Friction and Harmony

The horse might even get excited, prancing around on cracked hooves, circling the pool excitedly and whinnying loudly.  Then, just as he sees his reflection in the water…  Like  an anorexia victim staring in the mirror, he decides maybe he’s not so thirsty after all.  Or maybe the water is too warm, or too cold.  Or it might be that it’s been so long since he’s taken a drink that he’s forgotten how to swallow.  Or maybe, he’s just afraid of what no longer being thirsty might feel like.

Don’t expect this to make any sense at all.

I’m not sure I understand it either.

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MamaBear is an artist – and not just of the “closet” variety. She’s a professional artist.

MamaBear paints – mostly in oils, and mostly portraits these days, but she is versatile. She often does interesting and colorful abstracts for “warm-up” or to “release tension.” In my opinion, her abstracts, while still very good, are her least-capable work. She can literally whip one out in an hour or two, depending on size. She has painted some brilliant pieces, but any of her most complex work to date has been dismissed by the local art society as “amateurish” or otherwise not good enough for local juried shows.

For example, here is her latest piece for the show – a tasteful nude:

It was actually less-technical than anything (aside from abstracts) that she has entered in a show, and far from what I consider her best work, so she thought she might have a chance of actually having it accepted, at least to simply hang in the show. She didn’t expect to actually win anything.

It was flat-out rejected. Again.

It didn’t surprise me. (She has had her abstracts accepted to hang in the gallery. One of the ones accepted took just over an hour’s total effort to complete!)

I helped her take this piece to the gallery, and while we were there, I noticed several people were fawning over three near-identical abstract pieces. I mean, people (gallery professional artists) were literally gathered-around, ogling the pieces as if Michelangelo himself had just strolled-in after millennia to present his newest work. The work was on canvas, but it wasn’t a painting – it was entered as “mixed-media”. Aside from shellac, there wasn’t a brush-stroke of paint on the whole thing. It was colored tissue paper. The same type of colored tissue paper like you find in gift-bags, torn and applied to the canvas surface with garden-variety shellac. Up close, you can see where the colors ran under the application brush as it was literally slapped together like a second-grade art-project. Seriously. Have a look for yourself:

Oh, and did I happen to mention that the “artist” of this piece is also a city council member? Nothing like seeing a judge’s lips shellacked to a council member’s ASS over a piece that “displays a wonderful sense of the gesture” (what??) – at least as considered for what should be the “Refrigerator Art” category!

(I apologize for the quality of the photos. They were taken with my crappy phone camera, so the quality isn’t that great, but it really doesn’t need to be – especially in this case.)

And some of the other pieces were even more awful than this. Another “mixed media” piece that did use actual paint was titled “Java” and was a canvas that had what looked like clumped toilet paper wadded-up and plastered to it, and then the whole thing was smeared with thick, red-paint. While the paint was wet, the artist apparently used his finger to carve-out a rough, out-of-perspective coffee-cup on a saucer. Then in the corner, in case you couldn’t tell what the finger-paint image was supposed to be, he used tacky gold paint to pen the word, “java” so the viewer at least knew what he was trying to portray. I’m sorry I didn’t get a pic… The gallery ghouls were frowning in my direction whenever they heard my stupid phone make its “camera noise.” I decided not to push my luck. MamaBear was already ranting out-loud about the quality of “Art” that made it into the show over her work.

In all fairness, there were some paintings that were good. A few others that were little more than “tinted photographs,” but listed as “original oil.” Pppppttt! The show winner was a piece that was technically detailed, but strange, in that the subject seemed to have a dark aura as he and all the leaves and details were outlined. The facial details were nowhere near the technical quality of MB’s portraiture, but that didn’t matter to the judges. What mattered to them was the artist’s name and the fact that he put a $60,000.00 value on his painting, no doubt. The guy is out of his leaf-outlined tree:

Now don’t get me wrong – the portrait is good, but $60k good? Check-out the thick brown outline along the top of the pant-leg. That same brown outlines everything on the guy – his fingertips, ears, shirt – and every leaf of the out-of-perspective “shrubbery” behind him. The rest of the image – all the background, the tree on the left, the building – none of it is outlined. It is two different styles on one canvas – like they took the whole right side, the foreground and his backdrop – and pasted it on top of a recycled, already-existing painting that might as well have been by a different artist altogether. It’s weird.

