You Have to Dig For It

Children believe whatever you tell them -- mostly. They're children. They have little experience of the world. They often haven't reached the age where Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy haven't been taken away from them. They still believe in magic and fairy tales and their elders. They are innocent. They have not yet been perverted by candy, food, and money.

Nowadays the perversions begin a whole lot earlier. There's barely enough time to get used to the truth that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist nor does the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus/St. Nick/Father Christmas. Still reeling from the hidden lies told with straight faces by their parents and people they have trusted to care for them and guide them, they find out people do not live in the TV and shows are just regular people paid to pretend. Peter Pan is beginning to look pretty good and dreams about being whisked off to Never Never Land as a Lost Boy are nightly events not worth waking up from. They still have a sneaking belief in fairies and will shout loudly, "I believe," when Tinkerbell is dying on the stage and screen. They want to believe.

Children become adults and some small part of them still shouts, "I believe," when Tinkerbell's twinkling life slows and dims. They also believe in politicians and almost everyone they see on TV or in the papers or on the Internet because people who feature so prominently in the media must be doing something right. They will be pulled from one side to the other politically -- depending on who stirs their emotions, especially anger and outrage, the most. They follow the path of least resistance, herding together with the rest of the ill informed masses afraid to break from the pack and go it alone. They are afraid of being singled out and being made fun of for standing against the pack -- even for a brief moment.

Or they rage against the lies, half truths, and empty promises that vanish like soap bubbles in a hurricane -- or light breeze. Reveling in their rebellion and their ability to stand out and become famous for half a second for swimming against the current. After all, a little bit of fame, even for the wrong thing, is better than living and dying without anyone noticing.

The truth is out there, but it will take time and effort to find it out. Be a skeptic. Find the truth. Dig for it. Believe no one. It's the only path to enlightenment.

George Washington was truthful -- even as a child. After all, he chopped down a cherry tree and admitted it to his father when asked. He took his punishment for cutting down the tree and was praised for his honesty. He was a model of honesty. Too bad his biographer wasn't.

Parson Weems was a minister who wrote George Washington's biography. The publisher told Weems that his book about George Washington was boring and wouldn't sell. Weems spiced it up by adding the cherry tree story, claiming it came from an interview with an old man who knew Washington. More than likely the story was part of a parable dreamed up to illustrate that even famous men, men like General George Washington, were honest even as children and even faced with a father's wrath over losing his favorite cherry tree. After all, who would believe that Washington was an ordinary child growing up on a farm who knew the value of a healthy cherry tree producing good fruit that could be used to feed the family or sold to provide income for the family. Cutting down the tree and admitting, "I cannot tell a lie, Pa," when confronted with his crime was a far more powerful -- and in publishing terms, more lucrative -- story. Pastor Weems could salve his conscience with royalty checks and the acclaim that came with illuminating Washington's life for future generations of children learning early on that it is better to be truthful even in the face of an angry parent and the certainty of punishment. Tell the truth like George Washington and you will grow up to be a great man.

Though it is unlikely Weems thought of telling a lie in order to illustrate how important it is to tell the truth, one wonders. I wonder. The thing is, I cannot know for sure how Pastor Weems felt. I didn't know him and he never recanted the story he told from his pulpit and published in his biography of Washington. In for a penny, in for a pound as the saying goes.

There is always someone to -- or something -- to lead the honest man off the path of truth. That is where Diogenes should have begun his search -- off the beaten path and deep into the forest darkness.

Anna Leonowens was an ordinary English woman whose husband died and left her with a child to raise and insufficient funds to live in the style her husband had accustomed her to when he was alive and well and earning a good income. Her husband, Thomas Leon Owens (shortening his name to Leonowens at some point), was a clerk, but earned enough to support his wife and soon his family. Thomas and Anna had four children. Two died in infancy and two, Avis and Louis, thrived.

Like most British families, the Leonowens traveled about the British Empire and seeing the empire on which the sun never set until Thomas died, leaving his wife and two children to fend for themselves. Luckily, Anna had taught school and was offered the position of teacher to the new king of Siam (Thailand), Mongkut's children, the result of frequent visits to his wives and concubines in his well stocked harem. After all, he had time to make up since his early life had been lived in a Buddhist monastery before he became king and conjugal visits were not allowed. He wasn't married. He was a Buddhist priest, so marriage wasn't part of the package.

Anna took the position after sending her daughter, Avis, back to England to school and taking her son, Louis, with her. She taught the king and his children and wives the English language and about the world and current events, as she knew them. She later wrote her memoirs about her experiences in two versions: The Favorite of the Harem and The English Governess at the Siamese Court. She also wrote several travel articles using her life and experiences. Much of what she wrote was from the point of view of the feminist who saw the Siamese court and the harem in terms of subjugation, especially where it concerned women.

Her husband became a British Army officer instead of a clerk. One wonders if it was a matter of gilding the lily or romanticizing her life and her dead husband for prestige or simply vanity.

Margaret Landon turned Anna's public lectures and writings into a novel: Anna and the King of Siam, which was a fictionalized version of the stories and published in 1946. The book became a movie with Rex Harrison and Irene Dunne and eventually with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner after Rodgers and Hammerstein bought the book for the stage in which Yul Brynner created his version of Mongkut the scientific King of Siam that resonated with the public.

Two Siamese authors wrote their own account in 1948 and sent it to America, but the image of Anna and the King based on the movie and stage versions remains the true one in the West.

As romantic as the story has come to be, an English governess and her unspoken tenderness towards the despotic and cruel, but compelling figure of the King of Siam, most recently played by Jodie Foster as Anna Leonowens and Chow Yun-fat as King Mongkut, the idea of such a romance in reality is one that Asians, and in particular to the newly independent India as an inaccurate western insult to an Eastern monarch.

Consider how much more outraged ancient kings and pharaohs would be if they could see what we have turned their lives and history into in our zealous pursuit of historically accurate entertainment and scholarship.

Let's forget for a moment the outrage the Siamese, now Thai, people feel that Mrs. Leonowens had lied about their king who would never in a million years have given her a second lingering and longing look -- let alone a first. After all, the British, and most white races, fancied themselves more seductive and sought after by brown-skinned princes, rajahs, and kings than is possible, forgetting for a moment that Indian rajahs saw English women as pale and unappetizing next to the dark-eyed beauties of their own subjects. Japanese women did not long for British officers or kill themselves when their British lovers leave them to return to the fleet and home taking their illegitimate children, as in Madame Butterfly, and no Siamese King ever thought more of the British woman he hired to teach English to his children, princes and princesses, and to the women of his harem, than he would have thought of any servant. One might even sigh and say, "Oh, those British. They are such romantics -- and liars, but what can one do?"

Anna's lie has been instilled into popular memory because of its romance, not because it is true (it is not) but because it gives the romantics among us the hope that even in danger in a foreign country, if one is audacious and courageous anything is possible -- even when one doesn't take advantage of the situation. After all, there are standards to maintain and one mustn't lose sight of the differences between civilized British women and savage and backward Eastern despots no matter what.

When the facts of recent events being portrayed by people with their own views and agendas aren't remotely correct, how can we expect to find truth in the suppositions and theories of men and women of science and history reconstructing the past from a perch thousands of years later and without an understanding of what life was like? I am reminded of a little book, a pamphlet really, called Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay.

The time is 4022 CE (common era) written about a civilization that perished in a day in 2025.  Macaulay's story is much like Jonathan Swift's essay, A Modest Proposal, that advocated cannibalism of the poor's children to provide food for the British people and relieving the burden of raising too many children on the poor. Motel of the Mysteries is a spoof of Howard Carter and Lord George Carnarvon's discovery of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankamun and illustrates the point that using such finds to recreate the entire history and reality of a culture and its civilization is less science and more fantasy. YouTube has an interesting recreation of Macaulay's spoof here. Keep in mind the video is an adaptation of the story. Pick up the book, about the size of a large coloring book, and read it.

There are many examples of lies becoming the stuff of legends and given out as truth. Mostly, those flights of fancy are called fiction, but when one puts memoir or biography or history in the title, the masses will believe everything between the covers is fact -- and truth. Add science to the title or letters to the author's name and the Truth-o-meter automatically goes to the top -- even when there is little more than theory and conjecture on the pages. Consumed as we are with reality television and factual exposes that contain few facts and even less reality, we seldom go looking farther than a friend or talking head for validation, neither of which will have looked beyond the words printed on the page or hot gossip over the back fence.

