (Boo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo)
Has his fins hacked off (Boo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo)
and he’s tossed back in (Boo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo)
the sea to bleed, (Boo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo)
suffocate, and die (Boo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo)
One noticeable effect of coronavirus on society is that now, a billion people must admit they weren’t so content with the status quo after all. Something was very wrong in the manner in which we lived our lives. Pre-virus family and job dynamics that were set in place, post World War II, atomized existence, pressing down heavy, manufactured (artificial) demands on traditional roles of the family, stressing everybody out. Acute separation from all sectors of the natural world, even our own loved ones, became the norm. Today millions of parents are spending extra time with their kids, by mandate, not choice. After the first week of lockdown everybody realized that teachers are grossly underpaid. Yesterday, Mom and Dad relied upon Mrs. second grade teacher to provide the mental and physical care of their child. Now Mom and Dad are in school too, all day long and into night, with no respite until after bedtime.
“Welcome back to Homo Sapien,” laughs Gaia. “You thought you could escape it, but no. Either this will set you right or I’ll have to send you away.”
Boy did those old days (pre-coronavirus) spoil the parents! This week Mom quit her data entry job with benefits because little Johnny was too depressed to get out of bed. Wednesday, Dad stopped dreaming about buying a new car after Sally scorched her arm ironing Barbie’s angora sweater. Unpaid bills are piling up. Sometimes it seems that both parents would rather have grandma die than work through another day with these little monsters. They weren’t prepared for this! Suffering their own lifelong emotional immaturity, Mom and Dad are caught in a trap, wild-eyed, not knowing what to do. They abdicated the bulk of responsibility to state education because their parents did. And their parents before them.
Over the last 100 years, between pandemics, the state encouraged an industrial/consumer factory economy that needed obedient workers to survive. Public and most private education honed their pedagogic philosophy to unwittingly dumb down and desensitize the population. School became a slave labor factory to graduate into the next tier of factory—the lifelong job and/or career. There were perks at every level along the way—even for the unpaid scholars in the schools. And society disfunctioned splendidly for a few generations, providing food, shelter, clothing and fuel to the super majority. And because each graduating class needed its own factories to work in, everything ever imagined was available for purchase.
Like shark fins and stuffed turkeys.
I don’t believe it was some nefarious conspiracy—nobody seems to be in charge enough to know what the hell is going on. But it’s something along the lines of arriving at any doctor or dentist check up and expecting the same procedure as the last time. No surprises. Just sit down and wait to be called. They will do what they do and you will do what you do. Pick a magazine and read about the marketing genius of the Baby Shark Dance. Billions of views and a villa in Tuscany for the fortunate creators. No mention of the psychotic death writhings of massive shark slaughter in the South China Sea. And if there was ever a tragedy, one need only turn the page to get away from the slight discomfort knowledge delivers. There are some forms to fill out. A bureaucracy you know. No wrong answers to formulaic questions. Hand the paper in and graduate to good health and a steady job.
Collectively, we must break the cycle of mass ignorance repeating itself. Even if, after coronavirus, most parents go back to same old same old, there will be left a spark of enlightenment to motivate others. Gaia has thrust a thin stick in the spokes. It won’t be enough to crash the machine, but it might make people think twice about riding the same systems until death. We need to reform education of the young and the old to get back on a path to sustainability. Our mutual acceptance and obedience to systems we never crafted for ourselves has locked our children down the rabbit hole. We must free them, hold them close and stop spoiling their lives sour-rotten.
I believe, after all this coronavirus tension and suffering, many parents will be less prone to create an insane candyland for their kids. Critical thinking will be on the rise. Animated toy sharks can continue to help toddlers express the joy of being alive. But if we don’t counter this party atmosphere bullshit with the truth of wild sharks being sliced-up at sea, then Gaia will send out her next calamity, which may not play so nice for future epidemiologists to antidote.
Repetition is death. But I’m probably not going to tell that to my shark dancing granddaughter. That’s why we pay the teachers to do our dirty work.
