art journaling, new shop, a visit

The government of the United States has become a wrecking ball. Not only here but worldwide. Not content to bring this country to its knees, it is intent on destroying the law based world order that has been in place since WWII preferring instead one based on conquest. 

We were given a list of 150 words in yesterday’s art journal workshop, a hundred and fifty words of love, compassion, hope, positivity. The first exercise was to pick one word, not as a new year’s resolution but rather as guidance for the coming year. Too many words, how do you pick just one. At first I chose mindful but I already have a page in mind devoted to the word mindfulness so I perused the list again and I saw it. Create. This was my word. But first we cut a page out of an old dictionary and glued it to the page in our journal and then chose a color of acrylic paint and painted over it. When the paint was dry we took a marker and wrote our word on the page and then wrote down what that meant to us. So I wrote 

create

because there is so 

much destruction in

the world today

bring more art, love,

joy, compassion

into being

And then she told us to select miscellaneous papers, stickers, tapes, what have you and cover up the words. That made me laugh a little so she explained why. In therapy, art or otherwise, writing things down is a way to expunge them from your psyche, to get them out and reduce their power, and they may be things you don’t want other people to be able to read, your pain, your fear, private thoughts so you write it all down and then cover it up or destroy it. So while my words were not so private, that was the exercise. I used tissue paper, stickers, decorative tape, stamps. I stamped the word again across the top.

For the second page we first did a watercolor wash for a background. Then we were to select a scripture or something from a favorite hymn (folks here are religious) and write that on the page with marker. I’m not religious so I chose the simple ‘be here now’ one of my guiding life instructions. Next we selected three colors of acrylic paint and painted on a small rectangle of 1/8” hard acrylic plastic, flipped it over and transferred the paint to paper. When that paint dried, we were to embellish it however we wanted.

Third page was a collage, something I’ve never really been that interested in. So we used foil on which we colored with water soluble markers, wet the page, and transferred the color from foil to page. Again, after the page dried, add whatever we wanted from the materials she had brought….stickers, colored paper, markers, tissue paper, strings and other fuzzy things, etc. I kept mine simple.

So that was my day Saturday. After, I went by the new little bookstore and picked up the used copy of American Gods by Neil Gaiman she ordered for me and then I went to check out another new little enterprise in the next block. Tru Bath and Body Boutique - home, body, & spiritual wellness. Organic luxury bath and body essentials like lotions, soaps, perfumes, balms, bath and shower bombs, that kind of stuff. But the really interesting stuff was the spiritual and mental wellness section; herbs, resins, camphors, candles, incense, smudges, charcoal burners, all kinds of stuff and guidance for their use. I imagine the majority of religious Wharton would be horrified at this juju if they knew. That’s three new interesting little shops (including the dispensary) in the block off the Square. I hope they survive. Five years ago they wouldn’t have but there’s been a lot of new home building in the last couple of years bringing people from Houston and Katy and Sugar Land and maybe even Richmond who commute so maybe Wharton is getting a little more enlightened. 

On the way home I stopped and got another bucket of pecans cracked, the last I intend to shell, and inquired how long they would be open as I have four almost full boxes of pecans I’ve picked up since I sold what I previously had and they are still falling. The last two days were windy so I expect more are on the ground. I guess I’ll take them in towards the end of this month.

And then this happened Saturday evening.

more playing in the journal and spoken English through time

Tuesday was a full day; coffee, breakfast, my biannual appointment to get my teeth cleaned (you make my job easy, she says, keep doing whatever you’re doing), grocery shop, lunch, walk the dog which included visiting with my friend at the other end of the street, feed the cats, fix dinner, clean up after dinner. My dinners usually revolve around what’s been in the fridge or freezer the longest. So Tuesday night was sautéed cabbage with onions and garlic, coarsely mashed dill new potatoes, and fried catfish. I did make time between feeding the cats and fixing dinner to work on the new page in the art journal I started on Monday, maybe even a bit in the morning, I really don’t remember. 

I worked on the jellyfish just a little on Monday but mostly on the new page. Wednesday though I finished the jellyfish unless I decide to paint a background. I’m leaving it as is for now, afraid I’ll mess it up if I do. Worked on the new page off and on all week and finished it today. 

We’re getting small showers off and on today which we sorely need, bringing in a new front that’s supposed to drop us in the 40s for lows, highs in the 60s for the next two weeks. Unless that changes which it surely will. Not even a half inch of rain today.

