Hand – Work

In the last six weeks I haven’t written here for a number of reasons, but mostly because I didn’t feel I had anything much to say, and like everyone else, just trying to keep up with my To Do List has been a challenge.

In October, I stopped at the library to pick up an item I had requested, and while there I looked at the “New” book shelf and found an interesting looking fiction book titled “Flight Portfolio” by Julie Orringer. This is a story about an American man who went to France during World War II to help the artists in Europe emigrate to the U.S. Having been born during the war, I was taught nothing about it in school growing up.

This story takes place in about 1939–40, is very well written, and at many points is hilarious. I was reading a chapter each evening before going to sleep, and every night I was eager to learn what would happen next.

At the end of the book there is a five-page author’s note where I learned that it is based on the life of Varian Fry who is the main character, and some fictional characters based on implications of her research, which couldn’t be acknowledged at the time it happened.

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My living room has a large picture window and about the only time I spend in this room is checking on whatever activity is going on across the street. The man is a general contractor which means he does all kinds of jobs and there is constant coming and going. One day, I glanced out the dining room window at what looked like a wall. In the living room I saw this:

It didn’t stay there very long.

On December 22, during a gentle rain I saw this beautiful, full rainbow, at times even a double rainbow, from that same picture window.

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I continue to frequent estate sales near my home, usually on the second day of the sale. It is a great way to pick up odd tools, other items of fascination, and supplies for collage like fabric, old books, canvass board, and odd papers with handwriting on them.

A few weeks ago, there were two estate sales on the same street! At the first one I found a flannel nightgown, a “Pajamagram” with the tag still on it, brand new for just $5.

At the second sale, I couldn’t pass up what I’m calling a collage cookbook. This book has 815 pages. Has finger indexes like a dictionary, was published in 1939 for the San Francisco Examiner, and is titled the Prudence Penny Cookbook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The owner made some handwritten notes on some recipes, but mostly added in recipes from newspapers, boxes, magazines, and typed recipe cards, which she pasted over pictures or taped to the top of pages with similar recipes.

I’ve never seen anything like it. I joked with the cashier, who is my former mailman, that I was taking it off his hands. He charged me a dollar for the book and two other small items. Such a deal!

On that nutty note, I wish you all a Happy New Year, full of whatever brings you joy.          2020 – Bring it on.

 

 

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.

 

 

How long has it been since you were at a high school football game on a Friday night? For me, it probably would have been 59 years, until last week.

I remember one game in particular from back in 1960, when a certain young man was kind to me on a bitter cold Friday night in northern Ohio. My date had gone off to visit with some of his friends several rows away and left me sitting with Ray, whose usual date had not come to the game because she had a cold. We always double dated to the games because Ray had access to the family car, and my date didn’t have that privilege.

I remember Ray talking with me as the game progressed, and at half time he went and got us hot chocolate. Five years later, I married Ray, who was Chris’s father.

Fortunately, last Friday’s game was not freezing cold, as we watched my grandson, Vinnie Marquez, number 7, play at Oakmont High School in Roseville, California.

A few weeks ago, a friend of Chris, who lives in Stockton, was on Facebook at one of Vin’s games, and I thought “I guess I’m not a very good grandma because I haven’t been to any of his games.” I suppose I could have gone to a game, but I tend to wait to be invited to things.

Then suddenly, I was specifically invited to attend this game. It was “honor the seniors” night, where senior football players, cheer leaders, dance team, and band members walked out on the field with their families as the announcer identified each family member by name.

The players and cheer leaders walked before the game began, the others at half time. And they took video and still photos, which showed up on my iPhone on Saturday and Sunday.

Vinnie has been playing football since he was seven. I had seen him play once about five years ago when his school played another team in Stockton at St. Mary’s school. At that game, I had trouble keeping track of him on the field, but this time he was easy to spot on most of the plays. He plays wide receiver, so he is all over the place. He also holds the ball for the kick after a touchdown.

The Oakmont Vikings started the season well – undefeated the first four games. But once the other teams got up to speed, they have lost a few games. The opposing team from Rio Linda won the toss and had a big lead at the end of the first quarter. Oakmont fought back, but lost 35 – 63.

A month ago, I never expected I’d be sitting on bleachers on a night in October. Life has its little surprises and gifts, like sitting around relaxing with family—a welcome respite after ten weeks of cutting ivy in my yard.

If you want to know what happened between the football game in 1960 and now, you can read the whole story in my memoir, “Looking for Connection” available as an eBook on Amazon here.

As for me, I’ll be busy all week cleaning up my yard from the mess the wind made on Sunday.

