Landing in clover

another hopeful - but enough of these dog show hopefuls- I must tell of an amusing incident. I live in Savannah - a city in the South of the USA that is just dripping with colonial history, antebellum history, and ghost history. The whole beautiful and haunting place couldn't have been designed better by a Hollywood set designer. Spanish moss, ancient oaks with their resurrection ferns and the land itself interlaced with lazy rivers whose many tributaries empty into a sometimes treachurous sea.

Savannah, a city said to be built on the bones of the dead, has many ghost stories. To this point, we had a young lady stay with us who solemnly swore she had "an encounter". She said that in the evening she felt a presence. She was staying in an upstairs bedroom in one of the twin beds. My son was in the other twin bed. Restless and feeling thirsty, she went downstairs in the middle of the night, got a glass of water and then brought it back upstairs, placing it on the nightstand between the two beds. Sometime in the night the glass shattered. She and said son brought me up to see the very evidence of the visitation by some unseen malicious hand. Well the glass was certainly in a million little diamond looking shards but what to think.!!! We are living in a relatively new house - true we are on ancient land and within a short walk to the river and the marsh but still.

I mentioned it to my regulars at the quilt shop and instead of laughing outright, the native Savannahians nodded solemnly and said that our house and the others in my neighborhood, were built on the grounds of an old plantation =we are across from Rose Dhu island and Vernonburg. And they added, there are old burial sites all over there. Lawsy mercy Says i to myself - that explains the mushroom fairy rings that appear in our yard with persistent recurrence. (I read somewhere that mushrooms growing in formation indicate the presence of buried organic matter - massa in the cold cold grave says I).

Figure all this into your assesment of what occured last night. I was up very late - in my headquarters of all things creative. This headquarters is actually the guest bedroom. It is upstairs and has lovely wide windows looking onto a primordial forest beyond the backyard. It is a nature preserve and there are wild magnolias, live oak, hickory and palm and bo coo spanish moss, as well as a great horned owl. It was well after midnight and I was tickling the old computer trying to get her to print my little creations. She has become quite fiddly to work with - so well onto 2 Am, I was aware that I was not alone in the room. A slight rustling - said I to myself -aha, a squirrel has penetrated the fortress that is the roof and has made a home in the attic overhead. But lo, there was a definite shifting sound. It sounded like a heavy body turning in the double bed and making itself more comfortable.

Could this be the glass breaking presence! I froze in silence and listened intently. At first faintly, then with greater volume, I distinctly heard heavy and rhythmical breathing which soon gave way to definite snoring. I broke out in a cold sweat and tried to think how one greets a spirit. Was it some pookah who erased my email, jammed my printer, caused the treacle like pace of my hardrive? I sought the comfort of my own snoring husband and fled to my little bed downstairs.

The next morning, I fed the outdoor cats. What's this - only two arrived for breakfast - grumbling and showing their displeasure at breakfast served at 7 Am instead of 5 AM. The third, it transpired - had been the midnight snorer. They are Burmese and adore their ease. What's a down comforter unless you are under it. I never saw her go upstairs - she generally stays out with her cranky hellacious son and her maiden cousin. The three bring down a squirrel a week and lay waste to the little chameleons and snakes that dare bask on a sunny day. Normally, they prefer stalking and patroling the tropical jungle that is our yard - you couldn't tempt them indoors with a fat mouse. Last night, however, it was a bit chill - and lady cat deigned to come in and squirm about in all her sensuous splendour under the down comforter on the guest bed in the temple of creativity. Even as I write this - hell cat has decided that he too should stretch out and eventually snore under the down comforter. Such is winter in Savannah - a place of ghosts or not - but definitely a place whre three little cats are in jungle heaven.

