Archive for May, 2006

The Rune Man Appraisal

Wednesday, May 31st, 2006

It’s happened a second time within eight weeks—more property dumped in the gap between the Town House and the building on the corner next door (this time a pile of antique silverware). While I was waiting at the police department, a nervous guy with extensive rune-like tattoos started a conversation. I think he might have been a crime victim and it looked like he was there to turn in a list of stolen items. He was telling me now crazy a place this was, a conclusion he’d formed after living here a month.

“People do meth. I’ve never even seen meth. They snort it at work. People drink and drive all the time. I don’t even drink. I’m from New York. This place is crazy. It’s like it’s a no-consequences town or something. If you get caught drinking and driving in New York, you don’t get your license back. Not like here, with multiple offenses before they do anything. It’s crazy.”

I didn’t know what to say. How bad will it have to get in Kentucky before we experience the kind of enforcement crack-downs that have already taken place in other areas of the country? How bad will it have to get in Danville?

“Bimbo’s TV Trivia” lives on

Tuesday, May 30th, 2006

Dr. Gruntled has a recent post that gets some of us thinking about how marriage is portrayed on TV. He suggests that “Medium” currently features the best marriage and welcomes other nominees for strong marriages on television today.

I haven’t found a series that I can get myself to regularly watch since I soured on “Alias” and ABC cancelled “Eyes,” so I’ll have to present a more historical survey. Look elsewhere for cliche nominees like The Cleavers, The Petries, Andy Taylor, and Steve Douglas. This is my peculiar take on the subject, in no particular order, but highly influenced by my favorite shows:

Best Single Mom—

One Day at a Time | Ann Romano | Bonnie Franklin
Star Trek: The Next Generation | Commander Dr. Beverly Crusher | Gates McFadden
The Big Valley | Victoria Barkley | Barbara Stanwyck
Julia | Julia Baker | Diahann Carroll

Best Single Dad—

The Byrds of Paradise | Sam Byrd | Timothy Busfield
The Courtship of Eddie’s Father | Tom Corbett | Bill Bixby
Jonny Quest | Dr. Benton C. Quest | voice of Don Messick
The Rifleman | Lucas McCain | Chuck Connors

Best Married Couple—

thirtysomething | Michael and Hope Steadman | Ken Olin and Mel Harris
Firefly | Zoe and Hoban Washburne | Gina Torres and Alan Tudyk
Life Goes On | Libby and Drew Thacher | Patti LuPone and Bill Smitrovich
Love on a Rooftop | David and Julie Willis | Peter Deuel and Judy Carne

No greater love

Monday, May 29th, 2006

I need not stand in my family cemetery today to have an overwhelming sense of gratitude for those who have put on a uniform to serve our nation. They performed the duty, often dangerous, at times fraught with extreme peril. There are those in every generation who meet the necessity. I owe them too much, even when they changed their minds after returning home. Some of them did not make it home, and I join with those who offer this day as an inadequate memorial to the magnitude of their sacrifice.

† God bless their souls.

Uncle Art must have known about these things

Sunday, May 28th, 2006

The discipline of aikido is known as a “soft” martial art, but during my period of training it became clear that the defensive moves were ineffective if executed without a certain vigor. On the other hand, an application of too much energy was counterproductive, impeding the ability to flow with the attack. The practitioner was at risk if he became the aggressor. However, by contrast, the dispatch with which one hopes to end an encounter is clearly not the finality of becoming a victim, and that necessitates learning how to find the proper way to redirect incoming force. There are times when you must step directly into the face of an assault to protect yourself. Much of my emphasis during that time of study was overcoming a natural inhibition to act, but with just the right amount of decisiveness. It didn’t come easy. It required focus, relaxation, timing, and fearlessness.

An even less competitive practice is yoga. If one seeks to “win” yoga, it immediately becomes something else. Nevertheless, most, if not all, yoga postures lose their essential value if one “wimps out.” But what’s the difference between pushing too hard and “surrendering” into the pose? Where is that elusive intermediate ground that exists between mere athleticism and withdrawing from the challenge.

People are surprised to learn that I haven’t cut my grass with a gas-engine mower for two or three years. I guess it’s been since my Uncle Art died. He gave me his Craftsman rotary push mower when he moved away from his house on Fernwood. He’d gotten away from relying on it when he wasn’t physically up to it anymore. I didn’t dedicate myself to using it until after he died. I don’t know how old the darn thing is, but I think he used it for a long time. Because I considered myself a “townie” like Uncle Art, and our yards were about the same size, I figured I would give it a try—as a quiet way to honor his memory.