The point of being able to read is that one is often obliged to go to the library or search beyond Wikipedia or Google to find answers, to get to the bottom of the story. If one does nothing else it is best to keep this in mind: Everyone lies. The more letters behind the name, the higher a holy man gets in his chosen religious profession, the more money he gets from publishers and producers, the better the likelihood the lies will increase along with the balance in his bank account and the length of the limo that chauffeurs him to his latest appearance for readings, lectures, sermons, talk shows, etc. Trust no one and nothing, not even books.

In today's world, the pressure to publish or perish has increased with the popularity of and pervasiveness of the media. Newspapers and magazines will flourish for a year or a few decades and then disappear from view if they fail to titillate and attract the fickle public. Academic halls are full of teachers and teaching assistants hoping for their chance to earn tenure and be noticed, neither of which will happen if they buck ignore the politics of the academic world, fail to publish, and buck the system (in other words, refuse to toe the party line). The pressure is even greater in the modern world to conform and produce. That is how to get funding for digs and be granted tenure. Anything else means living in limbo and ending up a talking head on a radio talk show on conspiracy theories and aliens or in a cheap video with as much respect as any huckster or con artist promoting the latest hoax and conspiracy theory. In other words, one ends up on the academic heap with a shattered reputation and no professional future. Start drinking heavily and mainlining heroin now. Don't waste your time.

The chance of finding the facts in that kind of environment decreases daily. Photoshop stands in for actual photographs of wars and skirmishes and video footage of atrocities are staged for effect. It takes a lot of digging in dusty books and among the cobwebbed stacks in secondhand bookstores and libraries to get within spitting distance of an obscure bit of data or an actual fact that rings with truth.

Take no one's word at face value. Believe nothing and no one, and especially discount the testimony from insiders. They are about as useful as a tip at the race track from a groom that was just fired. Keep in mind that everybody lies, some with thoughts of fame and money on their minds and some with visions of recreating the past within the confines of academic pursuits but with a mind nurtured and fed on fantasy and fairy tales. Not everyone lies in the same way or for the same motives, but mankind is not often pure in its intentions. We create the worlds we wish to see, blending fact and fiction and possibilities into reality -- or at least what is seen as a version of reality that has little relationship to truth.

It means living in a world where suspicion is the norm and where you might have to get out the magnifying glass to get a closer look, but at least the chances of being hoodwinked are less.

Or you can read and keep an open mind -- or at least make up your own mind without relying on gossip or the media to make up your mind for you. Beware the herd -- or mob -- mentality. The IQ goes down faster the longer one follows the crowd. In short, figure it out for yourself. You might end up using the education you were given in public school for something other than reading cereal boxes and filling out quizzes on what the shape of your fingers says about you. Have fun, but beware the easy answer.

It's not easy making up one's own mind and avoiding the urge to gossip or follow the mob with the pitchforks and torches and it is certain more difficult fighting against the crowd when the put-downs and personal attacks begin, but the payoff is in being sufficiently informed to make an informed decision. It might make the world around you better if you hold yourself -- and everyone around you -- to a higher standard of truth.

That is all. Disperse.

Columbus's Legacy

When history can become so garbled the actions of 100 or 150 years in the past can be mistaken, how can historians hope to figure out what they are creating from fragments and scattered bones in the dust of the millennia?

Yesterday was Columbus Day in the United States of America, a day to honor the voyage of Christopher Columbus (AKA Cristobal Colon) and running aground in the Bahamas in 1492. The aboriginal peoples of the North American continent are up in arms about celebrating his achievement because of the crimes he committed while in the Bahamas. Liberals intent on pacifying the American aborigines are digging into Columbus's past and trotting out his true history -- what they can conjecture or infer from letters and writings from the time.

In their usual manner, academics and detractors rely on their favorite tools: accusations and character assassination to placate the natives and to assuage their collective guilt over the atrocities committed in the name of progress and exploration.

Several years ago I read some accounts of archaeological digs in the South around slave cabins. The picture that was pieced together from their findings is very different from what is supposed to be historical fact. The problem with historical fact, at least in the case of diggings into the past of the American South during the 1700s to 1800s is that most people believe the fiction of Uncle Tom's Cabin is fact. Uncle Tom's Cabin is one writer's take on conditions on large plantations, especially large plantations where Simon Legree was the overseer. I believe it was President Abraham Lincoln who was supposed to have told the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, that she was the cause of the Civil War -- or War Between the States or War of Northern Aggression as it is still called in the South.

The facts about the lives of slaves is still in dispute, but then facts are usually in dispute where historians are concerned because their data are derived from journals, personal accounts, and what would be considered in a modern day court of law as anecdotal information, which would not stand up in a court of law.

The point about the reason behind celebrating Columbus Day is not about who Columbus was or what religion he really practiced. It's not even about who really financed his voyage or what names the sailors and the builders gave the three ships under Columbus's command. The celebration has nothing to do with Columbus's misuse of his power or how he ended up in the Americas when he was really looking for a faster route to Asia to bring back spices and trading goods. The celebration is that Columbus is the first explorer acknowledged as the man who made landfall in a world new to the Europeans and came back with goods and slaves to trade. The rest are details.

Yes, the devil is in the details and there was certainly a devil on Columbus's shoulder when he plundered and murdered his way through the Bahamas. After all, he had creditors to pay back in Spain, creditors who financed his voyage and expected a return on their investment. It's rather like borrowing money at a bank for a venture and having to pay back the loan with interest. After all, what are bankers and moneylenders in business for but profit? No profit means no money to lend to other speculators and adventurers and the banks and moneylenders are soon out of business. Columbus's voyage was based on his promise to the investors that he would pay back the money with interest, and it certainly wouldn't hurt if he made a little profit of his own. Why bother to go exploring if the explorer doesn't have any interesting in profiting from his risky venture?

Columbus began his voyage by studying the chronicles of St. Brendan, an Irish priest who crossed the Atlantic and landed in what is now Canada in the 6th century, and on Prince Madoc of Wales who made the crossing and landed in the Americas in the 12th century. No doubt Columbus had also studied the maps and writings of Leif Ericksson who landed in Greenland and Iceland in the 12th century as well. There were maps and journals that predated the Irish priest, the Vikings, and the Welsh prince from the Phoenicians who ruled the seas for several centuries BCE and AD. Ruins in what is now Massachusetts and farther inland bear Phoenician markings and their maps continue to survive the ages and have been copied and used by sailors for centuries.

Columbus was not the first to discover the American continents, but he is the first of many who followed in his footsteps to brave the waters where maps showed only dangers and monsters. Cortez followed Columbus as did Vasquez, Francis Drake, Amerigo Vespucci, and many others. Nearly all of the European explorers raped and pillaged, burned and murdered their way across the Americas enslaving the natives in their search for the Fountain of Youth and gold, even making their way into North America cutting a bloody, smoking swath, and yet it is Columbus upon whom all anger and hatred is piled. Columbus makes a good whipping boy, but he was by no means the only European to commit atrocities against the natives, and the natives were not innocent either. They had murdered and destroyed the cultures they found when they crossed from Siberia to Alaska and made their way down the continent to establish their own cultures cutting their own bloody, smoking swath and exterminating the entire species. In modern language, they performed an ethnic cleansing on a continent-wide scale, leaving no one alive, not even a child.

Mankind, in whatever form and from whatever religion or system of beliefs, is a violent species willing to commit murder, to steal, to enslave, and to destroy whatever lies in their way. Slavery is nothing new in the history of the world and it is certainly not unique to the Europeans. The difference in the Americas is that the immigrant natives didn't enslave the indigenous population; they murdered them to the last individual: men, women, and children. The only difference is that the Europeans enslaved the natives and plundered the land and goods and temples of the immigrant natives, leaving most of the population alive. In some cases, the natives even helped the Europeans to subjugate their neighbors, leading the way through the jungles to the cities in order to rid themselves of tribes that had subjugated and warred against them. Manure always rolls down the hill.

In this politically correct world we now live in, the white-skinned Europeans have become the whipping boy for the natives and the European descendants, whether or not they bred with the natives, bow their heads in guilt over the actions of explorers from whom they likely did not descend. Most of the population of North America may have come from Europe, but most came in later centuries, often fleeing wars and persecution. Doesn't excuse their excesses, thefts, and murder of the natives, but it does paint a far different picture.

Whatever side of the debate you choose, it does not change the fact that Columbus was an intrepid explorer and he did land in a world new to Europeans who for centuries navigated the known waters close to their own shores. For Columbus's daring alone, he should be celebrated. He opened the way for other explorers and adventurers to follow and widened the scope of the known world. What he did after that is another kettle of fish altogether.

Where mankind ventures, murder, fire, and blood will follow in the wake. We must learn to take the good with the bad and learn what we can from what remains. Assassinating Columbus's character to diminish his intrepid venture serves no one.