enoough is enough

Another piece for the dog art show - and maybe not a good idea. Sometimes, I have found that some dog folk have scant humor when it comes to depicting the canine in a less than flattering light. I have "beagled" many a time with my old Dad. He loved to hear them bay. The little terrier is a nod to the wire fox we had when I was a girl = though she never saw a field or rabbit for that matter. Dad would never kill the rabbit and the beagles were so sweet they never could kill a thing. he just loved the music they made, the tramp in the fields and setting them onto a likely trail in the sedge and furze. He was a talented draftsman and a romantic. he found an old steer horn and carved a running beagle (which I copied in this little panel) and carved all the names of the Beagles he hunted over the years - Bess, Major, Bo, Belle and Bonny. He found a brass mouthpiece to set in the horn and carved his name next to theirs. Next to his name he put " W. S. His Horn". He would call the hounds in with it when it was time to go home. If he had the money, and lived in a different age for that matter, he would have been part of a hunt club. One of his favorite books was an account of the Pytchley Hunt. I have it but it is in fragments - several chapters are missing. Still it is fun to read all about the Masters, the horses and the dogs. Real John Peel stuff. hard to look at a rabbity bit of countryside - especially in the Autumn on a moist chilly day - and not imagine him just over the hill following Bo and Bonny through the honey colored grass. Then see him turn to you when the hounds gave voice and say with never ending delight -"listen girl, they've got one - just listen."

circus poster and more thoughts on "Injuh"

I am trying to get into a show featuring dog art. Working like a fiend - here is one piece I will submit. It's really quite large so you can read it like the billboard its supposed to be so a witty bitty jpeg loses some of the humor because you can't read the type. Some of the dogs in the poster are, or were, mine. the peke, the wire and the cairn. Their names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I wanted to expound on the expat thing I started last post. It is a very odd life and not without a great deal of pleasure (and some pain.) It was the first time I ever had to deal with servants. I was a dismal failure. i never had the heart to fire any one - some of the old hands went through 5 and six cooks and maids in a two year period. Many maids and cooks over many a posting had hardened them to the degree that if one didn't suit, or was late, or was careless with possesions - they were out the door toot sweet.

i was such a newbie that the first lady i interviewed, i hired. Not only she, but her daughter, her nephew and her husband who did odd jobs. She assured me that they were essential. The nephew was our night jaga (guard). He seldom came on time and then when he did he would sit outside all night with some pals and they would build little cookfires for their satay. He eventually took care of his own problem by eventually not showing up at all. As for our lady's husband - we believe he was mainly unemployed so that she had the responsiblity of him, his father and the other children not yet employed by us.

Our lady cooked and did the beds and floors - her teenage daughter was supposed to be the cuci or washgirl. She was a languid thing. Her main role was to act as Greek chorus when her mom went into the fantastic stories requiring a "loan". She would nod emphatically as her mother told of the people in her life who were hit by buses or had lockjaw or some awful incident in which her employers needed to fork over a couple of hundred or the worst would happen. We often did. It caused no end of hard feelings for my husband's driver. He was a devout Muslim - honest as the day is long and never asked for a thing. He was assigned to us by the Indonesian Goverment. I miss him and think of him often.
I miss our lady too but by the end of our tour we were so beleaguered by her financial requests, I found myself roaming the streets of jakarta just so i would minimize my time with her. We did pay for one of her son's circumcisions and the festivities surrounding this momentous event. We got to go to her house and partake of the cakes and appetizers. It was great. We were even shown a picture of the wounded member. The boy was 13 or thereabouts and he posed shyly as you may well imagine. It all looked quite angry and hurtful - but i suppose that is the way anybody would look after the operation. I don't know if Indonesian moms take those pictures as a milestone event to place in the family scrapbook, or she was just trying to show us that our money had indeed gone for the purpose she needed it. (a great deal of money in my opinion but maybe it was expensive) All I know is that she hadn't made a dint in the relative vs. bus loan yet and didn't seem likely to.

Many is the time, i would find myself silently singing the Petual Clark song - "Downtown" as i rode the escalator to the ethnic section of Pasaraya. Many people's maids lived with them - ours went home after the evening meal was served. All i had to do was tramp around the shops and neighborhoods until the children came home from school. more later

A passage to India

I had the best Christmas - now - reality - definitely a downer. I've done some art work - sewed some and had some of my designs printed on Spoonflower. I was enchanted - oh the cleverness of me as P pan would say. I got two books on the Indian Raj for christmas. I was a companion/victim of my old dad and we read many a book together and then had our little reviews. We ranged throughout Africa, India and the English/American experiment. We tried to be scholarly but usually ended in an argument viz a viz socialism/communism/capitalism. I could not tolerate a system which sought to take $100 from the rich and then distribute it so that everyone - including the formerly rich - had a penny. I've always thought communism was a system in which the undeserving got to shove a stick in the eye of the diserving. All those sick block monitors reporting on their neighbors. And socialists breeding a needy sickly class of gimme's or I'll sue you's. Ah, too deep you say for this little soufle of a website.