“Teach the gifted children
The way of men and animals
Teach them about cities
The history of the mysteries
Their vice and their virtues
About branches that blow in the wind
On the wages of their sins
Teach them of forgiveness
Teach them about mercy
Teach them about music
And the cool and cleansing waters” —Lou Reed from Teach the Gifted Children
Our family home schooled officially for 18 years. It’s an epic story of several volumes that I would be happy to share at a future time. I think that with school districts going remote, there will be a noticeable increase in parental interest of primary and secondary childhood education. For the first time, during several months of coronavirus, moms and dads had a vital role in the American classroom, peeking over their kid’s shoulders during daily Zoom calls while performing administrative tasks once relegated to the principal, janitor, guidance counselor, crossing guard, cafeteria worker, etc. Some (probably most) can’t wait for the new school to be over, and will welcome pre-pandemic routines with jumping for joy. Other parents (a minority but noteworthy) won’t be ready to re-abdicate all the responsibility. Not without stronger feelings anyway, and opinions to instigate action and possibly reform.
Our youngest daughter began her school career in the seventh grade. I promised myself to let go as best I could in order to make a smooth transfer of education power. I felt confident that her 13 year old character was strong and ready to navigate the pressures of peers and institution.
She was ready.
Her father not so much.
Sex Education In Schools Has My Heart Fill Up With Water
Yesterday my thirteen year old daughter got to pass around a condom in class. Her friend Ken learned a new word: “ejaculation”. And the eleven-year old, chronic giggler sitting next to her can now identify an erect penis. They are being taught “safe sex” by a team of outsiders who visit her school four times a year (twice in fall, twice in spring) to show the children how to have sex safely.
No doubt about it, the Puritans still scour our rotten souls. Are there any other mandated “health” education subjects I need to know about? The state keeps pushing the sex one. We get it. AIDS. Unwanted pregnancy. Yes, bad, scary. So is decapitation in a Chevy Cruze, yet I’m sure legislators do not feel the political pressure to mandate driver education to my thirteen-year old, even if she finds herself drooling for sex in the passenger seat of a car next summer, and the car driver rolls the car over a cliff while cleaning up his ejaculation. Why not mandate teaching the threat of Type 2 diabetes? Send in the traveling pedagogic team of Safe Eaters. They leap into class carrying baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables. The kids shoot carrot stick darts at posters bearing the smug mugs of Kraft and General Mills CEO’s.
Not likely. Though according to our state and federal education departments, half her class is rolling around in bed, licking the dust out of Dorito bags and dreaming of unprotected sex. Rebel teens and preteens. In her free time my daughter reads Anne of the Green Gables. Anne had to worry about sex too. Gilbert was ready, but not for syphilis. Matthew had Anne alone in the pig barn too often, and Marilla, with the political push of the women’s rotary, was able to persuade the teacher to speak about farmer pedophilia, and the smutty culture practiced by Canadian cows out twerking in the field. Anne and Gilbert courted in college and probably fooled around a bit, and I am certain they had unprotected sex, but probably not with the whole fraternity and likewise, sorority. Just one of those silly traditions from way back when—sex with one you love, or at least, are determined to marry. Still, there was always a risk, even with just the one partner. A shotgun wedding and a private shame suffered by the family.
What else, beside STD’s, do our little scholars need to learn by complete strangers in this cowardly new world? I mentioned safe driving. Perhaps they should wear little condom helmets so, after the head slams against the dash, the tainted blood doesn’t freely pour out of an ear potentially infecting the other passengers with chlamydia. Instruction in vigilant hand washing and a mild electric shock at the shared drinking fountain could weaken flu outbreaks, and prevent a few rotavirus accidents in the kid’s new jeans. Banning the Marines recruiter from the guidance office might save one or two young girls from guaranteed sexual humiliation. We could always do the near impossible, and give these kids an early civics lesson by a competent civics teacher, one who has read our nation’s constitution, and can interpret the Bill of Rights in the same liberal way it was meant to be interpreted by war weary white slavers wanting to check future abuse of power. That is, in the liberal sense that each of us has a right to practice the freedoms guaranteed by the first ten amendments. We have the freedom of speech but not to yell “fire” in a crowded auditorium. Likewise, I have the freedom to talk with my daughter about the birds and the bees, but would be arrested on the spot should I walk into a school displaying a picture of an erect penis for all and sundry. According to that quaint document, The U.S. Constitution, I still reserve the right to protest “professionals” being granted the legal right to show kids the same penis.