Some things are easier than they look. Using Uncle Art’s lawn mower is not one of them. It’s tough. Or I should say it’s tough to use it well—in other words, to cut grass. It’s easy to push it very slow, but nothing much happens, and it’s not difficult to push it very fast, but the blades spin too rapidly to cut. I’ve learned that I have to find just the right inertia to get it to “bite.” The challenge is that this proper biting speed requires the most stamina. You don’t have to understand mechanics to know it must have something to to with the physics of “work.” Now I know one of the ways Uncle Art stayed trim and avoided the Seitz roundbelly. Undoubtedly, I need to sharpen the blades, but I know that same “middle way” phenomenon is there to experience in human-powered lawn mowing, too.

And the more I look around me or examine my personal challenges, the “middle way” and its mysteries keep perplexing me. How do people master it? How does the Indy-car driver learn the margin between being passed and hitting the wall or blowing an engine? How does the salesman find the sweet spot between an off-putting overconfidence and the telltale signs of desperation? Would my son Bruce have lost his life last year if he hadn’t achieved the rare zone between fighting and giving up? I once had a young cyclist observe the way I was hitting my brakes on a downhill curve, and he said later, “Just remember—speed is your friend.” Hmm. The way I’d heard it, “Speed kills.”

Eager or patient? Audacious or cautious? Assertive or receptive?

Seize the day, by God.

        — or —

Let go and let God?

Somewhere in between, lad. Somewhere in between.

Loose ends, loose cannons

Saturday, May 27th, 2006

It really hit me hard the other day that it’s been over four years since Dana asked people to kindly submit their collections of my hand-crafted greeting cards for the birthday retrospective at Grayson’s Tavern. Inexcusable! I promptly decided to finish my delinquent documentation effort and return every card to its rightful owner.

While we’re on the subject of a ton of bricks, the Boyle County Library took possession of the church across the street and immediately put up a chain-link fence. Members of the congregation had been picking apart the facade all month, perched precariously on aluminum ladders. It was a bit scary to watch. The Library folks obviously wanted to put a stop to any makeshift salvage operation that might continue, semi-authorized or otherwise.

Remind me sometime to fully describe the phenomenon of “scrounge madness,” related in its deviant nature to “movin’ madness.”

I’m waiting to see if our standing request yields a formal result. The expansion committee was thrown a curve the other day when Fiscal Court magistrates declined their appeal for financial support, voting instead to use County employees to haul off debris. Sadly, that may knock out of contention my brilliant idea for a recycled driveway, but at the same time curtail any similar display of “scrounge madness” on our side of West Broadway.

Tales of the Graybeard Prospector XV

Friday, May 26th, 2006

• Made an expedition to Lincoln County yesterday and the result was an outstanding conversation with the head of the Industrial Authority and the new Director of Tourism. We’re in the door, and the timing seems perfect.

I was mildly astonished by the way downtown Stanford is coming to life this summer. I remembered my long-time pal Mark telling me about its quaint drug store and that it served the best chocolate malt in the region. I was so uplifted after the meeting that I decided to stop in and visit the soda fountain, and to see if he was right.

Unbelievably “oldendaydelicious”!

When I strolled Main Street, thinking about the opportunities, I was transported back to when I was a 22-year-old vagabond in Europe, and the perceptions I’d get whenever I entered a new city. Back then I felt I could conquer any unfamiliar place in a matter of hours—Amsterdam, Zurich, Florence, Rome, Munich, Paris…

I’m 32 years older now, and my whiskers are a different color, but I reckon I can still conquer Stanford, Kentucky.

graybeard prospector

Don’t give me no hand-me-down world

Thursday, May 25th, 2006

My sis sent me word that it’s the birthday of Emerson (He’d be 203 today, in case you were wondering.), and also this characteristic quotation:

“Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote those books.”

Some people don’t care for quotations, but I like one now and then. Emerson used them often, but you can bet they weren’t hand-me-downs. Reading an Emerson quote is for me like watching a good trailer. You have to see the movie.

That’s why, once Joe Wood got me started on RWE, I won’t ever stop digging behind those quotations.