Here’s another example of what did get into the show – a solitary cow against an impossibly-aligned backdrop of sunset-orange clouds. It’s cute – the colors whimsical. But I’d have sooner seen this get a ribbon than Ms. Council-woman’s kindergarten art project.

Oh, and for the record, here’s MamaBear’s very first portrait. She had never before painted any kind of portraiture when she did this a few years ago. Needless to say, this and other portraits with the same or better technical expertise have also gone unnoticed by the local “Art Community.”

Personally, I think they’re intimidated by her work – and ’cause she’s neither a council-woman nor a member of their elitist art-crowd, they can safely ignore her. Yeah, and I guess since this was her very first portrait, you could consider it “amateurish.” I’d like to see any of those pinheads come close to capturing the level of detail and feeling that this image of Mother Theresa possesses.

But I may be prejudiced. I am, after all, her “cub.”

======= UPDATE ======

Yes, she does do commissioned portraits. Here’s one such example:

“Lindy” was actually an “extra” portrait that MamaBear painted for herself to see if she could capture the emotion of the child – who by the time had had over 130 pics snapped of her and she was tired of it! When the woman who had commissioned the original portrait saw this “extra” she had to have it too – ’cause “that’s exactly how she is sometimes!” MB’s best portrait work comes from photos she takes herself – she spends time with her subject and “gets to know them,” studying how their expressions change and flow… Capturing mood is what she loves most. And in case you’re interested, something like the above 18″ x 24″ goes for between $750-$1000 depending on complexity and whether or not she takes the original photos. Of course the price climbs with larger canvasses and with more than one subject – including pets (which she seldom, if ever does – she prefers people). A bargain* in the serious portrait market!

(*See the last line of my entry above the update.)

Something quick and painless would be a blessing.

It’s Red Tent week at the land of the House o’Zathras, which means plenty of Friction with no Harmony to be found! And while we males normally outnumber the wimmin-folk 2:1, they’ve locked arms and formed a synchronized hormonal attack. And wouldn’t you know it, today they’re both home for the event.

With me.

Now suddenly I find the tables turned and it’s 2:1 against, since the three boys have all escaped the house for school.

There’s not a room that’s safe…

I’m doomed.

UPDATE:  3/15/07 – 19:55

Though it took me time to notice, I’m honored to have been quoted in a post by the very eloquent Marine wife/tech wench, Cassandra, of Villainous Company.   Her site is worth a read.  go check it out! 

UPDATE: 11:30pm

I’ve contemplated removing this post entirely. Calling out Evil by its name has unsettled me, I guess. For now, I’m putting the whole thing below the fold. Really, I can’t even look at it. Read if you want, but if it touches you the same way it did me – you’ll probably feel like showering afterward.

Maybe it’s just the culmination of all the events I’ve recounted, the bubbling to the surface of all the old emotion, still raw and painful… But what is truly strange is that since I wrote this, there has been a seemingly constant barrage of dark images and events that have assaulted me this evening…

I feel as though I need… Really, you can’t imagine the gravity – you don’t know how unlikely it is for me to say this: I am off to go pray.

More »

(Cross-posted from my comment-response to Mrs. Who’s post here.)

Seven years… Wow.

Seven years ago (now yesterday as I write this) I was checking on my adoptive parents, trying to figure out what to do with them, wrangling three boys – trying to get them into tuxes and discovering at the last minute that one didn’t have pants – and freaking-out… Explaining over and over again to my parents the schedule. Freaking out some more as my dad was still walking around the Executive Suite in his boxers… and ohmigod.

