The Last One Left, But Seemed Concerned

There will always be one bear that is the perfect bear. King Lear's daughter. She knows too much, cares too much, and leaves no stone unturned. She will be the fabric of my life much later, I'm sure, when I'm howling at the moon in the madness of my old age. Anyway, she's gone.

I have just laid 250 feet of baseboard in my house today. I am very sore and tired. I decided that its the detail that makes the place.

This is it basically. About the color of the walls too.

Why, do you ask? Because I have a strong aesthetic about place. I will never be able to afford it, but I can create it myself. Come visit. It is all allusion anyway. (But a friend, years ago, upon seeing what I was doing with my workspace (a rebuilt garage, built into a studio) was green and green and green.

Two Gone

Off to school. One more tomorrow, but she won't be that far away. It's just as well, we were running low on picnic baskets.

The music here has nothing to do with missing little bears. I was looking for a song called "One Horse Town" by these two, but there isn't a video of it. It was all about your kid leaving, and probably little chance of them coming back. The two waving goodbye above are happy, and off to have fun, such as it should be. We get to form our own adventures again.

Painting The House

Painting the house blues. Lots to do, through and through, I wish I was.

The Big House

A friend, years ago, who had a bigger house than mine, told me that something is always broken. You just have to get used to the awareness that there will always be something in the house that needs your attention. We don't have a mansion, but we do have a lot of space and we spent the last two days painting two large rooms and two hallways. I'm exhausted and we are still not done. I'm the ceiling trim man: I'm tall, but I also have a very steady hand, so I've always been able to paint trim without assistance from the things everyone else uses. What I discovered is that we very several little families of spiders living in the corners of our big rooms. They are little spiders,

not sure if they are of this family, but they look similar, but they are tiny and move fast. When I arrived with paintbrush mostly they scurried away and disappeared I know not where, probably into the attic. I have always thought that spiders in the house was a good thing, they eat the other insects that might wander in. I know under there house there are plenty. We don't get bit.

So we are a part of the ecosystem at my house. The song above is "The Dance of The Wee Folk"

More

Why do we do anything?

Had our Writer's Group Sunday afternoon. A nice guy has been coming off and on, bringing us pieces of his novel. It's been getting panned, over and over. It turns out that he hasn't been bringing parts of it because he doesn't want anyone to steal his story? his ideas? We don't know because he won't tell us or share any of it with us. What we did see, everyone panned because it wasn't dramatic, it wasn't emotional, it wasn't vested. And it was realistic to the point of not really being a story at all. You could see him getting angry at us for our criticism. Did I mention that he was Christian with a big C? He's decided to self-publish, he says. I offered to tell him my experience, but he does want to hear it. He doesn't want to hear that he doesn't know how to write. His is the only true God, I guess.

I left a group over in the valley because the critique level was just stupid. I didn't have enough emotion in my story. I didn't have enough emotion in my story. I didn't have enough emotion in my story. Everyone that read it through told me something different. So I decided it was a waste of time to listen to idiots.

I hope someone is telling our nice guy something different. And I hope its not God.

Why do these people think that they can just write and it will be brilliant? Why do these people go on American Idol? Why do people paint who have no talent? I think anything you do starts with comparison. Can I do something that can stand on its own, apart from me and sort of look like a similar thing that I admire? That's the question you have to start with. Are my words as good as...? Is my brush strokes similar to ...? Can my music be like ...?

It has always amazed me that a man can lecture on T.S, Elliot and not know the difference between Elliot's poem and his own.

Why do people think it's some kind of magic?

Favorite Things

All of the below are wonderful things. Summer is not quite over

LA On Saturday

Only in Los Angeles, Ca you go on your bike from here:

To here in about 15 minutes:

I was riding with a bunch of 12 year-olds and a couple of the dads. Venice was a little scary for them - Westchester is a quiet little suburb where most of the guys don't get out much to places like this. One of the boys left his knapsack there (with his Boy Scout Book in it.) I told the mom that I would go back to look for it, but I'm not. It won't be there. It would take me an hour to park and walk in. 

Getting Used To

Truth: Everything about life and all we wish and dream of, all we have nightmares about can be measured by how well we can get used to it. The smell of a slaughterhouse, for example. Writing a book. Singing and playing a banjo in front of a group of strangers (or worse, people you know too well). Working at a meaningless job. Being poor, being rich. Being happy. Lecturing 30 professors on art and literature. Frying hamburgers. Climbing a mountain. You start with a step, and on the second day, there's a second step.Since I'm being so inspirational, here's a song that I love a lot. (The littlest bear has gone off to college.)