All joking aside. Perhaps I am one of those few parents left in America still having meaningful conversations with his child. Maybe I know too much since my daughter, as a private human being, came through the door upset that her teachers want her to know not only what an erection is, but what to do with it when it appears out of the blue. She told me that she was not ready for that information. She didn’t want a condom put into her hand. She knew what her vagina looked like. She didn’t want Ken to know what her vagina looked like. Not yet anyway. Not until her heart got brave enough to hold his hand. I feel that she has been violated. If her uncle Bob got caught telling these stories to her, Uncle Bob would go to jail. At least Uncle Bob is my brother. It would be up to me to give him my permission on what I believe is a sensitive subject for girls and boys two years older from believing in Santa. Not because it shouldn’t be taught. It should. But not to pre or mid-pubescent children. Not by Uncle Bob, and certainly not by the state traveling safe-sex team.
It is our responsibility as procreating adults to decide when our children are ready for the state version of sex education. We are a liberal family with an old-fashioned, conservative approach to raising children. I object to the state normalizing casual sex to keep up with Hollywood and other cheesy media executives who, by virtue of their chosen careers, take a lizard’s approach to bringing up the kids. Our family is liberal, but perched from a tall mountain higher than the Hollywood liberal view, which is just more of the same greasy smut smeared on a smooth arrow. It’s projected trajectory will land us all in looney land soon enough. Love and nurturing do not rise in proportion to cultural degeneration. It’s obvious to anyone who loves. It is degenerate to show kids sex before they’re even thinking of it. Even Hollywood rates its smut so we as parents can decide if it’s smut worth sharing with our only angels.
And it never is.
An interesting note to make.
Our daughter is home for college break. Last night at dinner I asked her how she feels now about sex education to seventh graders. She’s all for it, with some tweaks in the manner which it is taught.
So whose opinion do I side with? The seventh grade daughter or the college sophomore daughter? The to-be educated, or the educated? The “in the moment sufferer” or the “out of the moment observer”? The child or the adult?
As a father, I now have opposing opinions from the same daughter about a happening in her life. Psychologically, I choose to believe the thirteen-year old suffering “in the moment”. She didn’t want the condom banana. She didn’t want Uncle Bob’s hand on her knee, either. The older daughter thinks the banana was necessary for her younger self to learn about sex, and forget about Uncle Bob. He was just being friendly.
The bulk of education is cultural assimilation. The 13 year old daughter wasn’t ready for sex nor the sex talk from strangers in a public forum. The same daughter at 19 said “just give it to her. There’s teen pregnancy, over-population, sex-on-the-beach, and AIDS. When she’s ready, she’ll know what to do”. I feel the 13 year old was violated when she said “please, no” and power over her said “hell yes”. I agree that safe practice should be taught at some age before engaging in foreplay. But it varies by a person’s level of maturity. The arrival of classroom pubic hair is not a signal for schools to begin teaching sensitive subjects universally. But it’s a starting point—perhaps sooner for the promiscuous and easily peer-pressured, and later for the critical thinkers. And the school should teach it if the family fails to. As it should teach all threats inhibiting the course of a natural life. Maybe while creatively instructing how not to acquire unwanted STDs or crying babies, states could focus on a nuclear weapons eradication education in schools. All 13-year olds, not just those engaging in sex, will need to know how to avoid annihilation of life on earth. Regrettably, however, we expect (and encourage) the Puritans at Central School District not to teach the evolution of human self-immolation to the young. It’s unpatriotic while pledging allegiance to die for the deviance of some very bad, perverted men (another story for another time).
I believe that to educate to the least common denominator (teeny boppers jonesin’ for unprotected sex), reveals a culture losing its credibility to maintain itself responsibly. During safe sex week, back in 2014, the kids and sex educators got to watch this video in their free time after dressing up a banana in latex protection.
This is what I was listened to at thirteen, five years before my first fornication with a human being. The sex was weird, as one might expect, and totally unprotected, which makes me shudder in retrospect.
Emotionally and maturely, I was ready to learn about safe sex several years after losing my virginity. If you told me this stuff at thirteen, I would have filled up the condom with water and thrown it off a roof.