I don’t know what I would have done without that limo for my parents, who, thankfully, stayed at the Perdido Beach Resort. Without a driver, they never would have made it! I remember my own distress at trying to get everybody moving in unison – playing orchestra conductor to a bunch of misfits, all the while wondering to myself, “is she really going to do this? Will she go through with it? When she sees this motley crew assembled, will she run back up the stairs, or out the door?”

The limo ride – the one you never even got to even sit in (I’m so sorry, Babe!) was… Well, it was a leather-upholstered, track-lighted, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride… With Champagne. (I promise, Kitten, you didn’t miss much – really!)

But oh, thank God for that Champagne!

(Now that you mention it – I think maybe it was the alcohol…)

I remember pacing nervously around the main level of the Pensacola Victorian as everything was assembled for our ceremony, mentally checking-off everything. MamaBear kept telling me to just breathe…

Then the music started. We all had our places, and everyone watched the stairway… And watched. And the music played, and we watched. People’s heads started to turn as they looked about for the bride. And we watched.

I thought to myself – I knew it! She’s decided to run away! She probably made her way out the fire-escape!

Then, as the panic was beginning to well-up – what am I going to do with all these guests? – I saw her.

(Little did I know, Ms. Who had practiced, timing the music to insure her arrival was on-cue with a particular moment in the Ave Maria that we had chosen for our opening hymn… And PrincessNO – our flower-girl – was suddenly shy causing a momentary hiccup. Mrs. Who had been prodding the Little Princess as silently as she could to go – go now. NOW! That moment was an eternity!)

My breath caught in my throat when I first saw her. My heart skipped in my chest. Mine was the most beautiful bride I had ever seen!

Oh, I had seen the pieces – the flowers, the dress, the bows. She even taunted me with the little lace bustier that she would be wearing under her gown… From Frederick’s of Hollywood, no less!

All the preparation, the rehearsal, the long, frank talks we had about ‘blending’ our families. All the meetings with our minister, Fr. Graves, who prepared us for this day. None of it prepared me for that single, solitary moment when I caught sight of her…

I tried to hide it, but the emotions were too powerful. I heard Mrs. Who’s Aunt “Moggy”, as she nudged someone, “Look at Bitterroot – Look at how he’s looking at her! Now that’s LOVE!”

If I could have, I probably would have broken into laughter – Moggy always told it just like she saw it. She was a wonderful, dear woman…

I won’t deny it. I won’t deny that tears welled-up when I saw my beautiful bride. Not to say that I was a blubbering fool… But oh, that moment when I saw her and knew that she was about to give to me her heart forever… The realization of that gift – more valuable, more powerful than anything of this earth… The emotions were impossible to hide.

Or maybe it was the Champagne!

(Unfortunately, I got sidetracked with other things, but I finally decided to finish this – my original Google Earth post.)

I finally got around to downloading Google Earth. I played with it for a couple hours, looking at places that interest me, places where I used to live and work, places I remember from childhood. And even places that haunt me…

All I can say is… Wow!

Among searching my many geographical and personal interests, I found the mountain property in Utah that we owned where my adoptive father would take us hunting when I was a kid.

Wow. Really, wow. With 3-D terrain, I was able to position my point of view to where we used to sit on the mountain face to hunt. It was kind of surreal, looking out over the valley toward the Interstate, many miles below. Of course the scrub-oak was “flat” to the ground – and the terrain isn’t quite as steep as I remember. Oh, and the Aspen are missing from the view. But have a look:

Oh, the memories of that mountain property. We would only visit it a few times a year, but every time it was a fantastic adventure!