Tales of the Graybeard Prospector XIV

Wednesday, May 24th, 2006

• As I mull over my current circumstances, “dire situation” is a phrase I hesitate to use, but it’s probably as accurate as any. That hit home tonight when I realized the graybeard was shamelessly prospecting during his traditional Wednesday evening bicycle ride.

Sorta sad, eh?

graybeard prospector

Something is wrong with this picture

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006

Long day. All pro-bono. All day. Long face.

I did have someone prepare a delicious lunch for me

Monday, May 22nd, 2006

Everything seemed more difficult today. The weights at the gym seemed heavier. The problems in the studio seemed more resistant to solution. The effort to ignore the glorious day outside seemed more burdensome.

Yes, I’d name a few counties after him, too

Sunday, May 21st, 2006

When the alarm went off I could smell that the air (coming gently through the narrowly cracked window beside my head) was perfect for an early ride, and I met my chums at the bike shop before 7:30. It was just a bit nippy for May, but I was dressed appropriately, having poorly overcompensated on yesterday’s run. We completed 32 miles through Mercer County and back, and the only problem we had was blundering into a long stretch of chewed-off road surface near the Beaumont Inn.

Mombo is native to another beautiful county named Mercer, in Ohio. I got to thinking that I’ve never known anything about this Mercer namesake, so, since I’ve been thoroughly “Google-ized” over the past couple years, I checked it out. As usual, it didn’t take long to determine that both counties, like many in other states, including Pennsylvania and Illinois, were named after Dr. Hugh Mercer, Revolutionary War commander and physician who fled Scotland as a refugee after serving as an assistant surgeon at Culloden. He distinguished himself in America as a patriot, and, after Washington promoted him to Brigadier General, gave his life for his adopted homeland in 1777—

At the battle of Princeton, while leading the vanguard of the Americans, his horse was shot under him, and he was compelled to continue the contest on foot. He was surrounded by British officers, who ordered him to surrender. Drawing his sword, he was finally beaten to the ground with muskets and his body pierced with bayonet thrusts. With five wounds in his body and two in his head, he was left for dead on the field. He was carried to a neighboring house. When Washington heard of the fate of his old friend, he sent his nephew, Major Lewis, to watch over the final moments of the dying hero.

This was the price paid for my pleasant life… riding my bike like a carefree boy on a Sunday morning. This was the price paid by the countless souls who bought my freedom with their most precious coin—life itself.

LAFF COMIX—the unreachable black hole

Saturday, May 20th, 2006

Don’t get me wrong—I’m very grateful for my talents, but I’m thinking that perhaps there’s no greater gift in life than a keen, dominant sense of humor. PartiallyClips proves that anyone who’s funny enough can create an entertaining Webcomic, even if the drawings look like clods of rhino dung. On the other hand, try producing really cool cartoon art with crappy dialog and see where it gets you.

No fair…

Another line in the water

Friday, May 19th, 2006

Joan made a special trip to Danville this morning to meet the application deadline for an employment opportunity here. I’m glad she did it. Nothing may come of it, but, in my mind, she’s uniquely qualified to excel at this newly created position, and it would be a job she could enjoy—something she deserves. Actually, I just like the idea of her working only half a block away. That would be cool.

Night Hag, begone

Thursday, May 18th, 2006

Last night before bed I read Ian’s post about his mother, and it would’ve buckled my knees if I hadn’t been sitting down. And then I had this dream where I was swimming in a pond and there was this powerful suction hole at the bottom that carried water a good ways off, and I got up the courage to swim into it and it sucked me through a tunnel and spat me out down a hill. Then someone else decided to try it (I won’t use a name), and they didn’t come out the other side. I had the horrible realization that the person had become stuck and was probably struggling and holding his breath, so I had to decide immediately whether to go in, too, with the hope of possibly dislodging him and forcing us through, but having the clear awareness that we would likely both be stuck and drown—or whether to do nothing—and I had to decide NOW. It was so frightening that I woke up and I haven’t forgotten about it yet. Sorry, I promise I won’t make a practice of recording my dreams here. Maybe all this is because I was talking to Mombo about that bad dream I had back in January.