 

Over the summer, I have been trying out different materials and combinations of papers by somewhat following projects in the book “Creative Paint Workshop” by Ann Baldwin. I say “somewhat” because I don’t have some of the exact colors of paint she uses, and it is not locally available. I am starting to understand how glazes work and which colors go well together. For me, reading about the process doesn’t explain it. I have to experience it at the end of my brush to “get it.”

The other difference is that in the last two collages I wrote about, I was using papers from my trips that had certain meanings for me which I didn’t want to cover up completely. In this collage, I used pages of words taken from an assortment of old books, magazines, and my stash which I randomly selected. It is called a Word Collage because there are no images.

I remember seeing a large collage of words at one of the local art shows some years ago. The artist had carefully pasted down sentences, and phrases of words, line by line, horizontal and vertical, many of them well known sayings, and in the center was an image of a yellow rubber duck. I liked the idea, wished I had time to stand there and read the whole thing, and realized what an incredible amount of work it had been to make.

In addition to using no images, I did not build up texture with fabric, cardboard, or molding paste. I started with a piece of watercolor paper which had a few dabs of paint here and there. I pasted down papers from old books, magazines, and a library signature card.

I added a few rubber stamp images, letters made with a stencil, and a first layer of acrylic Quinacridone Burnt Orange paint. The different papers take up the paint differently because some are really old, and magazine paper has a different finish than books. I filled in the white spots with Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide. I added fluid Paynes gray around the edges.

At some point I noticed that the page from the shorthand book had a title: “The Little Things.” With all the talk in the papers and on the radio, (I don’t do TV), about how divided we all are, it occurred to me that in personal relationships it’s often the little things “that divide us — that catch our attention.” So I picked up my Sharpie and wrote that phrase under the shorthand paper.

The very dark area on the left side is an attempt to try a technique in the book. The instructions were to put a clear layer of matt medium over the first layer of paper and again after the paint layer. Then paint an area with regular acrylic Paynes gray put on thickly, and while it is still wet, write into it with a rubber paint shaper to reveal the lighter paint underneath in the letters. My try at this didn’t come out as well as I hoped it would, partly, I think because the paint I used is old and a bit lumpy.

In the process of layering these paints, I noticed that fluid Paynes gray going over the yellow produces a sort of green hue which I liked, so I carefully touched a few more areas here and there to spread that green about.

The yellow shape in the lower left corner is the first leaf to turn color and fall off my birch trees. It sat on my kitchen counter for a week or more, until it became the final touch in this collage.

I like the idea of making collage using words, especially if I just grab various papers and paste them down, noticing what the words say as I look at it later, and pondering what they might mean to me now.

 

When I was a young child, my mother would hold the shells, pictured above, up to my ear, so I could hear the ocean. She found them on her honeymoon in February 1941, somewhere in Florida. The picture below, made with shells and painted, was a wedding gift to my parents, and it hung on our living room wall all the years I was growing up.

When I was about nine, we started to spend my father’s vacation at a cottage on Lake Erie, where I would occasionally find shells in the shallow water or at the beach. I’d put them in my pocket and take them home.

I might have become a biologist of some sort, if my high school biology class had not been such a disappointment. John Marshall High had two or three biology teachers but only one biology classroom.  I went to Jr. High at the high school, and the art room was just down the hall from the biology room, so I walked past it several times a day. All tenth graders took biology, and I had been waiting for three years to be in that class with all the wonderful natural displays. Unfortunately, my biology class took place in the physics lecture room, which only had roll-up charts of the solar system.

I was twenty-one the first time I saw the ocean, when my family stayed a night or two at a motel in Virginia Beach, Virginia, after a few days in Washington, D.C. where we visited the White House, the Smithsonian, and the Pentagon.

I was eager to see the ocean again when my husband and I spent two weeks touring through Florida on Ray’s vacation. Living in Cincinnati, we drove down the Atlantic side stopping here and there. Coming back north on the Gulf of Mexico side, I remember floating on the salt water at St. Pete beach. The beach was loaded with hundreds of shells. Most of them were small or broken but that didn’t matter – I wanted to take them all home.

I have been hauling home shells every chance I get for over fifty years. I learned how to catalogue what I found with an item number, the date found, and the location. Most of the shells I could identify from shell books. Now, my collection has over 4600 item numbers, but many of those items have more than one shell of that species with that location and date, so I know I have well over 5000 shells.

When I was working, I went on several trips with a small group of collectors where we spent every day collecting and cleaning shells. I collected in Baja, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Panama, and The Bahamas. Also, from Santa Cruz to Seattle on the west coast.