Who knew? There is power in a painting to flip off the tax man. Giving and getting at the same time. Hallelujah to the arts that have long been thought to beg, yet perhaps being true benefactors all along! Jeff Bezos, who can possess any material thing in existence, gives abundantly to write off his taxes for good. When you and I give, it’s for giving’s sake, and maybe one or two less cluster bomb profits for U.S.A. Inc.
This year, give liberally to those who have so much less. And get this painting!
The Past is My Future at Walden Pond
For two years Henry David Thoreau lived in a tiny house he built on the northern shore of Walden Pond. He was a philosopher who, like everyone else, ate and slept and voided excrement, but unlike anyone these days, drafted a life worth living to a nineteenth century humanity rife with bacteria and virus that did not play nice. In my opinion, the memory of his fingernail dirt has more value on the exchange market of a modern earth turning than the life of any president or prime minister. He could conduct a future rife with wisdom to any poor boy in America over the age of eleven while wrapped up for a day in his great coat. Thoreau— a higher prince than a modern Buddha, less of a dandy than flutey Krishna, and all the glory Jesus would have become if Texas never happened. I shall not explain, but I will tell you. I am weary of interpretation and attempts at persuasion. As of today I have transformed into the 21st century mutant red squirrel chip-monk. My eyes won’t blink. I distrust all several billion of you. Your species is insane. Without reason and philosophy, all people are suspect in a culture of sun and moon chasing unto death.
Slip on your tights and bike ride to cleanse, thin middle-aged men of America. There’s a good work-out waiting. Climb a mountain, kayak a pond, check your heart and pulse rates with a magic watch fat burger automatons, and order bean sprouts to sweep out those greasy prostates.
Look what Americans have done to the memory of a great man! A state park. Ten bucks a car. Hired summer work to take the money, but no one paid to love the park. The bike riders come, with bike and gear worth more at resale than all I have accumulated in coin thus far with creative effort. Working class swimmers climbing out from their railroad shanties at midday to test their pallid potato skins in the broad daylight. No proud gait. No soft eyes. Smart-phoning selfies while the Fitchburg railroad roars past the southwestern shoreline. In the guest book at Thoreau’s model cabin a girl wrote “Your book sucked”. I wrote beside her name, “iPhone® thug!” Obviously a young girl, forced to read Walden in high school English class. A breathing, walking mound of ignorance—the embodiment of failure of parents and teachers unschooled in humility, reverence, and pride. The poor girl doesn’t have a chance at happiness and will die a theoretical old maid with the latest game app glued to her face. We handed the bronze statue Henry our Tracfone® and told him to GPS the Marlboro Road. Oops, the data was maxed. So he opted to snort a rock of meth on the pond beach with wannabe Boston skinheads and compare stupid tattoos.
We made our way to the pond and walked north along the shoreline. A man in full body American flag swimsuit was divulging his daily hair gel routine to two interested men obviously unhappy enough about their own hair to commit homicide. At that moment I wanted war to rain down upon us. There can be no future for my unborn grandchildren if this kind of narcissism has reached Walden Pond en masse. Just a few paces more and we arrived at the cabin site, the only original construction left being the foundation to the fireplace. Some society in 1947 thought enough of Thoreau to memorialize it for future Walden perambulators. I am grateful. I touched the stone that Henry dragged to this spot like a believer of the Dark Ages stroked a traveling sandal strap facsimile of his beloved savior. Humility revered is a wonderful feeling. It is a human touch we need now more than ever. So rare is it to be found in this present society. No one lauds the greatness of others in order to mark a hopeful destination for themselves. A woman came up with her friend and I overheard her telling him that living at Walden was no big deal; Thoreau brought his laundry to his mother. Can’t be a great thinker if someone does your laundry! The arrogant ignorance of my countrymen. This poor woman can’t breathe without Ronald McDonald®, gasoline, French cheese, Vietnam sweatshops, Proctor and Gamble®, Internet connection, smart phone, 20% gratuity, big media everything, alarm clock snooze and periodontics unto death after partial.
