Tweet Season on my Mind or "Polly's ghost wants a cracker"

Cricket and I are prone to collecting.  I've mentioned before that I have a love for Royal Doulton character jugs and for Wally birds...  for the most part these are pieces I've picked up here and there and on-line, at one point I pretty much depleted my life-savings on Ebay.  (I assure you that it never was a lot of money)... it's been a fun hobby...

Cricket on the other hand has been collecting bird cages.

Now, for those of you that don't know, there is a substantial difference between the size of a bird cage and that of a character jug.  Most of the cages stand taller than I do and, while they are lovely, take up a fair amount of space.  

"Why is the china cabinet out on the porch?"

"Oh, I got a new bird cage."

"Umm, the fridge is on the front lawn..."

"Oh, I got a new bird cage."

"Where's the piano?"

"Oh, I got a new bird cage."

It works like this because we keep our addictions private... When a small box shows up, I check that it's mine and off I go to a private place where I can open it and check the item.  Once I've determined that it's what I ordered, I find a place for it in "the cabinets".  (The cabinets are two 9', floor to ceiling, shelving units that house my collection)...  I've been unemployed so the collection has been relatively stagnant these past few months...

Of course, when a bird cage shows up it is a different story altogether.  These things have stands and bases and are simply enormous...  Several have shown up and had to be lowered into the house by crane.

But a week or so ago a small box showed up... just the right size for a toby.  It wasn't addressed to me; I didn't open it.  (I hoped that it was a present for my birthday or something)

Two days later, as I'm pouring a cup of coffee, I see it; a cookie jar shaped like a simple bird cage with parakeets...  it's pretty...

"Oh, this is what was in that box that came..."

"Yeah, it's a cookie jar."

"I see that.  Does this mean I have to make some cookies?"

"If you want to," lifting the cookie jar.

twist

twist

twist

"It's also a music box."

...the music plays...

...and the music is, well... it's creepy.

I agree that a good many music boxes are creepy.  As they age it only gets worse; the music plays slower and slower.  I had one that my grandparents gave me that played the "Little Drummer Boy"; in reality it played the first phrase of "Little Drummer Boy".  You know:

"Come, they told me, Pah Rum Pah Pum Pum" over and over...and over.  

When you're a child you don't long for the resolution of the whole song, so, the one phrase doesn't drive you up the wall.  I would wind it up and let it play and play and play and play.  I enjoyed it so much that Mom decided that it should be put away with all the other "Christmas stuff"...  years later I found it buried in the linen cabinet...

Bean once bought my little sis a Christmas nutcracker that played (of all things) "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes".  Like I say, "There are some things that should never be made; there some things that are made that should never be bought; those things that should never have been made and never have been bought should never, ever, be given to your wife for Christmas."

Enough deeply nested tangent...

I expected the bird cage cookie jar to play any of various tunes that music boxes play such as "The Happy Wanderer", "Over the Rainbow", "Feed the Birds" even...  but not a funeral march...  the slow plinking music in a minor key is haunting and disturbing.  

If Uncle Fester from the Addams Family had an ice cream truck... 

If all the children in "Oliver Twist" went back to the work house at the end of the movie...

If Tim Burton were to recreate the Sound of Music in claymation...

...this is what the music would sound like...

...and so, there it sits on the counter; the haunted cookie jar.  It is old, old, old and remembers all the times it's been wound in the past and plays a stray note just when you've recovered from the last time it played.

My guess is that when the cookie jar is filled the weight of the cookies keeps the music from playing.  As each cookie is taken from the jar the weight decreases until it is light enough for the funeral march to start playing...  

The more I thought about this, the more it made sense to me.

I'm having a music box installed on the fridge door later in the week...  I should be ready for my swimsuit in no time...

-silly

Poetry Challenge: The Problem with Lipstick

The problem with lipstick
By G. David Post

“The problem with lipstick
Mascara and blush,”
Dad, brutally truthful, would say,

“The trouble with hairspray,
high heels and tight skirts?
They cannot take ugly away.”