Last year, I finally got everything I had collected, or otherwise acquired, entered into my log. This started as a hand written list, but is now also in a digital data base. The shells are housed in metal or plastic cabinets in my office room.

And then, given the size of the collection and my increasing age, I began to ask myself, what will I do with them?  While I haven’t found an answer to that question yet, I’m aware that some museums and universities will take donations of well documented collections, so that might be a possibility.

I can’t really answer that question until I know what I have, and what condition the shells are in. They are housed by families in the drawers. I have begun to print out sections of the digital record, one family at a time. I’m looking at each item. I’m finding a few shells that are not in the right family, as well as typos and formatting inconsistencies in the digital list, which I am correcting.

This is an exciting time to be identifying each shell with all the resources available on the internet. I can see wonderful images just by entering the scientific name of the shell.

When I attend the annual convention of the Conchologists of America, I’m often asked which shells I like best. I don’t have a favorite family, but I probably will discover one or two I like best while I’m doing this.

This is my hobby that I enjoy after dinner. I’ve only just begun – this will be a long project with about 160 families.  I’m having so much fun seeing what I have, where they came from, and remembering the place, or the trip, where I found them.

I left home at 2:48 p.m. on Monday, December 24 headed seventy miles north to Roseville, CA where my son Chris lives. It was dry, but threatening. As I drove up the on ramp at Hammer Lane, the first rain drops hit the windshield, and before the next exit the wipers were going on high speed. The heavy rain continued on the two lane section of I-5 until Elk Grove where the road picks up a third lane. Fortunately, the heavy traffic was headed south on the other side of the freeway.

Sacramento had easy, normal rain when I passed through. It was still raining when I arrived at my son’s house at about 4:30. When I stepped into the house, I was greeted with three new faces. Two of them ran toward the door; the third stood there in shock, and quickly disappeared.

Jeremy helped me unload my car of gifts, food, a duffel bag, and pillow. There was a face-to-tummy hug from my grandson, Vinnie, who disappeared until dinner was served. Jer was busy putting food in the oven at the right time, and fixing a salad. I learned all about his new job.

The almost three-month-old kittens were busy checking out my shoes, chasing colorful Christmas bows, and grabbing anything that moved on the Christmas tree. Once Chris got home from work, dinner was on the table in no time, my grandson ate and was back in his room before I had tasted everything once.

I had brought my IPad and was hoping Vin could show me how to do a few things on it, but I was never able to catch his eye, mainly because I couldn’t see his eyes due to his new hairdo.

When I go to Chris’ house, I seem to get caught up in a vortex of image and sound, so foreign to what I’m used to, that I just watch it happening around me, like I’ve stepped into the middle of a movie.

About 9 p.m. the shy kitten made an appearance, keeping her distance from me, while the two large dogs gnawed new bones, and we watched a movie called “Dumplin.” Things shifted into high gear as gifts were wrapped, the TV news repeated itself about every half hour, the kittens got into more stuff, and the Pope reminded us why we have Christmas.

When I got up to use the bathroom at 5 a.m. Christmas morning, one of the cats was outside the door of my room, staring at it, waiting for it to open. When I came out of the bathroom, she was gone.

Christmas morning Vinnie opened most of his gifts and had gone back upstairs before I could finish a small bowl of oatmeal. Once all the gifts were opened, I put on my makeup, and curled my hair. The two kittens attacked the neatly stacked pile of tissue paper and discovered it slides wonderfully on carpet.

My grandson went to his friend’s house wearing his new clothes, Chris cleaned up the kitchen, and soon it was time for me to get on the road back to Stockton, with the sun shining brightly. It is nice to go for a short visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Since the end of summer I have been accumulating clothing and household items that need the attention of the sewing machine in the small front bedroom of my home. This room is mostly used for storage of things I might use in my art, as well as my 12-harness loom, a small loveseat with a hide-a-bed for the rare occasions when we have a visitor for a few nights, and my sewing machine.                                    

The Singer sewing machine was my first purchase after I began my first graphic arts job in 1962. It has a cam system with discs to make decorative stitches, and it will sew in reverse with just the push of a lever. My mother’s machine did not have a reverse feature which required me to turn the item 180 degrees to sew over the end of the seam to lock in the stitching. My machine was portable, so I could set it up in front of the TV on a card table. Soon after I got married, I found an old treadle cabinet, with four small drawers like my paternal grandmother had, at a yard sale.

Until the last few years, I did a lot of sewing, making most of my clothes. Now, I mostly repair things. I wanted to get this room cleaned up before I start making plans for next year. Tuesday afternoon I finished the sewing. Next, I will be baking nut bread and a few Christmas cookies.

