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On my brother Bob, the artist

12/29/2014

He’ll give you the shirt off his back. It will probably have some paint on it, but that’s Bob.

A home builder and carpenter by trade, now semi-retired, his basement workshop in San Leon on Galveston Bay is the cauldron where he forges disparate art forms. No one would have suspected Bob of being an artist in his younger days. No one had any idea it was in him. But then it appeared, and he’s done pretty well by it, drawing some measure of regional acclaim.

As a self-employed tradesman and occasional artist for most of his adult life, he has hit retirement without a hefty 401k, but he’s about the wealthiest person I know. Living on the gulf right on the water, in a home he salvaged and rebuilt after Hurricane Rita, and turned into an internal and external feast for the eyes. Surrounded by a small cadre of terrific neighbors, and in the vicinity of his 90 year old parents and two of his three sons and two of his grand-children.

He wants for nothing.

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On a slow downturn

12/21/2014

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The bad news is that more than a year and a half after the publishing of SPOKE, the book is not selling as well as it started out.

The good news is that it's still selling.

Every few days I get a notice from Amazon that they have sold another hardcopy or ebook. Truthfully, I don't know who is buying or how they are finding it, but I know this: I am grateful for each uptick of the graph.

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On Retirement

12/13/2014

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For more than a decade, I have been stymied whenever I am asked if I am employed, or what I do for a living.

No, I don’t have an employer. I haven’t had one since 1986, when I left the employ of the American Hospital Association and started a software/technology consulting firm for the meeting and tradeshow industry. I labored in that industry for the next twenty years or so … but then I stopped. These days I manage some real estate that my husband and I own, including a commercial building with retail and apartments, and a guest house, and I work to maintain our 46-acre forested home site, which believe me, I would consider work. I don’t draw a salary, so I don’t exactly get paid, but we do make money – not a great deal but more than enough.

On the side, I write and do theatre (act, direct, produce, design …) I don’t seem to have had difficulty finding things to keep me busy (sometimes too busy) since I closed my software company. And yet …

Lately I have had a few days when I didn’t have anything to do. I admit that’s a little scary. I’ve always had things that needed doing, and other things lined up behind them – so to find myself with a day (or five) lined up with nothing on the schedule has been alarming.

Is this temporary? Not sure. Will I find ways to be okay with a life without immediate purpose? Again, not sure.

Stay tuned.

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On our chainsaw wielding neighbor

12/8/2014

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Dallas’ furry head rested in my lap as I tuned the TV to a local channel. We’d had two days of fierce weather, producing 100+ mph winds and tornados, and the skies appeared angry again.

Sure enough there was an alert. Doppler radar showed winds of 100-120 mph, with at least one rapidly rotating funnel that had been spotted above Livingston – a little town only a handful of miles to our southwest. “If you are in the Mineral Point area, take cover now,” the announcer repeated.

The phone rang. John said that he was coming home early, that Lands’ End employees had all been told to get into the basement for ‘another tornado drill’ and he hated those drills and that basement so he was just going to get in the car and come home.

I yelled at him to get to the goddam basement. He said no, he had plenty of time to get home before the storm hit, and I yelled at him again, threatening that if he never ever listened to anything I said in his life, he had to listen to me this time and go to the goddam basement. He sighed, and said okay.

Dallas and I headed to our own basement, forgetting to grab valuables like our laptop, forgetting everything except our own safety.

Through a basement bedroom window we watched trees bending in most unnatural ways. A group of trees would be bent almost straight over to the left while next to them another group was bent to the right, then they would whip around and bend the other direction, colliding into each other and fighting to get past each other’s branches. Second by second it grew noisier and darker. Finally, I grew apprehensive of our location, and grabbed our complaining dog and carried him into the enclosed, windowless toilet area of the basement bathroom. I shut the door. Dallas and I huddled on the floor, listening to unfathomable sounds of destruction above.

It was probably only a couple of minutes, but it seemed like much longer before we crept upstairs to survey the damage. Oddly, the first floor, which was surrounded on all sides by shadeless windows, was darker than the basement, which only had windows opening onto one side. I looked to my left as I came up the stairs, and quickly discovered the reason. All the windows in the front of our house were blacked out by limbs and leaves. The magnificent shagbark hickory that announced the front of our house and was one of the reasons we loved this property when we first saw it, was now lying on our roof.

I called John. Told him we were alright. And told him to come home. Now.

Fifteen minutes later, John walked in the door, soaked. It was pouring down rain and the wind had stalled to probably no more than 40 mph. John said he couldn’t drive up our driveway because it was blocked by downed trees, so he left his car on our easement that cuts through a neighbor’s field.

I said I wanted to go to town to call the utility company to let them know we had no power. I walked through the downpour to John’s car, pausing to assess the tree on our roof, and the fallen trees on the driveway.

A mile away, I stopped by our closest neighbors to see if they were okay. Joe and Christy are potters, and have a home, kiln and outbuildings on an exposed hill. Christy wasn’t home, but Joe answered the door, and said they were fine. I mentioned something to him about the tree on our roof, and the trees blocking the driveway, and then I went to town.