I remember blowing-up the beaver dam – seeing the whole thing lift into the air before crashing down in pieces amid a downpour of obscenities as Dad realized they (my BIL and his ‘little’ brother) had used WAY too much dynamite, and the immediate realization that the sudden wash of the whole pond releasing at once was going to do some serious destruction. It did – we were lucky to get out. The road that Dad had spent a year constructing with heavy equipment was just gone. We also were lucky not to have been killed by raining debris.

I remember freezing my ass off the hunting season that it began snowing on the season-opening eve. We went anyway – in the snow. It snowed until late morning – and since we were on the mountain before sunrise, trying to to get our kill out of the snow-covered mountains when every step through the waist-high stuff was a battle. But it was the smallest of our worries. We still had to get off the mountain. Later that afternoon, I remember laughing hysterically as the four-wheel-drive Suburban that Dad was attempting to pilot inch by treacherous inch along a deeply rutted road along the side of a mountain suddenly slid laterally into the deep ruts. Of course there was nothing funny about the nerve-wracking ride, or the possibility that we had just become irretrievably stuck. But the sudden jarring lateral motion of the truck had dumped my exhausted, sleeping brother out of the door he was resting on, where he suddenly found himself wide-awake, and shocked to be lying in a snowbank. The look on his face was priceless.

Then there was the time I got stung by a wasp that flew-up my pant leg one summer as we waited for Dad to come back with help – our van had broken a drive line, leaving us stranded for hours as he hiked out of the mountains on foot in search of a tow-truck that could – or would climb a mountain on short notice. I even remember being afraid to look at my knee after missing the log I was chopping at with my new hatchet (heavy, loose pants saved me anything more serious than a nasty bruise.)

The sensation of having one’s head in the muzzle-blast radius of a .30-06 as my idiot BIL excitedly swung his rifle just past my head before pulling the trigger… That was scary. The sensation of screaming – and hearing nothing… That was scarier. (We went home without a deer that year.)

I remember plinking with my .22 – and Dad furious when I shot at his six-pack of Schlitz from across the pond – where it was cooling in the stream – killing three of the cans in a spectacular splash of water and beer-foam. Then there was the live beaver I saw from only a dozen or so yards away, slapping his tail on the muddy stream bank and emitting angry-beaver (!) sounds. There was the time I stood watching as my idiot BIL and his little brother stormed the beaver den with scores of rounds of ammunition – and hating them for being such jerks (and that was before he tried to blow my head off!)

I had mentioned in this post what an awesome shot my father was. Google Earth helped prove my memory for me – and though my original estimates were a little high, it’s still pretty damned phenomenal. Though the ruler-line appears to bend with the curvature of the terrain, I believe it is still only calculating aerial (point to point) distance, as it is the same figure with terrain turned on or off. (i.e., a bird’s-eye view on a flat map measures the same as the “curved-line” terrain-view.) I looked at several different sight-lines (it was hard to judge the near-site with ‘flattened trees’.) From the approximate sitting position to the various target areas was measured by GM to be between 457 and 568 yards. And my dad routinely bagged deer from that distance. Usually with a single shot. On the rare occasion when the animal was only wounded and managed to run, it would only be lost to us if it went up the mountain and over the crest, where we’d hear gunfire erupt in the distance from the hunting camp on the next ridge over. Otherwise, I was the blood-tracker. Dad would stand and direct me from his “spot” on the mountain.

More than five hundred yards. Wild mule deer. No baiting feed stands. No tree stands – the only foliage was scrub-oak and wispy aspen, so we either had to shoot through it or over it. Gutting and field-dressing the deer. And Dad sampling the raw liver to see how ‘sweet’ the meat would be, to decide how best to process it. (Something I think he picked-up from my Russian grandmother. She would be eagerly waiting for us to return with the cheesecloth bag that contained the stream-washed organs; the liver, heart and kidneys. Ugh! He routinely did that. A trip to the butcher shop was always an adventure!)