Donuts are easier or "Dip and cross your fingers"

OK...

I guess it's time for an entry about the creative process again... it's been a while and I don't want to lose you all as I immerse myself in the POETRY challenge... so let's just take those little letters E O P R T Y ; we'll add another T. And with a little magic we get P O T T E R Y... Yea... I love word games...

Last Night was pottery class; sans M&M... Francine announced that she'd be firing soon. Of course, I was in the middle of doing something and this announcement made my heart skip a beat (in a bad way)... You see, if all my pieces aren't glazed when she fires then they won't make it into the kiln...  that's a bad thing...  I have a show coming up in May and if I don't have my pots glazed there's no show...

So there I was, elbows deep in clay, doing something else (trimming my one pound pieces - I challenged myself to working with only a pound of clay to see what I could produce and just how thin I could throw the porcelain) time to shift gears (insert terrible grinding noise)... so much for creative process...  

Time to glaze...

I've opted to have all of my work for the past year (nearly 60 pieces) glazed in a Malcolm Davis (some famous contemporary potter) shino glaze.  Shinos [pronounced (She - No) (or however you want to - I'm not the boss of you)] are this cool family of glazes that do weird things and can achieve some fabulous results.  They will pool, they will crawl, they will pit, they will trap carbon and sometimes they just look like snot...  yup...  gross...  

Let's review my track record.  While I was on the cruise last winter I got a free chip and used it on the craps table.  Since I had never played craps, I asked for a little help and the next thing I knew I had a few more chips...   ...before long, I had none.  And so it is with shino and me...

I've been trying this glaze on various pieces over the course of time that I've been doing pottery.  The first attempt was OK, but I was a beginner who wasn't very adept at throwing, so a fabulous glaze would have done little.  The next attempt was better...

Flash forward...

Well, HotDiana asked me to make her something for Christmas and I did.  I threw this wonderful jug with a clunky handle and even inscribed the bottom...  After she had unloaded the kiln, Francine called and asked me to come to the studio.  When I got there, she was sitting at the table with Diana's jug on a turntable.  I cannot adequately describe what the glaze had done.  Francine does not make comments or compliments frivolously...  So, when she turned the piece around on the turntable and said,

"This is a museum quality piece." I was in shock and she added,

"This will always be a prize in your collection of the pieces you've made."

"Except that I made it for someone else."

"Oh, you can't possibly give this away."  Such a quandary was mine, but the piece had, afterall, been made for HotDiana...

Subsequent attempts with this glaze have produced just as many different results, but never the same thing twice...

And so it is that I have rolled the craps dice of shino glazes and come out a winner; once...

Yet (and I add, undeterred) I spent last night glazing mugs and bowls hoping that one or two will reproduce that effect...  ...and hoping, beyond hope, that they will not look like they are coated in mucus or Elmer's Glue.  

Louie's rule number one is "Don't get attached to anything"...  alas...  I should have asked if that applies to a whole year's worth of work or just that one fave piece...

Maybe I'll produce stuff so pathetic that my friends will feel obligated to buy it at the gallery and maybe I'll have a kiln load of oddities...  I'm hoping for the best and at least one piece that I can put in the cabinet...

...right next to the jug that reads, "For my HotDiana".

-silly

Poetry Challenge: Lark in April Showers

Lark in April Showers
By G. David Post

“Secret party – Afternoon”
“The special day approaches!”
First date
First kiss
Stories of the labor room,
Of hurry when the time came.
First child
First word
Photos of the diaper pail.
And tales of Dora, Elmo.
First tooth
First step
Pigeons all around the crumbs,
That bobbing mass of feathers.
And, one lark,
With no coo.
Questions, questions, pigeons ask
Of the one she never met.
“Some guy?”
“Must be!”
Smile, laugh and shoulders shrug;
So the pigeons turn for crumbs.
First ball
First day
No tales to tell of colic,
Nor the tales of sleepless nights.
First play
First catch
Photos, none, of Halloween
Nor shots of the Christmas play
“My dog!”
“Oh…sweet…”
All the bows of opened gifts;
Paper strewn, uneaten cake.
"Best luck!"
"Thanks, so."
That lark among the pigeons
All the cooing, all the crumbs.
First note…
First song…

Poetry Challenge: Eden Snow

Baloney challenged me to participate in the April Poem a Day contest at the Poetic Asides Blog.  Nothing to win, really, but looks like fun and work for the brain.  I will post what I write for each day and in the comments leave the Topic as assigned by the folks over there.