Can’t, won’t write about the cold blooded murder and the attack on the high school in Minneapolis yesterday or the shooting of two people by ICE in Portland. Of course Noem et al are lying about what happened, see nothing wrong with their agents appointing themselves judge, jury, and executioner, protecting the murderer. Appalling how many people think she deserved it for moving her car like they told her to. There’s a searing report on the lack of training, vetting, waiting for drug test results, literacy (apparently some of these goons can barely read or write); the only requirement needed is a tendency to brutality and a willingness to murder. We’re not quite at the point of lining people up in front of a trench and shooting them in the head but they have the personnel willing to do it.

Well, I guess I did write about it a little. 

Ok, so here’s a fun little thing I got off 1440 (I think). It’s about 10 minutes long and includes a reconstruction of spoken English from about 450 AD to modern English, spoken English changing about every three sentences. That part runs about 3 minutes. He plays it first without subtitles and again after talking about his research, with subtitles. I began to understand it starting around 1450.

From Old English to Modern American English in One Monologue

little bird, old metal, new page

Saturday night when I was closing the garage door I startled a little wren. This is not an unusual occurrence. They like my garage with all the stuff and often build nests in there. After I raised the door again and ushered the little bird out, though they come and go through the gap at the top of the overhead garage door, I investigated where I had seen it fly away from in my peripheral vision. Sure enough, this unseasonable weather has the birds thinking it’s spring and I found the beginnings of a nest tucked into one of the struts of the door we never open.

Our lazy days are coming to an end. We’ve been sleeping/lazing in bed til eight or after every morning (I’d sleep later but my pill alarm goes off at 8:30) and I have not been doing my morning yoga routine I blame the holidays, the cold, my cold, any excuse sufficed and come Monday I’m going to have to get it back together. I could put it off another day, yoga class Monday evening that counts, right?. But the real kicker is coming next Thursday when we have to gasp get up at seven because SHARE starts up again. I’m already groaning.

Saturday called for physical activity to keep my mind off the stupidity that passes for a government here and so I raked the mountain of leaves out of the barn. First I designated several things to go to the metal recycler soon! and pulled that shit out,

-my old bicycle that will never get refurbished, the dead garden cart, an old metal milk jug at least I think that’s what it is that I pulled out of the shed when we first bought this place what I thought I was going to do with it I have no idea, two of four flimsy metal frames that were part of the structure of an outdoor gazebo that I bought and Marc and Mikey I think put up in the backyard while I was gone and didn’t anchor it down and walked off and left it and when a big wind came up it blew and bent the shit out of most the metal keeping the other two because they just look like they could be useful for something even though I’ve kept all four for over a decade and still haven’t used them-

then I raked the leaves and dispersed them out the south end since the breeze was coming from the north, though some did get removed through the north end and generously shared with the lot on the west side of us front and back. They’ll get mulched the next time whoever comes and mows. And who knows, the wind may have further dispersed them by then. I moved the antique wood wheelchair out and put it in the crumbling shed that is slowly being devoured by the wild space.

The door fell off a year or so ago. There’s stuff in there but nothing we care about and it’s seriously icky inside. Let the future archeologists find it and wonder at it all. Personally I’d throw the wheelchair on the burn pile but it’s one of Marc’s things so… It’s probably not totally useless but I wouldn’t want to have to depend on it. Hard wood and all, not to mention it’s falling apart but it is kind of cool with that little third wheel in the back.

Picked up more pecans since Marc mowed and mulched all the leaves and I can find them now, one last push to pick them up to sell before the buyers close up shop for the season, Sunday I picked them up across the street and still so many at the top of the trees. I’m wondering if those aren’t good, too light to fall. 

I did start a new page in the art journal, a loose watercolor of a jellyfish from an image I’ve had on my computer for 13 years, 

waiting for whenever I was saving it for, the medium with which I could or would try it. The picture was taken by a woman named Nancy Goodenough and she posted it on social media and I saved it. I love this picture. So I’m gonna try it. 

Still only using the Prang 12 colors. Sunday I sketched it out lightly and did my first layer.

 

that was an exercise in magical thinking

Well, fuck, so much for hope that this year will somehow be better. Trump ordered an unprovoked attack on Venezuela in the wee hours this morning bombing Caracas, Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira targeting military installations, capturing and kidnapping President Maduro and his wife who have been “extracted” from their country and indicted in New York for narco-terrorism, conspiracy, and possession of machine guns among other charges. Possession of machine guns? In his own country? Make no mistake, this is not and never has been about drugs. It has always been about Venezuela’s oil reserves and Trump’s desire to start a war of his own despite his boasting of how many wars he has ended and his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize. This man, who ran on being the ‘peace’ president, has bombed seven countries and he hasn’t even been in office for a full year yet, needing to show his buddies Putin and Netanyahu that he is a strongman too. It’s not as if we need Venezuela’s oil, we’re not running out, power grids around the nation are not failing for lack of oil. This is simply greed and his bottomless need to be the biggest baddest bully, it’s about control and bringing other countries to heel, like China who gets a lot of oil from Venezuela. The Cult is already championing Trump’s removal of a repressive dictator, that the Venezuelan people are dancing in the street, as if Trump is liberating the country. The claim falls flat considering Trump supports and admires every other repressive dictator in the world for their complete control and power. Wait until the Venezuelans figure out that they will have no say in who will govern their country, that their lives will not improve, that Trump will appoint someone who will rape their country of its resources and funnel the money back to the US. Venezuela did not get their country back or their freedom, they have become a colony of the US.