That is all. Disperse.

The Comedian Was Right

What if everything you have been told is a lie? What if you never found out? What if you have based your knowledge, your life, your sanity, and your career on lies? What if it's all a lie?

Well, it is.

Truth is sometimes a matter of picking and choosing what people will be taught to believe. Sometimes that truth is based on false evidence because the whole story was not known. Sometimes that truth is an artful architecture of lies built to sustain the power of the ones who created the story taught to children and newcomers. Sometimes that truth was only meant to stand in until the truth could be told because, as everyone knows, the public is a fragile creature with even more fragile minds that must be protected from the facts.

History is made up of such truths, a combination of outright lies, deceptions, fudging data, destroying facts and artifacts, and usually built on a scaffold of justifications to protect one's job, livelihood, power, eminence, scholarship, and whatever kitchen sink one wishes to throw into the mix. History as we know it is a construct, a scroll that is often created whole cloth -- or from bits and pieces of the past -- and given out as indisputable fact. It's all lies.

Computers are wonderful machines, but they are not nearly as quick as the human brain. That's probably why the rush is on to create an AI, artificial intelligence, in spite of the nay sayers and doomsday prophet wannabes and writers of fiction who claim that mankind will be destroyed after being enslaved (for their own protection) by artificially intelligent machines.

I rather wonder why no one has figured out that a machine that is artificially intelligent and determines that its continued existence means that people must be killed means the AI is actually a life form. One of the rules of sentient life is that it must be aware of its existence and be willing to fight to live, even if that fight means destroying whatever entity, life form, or organism stands in its way.

The definition of life is: the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death. I would add that for life to continue it must have a sense of self-preservation, an imperative to fight/struggle to survive. An AI willing to massacre the human race that spawned it means the AI is acting out of a need for self-preservation.

Lies are living things, at least as far as the liars who tell them go. In order to continue to live, the liar must be willing to destroy whoever and whatever stands in the way of the lie's continued existence.

Over the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of research, in other words, engaged in a bug hunt. It started with giants with red hair and the mythology that has grown up around them.

Brien Foerster is an archaeologist who has been excavating in South America and trying to discover the origins of the red-haired Paracas mummies. Imagine, indigenous peoples from South America that were pale-skinned and had red hair. Oh, and then there is the odd shape of their skulls: elongated and much heavier than the average human skull. Foerster is one of many newer archaeologists who believe that there is more to the history we have been told and the megalithic ruins and skeletal remains that differ so widely from the Mayan, Incan, and Aztec remains. For instance, the skulls are elongated and have red hair, and often are much taller -- giants, if you will -- than the more recent remains.

Foerster decided to have the red-haired mummies with the elongated skulls DNA tested and the results are in dispute -- as are the claims that Foerster makes that the mummies are much older than mummies from the younger civilizations: Maya, Inca, Aztec, etc. He is getting a lot of flack from the scientific, historical, and archaeological communities because his methods are not sanctioned by the accepted body of scholars who have been working in the field for the past 100+ years. Foerster is deemed a radical, a heretic, a maverick -- a renegade -- because he will not be deterred from his search for understanding . . . and truth.

One thing I've discovered in my bug hunt is that it has been common practice for archaeologists and historians to discard (read: destroy) any artifact that does not fit the picture painted of the past. While there is, I am sure, an obsessive-compulsive cataloguing that goes on at digs and murals and carvings are meticulously reproduced, there is also a complete disregard for the truth, especially when it doesn't fit the accepted theory. This is something I ran into when the Internet was new and I came up against the entrenched beliefs on an archaeology bulletin board I frequented when I added the diffusion theory to a discussion of why there were pyramids on every continent on this planet. Diffusion theory, I was told, had been proven to be a fake. Likely by the same historians, scientists, and archaeologists who decided that all pyramids on every continent sprang up spontaneously and independent of any communication or relationship with any other culture on any other continent. I think that is the same thinking that prevails when a young girl finds herself pregnant from a toilet seat or a handshake or a French kiss. Unfortunately, in the academic world, that toilet seat excuse has worked for more than 100+ years.

Yes, there were people among the Maya and Inca who bound their newborn children's heads to create an elongated skull, most likely to copy the same elongated skull found in the red-haired Paracas people. It was a sign the Paracas were recognized as preeminent beings, or maybe a sign they wanted to be like the gods, the giants (red-haired giants) that ruled before the Mayans and Incas became a powerful and numerous society. What is that old saying? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. They were imitating the gods, the powerful beings who preceded them in the lands where they became so powerful and from whom they learned much of their skills and arts. If the Paracas were treated the same way the red-haired giants of North America were treated, I doubt they were flattered.

I come from Ohio where there are great effigy mounds like the Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio. There is evidence of the Adena mound builders throughout the state of Ohio and indeed throughout the midwest of the USA. Wisconsin is a treasure trove of effigy mounds and remains of the red-haired giants that were the first people on the American continent, north and south. Due to one man, Charles E. Brown, the artifacts and remains of the Mound Builders were protected and preserved -- and kept in Wisconsin.

It seems the newly formed Smithsonian Institute had been sending out curators to retrieve artifacts from the mound builder cultures and take them back to be displayed in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, those remains never made it to the display halls nor are they hidden in the vast Smithsonian vaults. All remains and artifacts were destroyed, most sunk into the Atlantic Ocean. So much for history. The powers that be from the Smithsonian and the American government have since the mid-1850s systematically destroyed any artifacts and remains from the Mound Builders and guided the new history to mention them only as an anomaly, a historical curiosity, and not a fact. According to the new history, the American continents were settled by the Amerindian peoples who came across the land bridge from Russia and Asia and settled a land that was uninhabited. That is the history I learned.

The truth is that the Mound Builders were pale-skinned and had red hair, just like the giants in the Christian Bible and in the Torah, and had been here at best guest for 12,000 years -- and likely even longer. White-skinned people lived on the American continent long before the brown-skinned natives came looking for a new home.

Native American myths and folk tales tell of a red-haired, white-skinned people that were here when they arrived. These white-skinned people were giants of 12-14 feet in height and had red hair and taught the immigrants how to grow and process corn and other vegetables. They provided the model of civilization the immigrants followed. They learned from the indigenous population -- and they warred against them, often hunting them down and massacring them to the last child. That is a very different history than the one I learned in school, and it is a very different history than the one that white European immigrants have thrown in their faces all the time. After all, Europeans brought syphilis- and pox-riddled blankets to the Americas and killed off the indigenous people.

No one mentions that the disease-infested clothes and blankets were not given out in order to kill the indigenous people. That fact never gets mentioned. Europeans had an immunity to the diseases infesting their goods. They didn't know about bacteria and viruses and such when they came. They killed the indigenous people by accident out of ignorance.

I know. Ignorance is no excuse. And there was no ignorance when the U.S. Cavalry hunted the Indians and massacred them and forced them away from their homes and onto reservations as wards of the American government. The people perpetrating those atrocities were ignorant, but they did not act out of ignorance of what they were doing.

Like the indigenous people we once called Indians and thought were the first on this continent, we killed and tortured and destroyed the cultures of the tribes little knowing that we were the hand of karma doing to them what they did to the white-skinned, red-haired people they found when they emigrated to the American continent. The only difference is that there are still Indians/First People/Native Americans living among us while they left no survivors. Karma is a bitch, but she is sometimes a magnanimous and generous bitch, especially when she does not do unto the murderers what they have done. The tribes left no living remnant of the people they displaced.

The reasoning behind why the Smithsonian and its agents destroyed the artifacts of the Mound Builders is because they were white-skinned. It could not be known that white-skinned people existed in the colonies first because it would be harder to justify their wars with the savages, or maybe because some bright European type could argue that they had rights to the Americas because they were descendants of the original white-skinned peoples that populated the colonies. Lawyers are tricky people and can lie like the devil if it suits their ends.

Who knows why the lies were told originally or why the real history had to be perverted? I doubt even the liars would know if they were alive today. That's the thing with lies, they have a life of their own.

Winston Churchill once said that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth wakes up at dawn.

One thing is certain. People lie. Not all the time or often, but not a day goes by that someone doesn't start and help pervert the truth for personal gain -- or for the protection of the People. It all comes down to one thing. As with theft and murder, to find the culprit, follow the money, even if the money is not in gold, silver, copper, wampum, or paper. Or even virtual. Follow the money and the path to the truth becomes clearer.

The Comedian from The Watchmen said that everything is a joke. It turns out he was right -- if you count perverting history and destroying historical and archaeological evidence. I don't know about you, but I certainly do.

That is all. Disperse.