Eden Snow
By G. David Post

A chilly morning this,
In the garden.
More than frost and falling from the sky.

Under foot, soft and cold,
(Adam’s bare foot)
Dancing on the wind with Eve’s long hair.

As, from mud, his form made
So, from snow, this.
Two hands work a shape, so round, a ball.

“Duck, Creator”. A smile.
Angels protest.
Heaven’s host, to His defense, arrives.

Creator’s aim is true
And Eve’s not bad.
Adam runs, but laughter stings, not cold.

No work this snow day has,
but wage of war,
Now that play is born and snowball fights…

Does anyone have a recipe for??? or "the purpose driven toothpick"

Mom has been giving me a subscription to Taste of Home magazine for several years now.  I won't ask her to renew it for next year; as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't exist any longer.  It's dead to me...

TOH was one of those fun little magazines that was dreamed up by two grandmas sitting in front of their mobile home looking for a way to preserve what can only be considered the origins of Paula Deen style cookin'.  It was a place where little old ladies could talk about their best Easter dinner (Ham, ham and ham - who doesn't love ham), where "Men Who Run the Range" was a regular submission ("Imagine, Flo, men that actually cook...  what's this worl' comin' tuh?"), and the editor gave advice to those cooks who wrote in with questions (Q: When I shell my hard boiled eggs the shells don't come off, what can I do?  A: Buy your eggs more often than once a year.)

With the revamping and updating so much of the charm and "quaint" appeal of the magazine has been lost.  What this really means is that they have lost that thing which people (like me) enjoy poking fun at, but it sold subscriptions.

Gone is the section: "Does anyone have a recipe for..."  I miss this section so very much; it was classic!  Such letters as: When Elmer and I were at a friend's for dinner over 25 years ago, she made this tasty dish using catfish and pimento cheese, but I lost the recipe.  ...or... When my dad was growing up in Slobovia his mom made a special Christmas turkey that was stuffed with black jelly beans, I can't find the recipe anywhere.  AND ONE TIME... I was at a church potluck and Velma made a jello mold using circus peanuts.  She won't share her recipe, will you?

Here is where I have to add that I'm the person that actually eats circus peanuts (not the ones in a shell) those orangish flavored marshmallow candies.  (When I tear open the bag Cricket has to leave the room.)  Out of a bag, I eat about 6 of them and then, I'm done for a while - six months.  (Not too long ago, my family showed up at the door and held an "intervention", but I digress.)

So, you won't find it unusual that I actually had a bag of circus peanuts (tho you may still find it unusual)...   ...and what should be on the backside of the bag, but a recipe for orange jello mold with circus peanuts...  As I stared at the recipe all the other requests began dancing around in my brain; violent nausea overwhelmed me when the realization became crystal clear... THEY WERE REAL...  all those requests were for food that people had actually eaten...

Also gone from TOH is Ned's toothpick.  While, in reality, this referred to a sketch of a toothpick that was cleverly hidden in the pages (the finder of which could receive some type of prize), there was an intro line of how Ned had lost his trusty toothpick and it was somewhere in the pages of the magazine.  In my book, the word "trusty" can only mean that it had been used on more than one occasion.  Gross...

Alas, the "In Our Family" section is also gone.  This is where people share their own family traditions, prayers and customs... ...quaint.  Mom never got to send her entry; she'd have sent it on a lark.  She and Dad had had dinner at the home of friends from their church.  When dinner was over the host announced that it was "Time for toothpicks."  Out came the little canister of toothpicks that was passed around the table.  The hosts and other guests sat at the table picking their teeth until the hostess passed around "the bowl".  Into the bowl went all the toothpicks.  This was revolting to my mom, but she was too polite to have ever said anything.