Weird Place I've Slept Again

We did our Order of the Arrow ordeal (my boy bear and I) at Camp Josepho up in the Santa Monica Mountains. It's supposed to be an ordeal and an honor. You first have to picked out of the circle (ours was at the District's Camporee and you are mysteriously picked by dancing braves in Indian garb late at night) and
we were taken out to sleep under the stars. Its all done very spooky and the young boys eat it up. Then you go for an ordeal weekend. You are required to take a vow of silence for the day and you do service and you fast. Our service was to clear brush at the camp all day long without saying a word and we ate crackers and water all day. Another father and I mowed a high meadow above the main camp most of the day. We whispered when the boys were not around. He was a professor at UCLA and was the leading expert in academia on the Asian international trade markets. At the end of the day, we were served a steak dinner and the boys got to sleep on the floor of the great lodge there. I looked at that swarming mass of sweaty boys who would be up until the early hours and I took my sleeping bag up to that meadow we mowed and slept out under the stars. And heard every insect that passed by my head. Now I sleep out all the time. It has made all the difference in the way I look at camping.

 This was the choice.

Caught In The Act Of Singing

It looks cool, huh? Like We knew what we were doing. I was telling everyone at work that I watched the video and everyone else looked like they usually do, except me and I looked really old and ugly. The video camera don't work properly.

Weird Places I have slept (I don't remember the number)

You have to listen to the song to get in the right mood for this. I was living a slave quarter room in the French Quarter (the one with the bathroom in the main house, so I had to carry my towel etc across the courtyard to take a shower). I was twenty-one, drinking like a fish. There were a group of us that would bar hop and Mexico Mike (who had a different name back then) was the talker and he would just pick up stray people and they would join our group. We drank a lot of pitchers of beer, because that was cheapest way to go. And sometimes you could get other people to pay. We hooked up with a guy that was a nephew of the JAX brewery family and he had good weed and so we all went to his place. A nice apartment actually. It became apparent later he was just hitting on the guys. Anyway after hours of drinking beer, we smoked this stuff and I hankered down in the corner. (I was working as a printer's devil in those days and the nature of the job gave me really strong legs and knees. I could hop-frog a city block. I could hold my feet off the ground by balancing my elbows on my knees). The rising sun came up. Everyone that was still there was passed out on the floor. And I had slept the whole night in my corner like a good bullfrog. It was a little hard to straighten up.

Steady Hand

There was a time in my life when I had good eyes and a very steady hand. What are these skills good for? Well, when they misprint the date on your wedding invitations, you can correct them all by hand and no one can tell.

I did this at 17, believe it or not. Hours at a desk with paint that matched the color of the paper and a fine tipped pen. I could also shoot anything and hit it. (With a bow and a rifle.) My brother and I were signed up early for 22 rifle training. After I got the wedding invitations fixed and got married and moved to Utah, I went deer hunting on horseback (this was the best part of being a real cowboy), and I was complimented on my abilities.

But not by the deer. What did this prove? If you read Hemingway, it proved that you had the right stuff. It never came across to me that way. All it meant in a literary manner, was that he couldn't see all that well and did not have a steady hand. I quit hunting after Utah. It didn't seem to mean that much. I could hit a cow or a jackrabbit and all it meant was that I could do it. I suppose I could have done it for the Army or such, but who would want to.

Maybe this is a metaphor for something. 

Wishes

I was waiting a year for this. Survived another vein stripping and an allergic reaction to the meds that sent me to the emergency for the simple pleasure of sticking my tired dogs in this and several other streams along the way.

Also, played on stage with the band last night for the very first time ever. We seemed to do ok. Video coming.

A couple of wish fulfillment books that the simple hearted  might like: There are not quite under 17 books, more like my twenties. Good love stories

Good Music & Good Food & Good Friends

Well, Its been nice this weekend. We rehearsed Friday night for our 10 minutes of open mic. Went to the Bluegrass Meetup yesterday morning and discovered the small mandolin player who looks like Grandpa was exactly my age, born yesterday in 1952. I invited him to my party but he didn't want to come. We're eating and going off to play tonight and wishing my youngest bear well on her trip to college on Thursday.

This was a shot from the backpacking trip actually.

We're singing this tonight.

Books to Read Before You're 17

I still want the houseboat in Florida that Travis McGee lived on.

In Case You're Missing The Music (Mandolin Orange)

Why I'm Warped (books of my childhood)

If you haven't read these, you should. But it may be too late. 14 is a good age to start.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

This is the Lilly Library in Bloomington (my home town) This is where the Gilder MSS are stored, where the Ian Fleming MSS are stored. Eli Lilly, (the medicine company and founder and endow-mentor) was a great book collector and MSS collector. Bloomington also boasts of the largest collection of pornography in the world as the collection of the Kinsey Sex Institute. 