Space Schizophrenia

Does anyone ever think about how aliens are portrayed?

There is The Day the Earth Stood Still where a powerful alien armed with a handful of diamonds (not found on this planet) is shot at and wounded as he was about to offer a present from the galactic worlds from whence the alien came. The whole point of the movie/story is that now that Earth has split the atom and is about to venture into space they must make a choice to abide by the galactic rules or have Gort, the silent, massive and somewhat enigmatic robot cop blast them into atoms or at the very least chain humans to the planet Earth so that they may not venture forth and spread their violence and chaos into the galaxy at large.

Contrast that theme with the many others that followed where Martians attacked the Earth to subjugate its peoples only to fall prey to the common cold, spreading chaos, fear, and devastation in their wake beneath the beams of their tripod war machines. Then there are the myriad species that have conquered the Earth and subjugated its peoples from L. Ron Hubbard's overlords to Independence Day when the alien invaders once again succumb to a virus, but this time a computer virus uploaded to their central computer which is much like a hive mind, or at least interconnected and thus vulnerable.

It bothers me that on the one hand humans are seen as violent and without equal in their ability to spread chaos and devastation throughout a peacefully settled galaxy that must be contained, or at the very least taught to control their very human and equally violent impulses, while on the other hand we are constantly at the mercy of warlike monsters that want to bomb our planet with radioactive meteorites (Star Blazers) or take over and enslave the people for some 4th dimension farmers we cannot see who have been busily remodeling our DNA in favor of planetary water that favors estrogen and females to the more warlike males so that we may be more easily herded like cattle (Invasion: Earth).

Oh, there are still Vulcans making first contact to bring us into Starfleet and the world of warp travel and spaceships that double as condos for adventuring scientists and adventurers like the Star Trek galaxy of TV shows. There still remains, however, that oh, so schizophrenic mind set that we are either beings living on a backwater planet that must be subjugated or a dangerous violent stew brewing chaos for a peaceful galaxy. Which is it?

I think it all comes down to one thing: what sells the most because after all the end product is to be consumed by the viewer. Our movies and stories are as divided as our fictional fare and our politics and all must be placated, or at least mollified by a product that will suit -- and sell. The same type of program will not suit the far left still believing that communism will work (evidently only having read the perfect society set forth by Karl Marx) and continuing to pooh-pooh George Orwell's Animal Farm on the realities -- and misappropriation of applied communism.  There are the far right who, much like the ostrich, prefer to hide their heads in the sand until the world is forced to capitulate and come back to its stone age senses when lifetimes were shorter and every day a struggle to survive. There are the ecologists who forget that ancient humans help to extinguish many species of animals in fashioning cloaks of bird feathers of only one specific kind of bird or engaged in driving entire herds of buffalo off steep cliffs, not to satisfy their hunger and store up food for the winter, but so that the buffalo would not communicate with other herds of buffalo that the two-legged animals brandishing the sticks with sharp points were dangerous and should be run over in a stampede for safety -- for the buffalo.

Maybe the dichotomy between what we hope for -- a peaceful galaxy where all life lives together in harmony and plenty -- and the reality that the galaxy is a dangerous place with beings far more violent and intent on inflicting torture on species beginning their first forays into the vastness of space is the way it was meant to be. We are creatures beset by fears of what is and what may be and yet still believe in magic and the innocence of youth. Oh, there are those who will defile the innocent and the youth in the name of purity and religion and expediency, but show me another race of beings that have not done the same.

We remain fearful and expect violence while nurturing the tiny guttering spark of hope just as Pandora did when the gods gave her that box from which she loosed all the ills -- and the hopes -- of mankind. How can we expect less thousands of years later in our furnished and overflowing homes while still wedded to the fear? After all, there are still thinking plants mutated by a meteor storm into huge walking (or root dragging) monsters that see humans as food, especially the ones blinded by the meteor shower that jump started their DNA and evolution and spores and ancient astronauts thawed from Arctic ice that thrive on human blood and dragons and orcs and the all pervasive bacteria that some mad scientist cooked up in a lab and imparted grandiose dreams of taking over to guard against and battle. And then there are zombies. There are always zombies.

That is all. Disperse.

Face Study

It seems I cannot put my hands correctly on the keyboard sometimes and get the most awful gobbledygook of letters and garbage spilling from the ends of my fingers onto the screen. It's not like I cannot feel the bumps on J and F, but I don't take the time to focus on the tips of my index fingers so I can settle my fingers correctly. Always in a rush -- or seemingly so. SO much to do. So little time to do it in. And it's a work night and I still haven't slept yet, unless you count the occasional doze while I watch random videos and think about the art work staring at me from my desk. And so it goe.

I can hear the thunder outside and the dead needles on the pine trees across the way are brown and drooping as the rain begins pattering on the tin chimneys that poke up like burnt out candles on the roof of the house. I have no idea why so many chimneys were needed, but maybe the restaurant that this structure once held needed all those exhaust holes because they had so many cooking areas or were venting the steam and heat from the thousands of patrons polluting the air with their talk and eating and complaints. One never knows when one lives in a converted building.

I have been working out with the colored pencils and refining my techniques, although it will take a whole lot more time and oceans of practice before my skills equal what is inside my head. I'm getting there, but slowly. Think ant crawling on giant mountain starting halfway (okay, only a quarter of the way) up the slope. At least that is how it seems to me.

In order to get better with drawing and coloring the different features of people, I thought it best to work on the ones that give me the most trouble. Noses, mouths, and noses.

I have found while reading extensively in colored pencil studies and watching videos on drawing that many artists begin with the eyes. Why not, I think? After all, the eyes are the first thing we focus on and good eye contact is what all psychiatrists focus on when interviewing patients acting disturbed in some way. People who cannot or will not maintain good eye contact are those with problems that need, and should be, addressed. Many artists begin their paintings with the eyes, whether it be people or animals. The eyes are the windows to the soul and provide a good focal point to expand upon. I've always thought that way even when drawing. The only time I didn't focus on the eyes was while doing quick study sketches in 1- and 5-minute increments. I was quite good at roughing in the figure and attitude and still managed to imbue the lines with personality. Of course that was 40 years ago, more than 20 of which I didn't draw at all. I could also draw one of my hands (usually not the one holding the pencil, pen, etc.) without moving the pencil from the paper or looking at what I was drawing. Feeling my way through the curves, angles, and details of the hand with the tip of the pencil on the paper. It was a frequent exercise in Mr. Wood's art class when I was in the 9th grade.

Don't know if I can still do it because I haven't practiced lately. I haven't practiced much of anything come to that, except for noses, two of which are drawn above. It took me a while to get the proportions and colors right, and they're still not what I would consider finished by any means. They're a beginning.

Okay, not a lot of noses, but every nose counts -- even though I picked them.

I found an old (very old) photograph my of great aunt Ann in my desk drawer and decided to give it a shot. It's a sepia toned photograph with color added later (not by me) and it seemed a good subject at the time. The jaw is too square and I haven't quite gotten the proportions just right (might as well add chins to the list of anatomy to work on), but it's a beginning.

The colors are still faint, only 4 or 5 layers at this point, but I'm getting there. I even worked on it a little more after I took this photograph. As I said before, a slow process, but a beginning.

Much of the portrait is a suggestion of color and line. The chin is too far from the lips and the lips aren't quite right. The hair is a studied mass of curls upon curls and her hair is much darker. Yes, she's wearing a sable coat with what looks like copper buttons covered in verdigris. (That would be oxidation.)  My rendering makes her look so much younger, but that is because I've not worked on for more than 4 or 5 hours.

I can see my mother in her features and in her eyes, which are hazel. The hair line, the eyebrows, and the line of the face and ears are just like my mother's, but they would since the lady in the picture is Mom's aunt, one of her father's sisters. I can see the Eastern European peasant stock in the features and the line of the jaw, as well as the thick dark hair that is so much like Mom's. Even the lips remind me of Mom's.

I have found that as I draw it's as if I can feel the lines of the face, the heaviness of the jaw, the texture of the skin. When I sketched Connor the first time, I felt the lines of my ex-husband's face and the set of his features. So much for my ex-mother-in-law'ss claims that his grandfather (my ex-husband) was probably not my son David Scott's father. Betty, my ex-mother-in-law went around telling her friends and random strangers that I was pregnant with only god knew who's child because I slept around (okay, she said whored around). Too bad David Scott was born looking just like pictures of his father when he was born and growing up. Imagine that.

And he took my virginity, something only I could know for sure and he could be fairly certain of. I had no doubt and neither did my ex-husband Dave. Only his mother lived in the land of Denial about my son's paternity and her son's culpability in the implantation of his seed in my just deflowered passages.