My mother's telling of this story was not as funny when she told it the first time.  It was only after the second dinner they attended ,when new guests looked with horror at the other guests picking their teeth and at the bowl of used picks passed around after the meal, that Mom's story came into full bloom.  I love to mention those old friends to Mom and hear that story and how it morphs depending on her mood...

...and so it goes, that Taste of Home has morphed into a cooking magazine; like all the others...

Gone is the quaint.

Gone is the absurd.

Gone are the toothpicks and grandmas.

Gone are the things that turn your stomach and strike your funny-bone.

It's odd, really, because those are the things, that are "Home".

-silly

Shuman Hall is haunted by the ghosts of my youth or "How many years did it take to get the smell out of your clothes"

"At the top of the stairs, take a right; go all the way to the end."

"Thanks."

I had been in this office before, tho it was a very long time ago, four/five sitcoms at least.  (Maybe it's the fact that I grew up watching "Mary Tyler Moore"

, "Laverne and Shirley" and "the Jeffersons", but, I tend to think of the different times in my life as sitcoms - and, yes, I have a theme song for most of them).  This had been the office of the Academic Dean and I had been up here for good reasons, bad reasons and dumb reasons...  Dean Collard (I couldn't tell you his first name) had been a prof that I'd had in college for a "Modern Thought" class.  He didn't lecture, he simply had you read a chapter and discuss it with him.  It was very tricky.  Oddly enough, it was one of those classes that required "permission" and how someone like me ever got in is still a mystery (to the other people in the class).

Dean Collard is long gone, but something he said back then still haunts me.  "Your generation doesn't pick up pennies because they don't see value in them.  When we begin to think of insignificant things as valueless things it hurts us.  We begin to think of insignificant people as having no value and it only goes down from there."  I started picking up pennies - and my friends started picking up Purell.

But today, I was on my way to see another Prof I had had in college. (It's funny to think that at 43 I am older now than he was when I had him as a professor).  When I got to the office that I believed was his I had a very strange feeling that I was in the wrong place.  Tho I couldn't put my finger on it until later, realize now that I still associated him with the "smell."  

I was in college in the 80s, he was a young man in the 80s...  in the 80s the cologne was Polo.  ...and he wore Polo.  Now, I won't remark that he wore too much cologne because Polo is one of those scents that is not unlike the QEII.  If you were in a row boat and were hit by the QEII you couldn't complain that the liner had hit you harder than was necessary...  ...and so it was in college that I knew he was coming down the hallways long before I ever saw him and years afterward the smell of Polo would bring to mind this man who was, at the same time, my professor and my friend.

Upon arrival at his "new" office (Dean Collard's old office) I had the suspicion I was in the wrong place because I did not smell the cologne - so odd how the brain works.

He was there and seemed genuinely pleased that I had come to see him.  We decided to go for lunch, Mongolian BBQ.  

Our conversation over lunch was what you would expect of that between the head of a college and his unemployed blogging former student from years past...

"What are you doing these days?"

"I'm unemployed."

"Which explains why you're in such great shape."

(If you read my blog regularly, tho we've never met, you can see the expression on my face.)

"When did you go blind?" was not my response.

"Was I that fat in college?" was also not my response.

Instead I laughed and said,

"It's amazing what a VERY TIGHT stretchy t-shirt will do to your body under a very loose sweater."  (and it is!) 

I was amazed to find that it did not seem at all as tho 25 years had passed since last I had sat to talk with him.

I was amazed to find that, when he began to suggest possible job paths for me, he was spot in terms of what I know and what I can do...

I was amazed to find that he had changed so very little and that, while I think I have changed so very much, (perhaps) I have not.

On my way back to the car, I glanced at the ground and saw an old metal spoon in the mud along the path.  It was bent and twisted, tho not rusty.  I left it where it was because it was garbage...  ...but it was right at the foot of a gate that I had never noticed.

 

-silly