Well the thing i loved reading about the first raj book, Women of the Raj by MacMillan - was that in many aspects, it coincided with the experiences I had in Indonesia running up against the State Department. No sooner had the sleep been wiped from our new comer eyes than our near neighbor - a lady born and bred in the State Department - bounded over our tropical hedge to inspect the new conscripts. Nose aquiver, she asked what my husband's rank was because that rank would denote how many bookcases we were allowed. She imparted such inestimable knoweledge that if I were in anyway unhappy in my situation and it could be attributed to the state department - I could write a letter of complaint - it would not in any way alleviate my unhappy situation - but it would serve to act as a cumulative indictment in the file of the official whom i chose to attribute my unhappiness. Eventually, it was assumed, a thick file of censorious revues would force a change in position for incompetent official.

Was i unhappy - well not with Indonesia - but with the very state department that held my fate in its flabby and ineffectual hand. We were sent over as envoys of the USA, but as advisors to the Indonesian Gov/t. As such, State departmant wished to foist on the Indonesians any expenses regarding housing, upkeep and my children's education. Upon our arrival, we were treated much like a Rumanian Refugee in Putin's court. Games were played at our expense regarding who would incur expenses down to appliances - but most importantly the children's education. Some bright light threw down the gauntlet and said - we will not allow (my) children to attend the Jakarta International School. Leave at once, says I. Backtrack say they. To be fair to State, they were apparently operating on a 25$ budget in a 1,000$ world. They just simply could not afford to take on a family of 5. Besides the last guy holding my husband's position was so much fun and didn't have any chillun. he was a great fourth for bridge - marvelous as a double for tennis and, though deemed immenitely replaceable by his own hires who wished to rid the role books on which he appeared - a great favorite with the expat community in which he had made himself indispensible within the social doings. Little did it matter to the denizens of the American Club, that jobwise, a change was deemed necessary.

And so, we arrived. We fought the school fight and won - fought membership into the American Club and won but they had me licked in the appliance department. State would not find us lodgings but they would impose their heiarchy rules on the lodgings that the Indonesians would provide for us. So be it. I walked the neighborhoods and found a perfectly charming house in an Indonesian neighborhood, alas, without air conditioning. Still we were turned down so many times by State that we grabbed it. The bedrooms were air conditioned and the landlord was a sweet Indonesian. The back wall of our dining room was a waterfall with a fish pond. I loved it.

The landlord provided us with a washer/dryer. A product of Italy - I can only think to humble the Italian housewife. The wash cycle was anemic and half hearted and the dryer simply meant that your clothes were whirled about but that no real heat or air was applied to them. Consequently, we all had pink eye as a result of mildewed wash towels and bath towels. The monsoon season prevented any air drying of clothing or bedding and towels.

I decided to appeal to the side of State Department that actually could identify. I laid out the course of events we had endured and my plea was heard. A kind lady official, saw to it that the children were properly enroled in JIS, that we were allowed to partake of the hamburgers and ceasar salads at the American Club, and that we had a proper, correctly working washer and dryer. What did I care that I was lower than low on the State Department ranks. I had seen their number and were pretty sure of what stuff they were made.

dog stuff

I am trying to create something for the Art Show At the Dog Show in Wichita, Kansas. Its always a great show - sometimes I get in even. I'm afraid the mime is taking away from the dogs but he is somehow a sexy fellow - what must I have been thinking?? At any rate, the emphasis should be on the dogs so i am afraid he'll have to shrink or be rejected outright.

Befouled by technology

You can create 'til the cows come home - but if you can't print it - it devolves to your heirs to somehow crack the computer code and reproduce your little designs. I am in the 3 year cycle for Apple and Epson. That is a built in Dr. Kevorkian has planted a wee wittle cyanide pill in my - to me- very expensive Adobe programs and my printer. My printer is deemed one sufficient to meet the needs of a semi-pro. - what the hell is that you ask - well apparently you purchase the best you can afford from good ol' Epson and they decide - based on your ante- whether you are a pro or a scrapbooker with a head cheer leader as a place marker for Jon Benet Ramsey. Now I suppose I could enter one of their bogus "win me's" for the 7900 but we would have to remortgage the house to afford the ink.