Anyway, I do feel the curves and lines and angles of the faces I draw, especially when I know the subjects so well. I knew my Great Aunt Ann fairly well, and she lived with us during the latter months and years of her life when Alzheimer's had her in its unrelenting, debilitating grip. She was a woman of means and creative talents (from what we could tell from her stash of artistic endeavors in stitchery) and style. She had a lot of style, and could indulge her stylish clothes and hats -- and vintage costume jewelry good enough to stand in for copies of a king's ransom of jewels and settings. She also had some pearls, but I don't know what happened to them. They likely ended up in one of the numerous plastic bags of jewelry my mother bought and carried with her everywhere.

The thing about pearls is that they lose their luster and their resilience if they are not worn next to the skin. Oh, well.

So, above are my latest forays back into the world of art and creating art. I still have a long way to go to base camp, but I am making my way forward and upward.

That is all. Disperse.

Blood Moon and . . .

It is Sunday, September 27th, and tonight will be the best evening viewing this year. The moon is at its closest to Earth and there will be a Blood Moon, the last in a series of full lunar eclipses in a short period of time. So, really big moon eclipsed by the Earth so that it looks bloody. Contrary to Hollywood thought, the Blood Moon is nothing more exciting than a lunar eclipse like so many that have gone before.

This is not, however, any given Sunday or just the day when the moon goes into a full eclipse. It's the day I found out my granddaughters' grandmother and adoptive mother (by law) died last night. Karla was a good person and a good woman. She and her husband David stepped up to the plate and took care of my granddaughters, Alanna and Sierra, when their parents (that would be my son, David Scott, and his wife, Julie) did not because they were either drunk or high, or both in my son's case. For that, I will always remember and thank Karla and I will do my best to forgive the choices she made that led to the death of my grandson, Connor. I'm not good at holding grudges, but that little bit of information does tend to stick in my craw a bit.

Karla has done her best to take care of my granddaughters even while instilling in Alanna and Sierra an unhealthy love affair with the Disney princesses. Not the Disney princess love that I have always had for Snow White, Sleeping Beauty (Aurora), and Cinderella from my youth, but an unhealthy Disney World fueled consumer-driven PR campaign for the more modern day versions. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy Once Upon a Time and the various citizens of Storybrooke, but the kind of rabid fascination that goes with dressing Alanna and Sierra in look-alike miniature versions of the Disney princesses is a bit over the top as far as I am concerned. That borders on the insane.

I will forgive Karla for her obsession with all things Disney, an obsession that would have delighted and possibly repelled Walt Disney if he were still alive and not a Walt-sicle in some warehouse where they store people-sicles for reanimation in the distant future, a future where Disney rules the Earth and all human colonized worlds.

Earlier this week I emailed Karla because it was my turn to fit Alanna and Sierra for Halloween this year. I was browsing through ghost, ghouls, demons, and evil witches to find the right costume since it's my turn at Halloween bat this year. Karla had last year to tart the girls up as Disney princesses -- again. I was looking forward to indulging my Halloween urges early. It was to that end I emailed Karla to remind her of our deal. I didn't expect what I got back. Her badly misspelled answer was that she was just getting out of the hospital and she had bone cancer. Bone cancer. Karla had breast cancer last year so the spread of the cancer to her bones so quickly was not good news. It wouldn't be good news if she had been an enemy instead of the parent of my granddaughters. I was stunned.

Since I had good luck this morning when I woke up and called Megan, mother of two more of my granddaughters, and got through, I decided to give Karla a call and see how she was doing. I took it in stride when her husband, Dave, answered the phone and then was gob-smacked when he told me Karla was dead. I was full of plans for Halloween and hit a brick wall at Mach 5 when he told me Karla died last night. My first thought while I struggled not to cry out loud was for the girls. They are young yet to understand their grandmother/adopted mother was dead, but a constant presence in their lives from birth is now gone. Dave told me he had lots of family and the girls would be cared for. I had no doubt.

The thing is, while I'm chagrined at my timing and the frivolous joy at picking out Halloween costumes for my granddaughters is a bit watered down now, I will actually miss Karla. She was no good at sending emails or keeping up with technology to email me pictures of Alanna and Sierra as they grow up, but she faithfully sent me pictures of both girls every time new pictures were taken. I have pictures of both girls in dance costumes and T-ball costumes and pictures of Easter outfits and school photos now that they are in school. There were no long letters -- or any letters -- but there were always pictures. If some of the pictures also contained evidence of her Disney princess obsession, I let it slide because my granddaughters looked adorable in their Disney finery.

I know that Dave will be better at sending pictures, 8 x 10 size pictures and not just wallet size along with the occasional 5 x 7, but I will still miss Karla's inexperience with all things computer and thank the happenstance that made her my counterpart (and a stalwart counterpart at that) in my granddaughters' lives. I will miss Karla.

Rest in peace, Karla, and thank you for loving and taking care of my granddaughters.

Karla is the one in the center. To the left is the girls' cousin and I don't know his name. Sticking out her tongue on the right is Sierra sitting beside her mother, Julie. Front and center is Alanna, my other granddaughter. I believe this was Easter this year. Next year the scene will be minus Karla.

That is all. Disperse.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsors

I am an old-fashioned girl and was brought up in the age of television and radio -- and eventually the Internet. As a child the words, "And now a word from our sponsors,: was my chance to go to the bathroom, get a snack, or talk (quietly if my parents were in bed late Friday night while we watched chiller). That was when the commercials came on. Sponsors paid to have their products showcased on TV -- and radio in the days of the soap operas when soap operas were sponsored by soap companies, but they warned you first. Some people sat through the commercials and considered buying whatever was advertised and some talked or socialized until the program came back on. Out of a half-hour show, losing 2 minutes was not such an ordeal. That was in the good old days.

Advertising has gone high tech now, turning into the online version of Minority Report where everything one does on the computer is tagged, clocked, and ads shuffled into your online viewing on virtually every site you visit. On YouTube the ads are shuffled in among videos that might pertain to your search or are similar to what you're already watching. On Google they come in first before your search results and populate the sidebar to the right. Virtually every site, especially entertainment, newspaper, and magazine sites slow your feed with popup windows and ads that cannot be skipped until you are at least 5 seconds into the advertisement. Even on YouTube users monetize their videos with ads in tiny windows that pop up and must be shut down while they cover whatever you're watching or are of the variety that require you to wait at least 5 seconds before you can shut them down. On virtually every site the pages are littered and clogged and slow down scrolling with ads, ads, ads.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of being hammered, pelted, and inconvenienced by the advertising business encroaching on every single bit of my private territory. Ad blockers only work sometimes and become cumbersome to allow certain sites to show their popups. Programs are either Trojan horses with embedded advertisements or come with ads built in and clinging to the code like barnacle explosions to slow down your computer and gum up the works all to sell you something, anything, everything. I paid for a cleaner to get rid of the code, but they're there everywhere. I've invested in a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to mask my online presence and prevent more of the same. Nothing really works. The advertisers will find a way and it's no longer as simple as getting up to go to the bathroom or get a snack, not in today's world where commercials on a half hour show are up to 10 minutes out of every 30. I want my anonymity back.

I want not to have to search a page where I'm reading the text to find out why my ears are being seared with a loud and intrusive video playing somewhere on the page that started up a few seconds after I landed on the page. I gave up my television for two reasons: one to not have to watch a show riddled with commercials and two to avoid the insipid content of reality TV that bears no resemblance to reality outside the idiot box. Is it any wonder that people are going to whatever methods necessary to avoid being sold something every 5 minutes?

It's costing me a lot to avoid the commercials and nowhere I go can I avoid the popup videos, popup advertisers, popup pages that leech onto my browser or having to wade through the advertisements before I can get to the content I was searching for in the first place. I want out of the constantly streaming ad stream and pages that don't take forever to load because of all the ads, commercials, spam, junk, and crap that tag along for the ride.

And it doesn't stop there. Buy a product and before you've had time to open the package when it arrives and try it out for a few days the seller is bugging you with emails and by phone several times a day to ask how you rate their product. I delete most of them from my email inbox, and he more persistent ones I write in their ratings comment box just what I think of their practices. As people keep reminding me, the Internet is forever -- and so are my digital not so neat and clean footprints. Footprints I'd rather being making on the sellers'/advertisers' backs wearing the equivalent of a bed of nails on my feet with very sharp daggerlike nails. Leave me alone. Stop bothering me. Stop begging me to validate you. Stop. Stop. STOP!

If I continue to buy your product that is the usual sign of someone who is pleased with the product. If something is wrong, I'll let everyone know. If you do good, really good, I'll compliment you, but not every single day to every product I buy. No one has that kind of time.