I knocked on Frank and Sandee’s door. Frank answered, somewhat puzzled, since I had never before visited them without calling first. I said, “I’d like a martini, Frank.” And Frank nodded, and said he thought he could manage that.

As I drank my martini, I made a call to Alliant Energy, and then got on the Internet to post news of the storm and let people know we were okay. I placed a call to a local house painter and handyman who has a truck with a boom, and I told him about the tree on our roof. He said he’d be out first thing in the morning. After a few more minutes visit, it was time to get back home.

I drove up my cleared driveway. What the hell? Less than an hour before, it had been blocked by at least five fallen trees, four of them substantial, and one of them seriously large. Now there were piles of sawed up tree limbs and trunks stacked on both sides of the drive, glistening in my headlights as the rain continued to pour.

I entered the house. “What happened to the trees in the driveway,” I asked John.

“Joe,” John said. “Half an hour after you left I heard something outside, so I went out and found Joe at the top of the driveway, finishing off the last tree. Did you ask him to do that?” John asked.

“No.” I said. “He just … did it.”

And that, dear friends, is what we love about living in rural Mineral Point. People take care of each other, without even being asked.

The next morning, at 8 am, Brad arrived with his crew to take the tree off our roof. By noon, he had not only cleared this tree, but another ten trees that blocked the path that goes from our guest house back to the prairie.

We figure we lost about 100 or so trees. Some were lifted right out of the ground, with their roots, thrown down like pick-up-sticks. Others were twisted and snapped off, with their giant tops angled and resting across other trees, threatening to fall and making all of our four miles of trails dangerous.

Six months later our woods are healing, and all of our paths are re-opened except for one quarter mile section, that certainly gives the appearance that a funnel may well have touched down there.

A lot else happened this year, but nothing so dramatic as that fifteen minutes in June. And nothing more satisfyingly heartwarming than a helping hand from a chainsaw-wielding neighbor named Joe.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year

John, Coleman and Dallas

PS – You can see a short YouTube video of the storm damage on our property, at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx2j5lPI93c

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On 'Black Lives Matter'

12/4/2014

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Bill Deblasio's off-the-cuff remarks on Staten Island were eloquent, emotional and spot-on.

Black lives matter.

It's shouldn't have to be said, but it does. The failure of the grand jury in Ferguson to indict was unsettling but not altogether unsupportable, given the conflicting evidence (though the failure of the prosecutor to ask more penetrating questions is suspect). But the failure of the Staten Island grand jury to indict is egregious. The evidence was crystal clear: an unarmed, unthreatening black man was taken down by police in a choke hold; he cried out repeatedly that he couldn't breathe, and the officers stood by, doing nothing to aid him.

I'm not black, and I live in a corner of the US which s overwhelmingly white. I miss the racial and cultural diversity that I enjoyed in my previous 22 years in inner city Chicago. The daily impact of racism is hardly visible where I live because other races are hardly visible here - which speaks to the geographical racism of rural Wisconsin. I know of no incidents in my county of police mishandling of suspects of color. And yet ... could they happen here? They might even be more likely here, since people of color are so uncommon.

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On decorating for Christmas

12/2/2014

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As a confirmed atheist, I haven't allowed a scrap of Christmas decoration in my house for quite a few years now. (Candles aren't considered Christmas decorations, are they? I mean, just plain candles, with no frills.)

I suffer just bit from seasonal affective disorder. Fortunately, I spend most of my days in our great room which is surrounded on three sides by large windows, including one that stretches across the length of the peaked roof and ceiling - so every available bit of light floods into the room. Some cheery Christmas lights in the dim afternoon and dimmer night might prove of some cheer, but principles are principles - so no Christmas lights.

But John and I own two businesses - a commercial building in town, and a guest house on our property. When we first bought the commercial building, we decorated it for our renter with a Christmas tree appearing to crash through the display window. It was great fun to install. Every year since then, the renter has provided their own decorations.

But the lodge is a different matter. Guests arriving expect some measure of Christmas cheer, and it is up to me to provide it, so ... today I will haul out the two-plus bins of decorations and scatter them around the guest house. I'll probably put on some Christmas music while I do it.

And yes ... I am performing Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales this weekend - but it's not a religious piece. Just a celebration of the season, right?

We all need a little cheer.

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On memorizing Dylan Thomas

12/1/2014

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I admit it.

Memorizing Dylan Thomas is by far the most difficult trick of memorization I've put myself through. Though A Child's Christmas in Wales is only 25 minutes long, it was much trickier to learn that the 1 hour 45 minute, one-actor A Christmas Carol - all because of the language.

Dickens' Christmas Carol - for all its Victorian sensibilities - consists of fairly standard English, and a fair amount of dialogue. But Thomas, while using mostly standard words, assembles them in truly unique ways, and then layers them on top of each other in cascading cacophonies of verbal music.

Try it yourself. Here's a short passage from Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales.

Try to memorize just this opening passage. You'll soon see what I mean.

" One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen."

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On my brother Bob, the artist

On a slow downturn

On Retirement

On our chainsaw wielding neighbor

On 'Black Lives Matter'

On decorating for Christmas

On memorizing Dylan Thomas

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