As it stands, i have the 2400 now superceded by the 2880. My 2400 has put its foot down - it has wearied of such onerous tasks such as printing custom sizes. Try as i might, it simply refuses to print a 5X7 Christmas card. Furthermore, printing on velvet art paper from the rear is not to be tolerated. I, know - the little yellow exclamation warning thingy - so cute- tells me i have given the wrong signal, the wrong paper size, the wrong this that and the other. But no, I scream into an unfeeling cosmos - i have done everything right. Still, the hopping distress signal. But what the hell am i thinking my printer is 3 years old - in human years that is 256.

This moves me to the mac GS5 I have - the be all and end all. Only mine, I am told predates the intel component. My machine, it transpires is yesterday, a dinosaur. Steve Jobs is ashamed he even sold the thing to me. I purchased a plug in - the machine had a major hissy and Photshop refused to aknowledge me - me of all people - me who makes the whole bleeping thing go (as Gov. Blagoyevich would say) me who has faithfully upgraded right along as Steve has urged me to do. I haven't gone to CS4 - economic down turn and all - but other than that, i have been a fellow traveller in Steve's vision of Mac and Adobe. The man who created the plug in assumed that since photoshop refused to aknowledge me and therefore did not recognize the serial number of the plug in I purchased, assumed i would be buying a brand new computer - complete with intel immediately.

Well folks, I need a bail out. Chicken feed when you compare me to Wall Street, GM et al. I know, I know - whereas i have probably made but a few hundred from my work (I don't count the folks in India who rip off my designs - hey if they can make money off of them they are better men than I am Gunga Din- I just say - i've got the begging bowl out with all the rest. Alas, i have hit the rubbish heap built in regarding Mac and Epson - yet, I still have these gosh darned creative ideas - :Gotta dance - Gotta dance. I may have to take the tarp off the printing press and buy some new oil painting brushes. Technology sucks.

hitler - geobels et al

Sorry i have neglected this blog but helzapoppin. I just saw a documentary on Goebels. His diary was read by Branaugh - it was a PBS effort. i'd have to give it a C. It seemed very selective- you had to know what transpired between his written passages to really see the thing in context. i have to think that anybody 18-30 wouldn't get it all. A pert young lass in a creative writing class I took, felt she would have some cache by way of being a transplant to Germany for two semesters as part of her academic program. My proffesor asked her how many nazis ( is the plural nazie) she met in her academic exchange student ramblings. Thinking she'd be the jolly good fellow for the day she was somewhat taken aback. None she said - of course not - none. He said jokes on you - they all were.

Seeing the videos of two closet homos was somewhat comical. I kept waiting for Margaret Dumont and harpo to show up. The fat ass Goering in his Gilbert and Sullivan Costumes of the Modern Major General. The tiny rat king Goering - so many people he vowed would be exterminated who had slighted him, disrespected him or his mother, under- esitmated him or, God forbid, were Jewish. That sick devotion of Hitler. And H - himself. As my old father would say - a trio of limp wristed bastards. The shocking distortion of a burned human being - in his case, he looked like a cane toad with a diaper on. And the sick a-hole killed his children - they were laid out like cord wood. Madness! Are we headed there again?

Are we ripe for it now. Hitler said he was going to change Germany from top to bottom. So says Obama - the only thing that separates the two scenarios is the fact that Republicans are 43%. When Hitler took over the financial engines were bankrupt. He promised to set Germany back on its feet and put every man to work. I'm hoping Obama is just an idealist and that his vow to place an energy meter in every home is but the pie in the sky dream of a man who will soon face the reality that this is America not Sweden. If Santa is really good to me this year, i'm wishing Pres. O will see the folly of forcing every american to public service for two years - we ain't Israel. It would be lovely but it can't be forced unless we want to throw over what America is. And oh yes, rich people aren't evil. I'm not rich in any monetary way, but I support the efforts of those who are rich. If the dollar bill and the getting o' it is their reason detre, then have at it.
Remember the Mellons, the Carnegies, the John Beresford Tiptons and God Bless them for their donations of arts, libraries, insitutes of learning. I don't think Jeeters Lester would have the imagination to spread the wealth. He'd spend it on a meaner fighting cock. So much for my opinion of the great unwashed.