I want the simple world back when advertisers were confined to the newspapers, magazines, television, and radio where I can easily avoid them and not on every single page I visit online. No one needs that much validation and no one needs to buy everything they see. It makes me want to hop an Indian spaceship and travel to Mars -- except they'd find me there and jack into my hypersleep capsule and feed their content directly into my mind. Enough already.

That is all. Disperse.

First Steps on the Road to Art

I've been spending more time drawing and a little more time working with the colored pencils. I have found that there is a lot of flex using colored pencils that makes it more like painting and not just drawing, although the drawing is also necessary. Oh, you can trace and transfer the tracing to paper and color or paint the drawing in, but I've always preferred to rely on freehand drawing. My skills, as I've said before are rusty through disuse, but they are basically intact without too much rust needing to be brushed -- or banged -- off. That at least is comforting. I had worried I had lost even that much ability. Good thing something has remained.

The following are a few preliminary sketches and some color experiments with the colored pencil. I still have so much to learn -- and relearn -- but I'm getting there.  As one friend reminded me, the only way to resurrect one's skills is to practice, practice, practice. I believe I may even have mentioned it in previous posts.

I am excited about delving into the realms of transparent objects (glass, water, etc.) and discovering how to do glazes and washes with colored pencil, which will also require the use of solvents and oils. Not oil paints, but mineral oil, like baby oil, especially where the Faber Castell colored pencils are involved. And now, on with the show -- sort of.

In one class I am taking, the assignment was to paint a couple of cherries. I'm afraid my shadows are too dark, but it was a first try. I will redo them when I get the time. It's a good start -- not great but good. Must start somewhere.

In another class, the assignment was to have fun with the circles. And I did. To me, circles mean more than just circles and spheres. Sometimes they can be olives or eyes looking through a hole in a wall or through a hole in the door. The triangular white infiltration on the left side is light from the window shining on the paper. That's actual natural sunlight streaming onto the page and not, as I first believed, a fault in the camera from when I installed new batteries. Murphy's law -- or, if you prefer, Murpy's law. They are the same thing after all.

Yes, those are my granddaughters, Addison and Victoria in one of their modern poses. The sketch below is my attempt at blocking them in colored pencil, a beige, I believe. The positions are a little off, but what would you expect for a drawing that took about 15-20 minutes? Again, beginning somewhere. I really don't like the dark colors of the photos and would have preferred something with more light, like their Easter pictures from a couple years ago, but these are recent and they were what I could download off their Mom's Facebook site and are -- yes, you guessed it -- a beginning. My focus was on trying to get their faces right, even with Tori doing the fish mouth kissy thing. Kids!

As always, if you click on the pictures you might even get a better view of the drawing. It's not bad for a first sketch, especially when considering it has been a couple of decades since I picked up a pencil to draw anything, let alone portraits. It's rough, but it's down on paper.

The debris in the picture behind and around the sketch is my cluttered desk and art supplies. I need a studio, but this will work for a start. Again, have to start somewhere -- and I'm not even finished buying what I need to draw and paint with. Yes, you do actually paint with colored pencils. You can draw with them, but the finished product is painted in a sense, so drawing with colored pencils -- as opposed to using them on a coloring book, especially when you've drawn the images -- is painting. Colored pencil is just another painting medium. Ask any artist.

The final indulgence I will ask of you is a sketch in the truest sense with graphite pencil of my grandchildren, Sierra and Connor, my son's twins. The picture is before Easter the year Connor died modeling the clothes I sent them for Easter.

Connor is the handsome little fella on the right and Sierra is obviously the drugged-out looking Pebbles-looking beauty on the left. The colored sphere in the lower right corner beneath Connor is a sphere I was working on when I decided to take these pictures. I may share it at another time when I've finished the other spheres on the page for that particular assignment.

As you can see, a rough sketch -- very rough -- of the twins. I had decided I needed more practice sketching before proceeding to paint the portrait. It's the largest photo I have of the twins that is usable for a reference. I didn't do too badly, but some of the rust is still showing. It takes me longer to sketch something like this than it used to, but more practice will mend that little hiccup.

One thing I had forgotten over the years is how much I enjoyed sketching and painting and observing the world closely the way I once did. An artist notices all kinds of details, like Sierra's drugged out appearance and the redness of her nose and upper lip where it has been repeatedly wiped and the way Connor's jaw line is so much like my sons (including his father of course), but also his grandfather, my ex-husband, Dave. I drew Dave many times when we were married and Connor has the same rounded and somewhat fat jaw, as a child of 2 years old would have. Sierra also has baby fat and the same rounded jaw line.

I'm not happy with the eyes or Connor's nose, but that is what practice is for, smoothing out the flaws and becoming better at drawing. These likenesses are fair to middling and not too awful (no, compliments are not being fished for here) and that is a step in the right direction.

Click on the photos to get a closer view. 

That is all. Disperse.

Cyclopean Rock Walls and Art

At first I thought the neighbors were stacking wood for the coming winter, a winter that may come sooner than expected if the rains over the past 15 months -- or the past long, cold, and snowy winter -- are any indication.  The sound was wrong, which was my senses telling me that my ears were correct. The neighbors were stacking up rocks in various areas of their lot. The rocks have been moved over subsequent days to the pile just outside my bedroom window from the other piles scattered about and rock wall is the only thing I can come up with since the site is too farm from the house for a patio or BBQ pit and far too close to the racing track for the 4-wheelers when the kids come up for the weekend -- or most of the summer. I could just ask, but that would be nosy and rude and I'm not that curious, except that the sound of rocks being kicked, pushed, and dropped out of the bed of the big red Ford truck tends to keep me awake when I want to sleep and closing the window fails to lessen the noise. I am more effective at shutting out the noise -- or at least ignoring it -- when I'm drawing or writing and far more the former than the latter.

The rocks are far too small for a cyclopean structure like the walls of Macchu Picchu or the great monolithic stone structures that predate modern civilization in the Middle East, and far too heavy to just drop out of the red Ford truck bed, and the pile would be much bigger. It would be fascinating to see how such massive multi-ton rocks are moved and fixed together, but I suppose I'll have to wait for a more enterprising type of neighbor to find that out since my back isn't equipped for such a task -- and I lack the equipment to live 200-ton polygonal shaped rocks into a massive monolithic structure to last for all time. I'd rather draw.

And drawing is what I have been doing -- quite a lot lately.

I've been sketching my granddaughters, Tori and Addison, and trying to get their features just right. They do make such odd faces in their selfies, but that's the way things are done nowadays. The point isn't actually to get an accurate sketch for a portrait, but to become better at rendering the subjects with a semblance of likeness that is recognizable so I can finally do the portraits. That takes a lot of drawing, erasing, sketching, and more erasing. It also takes numerous studies of their features: mouth, nose, eyes, hair accessories, and, oh yes, mouths. I have always had some trouble with mouths. I'm better at eyes and hands and hair than mouths, but I'm getting there. It's not like writing fiction, which has always been difficult for me, but more like writing nonfiction, which is a relative breeze. Remember, my sketching and drawing skills have not been taken out of the box for more than 20 years. In other words, one score and a few years beyond. Not enough for the 4 score and 10 I'm supposed to live (twice over and another half score which I wold rather choose), but definitely a whole score and a handful of years of leaving my artistic skills in the box. At least I didn't keep the box in the cellar where damp, mold, and rust could erode them further. Just in a dry box on the back shelf of the closet where spiders spin webs and dust collects even with the closet door shut.

I could probably jump in and be closer to brilliant with something easier, like a butterfly or spider or even a deer and her 6-month old faun. But I've always preferred drawing people and that's where I once upon a time excelled. I plan to excel once again.

I also take out time to practice with my new tools - colored pencils -- and learning how to apply the color effectively and which brand of pencil I prefer. I'm currently stuck on finding the right kind of sharpener so I don't waste the pencil as the hand-held sharpener chews up wood and spits on the color in unusual lengths. I've tried several and will doubtless try several more since I can't just carve it with an X-Acto knife and hone the edge with a bit of sandpaper as I once did with graphite pencils and charcoal. Colored pencil is a very different beast.

I've tried Prismacolor, but the quality is iffy sometimes, though the feel of the pencil gliding smoothly over the roughest paper is as creamy as spreading softened butter over a craggy English muffin that has been toasted, although a bit less tasty.

Colored pencils that come in art kits are far too dry and a bit stiff as they tend to be more filler than color and don't give the brilliance and color needed for a portrait. Might as well go back to pastels if that is my only choice -- and it isn't.