Up on “Author’s Ridge”, back in Concord village, Emerson self combusted his bones after hearing that one. Alcott didn’t get the irony—she always did her man’s laundry... And wrote books. Equality she knew was several generations away, so adversity was obvious and had to be overcome. Now thoughtful people leave trinkets at her grave, and dumb people piss their Pepsi® in Walden Pond. Thoreau’s mother did his laundry! My god, we should just start eating each other if this is what humanity has become in Concord, Massachusetts. Arrogant ignorance. Men teaching men about hair gel products. Dogs being invited to shop with their loved ones. Bicycling for no other reason than to detox almonds, kale, and the occasional meat product prepared by immigrant slaves a thousand miles away. Target® probably sells “Civil Disobedience”. Why not? It’s all cuckoo without men like Thoreau. America had a very brief Greek revival in a time of devastating child mortality and over-the-top fear of the supernatural. So brief that it lost all ground after one generation. Thoreau knew what seeds his contemporaries would leave. He wrote warnings and solutions. At the Old North Bridge that is in need of much care, the grounds being neglected from lack of help, one can look skyward to a machine of war flying by. It’s good and loud—both arrogant and ignorant. Back home the pilot gels his hair and learns from his kids a new smart phone app. This weekend the family is taking the bikes up to Newburyport to ride the bay circuit to Ipswich. About as transcendental as Gandhi on a lunchbox, or Martin Luther King boulevard on a hot summer day.
Henry Thoreau lived for me, but only I can give a damn.
Supposedly last night, for the second time this week, a meteor entered the atmosphere over Central NY and made a bright light and a boom. I thought it was thunder. The skunk at the compost probably thought it was the end of the world and let have it his entire sac load.
Our house is now heavy with the scent. I read somewhere that it makes people irritable and nauseous. Today it stopped my writing and affected my painting, as you can see.
So I baked a cake.
Below is an exact account on how I used to homeschool, half time, when my first daughter was nine.
Not a Very Good Accountant’s Account of Three Days With Rhiannon
Sunday at noon to Wednesday at 3:30. That’s it! Now love, nurture and educate. And do it a whole lot better than everyone else because you’re her god-damned father. Not everyone else. I’m gonna teach her the basics. I will keep a written record to keep away from the police. I will teach her the patience of animals too, to keep me from getting bald and fat at a wedding. Patience oh, and she will be kind like a raccoon is to a garbage can. She will be the kind to eat into you. She will be like her Dad. He’s not going to live vicariously. No no. A doe is no fawn, a fawn is no doe. She will always know who puts food into her mouth. Noon and 3:30, two times to educate. She comes to it shaken but leaves deep in love. There are miracles. There is magic. Santa Claus never had a telephone number. She’s so quiet and thoughtful. Multiplication didn’t do it. But it can get her food, so we’ll learn it. She has to think about math to eat someday. It’s not right to steal like a fish does, says the cats who are thieves, says the crane who was a small woman who married a peasant for money. Thirty-eight times two equals seventy-six. That will get her a doctorate and a piece of chocolate cake. Quietly watch the bugs on the water. That will get her to heaven on earth with warm dirt for dinner.
Giraffes run away from the lion. Gazelles know a thing or two about your science. Bang bang. You kill an animal and look inside and biology is more than dinner—it’s a way of careering your children away from you. She makes faces that freak me out of all the deals I’ve made with the devil. I want her dance at a wedding. I don’t want to be fat and bald. Vicarious living is English grammar. A preposition is “after love is torn and eaten by the wolf pack”.
A Tiny Hand. That has to be the title of Doctor Dork’s first book. A Tiny Heart must be his second if he will save for his daughter a poetic life. Look at the bobcat stalking the rare bird. Flit flit flit; the square root of nine is three because three times itself is more itselves stripping the planet to bits and shreds. In my big man’s hand she trusts, and that has made a difference I am sure. You all know how a duck operates? Quack quack quack. The soldier got gangrene but the soldier’s son’s son’s son is a billionaire computer genius. Now the genius is shooting blanks. Thank you God and horse and ancient spiders!
I will keep a record of her creations. If she says French Toast, I’ll say yes! If it’s mashed potatoes, gimme a peeler. Because I am bringing food to my baby, here are a thousand books to read. We have talked to Barbie’s mother. Barbie is called Violet and Violet is a jealous witch. She wants Ken’s riches and his name is Roland, but he’s in love with Margarita because she talks just like Rhiannon will as a grown up. All the boys will fall for her when the shyest dope hands her a poem he wrote in the sun.