Check out the collection: http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/collections.shtml

If you order copies, please request that the student that copies look at what they are doing. The last batch of 40 pages had 15 that were barely readable. But who am I to complain. I've been sitting on an almost unreadable copy I printed off a lousy microfilm copy from the NYC Library and microfilm machine that USC had. It was primarily unreadable because of Helena's handwriting.

A place of old age fantasies. A place to sit at a desk in an old Tudor style house and look at the garden beyond and dream of the lives you've never had. Helena's daughter typed up the letters from Helena and Molly Foote. That is probably enough to base a biography on. I wasn't ever thinking of a large book. There's pictures and artwork to fill it out. Even some of Helena's artwork is here.

Wonder if they will let me play my banjo on the front steps.

Below is the latest fantasy of Bloomington. Had I known? Anyone see "Breaking Away?"

Box 16 of 36 or so

Right now, the task of trying to write Helena's biography seems overwhelming. Even if I was funded and had a year sabbatical, it would be a lot to chew off. 
Box 16
•             Gilder, Helena de Kay
o             Talk: "Caricature" Given to Wednesday Afternoon Club
o             Talk: "The Complications of Modern Society"
o             Poem: "Hilda"
o             Talk: "Joseph Jefferson" Given to Wednesday Afternoon Club
o             Article: "A Letter on Women's Suffrage". Pamphlet and reprint, includes additional writings on   women's suffrage
o             Article: "Mary Hallock Foote" for The Book Buyer, Aug. 1894
o             Prose and sketches: "The Pansy Book, made by Helena De Kay for Mary Hallock"
o             Article: "R[obert] Lincoln" 1913
o             Poem: "Shakspere vs. Bacon" With note: "Delivered before the Prof. of Yale in reply to Ignatius Donelly's [sic] Criptogram"
o             Talk: "Shelley" Given to Wednesday Afternoon Club
o             Book: concerning Theodore Rousseau
o             Notebook of poetry and prose
o             Notes after Richard W. Gilder's death
o             Miscellaneous untitled writings and notes

Well, It was steep.

My knees look like this. They still work and all, but everyone that went on the trip suggested an easier trip next year. I'm in agreement. The jury will be in tomorrow when I'm back on my bike to work.

This is Half-Dome from on top of El Capitan.

This the bear that is going off to college in a couple of weeks. That's the Yosemite Valley floor. I promised her mother I wouldn't let her fall off a cliff.

That's the rainbow at the top of the world. (Actually, its on the Mist Trail below Vernal Falls.)

It was well worth the aches and pains. I walked most of the way behind a girl that friends with my daughter. She had never even been camping before. She walked real slow, which is probably why I'm not feeling too wasted this year. There were only three mosquitoes up there this year. All the streams were running and it was cool.

Just Found Something New

Ella Dietz, actress and poet, a childhood friend of the James brothers (Henry and Williams) and the de Kays,
and particularly Minny and Helena http://helenadekaygilder.org/childhood/index.htm
I was working on my copy of the NYC Library copy of the Gilders Journal comparing it to the transcript I got from the Lilly Library and discovered I had a copy of a poem to Helena that wasn't in the transcript.

Ella wrote it:

To Helena,

Like a sad flower, is she, a sad bright flower,
That bloomed alone, but with its flame like face,
Marked light- the gloom, about some trees dark place,
Where the dank leaves wind- streams- no lady's bower,
Nor spot to tempt a traveler for an hour,
So perfect but yet so filled with subtle grace
That the shy snake learned there his lizard race,
And the wild bird falls victim to his flower,
Why wouldn't thou leave the wilderness to go
And paint beside the sunny garden wall
Where blooms the Marigolds and Lilies white,
In the day's heat a hundred roses blow,
Why bask thy beauty there amidst them all,
Roses who were made for solitude and night.

-Ella Dietz

She published three or four books of poetry, helped found the Women's Club Assoc of America and apparently tried to get a divorce (unsuccessfully) from her first husband. There were letters to William James from Minnie talking about her. Have to go dig some more.

Not sure I understand the poem completely. Think I got it right, it's transcribed from a copy of a handwritten sheet in a microfilm roll.

Me and Mauriac

It's late and I've unpacked. Here's a quick shot of me on top of El Captain (in Yosemite) reading "Flesh and Blood" - Francois Mauriac- he won a Nobel Prize in the 50s. Good good read, the perfect book to take backpacking, especially with the guys I go with- and the girls. This trip was me and Rob and Dan and 4 girls, our daughters and friends. Slightly obsessive tale of a very smart unwashed bright young poor guy who goes to study as a priest and then quits because of his animalist nature and his relationship with a couple of spoiled rich kids who come to live at the estate the he works at as a manual laborer. Jude The Obscure told backwards, sort of.
Sad ending, but the trip to get you there is worth the ride. I'd suggest a slightly hard backpack trip when you are over 40.