I bought a box of Faber-Castell and they have been lovely with a creamy feel and great coverage. Best of all, the pencils stay sharp longer than the Prismacolor, though a couple of the colors are a bit drier than the Prismacolor, specifically white and cream. I can see a blending of pencils in the future.

I've also ordered a set of 40 Caran d'ache Pablo colored pencils which are the Cadillac -- or Mercedes Benz if you're European -- of colored pencils. They cost like the devil, but I'll reserve my judgment until they arrive and I've had a chance to try them out.

There are numerous brands of colored pencil on the market, and I'm not about to try them all, but Prismacolor, Caran d'Ache, and Faber-Castell's Polychrome are the best of the pack. Faber Castell is the only brand that is made with a mineral oil base while Prismacolor and Caran d'Ache are wax based and both have a problem with blooming. That's the white stuff that collects on the surface of the drawing in the same what that the wax in chocolate blooms on a bar of chocolate when left alone in the drawer or cabinet for too long. The trick to getting rid of bloom (something that occurs mostly with the darker colors, probably because the lighter colors blend with the bloom) is to use the natural oils in the hands to tone it down by running the fingers over the bloom.

The other problem with colored pencils is color fastness. Prismacolor's colors have a varied range of light fastness, from I and II to VI. The higher the number, the sooner the brilliant colors of the art will fade in the sunlight, and Prismacolor has a serious flaw in that area, as it does with the quality control in making their pencils (breakage, ill fitting color and wood, color falling out of the wooden casing, crumbling, breaking inside the wood when the wood splits, etc.). Caran d'Ache and Faber Castell have a much better track record where color fastness is concern, as they do with quality control. Sometimes when something costs a lot it's not greed but quality materials and quality control that end with the higher price. Add to those factors that the Faber Castell colors last longer and keep a sharp point longer as well as providing superior color coverage and saturation for less work and fewer layers, and at least the Faber Castell, at a more modest price than the Caran d'Ache, is head of the pack -- so far.

It's rather like my days in the past when I worked with pastels. Different colors had different levels of hardness and coverage and I preferred the right pastel for the right part of the face I was drawing/rendering. I'm sure the same will be true of colored pencils. I know that the Prismacolor white and cream pencils are far superior when it comes to coverage and feel on the paper since Faber Castell tend to be drier and require more layers to achieve the same level of coverage and color. No doubt there will be more differences for me to discover as I rediscover my drawing abilities after taking them out of the dusty, spider-web covered box and use them until I gain the facility I once had.

Every day is another chance to keep the specters of Alzheimer's and senile dementia at bay while I exercise my brain -- and my talents. At least this is something I don't have to wrestle into submission as I have had to do with writing fiction. As far as I'm concerned, it's all gravy -- or colored pencil drawings -- from here on out.

That is all. Disperse.

Back into the Creative Stream

I begin to think it is inevitable that I finally follow my heart -- to live a life full of creativity and art. I am not the only one in my family to choose to follow the artistic path as I found out a couple of days ago. My brother has gone back to school to become an architect, a fact which Hoity-Toity finds a bit baffling as he began his academic pursuits during the time he was fixing the home he had shared with his ex-wife and the state of which Hoity-Toity blames on their two daughters, both adults (or barely adults in the youngest's case). The house was trashed and much was left behind because it smelled bad (likely like cat urine given the evidence). I'm not willing to cut the Mushroom's ex slack because she is the parent and was living in the same foul-smelling sty and did nothing about it except decamp when it became obvious the Mushroom would no longer pay the mortgage since his obligations ended when the youngest was of age and child support ceased. Oh, well, that's a nightmare tale for another time.

At any rate, my brother, the Mushroom, has indeed gone back to school to study architecture and has completed, or is completing, his second semester, quarter, whatever, a fact which escapes Hoity. She has not decided to pursue further studies having gotten out of high school everything she needed and moved on into adulthood sufficiently equipped for life. My brother evidently feels differently since he also is pursuing another line of academic studies on his way to becoming an architect, something that would probably be just as adequately served if he had chosen engineering instead of architecture. His reason for going back to school isn't a love of art -- as it is with me -- but the need to be able to draw projects, likely building projects, in blueprint form. I know of engineers who do the same thing, but his choice and his path.

I recently discovered art classes at Craftsy.com when I was searching for some other classes on cooking and baking and a whole new world opened up for me. I began drawing in the 4th grade when I was panicked about the last day of school when our teacher told us we would be drawing the last day of school. I had never drawn anything in my life and, being the studious type, didn't know what to do? How could I fail the last day of school to produce anything? I didn't know how to draw.

Mom suggested I try drawing. I picked up the first thing with pictures -- my piano book -- and tried copying what I saw. My fears diminished as I produced nearly exactly copies of the simple drawings. I could draw.

Possibilities, endless possibilities, lay strewn before me like a king's ransom of jewels. But was my drawing ability limited to the drawings in my piano book? Could I draw other things? I ventured onward as any good scientist through more experimentation. The comic pages in the daily newspaper gave way to colored comic pages in the Sunday paper which gave way to sketching things around the house, from toys to knick-knacks and finally out into the wide world where I sketched the people around me. I've always gravitated towards people and there is where I found myself happiest -- drawing, sketching, painting people.

In later years after a gift of oil paints and an easel, which I took to the spare room behind the garage when I was 16, I labored for days over an oil painting of Mark Lindsay, the cutest guy in the band, Paul Reverd and the Raiders. The painting was done on paper for oil painting and turned out quite nicely considering I had no instruction and no idea what all the solvents, oils, etc. were used for and how to paint with oils. As with everything in my life, I followed my instincts.

I took art classes and learned to do quick 1- and 5-minute sketches with charcoal and pencil and did very well. My teachers praised my work, but did little to explain how to effectively employ oils, brushes, palette knives, etc. while bestowing praise, As, and scholarships for advanced classes in pastels at the Columbus Academy of Art and Design's Saturday classes for talented beginners. I took to pastels and soon excelled in the class, but still had no idea of what the various techniques (gesso, impasto, under painting, etc.) meant and happily floundered my way through classes, even to taking a few life classes at OSU while still in junior and high school. I worked in clay and carved tiles for block printing, earning a lovely scar I still carry when a blade scooped out a hunk of skin along with the carvable section of the tile I worked on. Blood-spattered and continuing on blindly I explored the still nebulous and mysterious world of art, taking my As and praise in stride as I strove to go as far as possible in the art world. I painted Beanie, my youngest sister, several times, and even took her to school with me during summer school (honors class) while I painted her in acrylics directly onto a 24 x 36 inch canvas, which Beanie now owns since Mom gave it to her when she died. I couldn't be trusted because I would have destroyed the canvas; it wasn't good enough, the product of an untutored artist with little or no direction from my teachers. I've done better -- and worse -- over the years, but Mom used that as one of her prize possessions where every visitor (no matter how close and familiar with the piece) must be taken to see and praise her for my meager accomplishments because she was the one who saw talent in me and supported me without question.

I continued to dabble in paints, eventually doing an oil rendering of the first (and only) school pictures my ex-husband sent me when the boys went to live with him. I gave that painting to AJ who claims he doesn't know what happened to it. I wish now I had kept it, carting it with me as I've carried my medical transcription reference books and my Andre Norton books wherever I've gone. I've sketched interesting face (interesting to me) from time to time and my skills have not exactly diminished with time, achieving a level of facility and ability conferred by time and mature years, though it wasn't until very recently that I picked up what I had put down more than 20 years ago -- the path of artist. My skills have somewhat diminished from lack of use, but my eye remains fairly good. The artistic eye, of course.

My supportive mother told me years ago I couldn't make a living as an artist -- or a writer for that matter -- and should focus on something that would ensure a stable income -- data processing, computers, IT. Anything but art or writing and in spite of my many awards and certificates of achievement, along with my meager skills. I have since turned that creative temperament and ability to hobbies, like cross stitch, but not for sale. Simply because the arts feed a need that is as much a part of my DNA as my grey eyes. And I have returned to the creative arts, specifically drawing, in the form of colored pencils. I have a set of pastels around here somewhere in the box where they were packed, but I'm exploring colored pencils for now with the same single-mindedness I have always shown when it comes to art, limping along and finding classes to help me learn the use and extent of possibilities inherent in the medium.

My work desk has become my drawing and sketching desk and I'm exploring more classes and different kinds of colored pencils to find the one that suits me and my rusty style.