Christmas is one of those events that can take over your life for weeks or even months if you let it. I used to make hand-woven gifts, bake dozens of cookies, wrap gifts with ribbons and bows—the whole big deal. Then my sons married,  had families, and wanted me to come to their house.

When I worked at the Livermore VA for ten years, we had so many Christmas events and decorations at work that I was happy to get away from it at home.  When I stopped working full time with the ninety-minute one-way commute, doing all my holiday rituals became another chore on the list. I would decorate inside, but spend all day outside raking leaves. I’d wrap and mail gifts, but never see them opened.

There is nothing wrong with making a special time if it brings you joy, but I came to see it all as a huge distraction, taking me away from subjects I was studying, or projects I was in the middle of. I was spending my time and energy on activities that I didn’t care about, and didn’t seem to matter much to anyone else.

Now, I decorate in less than an hour, putting candle-type lights in my windows. I bake two kinds of cookies I really love, and enjoy a few hours with my sons and grandson on Christmas Eve and morning.

Since I’ve been writing every week about my art making, yard tending, and occasional travels, I see no reason to write a Christmas letter reviewing the year.

My wish for each of you is that you cherish the meaning that this season holds for you. I pray you will enjoy good health and peace in your heart in the New Year.    Marilyn

I was quite surprised at the end of last week when a long forgotten memory surfaced in my mind as I thought about what I had heard and seen in the Supreme Court hearings on Thursday. I was asking myself if anything in my life was similar, in which I did not know details, like where something had occurred or how I had gotten home, but still had a vivid memory of some parts of the event.

I was seventeen at the beginning of 1960 when we moved to a new house in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. I did not make friends easily, and I had not begun dating, but I had a boyfriend at our cottage on Lake Erie, who I saw in the summer.

A life-long best friend of my mother, who lived in this suburb, called her and asked if I would go to the prom with a friend of her son who needed a date. When my mother told me about it, I said I didn’t want to go, but was told I should go and I would have a good time. My father likely supported her in this.

Mother said my dress from ninth grade graduation would be fine, and I was taken to her friend’s house on the evening of the event. Her friend’s son, whom I had met before, was driving. I do not remember what his date looked like or her name. I do not remember the name of my date, but I do have an image of his face. The place where the dance was held did not look familiar, but it was dark outside when we arrived.

What I remember about the dancing was that I could feel his penis against my leg all the time. After the dance ended, I discovered that this was an all night affair. The boys decided they did not want to go to the bowling activity. I don’t know what the other girl wanted to do.

My date and I were in the back seat. He wanted to kiss me and be close. I wasn’t afraid, but I was extremely uncomfortable being in that car. I thought the night would never end. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have any money with me, so even if I could have found a pay phone, I couldn’t call.

I had never been told how to handle this kind of situation. I had often been told that I was not to talk to strangers, so I wouldn’t get into a situation. This was repeated so often and so strongly that at the age of 42, when I started to attend the community college in Livermore, I was trying to figure out if people in my classes were strangers or not, and could I talk to them.

Nothing happened except some unwelcome kisses. I was not assaulted. I don’t remember how I got home. I think, since I was uncooperative and said I wanted to go home, they may have taken me home early, because I don’t remember anything about the breakfast that was to be the last part of the prom. I was lucky.

What is coming to me now as I write this, is that I had to ring the door bell at home because I didn’t have a key. When my parents asked how the prom was, I probably said “fine” and that I was tired. I went straight to bed, and never talked about it.

This memory would sometimes flash through my mind when my mother mentioned her friend, but I would refuse to acknowledge it. It wasn’t a strong enough memory to come up while I was writing my memoir.

The other day was the first time I really thought about the event, and allowed myself to acknowledge that my mother had insisted I go to this prom as a favor to her high school friend. I guess she knew it was an all night affair, but I didn’t understand that before I went. Although Mother passed away eight years ago, I have verbally forgiven my mother this weekend for putting her friend’s request before my pleas not to be taken there.

As I have read and listened to what is being said about both testimonies, I’m sorting out what I believe from what I saw and heard. I did not hear all of the hearing, but only heard parts of it. As a trained therapist, I think there is a lot of information missing on the woman’s side.

That tiny repressed memory I have tightens my stomach as I recall that night even all these years later. So, I can believe Dr. Ford had an experience with someone and not recall details of dates and places. I also find it difficult to accept that during her psychology training this trauma was not sorted out, and is still troubling her daily life. And, I think Mr. Kavanaugh has every right to be angry as hell.