She turns her head for crows, and bees make her stand stock still. She is nine on her way to a hundred happy. That is more than I can say about factories. That is more kittens than power plants and bars and what men do now when they’re alone. No, I mean alone! She will know what that is too and be forewarned running through the jungle like a panther in love.
Noon to 3:30. Four days if you count days. Seventy-five and one half hours. Four suns that aren’t forgiving you. I am keeping a record. One is a bright yellow and warm with beebuzz. One makes the green things forget their vendettas, and then up the mountain runs a man to set them on fire. One sun is dark in the afternoon. We are so still on the couch when it rains. One is frozen and helpless to the sight of me sitting down to write.
Fifty elk wait for the morning steam to rise off the lake. A hawk from the trees spies dinner on the road. It isn’t her, thank you God the wild man. I am teaching science like a poet and she is learning like a young poet in the grass. On Sundays all we do is lay about the nest. Right now it is Monday and the sun has not come. When it does she will wake up and ask to be taught. She looks like a baby bird waiting for worms and we both know no grownup bird ever got worms in the mail. No big bird writes books about worming. No great bird wears a white coat and an identification tag that says, “I’ll get you!”. Science is a difficult subject to teach.
Noon to 3:30, four days and three nights. It’s winter that freezes the fawn in the womb. The conservation officer has too many syllables to be good. He wants to prove that winter and a pack of human hunters is the same thing. Even cows if left unslaughtered would be wild on roller skates. How do New York teachers tell their little ones that two million chickens a day, 54 million buffalo, every eagle ever bald, all the mountain lions in the spring, are dead because of Barbie and Ken? Is knowledge better than wisdom? Wisdom is only revered when it is known, and it is known when it is dead. Knowledge is immediately rewarded with the knowledge of death, hence noon to 3:30, and the survivor’s human game of knowing everything. Can’t teach wisdom. Can’t plop her down in a nest with one worm a day and the desire to fly. Can’t teach her to run when Physical Ed is a man jumping up and down in place. Can’t teach her to love on George Washington’s hour. Unless cannibals are loving. George was a cannibal at Valley forge, and a slaver, a rapist and a thief. Next door Mr. VonHoltz ate a teensy-tiny piece of his wife’s heart each evening at six. She knows about VonHoltz, but damn myself further in your hell if I leak out the secrets of George Washington. History is a fun class of stories and lies.
The chipmunk is very nervous but will take your nut if you stay still. Evergreens are instructional names. It is good to think about the dead who have gone but I hope in life they washed your dirty dishes at least once. There is a crow jury and a congress of bear meeting in a tree, on a hill, in thin air. From Sunday at noon to 3:30 on Wednesday the Prime Minister comes completely naked and helpless. She arrives surrounded by her usual pack of wild animals. How gentle and loving they are in her care but waiting to eat you if you cheat. I know how violently a chipmunk breaks open a nut after he’s been lied to. You better be ready for the truth mister. They don’t think she needs Teddy Roosevelt. There were some very innocent moose friends around the moose lake one day before he came along shooting out their eyes. The science of trees. Some math using grass. English and grammar like the moment of the mosquito at sunset. Computer classes where an army of cows storm the farmer’s ranch demanding their freedom and some field in a sack. Art, the most obvious need for her now. Her princess is walking in flowers. The horse is taking a drink in the lake. From noon to 3:30 she hasn’t drawn a single car, a building of concrete, nor a man with a frown. That is the difference!
A hand holds another in two memorable scenes. But the one scene is over and done with fast. For the practical purpose of avoiding an early death we must concentrate on the hand-holding bridge and the woods and the stream and the purring sound of full and sleepy animals saying wonderful night, amen.
Two links further, and then let’s get down for the excitement of next week! Holiday partay! I’ll bring the shrimp plate.
Here is an account of my petition to a master of drawing seeking his tutelage, and my ensuing resignation letter, after I learned I couldn’t draw nude coeds even if they were stick figures.
Here is my Teach the Gifted Children painting exhibition.
Thank you for stopping in! Tell a friend to subscribe and you have my gratitude.
Ron