And so much for the hope that the military will not carry out illegal orders and make no mistake, this was an illegal act. There is no proof that drugs are being smuggled in from Venezuela, in fact drug deaths are declining in this country, Venezuela has not attacked us, our nation is not under pressure from lack of oil, and Congress did not meet and hold a vote to endorse this military aggression against another country, doubtless they were even informed in advance. Will the Republican Congress finally act now to rein in Trump’s egregious illegal power grabs? Absolutely not. 

Unfortunately, this is not the first time this country has engaged in regime change in Latin America and other parts of the world and the results have always been dismal. It never leads to improvement for the people, not when we set up a puppet government or when we actively govern because freedom is never the motivation. It’s always greed for a country’s resources.

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And because all that isn’t bad enough my kitchen sink is almost completely stopped up. This is a chronic and recurrent problem. Whoever built this house did a crappy job of plumbing from the kitchen sink to the septic system. When we first bought this place and it stopped up almost immediately, the plumber replaced the 45˚ turn under the house with the curved sweep it should have been which has helped but there is some other issue somewhere between the sink and the septic tank. We have to have it completely reamed out every few years, using a powerful unclogging agent in between times but eventually that stops working and we have to call the plumber again. The only real solution is to have the piping completely replaced. Anyway, the plumber is supposed to come today.

I finished the grid page in my art journal. Now trying to decide what to do next, another page or may start a new painting.

But before that I’m going to pick up pecans one more time here and across the street to sell and there are still so many up in the trees. It’s so warm out there, currently 70˚ and in the 80s the next few days, another week of spring/summer when we should be having highs in the 50s and 60s. 

hope springs eternal

Mimosas, brunch, naps, streaming.

A new year but first let me say I am well and thank you for all your concern. It was just a cold, two miserable nights and days, third day tolerable, now completely well so the immune system kicked butt.

Yes, hope springs eternal. Surely (hahahahahaha) this year will be better than the year of destruction that was ’25. I needn’t list the horrors, the cruelty, the greed, the graft, the stupidity, the decimation of the government, the loss of our allies, the attacks on our constitution, the tromping of our civil rights, the illegal acts of war, etc etc etc, perpetrated by the puppet masters Musk and Miller while Trump tarts up the White House, tears down the East Wing, puts his name and picture on beloved institutions that he doesn’t deserve, and whines constantly about how mistreated he is. Surely this soulless empty shell of a man with a bottomless pit of need without one iota of compassion or empathy or love whose only motivation is revenge against any and all who oppose him cannot last another year. Since the republicans in control of Congress are spineless thank all the gods that be for the courts, the only thing standing between our democracy and the full on authoritarianism of that fascist nazi Stephen Miller, the guy really in charge. Trump is just the figurehead like the Wizard in OZ only the man behind the curtain is not Trump.

There are some glimmers of hope; the courts for one, but also Trump is losing support as his policies negatively affect the people that voted for him. Trump signs are disappearing from yards, polls show that even among republicans support for him and his policies is waning, some republican congresspeople are starting to show a little defiance, and even better, Democrats are winning all the special elections even in red states. Of course that only makes him more dangerous, doubling down on revenge politics as illustrated by his recent veto of a bipartisan bill to provide clean drinking water to rural Colorado (as well as a bill that provided for water flow to the Miccosukee Tribe in Florida that was part of the opposition the building of Alligator Alcatraz) that passed both houses of Congress unanimously because Rep. Boebert, who co-sponsored the bill, voted to release the Epstein files. And then there is his deteriorating health and mental state that is getting harder and harder to disguise, his participation in the rape of young girls as revealed by the continued release of the Epstein files despite attempts to excise his name. Surely (again hahahahahaha) all this will hasten his departure. But then enter AI and the gullibility of his core cult who will never abandon him.

So yeah, last year sucked.

Well, I didn’t intend to go off on Trump and the devastation of his administration of unqualified, cruel, and hateful sycophants but here we are. How much worse can it get (don’t answer that).