When I listen to the stories of the “incredible one-shot, 80-yard” kills from a tree stand to the outer edges of the area where the hunter has been putting out deer-feed all year long, I can’t help but think – that’s not hunting. That’s barely even shooting. It’s not even close to “incredible.” Poser!

Dad – you made it look so natural and easy, that at the time… I was unimpressed.

You were one hell of a man.

I apologize for any of you having difficulty reaching my site, not being able to comment or load pages, or experience unusually SLOW page loads.

My web-hosting company has been having difficulties for what seems like weeks now. They have been un-helpful in my requests for support. According to the tech who responded, the issue was “isolated” and “temporary” and “only affected a few customers.” Though I explained that it had been happening for weeks, they treated it as if it was a one-time thing. When the SQL server crashed several weeks ago that caused me to lose databases for BOTH F’nH and HoZ, there was no explanation – no apology. Nothing.

I’m an IT engineer for nearly 20 years, and my business is consulting and systems integration. Needless to say, my own hosting company has dropped-off my list of recommendations to my clients. If things continue as they have for the past weeks, I’ll be forced to forfeit the remainder of my year’s upgraded hosting fee and move.

Needless to say, I won’t be happy about losing 9 months of hosting fees – so I’ll get my money’s worth somehow.

I’ll keep you posted – if you can reach me that is.

If you have been having problems reaching my site… PLEASE take a moment to let me know in the comments so I can forward them. Feel free to… be colorful in describing your frustration.

Thanks…

This is yet another reason The growing list of reasons why I hate Utah:

Two sex offenders living side-by-side, just 150 yards from a playground. The endpoint at the edge of the playground is actually a gate where students can pass from the schoolyard into the neighborhood and vice-versa. So far as I am aware, there is currently no law in the state of Utah that prohibits convicted, registered sex offenders from living within a given proximity to a school, church, public park or playground. And there certainly is no law prohibiting the Move-In Victimization of children and families – the State essentially sanctioned it in my case. There are, however, adequate laws in place to protect sex offenders from harassment.

Evidently, the mere act of making someone else aware of a sex offender’s public record status is “publicizing” – and therefore legally considered “harassment” in Utah.

I’d happily link to the offenders’ identifying information, but unless you find it on your own, the Pretty, Great State of Utah™ considers it illegal to use the information they provide to alert your neighbors. As it states on the Official State of Utah Sex Offender Registry website:

Pursuant to Utah Code Ann. Section 77-27-21.5(21)(b) and (c), members of the public are not allowed to publicize the information or use it to harass or threaten sex offenders or members of their families; and harassment, stalking, or threats against sex offenders or their families are prohibited and doing so may violate Utah criminal laws.

It is exactly this State’s attitude of protection and promotion of convicted, incarcerated and released sex offenders that led to the victimization of my children. Mrs. Who at one time had asked one State official if calling or sending mailed notices to the neighbors, notifying them of the personal danger he represents within their neighborhood as based on our experience would be unlawful. We were told quite matter-of-factly that without a doubt such action would violate Utah State Law. WHAT?!! She didn’t believe me – maybe she thought I had misunderstood – so she had to hear it for herself from the horse’s mouth.

My knowledge of these two offenders is based in personal experience, and I have indeed found the same identifying information elsewhere on the web. Nevertheless, I’m reluctant to post names of the scum because of the litigiousness of at least one of the parties involved, and also because of the positioning of the State in defending them. One of the offenders I show here is actually “un-mappable” because either he has provided incorrect information or the State has recorded it errantly. The address listed on the official State website would in reality be halfway up a mountain on the other side of the valley, and neither within the city nor the zip code listed.

I’ll credit Google Earth for providing the detailed aerial, and I encourage people to use it wisely in conjunction with other tools such as Family Watchdog National Sex Offender Registry to inform yourself by identifying dangers to your family. I trust Google will allow this ‘fair use’ of their software and not side with the scum, vermin and sickos and those who enable them to enjoy their freedom and practice their hobbies so freely.