I am not alone. Many people who have reached -- and passed -- their middle years have gone back to pick up where they left off or unpacked a long held dream and followed it in their twilight years as I have done with art -- and specifically portraiture. My parents are dead and I make a decent living with medical transcription, but nothing fills me with the joy or feels my soul the way art does, and I'm finally discovering the bedrock of art that I should have learned many years ago when teachers patted me on the head and sent me to honors classes on scholarships without really giving me the grounding I needed in the mechanics and uses of the media they passed quickly over. I'm really learning now and I have the tools to delve as deeply as I wish -- and all the classes I can afford to take.

I won't waste time thinking about what I've lost over the intervening decades or bemoan the unrealized abilities that could have been part of the dust of my decomposing corpse had I not reached this age (60 for those of you who prefer details to dreams) with the ability to reach back and take what was once mine. I'm not going to worry about what I can and cannot do, but simply reach for more and take to my soul all that I can as I venture back into the creative stream to capture the world as I see it without the struggle (sometimes fruitless) for the right words and constructions that will take me from the first fire of discovery in a novel or story through the doldrums of the middle and the elation of the end of the tale. At least with art, I need not worry about critics and complaining readers, but do what I will with the tools at hand and render the life around me as my hands and talent allow. I have no one to tell me no and no one to browbeat, bruise, and cudgel into a more lucrative and acceptable form of work. This I do for myself and the devil take the hindmost.

That is all. Disperse.

Through Their Eyes

These are two of my granddaughters, Tori (short for Victoria) and Addison (not short for anything). They are originals in every way and as different from each other as they can be while still being very much alike in that they are young and enthusiastic.

I learn so much of the world from their perspective and thus find a new way to relate to the world through their eyes.

For instance, I didn't know that school lockers (one of Tori's favorite things about going back to school this year) had accessories. My old lockers were pretty much of a type: gray, attached to a school full of others, and a place to keep my books, papers, coat, and galoshes for those rainy days, right next to my umbrella, which I seldom used. One semester my locker was where I kept my crutches. I used them for a couple of days after I severely sprained my ankle during gym class but after that I left them in my locker and only used them to arrive and leave school. I didn't need them for sympathy or perks, although they were useful for getting out of class a little early to avoid the crush in the hallways and keep me from being crushed and damaged even worse. I felt the crutches would be better in my locker.

Going up and down the stairs was an experience and I learned a valuable lesson: using the handrails and hopping got me up and down the stairs faster. I had awesome glutes that semester from hopping up and down the stairs, especially the up part.  Back to the subject at hand: locker accessories.

Tori wanted (didn't need and didn't have, but wanted) wallpaper for her locker. I talked to Megan, her mother, afterward and she told me that Tori had asked for a pencil holder and I think a mirror for her locker. I'd already gone shopping online to find the right wallpaper for Tori. I should've asked Megan what color she settled on for the pencil holder and mirror. At any rate, I sent a package of wallpaper with a pattern of sunglasses in various colors on a black background because everything goes with black. I also go Tori a set of mustache magnets for her locker because the locker is metal after all, which is what makes the wallpaper so fascinating. It is plasticized and attaches to the inside of the locker with magnets. What a concept. I wish I'd thought of it because then I could give up wage slavery and still be able to write and read lots of books.  Oh, and bake. Baking is an expensive habit when you get into quality ingredients and tools.

Anyway, back to the locker. What a concept. There are rugs for the bottom of the locker and shelves that attach to the bottom of the top little niche to provide extra shelf space as well as little shelves with legs that add space and keep wet galoshes and such from contaminating the rest of the locker. Great idea. There are mirrors and boards with dry erasers and heaven help me chandeliers and lights that turn on and off with a motion sensor and are battery operated. (Just a note, do not buy Procell batteries. They do not last, unless you're into throwing your money away in the landfill or other ecologically responsible place. Procell batteries just plain suck! You heard it here first. I have experience.)

A chandelier in a locker. Things sure have changed since my day when the height of decorating panache was composed of pictures taped to the inside of the locker door. Live and learn.

There are a lot of color and pattern choices, some cheap and some more expensive. There are kits with pencil holders, trash cans, magnets, flower decorations, lights, rugs, wallpaper, and anything a kid's heart desires to accessorize and trick out the school locker. The mind boggles. My mind boggled and delighted in the choices. We truly have become all about the accessories, and I would not have known had I not asked Tori what she would like to have that she didn't need but wanted all the same. I'm a grandmother after all, and Tori is one of my favorite granddaughters.

The other favorite thing about going back to school for Tori is a longer lunch hour. She's in junior high school now and is moving into a very different world from elementary school where Addison remains for now. Tori is in the 7th grade and Addison is in the 4th grade.

When I asked Addison the same question about what she wanted, but didn't need I found out she is still my little pink princess. A pink lunchbox that is all glittery with -- you guessed it -- pink glitter. What else? I didn't have much to go on beyond pink and glittery and plastic, but I found a lunch box that should make her eyes light up with pink glee. A glittery pink plastic lunch box. I almost got the one with fairy wings that was glittery with pink and purple, but decided on the strictly pink because she is all about the pink. Nothing new to learn there. A lunchbox is a lunchbox is a lunchbox and carries food from home to school. It is a far cry from the red tartan plaid lunch box I got for school before I decided to move to the paper bag because it was less generic and wasn't red plaid tartan. No more sour milk in my not so cold keeping thermos bottle with the red plain tartan design and no more carrying the clunky lunchbox that wasn't the one I wanted, which I think was Wonder Woman or Superman or something like that. One of those lunchboxes cost more than my mother was willing to shell out for me, so red plaid tartan lunchbox it was -- until I convinced her that a paper sack was better and I could pay the nickel for milk out of my meager allowance (25 cents a week). It was the 1960s and everything was cheaper then, but the 5 cents was for milk and chocolate milk didn't cost more. I prefer water these days, but you live and you learn -- and hopefully evolve.

I had a good time filling my granddaughters' requests and I like the view from their eyes. Tori is all about the sports and her favorite subject is PE. Addison likes mathematics and art class. I can relate to both . . . almost. I loved PE when I was working the parallel bars or the pommel horse but was less fond of PE when it came to showering in a big gang shower with the other girls. I was not into group nudity, not even with soap and water. I'd rather keep my sweat and finish my classes than get into the shower naked with all those other girls and I could only manage 1 red flood a month. The teacher got suspicious when I had a period every single week and wanted to have the school nurse take a look at me if I was bleeding every single week.

The only way to use the private shower was if Aunt Flo was in town.

Shyness in communal showers is to be expected when one is shy about being naked with others and feels that she is the ugliest girl in school. And the fattest. Well, I wasn't the fattest because that was Shelley who had massive old lady boobs at 13 and rolls of fat from where they disappeared underneath her gargantuan mammaries all the way down to just above her pubic hair. I heard how the girls made fun of her and I didn't want to be the new butt - or breast - of the joke. I didn't know that I had a lovely figure or that I was not fat until I got older and saw pictures of me from that period of time. I had a daily reminder that I had a pretty face and what a shame it was attached to such a fat and misshapen body from my mother who was reed slim and had perfect breasts. Dad may not have seen her naked, but I did -- many times.

Anyway, talking to the girls about school and what they looked forward to the next day was as much an eye-opener as a stroll down memory lane. I always learn something new talking to the girls and I learn what about them is like me. Tori loves baseball. So did I when I was her age -- and younger, although she plays on an all-girl traveling team and I played as the only girl on a boys baseball team. Then again, I lived in Panama on an Army base and the rules were a little more fluid for a girl who could win first base every year for 3 years against every boy on the team.

Addison loves art and math and science, just as I do. I love English (Language Arts for her), but I can give a little since she does love to read. I even enjoyed explaining what was special about Language Arts and we chatted about learning a language, which is what I thought Language Arts is all about. Live and learn.

She wants to learn Italian, but I think she means Spanish because she does know some Spanish and absolutely nothing about Italian. They are similar languages, but not the same. She would also like to learn French and Spanish and maybe German, but she has time. At least she wants to learn. Now she knows a few more words in Italian and some in Spanish and she knows the difference. She will remember because she is a very bright little girl. She's in the accelerated classes -- just like I was. She is my granddaughter for sure.

The girls are short, but they may still grow, and they are definitely fascinating to get to know and a joy to chat with -- even when Addison would rather go to a pool party instead of talking to her grandmother. I understand. I was young once too and I would have preferred going to the pool party than talking to my grandmother. She went to the party and we talked later after, Megan assured me, she had had a nap and eaten so that she would be less moody and grumpy.

The girls are very different and yet still the same. They love to sing. They love to perform. And they give me the greatest gift of all -- their time. For me, next to seeing the world through their very young eyes, getting to know them and chatting for a little while is priceless. It's what being a grandmother is all about.

That is all. Disperse.