Tales of the Graybeard Prospector XIII

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

• Put on a necktie this morning and spent an hour with the new leader of Boyle County’s Economic Development Partnership. Call it “chemistry” or whatever, but sometimes things just click from the outset, and the only way the meeting could’ve gone better was if he’d given me an assignment on the spot. Stay tuned.

graybeard prospector

Tales of the Graybeard Prospector XII

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

• This has always been a numbers game—numbers of prospects, letters, phone calls, meetings, and presentations. Build the numbers and something is bound to hit, sooner or later. That’s not what causes me to scratch my whiskers, though. No, I’m still trying to figure out how I promised to create a proposal for a service I have absolutely no idea how to provide…

graybeard prospector

heart’s zeal = uneven keel

Monday, May 15th, 2006

Band Festival, Salvation Army, Bicycle Commission…
Alas, where did my Monday go?

A Happy Mombo’s Day

Sunday, May 14th, 2006

An evening of scrounged Chang leftovers, Godiva chocolate, and microwave popcorn… Priceless.

Double Graduation, Good Vibrations

Saturday, May 13th, 2006

I wasn’t able to spend last night working on my two “Photorama” collages for the Clan graduates, since we spent the evening with the Simpsons watching “Out of Africa.” It forced me to complete the gifts today, but everything worked out fine. After an eight-mile morning run, I was able to focus on my intuitive sprint to the family deadline—an ideal circumstance for creating this particular type of artwork—as well as getting to savor one of the only flawless motion pictures made in the past 25 years.

25 years… that’s Brendan’s lifetime, and includes the lifetimes of all the Clan youngsters present at our celebration for Nicholas and Caitlan. And speaking of Brendan, I got to see him in action with his new camera, an impressive piece of equipment. As I shot with my vintage Nikkormat, I felt like a geezer driving around in a dusty old coupe. Ah well, at least I didn’t say, “No, sirree-Bob, they don’t make ’em like this anymore.”

It was fun to eat good Chinese food with Nic and Josh and Marty, too. Nic was having a great day, one that will last long in the memory bank. I wish my Godson well as he prepares to begin his studies in veterinary medicine. I really didn’t get to chat with Oxford-bound Caitlan, but, actually, I really didn’t get to talk to many of the others either, including my mom, but that didn’t stop me from simply absorbing the magnitude of the good family vibes, before it was all over much too quickly.

Start the countdown

Friday, May 12th, 2006

Finalizing the design and artwork for the Band Festival t-shirt took far longer than I expected. I’ve decided that if I’m going to put in this kind of effort next year, the committee needs to select me as the “Featured Artist.” Otherwise, it’ll be time to bow out. It could make for an especially busy spring, since I just found out I’ve been granted a solo show at the gallery of the Community Arts Center in May of 2007.

Tales of the Graybeard Prospector XI

Thursday, May 11th, 2006

• This was one of those oddball days with wall-to-wall meetings and a string of outings into the community. Naturally, I tried to make the most of continuous contact with a wide variety of people, doing my best to avoid missing any opportunity to soft-sell our valuable capability.

Blow by quiet blow, I must pursue this steady defiance, in opposition to any prevailing trend of discontinuity in my commercial affairs. Resignation—to predispositions of temperament, or inevitabilities, or thought habits, or genes, or patterns of behavior, or personal psychology, or so-called karma, or perceptions of Fate—is not an option, as long as I have the power to invite change. Nothing is fixed in a world full of grace, in a world where I am receptive to the One Source of constructive change. As one would expect, the essayist provides even more keys:

But Fate has its lord; limitation its limits; is different seen from above and from below; from within and from without. For, though Fate is immense, so is power, which is the other fact in the dual world, immense. If Fate follows and limits power, power attends and antagonizes Fate. We must respect Fate as natural history, but there is more than natural history. For who and what is this criticism that pries into the matter? Man is not order of nature…But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him…if you please to plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say, Fate is all; then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free…it is wholesome to man to look not at Fate, but the other way: the practical view is the other. His sound relation to these facts is to use and command, not to cringe to them…They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, &c., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear.

“Once a pirate, always a pirate.”

No…

And the Old Fisherman was not the only one who misunderstood.

The Ghost of Lice was wrong…

Follow not the path of destiny, but accept the freedom to understand and transcend it.

Act to empower oneself with a force of creative conduct.

graybeard prospector

There I go again

Wednesday, May 10th, 2006

…creating a design that I have absolutely no idea how to execute for final production. I suppose it’s how I’ve inadvertently forced myself over the years to learn much of what I know, most of which I’ll never use again.