:::this is the way the world ends:::

Category: Holidays (Page 1 of 3)

J.E. may be the only one who appreciates this

I was reading Atlas Obscura this afternoon, and they talked about a beautiful clock in Glastonbury. A deeply embedded memory of this surfaced:

It was 25 years ago, around this time that I first saw that clock. 25 years ago, exactly, I was in Norwich packing up to start my Navy Dumb training. Now to get some Toasted Tea biscuits for Jerod.

So, uh, what’s we doin’ tonight, boys?

Just dreaming out loud here for a moment. There has been far too much time between visits and get togethers over the past couple of years. Understandable, of course. I am wondering what holiday plans might look like and if we dare dream up a kid-a-palooza event for somewhere down the road. There are too many great kiddos out there now with no real knowledge of the others. Perhaps we could plan something for next summer. i know a place in the mountains that may have enough space and may be cost-effective…just sayin’

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you all have a great one. Sorry you’re not all arriving up here in the cold and snow this evening for a night of Asian food before we have the usual feast on Thanksgiving Day. Tradition looms large in memory.

Amazon Kindle

Not Jeff's Kindle I got one. Anyone else? Care to muse and discuss? In this early stage with it, I’m finding the Kindle surprisingly readable and fun. In its way, it’s making reading "new." At the same time, I find myself gravitating toward nonfiction with it, rather than the more traditionally "literary" genres of fiction and (certainly) poetry. Maybe I’m used to seeking out information on a screen, and so nonfiction feels more comfortable in that format. In any case, it’s been an interesting Christmas gift…

Thanksgiving

I’m curious what all of your plans are for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Of course, I always think back to our run of Thanksgivings and miss them.

Jen, Beckett, and I will be going to Washington State to be with my parents and sisters. It should be great, and it will be nice to get together with them in our new “home” headquarters. It will be the first time taking B on a plane, so I’m sure it will pose interesting challenges. Any flight advice would be welcome, from those of you who have flown with one-year-olds…

I hope you’ll all have good holidays. Let us know what you’ll be doing to celebrate.

Keeping Up With

Eliot came home a couple of weeks ago and all of the sudden read me a book. It was quite a moment for me as you can imagine. We’re reading the Tale of Despereaux, which is better than the movie.

I just finished reading a book of essays by Wendell Berry, entitled, The Way of Ignorance (I got it for Christmas, unfortuantely, I didn’t get Life is a Miracle). One of the most interesting articles is by Courtney White on the revitalization of the western wild (his essay was included with Berry’s). I like Berry when he talks about farming, politics, and ecology. When he talks about writing and gets more philosophical, not so much. I also am enjoying Shaun Tan’s new series of illustrated stories, entitled, Tales from Outer Suburbia.

I enjoyed seeing Amanda and Peters over the break and speaking briefly with Toby. J.E., your package arrived and the ornament is quite striking. The kids were very excited. Shotts, I hope to get to the cities once the snow melts and see that little guy. It’s freezing up here. Hope you all had good holidays.

Thanksgiving

Oh the long tradition. Much regret we are not gathering together. Many good wishes and gratitude to all of you on this Thanksgiving. A lot to be thankful for this year. A raised glass to you.

Frightening Project

Ned, thanks for the quick examples of your take on the frightening theme.  About two weeks ago I started digging through my art from college because I had a hankering to start in on my work again.  I hadn’t looked at my work since college in many cases, and was surprised by what I thought was crap then didn’t seem so crappy.  I worked on "restoring" a couple of drawings that had gotten smeared from my few moves since an undergrad and fixing some parts that I wanted to alter.  A couple of drawings I thought would be fine contributions to Project Frightening.

I am hopefully going to post a couple of creepy things that aren’t mine and one that is mine in the comments later today.  Click on the thumbnails to see an enlarged view.

Frightening-Art-Death

Study of Bernini’s Death on the Tomb of Pope Urban VIII

Frightening-Art-Box-Elder

Box Elder, Part of the "My Icons" Series

I had to take photos of these both and adjust them in Photoshop, so they look much different in real life.  The Box Elder piece is at least five feet in height, so I had to take two shots and seam them together.  The Death study is on white paper, but I created the effect you see in Photoshop and thought it created a nice mood for this project.  Hope you like my additions!

Frightening II: The Bear (Tentatively Titled)

Here’s my newest painting. You can also see it and a close-up on my website. The Bear refers to the market and who actually pays for our financial miscalculations – a weight no one can really carry. The text is Wordsworth’s "Lines in Early Spring." If you want to know how Toby influenced this painting, I can tell you.

 The Bear 001

Frightening Entry: I

So I was flipping through some files on my computer at work before I take off for MI, and I passed this sketch from an old sketchbook that I scanned into Photoshop. I have a bunch of these that I intended as chapter headings for a story I wrote. Here’s the first one done in pencil w/ Photoshop duotone. I think it is in the spirit of Tob’s pumpkin.

Duotone Face 02

Frightening

All-Hallows It’s October.  A few thoughts have seized my mind about posting some sort of collaborative challenge for the group.  I don’t mean to add to anyone’s burden but I thought it might be fun to participate in a sort of group exercise.  The poetry writing turned out really well during Beckett’s Baby Shower, and while I don’t imagine it taking the same shape as it did this summer, I thought it would be fun to engage the creativity of the group. 

My challenge: create something scary or frightening.

The events that precipitated this were:

1) One of my favorite novels had it’s genesis in the "ghost story" challenge (Frankenstein).

2) I read "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and it frightened me more effectively in short story than many things I see or read today.  It’s amazing to me the atmosphere Hawthorne (and Washington Irving) both were able to create in the span of their short stories.

3) I had a very vivid dream last night that Steph woke me up in the middle of.  Curiously, after being awake about fifteen minutes, I resolved the dream by coming up with an ending.  It was really hard to shake it before that.

Now, this only has to be as complicated as anyone wants it to be.  And each person can create as much as we’d like.  For instance, I could (and plan on) describing this dream I had last night.  I also had a story idea that I could flesh out for everyone, or just give plot points to.  I could haiku, write about the scariest moment in my life, take a photo, draw something, link to something scary.  It can be supernatural (ghost, demons, etc.), unnatural (politics, the economy 🙂 ), or even natural.

What say you all?  Is this a good idea or bad one?

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