The photo above is my brother’s senior college photo taken in 1970. He was set to graduate from Kent State in Ohio that year, when state troopers were sent to the campus. I never did understand what that was about. Only the graduates and their parents had been allowed to attend the graduation ceremony, held somewhere, my mother told me several weeks after the event.

I was married, living in Cincinnati with my ten month old son, Chris. On the second Sunday of July, my mother called with the news that Ron had been in a motor vehicle accident during the night, and was hospitalized with a traumatic brain injury. He never regained consciousness and died on July 31st. I had been looking forward to getting to know him as an adult instead of an annoying kid.

Today would have been his 72nd birthday.  Happy Birthday, Ron.

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Last month, I optimistically started an online painting / mixed media course and got through the first few videos on practicing with the materials. At the same time, I was trying to get some things repaired around the house. I replaced the cracked windshield I had driven with for two years.

I made arrangements to have a sprinkler line reworked that had broken sometime in 2017. The broken pipe was somewhere under the cement patio that was here when I bought my house in 1997. In the process of the repair person assessing the situation, the broken line was turned on several times, so he could observe where the water was coming from.

The patio has a built-in fountain with a statue which was working fine when the sprinkler repair man was here, but by the next morning it had totally drained out of water. I couldn’t believe my eyes to see the pump chugging along with no water. I found several soft wet spots on the inside wall of the fountain and two places where I could insert a screwdriver between the floor of the fountain and the side wall.

After the sprinkler line was completed, I began repairing the fountain, patching numerous places in the concrete that seemed soft and the two holes I had found. Some days later, I put sealer on the repairs. Then, I spent a day painting the entire interior of the fountain.

Since it is November, the trees are coming unglued, which results in a whole new set of garden activities, mainly hauling leaves out to the street for pickup.

In the last two weeks, I’ve washed – outside and inside – most of my 23 windows and three glass-pane doors. Now I’m ready for rain.

Meanwhile, the work table in my studio has accumulated all sorts of items that need to be put away before I can get back to that course I started. There are collage materials I’ve picked up in the yard – pieces of a disintegrating tarp, bird feathers, and wire scraps the repair man left.

There are also books that came in the mail I haven’t had time to look at yet. A promotional gift pack that some little girl would like, but I don’t know who to give it to. A leaf painting from my Thursday art group to finish. Instructions for what to bring to the January Basket Makers meeting.

Under all that are the nine good-size sheets of watercolor paper patiently waiting for me to play on them. I will need to watch that video again.

So, I have actually done some painting this month. Just not the kind of painting I had expected I would be doing.