It wasn’t bad on a personal level. I have a new great grandchild. I’ve sold some of my prints and notecards though no paintings yet. Despite the cold here at the end, my health is good. I had a wonderful birthday party for my 75th. I am blessed in many ways, my white skin insulating me from some of the worst other people are experiencing (and believe me, I do not take that lightly). So I look forward to another year of art and gardening and volunteering and friendships and family and resistance.

Happy New Year.

ps: I will get around to answering last post’s comments, just not right now.

do not invoke the gods

Apparently I bragged one time too many that I don’t get sick because sick I am. Damn. Can’t remember the last time I got sick but that little rug rat of a boy gave me an unwanted gift. At least I assume whatever this is came from Harrison. Started as a scratchy throat and a runny nose Saturday evening, then a cough and watering eyes, copious amounts of clear snot, can’t tell you how many tissues I’ve gone through. Two miserable nights with little sleep. Haven’t tested  but no, not bad enough to be flu or covid, just a cold. was starting to feel better Monday evening and finally got some sleep last night. Feeling much better today, not 100% but functuional.

Mostly I sat on the couch and read Sunday and yesterday, started a new book, a Painter’s Mill Chief of Police Kate Burkholder novel that takes place in the Amish community, Rage by Linda Castillo, which I’ve almost finished. I’ve read three or four in this series.

The other thing I did Sunday between blowing my nose was work on two more pages in my art journal. Not sure I’m finished with the first one, may go back and embellish it. Did the basic layout on another which I am in the process of embellishing. Felt so bad yesterday I didn’t work on either one. This is what I have so far. the first one is a bird’s eye view of the toadstools I posted the picture of last post (watercolor, colored pencil, permanent marker). I looked up the difference between mushroom and toadstool, toadstool generally refers to poisonous mushrooms and I assume the ones that pop up in my yard are not edible. 

The second page was an exercise suggested by that mysterious blogger Codex. Create a grid with masking tape, paint the open areas different colors, take a marker and  draw over the whole thing, tape and all, remove the tape. Now I’m going back and embellishing all the little rectangles. The intent is to add more detail and draw frames around each one as if it’s a display in a gallery. We’ll see how far I get with it.

    

Haven’t done any yoga of course. Abby always amuses me. When she doesn’t feel like doing the class for whatever reason she will check with me first to see if I’m coming, usually around or in between holidays. Monday was scheduled and then I got a text from her yesterday afternoon; “yoga tonight or nah?”, since I wasn’t feeling well I told her I wasn’t coming. Not a minute later she sent out a group text canceling the class, too cold (which it was) and windy, everybody stay home and stay warm.

Speaking of warm, the unseasonal warm weather last week apparently convinced the smaller fringe flower trees that it was spring. The birds seem to think so too.

Marcmas, the lost days

I started designating the week between Christmas and New Year’s as the lost days, really starting a couple of days before Christmas, when we were working because the few days before Christmas until the few days after New Year’s Day it was impossible to get any business accomplished so we generally just closed for the week plus. Even though we are retired, I still take this week to mostly do nothing. Wander the yard weather permitting, catch up on my reading, whatever else I find to do or not do with my time, no pressure. And so I wandered the yard and saw Brazilian button flower (above), bluebonnet (it’s been so dry I didn’t think we would get any next year but I counted at least 10), ball moss, toadstools.

I signed up for the next ‘advanced’ art journal workshop in January. I thought I should probably have more than the four pages we did in the first workshop so since I have this time I’ve been doing a few more after ignoring it all these months. I have limited supplies, permanent markers and water based markers, colored pencils, pencil, watercolors. I have a set of acrylics but so far haven’t used them. And I’m using my cheap Prang watercolor set with a limited (16) range of colors instead of my several sets of professional watercolors with way too many choices because I’m trying to keep these pages loose and quick, just studies instead of paintings. So far three new pages and the beginning of a fourth. The first one took me about four days to complete but the other two were quick and loose which is something I need to work on as I am not generally a spontaneous artist. 

I may not get time to work on the next page today because…

today is Marcmas! Marc’s birthday, 74 years old. We’re going out for a meal when our son, who is driving out from the city, and our daughter get here. This is the third? fourth? year we have done this. I love being around all my family; kids, grandkids, and now great grandkids and the chaos of my daughter’s house but it’s special to have just the four of us, our core family, for a few hours without the distraction of succeeding generations. Did I take pictures? No.

But I did take a few Christmas Day over at Sarah’s house. Harrison is 11 months and can stand but not yet walking. He found Paisleigh’s discarded apple that she took a few bites of and he spent the day gnawing on it with his one little tooth. Meanwhile Paisleigh was putting on all her new clothes, modeling them for me. I think she has on three layers here though the pajama shirt on top is on backwards.

Now that all the days of gathering are done for the year I’m ready for the empty lost days.