A Tribute

My wife and I bought our home on 26th Ave East, adjacent to the Arboretum, in 1970. We paid peanuts for it, even in those days. It has sheltered us. It has grounded us among many wonderful friends. It has provided parks, and water, and urban amenities, and cultural diversity and academic opportunities, all within walking distance.  It has sustained us financially during several periods when we lived away from here. I cannot conceive of a more perfect place for us to have made our lives.

Often when a large group of people cooperate to achieve some good end, it is possible to identify one or two particular ones upon whom the enterprise truly depended; people without whom the end would not have been achieved. Maynard Arsove was such a person in the battle in the late sixties to halt construction of the R H Thompson Expressway in Seattle. Those off ramps to nowhere that we know so well are Maynard’s work. The Arboretum, as we know it, free of a North-South freeway, is also Maynard’s work. But when I think of Maynard I don’t think of him as the guy who stopped the R H Thompson, I think of him as the guy who saved my house. Without him, this place where I sit at this moment tapping on my computer would be a spot on the south bound lane, probably crammed with cars crawling home from work.

Here’s to you Maynard, with my eternal and heart felt gratitude.

Maynard passed peacefully on November 14th.

The Answer to an Important Question

When I arrived at the gym today to do some yoga and cardio, I found a sign announcing an opportunity to get one’s body fat measured by the submersion method which is considered the best. I bit. An hour later, after expelling all the air I could from my lungs and lying on the bottom of a tank of comfortably warm water for a moment, a guy informed me that my body is about 19 % fat. He also provided a chart, calibrated by age, that indicated about five categories of this value ranging from life threatening up to healthy. (Just below healthy was good which is to say if you are only in the good category you are less than healthy in your percentage of body fat. How good is that?) 19% it turns out is just at the bottom of the healthy range, just above the not so good “good”.



Conclusion: I interpret this result as meaning that somehow I have managed in my life to eat just the right amount of ice cream. Any more and I would not be healthy. Any less and I would have gone without for no particular reason. What a relief.

The First Wednesday in November 2010

Really the only thing wrong with the United States is that it is run by homo sapiens.

Get ready bugs.  Your time can't be more than a couple hundred years away.

Gravity, The Real Winner

You have to really respect gravity.  It is so patient, so subtle, so unassuming yet ultimately so victorious.  It's going to get you, you know.  Eventually.  Not only will it swallow you into the earth, or at least clutch your remnants in tiny pieces flat to the earth's surface, it is going to do the same to everything you ever created.  And not only you of course, but everyone including God, if you think God made the mountains.  Good old gravity.  Just sitting there tugging gently, unnoticed against it all.  Well, I guess that recently there have been a couple of escapes, but a few cans of wire and metal tossed out of reach, hardly count against gravity's over all record.  It's pretty impressive.

Doggerel

Some words assembled on the occasion of my wife's 70th birthday

              Come Grow Old With Me

One time I chanced to see, on a bench beneath a tree
Some words carved with a knife, about the course of life.

Though tender was the verse, the truth it did reverse.
It said,” Grow old with me. The best is yet to be.”

The best is yet to be? This I’d like to see.

I stared at it bemused, my senses all abused
To say the last is best, just does not pass the test.

Our best I fear my dear, lies in the rear view mirror.
The future holds scant bliss. Reality is this.

Eyes grow dim and hair gets thin
Knees creak and bowels leak
Necks get crepey and tricepts drapey
As jowels sag and back is bent, the skin resembles old parch-ment.
As memory fades and wit expires, we find we’re running on old tires.
With withered grip and pruney lip, I fret about a rigid hip.

The future I must tell, just doesn’t seem that swell.
But come grow old with me.
When I meet eternity
It’s with you I want to be.

Factory Art

Suppose, as a sort of satirical comment on contempory art, a person began to drag home every piece of rusty metal that lay in his twisted path through life and set them out in his yard. After fifteen years or so, what would it look like? Any chance his project would morph from satire into artistic pretention complete with a lame interpretation of the art form?  Double click on the images for a better look.

Fredrick Faucet Hands aka Watering Man

Spirit Chairs

The Collage By The Garage

Four Gorillas Returning From A Pipe Hunt

Homer Simpson

Do You Call That Art?

I call it factory art, which implies that it was made in a factory so there were many identical items produced and it was made for some functional purpose and any visual appeal or interest it may have is accidental rather than intentional. But is it art? Since there is no, or almost no, artistic execution involved, it is hard to call it art. The role of factory artist is more that of discoverer than executor. But I will say that a number of legitimate artists have looked at the collection and none has ever said anything that was not encouraging. One opined that once a person puts something up to be looked at, then the thing is art. One time we hosted a party on behalf of friends so that we did not know a number of the guests. I was standing in the yard with two guys, one an engineer and the other a self described artist from Chicago. Indicating one of the pieces the engineer asked, “What does that do?” Before I could answer the artist said, “It’s doing it.” I took that as praise.

Not all these pieces fit the definition of factory art. Watering Man was intentionally made and the Spirit Chairs, while no doubt made in a factory are in fact not particularly interesting to gaze upon. What makes them interesting is what is not there to be seen. I used to favor those pieces that actually look enough like something to inspire a good name. Four Gorillas Returning From A Pipe Hunt is an example. Now I like best the ones that can sustain my attention. Collage By The Garage is an example of that. There is quite a bit to see there. If what you see is a bunch of hub caps, you’re missing it. It is a natural response to look at these things and say, “What is that? What was it made for?” That instinctive response is what you must get past in order to “see” the pieces.

I certainly know of pieces by legitimate artists that I find much less interesting, but there’s no accounting for taste.

A Conversation With Osama bin Laden

I had a day dream today in which I chanced to have a conversation with Osama bin Laden. I asked him, “How did you hope the United States would react to your attack on September 11, 2001?”

He said, “First of all I hoped you would get into a war with some Islamic country. Afghanistan would be good since the Afghans are so accustomed to fighting European invaders that they can do it forever. I didn’t predict your short term success, but I was pretty sure you’d regret it in the long run. Not only would it cost you in blood and treasury, but it would help to polarize attitudes on both sides of the struggle over the future of Islam, that is, will it modernize or not. Next I hoped it would incite a lot of anti Muslim sentiment in the U.S. with attendant displays of hatred. That would surely help my recruitment efforts. Third, I dared to hope that what was really only a symbolic strike given the size of the US, absolutely minor in real damage to either lives or property, would come to be interpreted as some kind of catastrophic blow. Since I didn’t really give a shit for your personal rights to privacy, trial by jury, etc. I didn’t particularly hope they would be curtailed. They mean nothing to me. Finally I hoped and I continue to fervently hope that you will never ever forget. You know, it was a pretty big day for me. I’d hate for you to just get over it.

Me: Well how’s it going for you then?

Him: Pretty well I’d say.