The truth hurts......

Today the sun shone brightly and my belly gurgled in delight!

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:11:10 -0400

Blue Skies ahead

Coming home from work

Puffy

From the Hubble Telescope

A tale of two sisters

Union Station

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A+++ for Berry Picking, D- for lighting and photography.........................

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:26:44 -0400

Mulberry Time

I was staking a trellis for my Gourds and Morning Glories and I looked over the fence and saw that the Mulberry tree was covered with berries. So given that I am cheap and would never pay for these I ran over with my bowl and made my fingers Indigo with greed. I got about a gallon.

There were millions of them. The birds are so fat they look like mini kiwi birds. We also have a patch of wild Strawberries so I picked a few of them also. Kevin's mission is to make me a pie, or sorbet, or a Cobbler, or Preserves, or a tart, or just a big ice cold bowl with some heavy cream.

I will pick on the third day guaranteeing to only take ripe ones and not get entirely sick of them. Plus when the neighbors discover what I'm doing I am guessing there will be a mob-scene around my secret tree. You couldn't see it until they tore the house down that it grew alongside of.

They are Royal blue and were so wet and shiny but my camera phone seemed to make them look rather unattractive.

Tonight I planted red leaf lettuce with chives interspersed. You cut the lettuce with the chives for a light summer afternoon salad. Kevin plants the Sunflowers tomorrow and then again in August for a second round. Tomatoes this weekend.

Depression Bowl and Berries

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Tagged by Beanie..8 things...............

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Sun, 18 May 2008 10:07:28 -0400

It just dawned on me that I never finished my tag from Stephel because I was in the middle of a bunch of drama with my dad's house and my beloved doggie being sick. So Beanie tagged me and it happens to be the same one Stephel did I think so I will answer two birds with one tag.

1.Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.

2.People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.

3.At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.

4. Don't forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they’ve been tagged,and to come back and read your blog for the whole story.

1. I am a painter. I have painted most of my life and am pretty good at it. There are many hundreds of my paintings wandering the universe. I do mostly watercolor. I was used by a paint brush manufacturer to design several series of brushes for watercolor painters and they are still around today. They are synthetic and not animal hair. That was my first requirement.

2. I have a poem in the Smithsonian. I was asked by an Archaeologist and an Anthropologist to read a series of translated texts and poems by Aztecs and write one in the same pentameter and style as an Aztec poem but in words somebody from today could relate to. That was in 1979 and my guess is that it was used once and filed for eternity or discarded during a cleaning spree. Or perhaps carved in a cap stone over the entry to a historic library,lol. Or to keep a coffee cup ring off a desk after they used it.

3. I am a left handed Sagittarian.

4. If I am outside in nature nothing can stop me. I value life hugely. I love nurturing things and watching them progress. And then I eat them. I frequently spare insects from certain death by relocating them to a safer area rather than squishing them. I am on a Karma correcting quest and trying to atone for things done when I was too ignorant to understand the consequences for my actions.

5. I framed Masterpiece paintings for the Brittish Museum when I worked at Yale and had to have armed guards with me while I worked on them. I did several Monets and a few of the "Hudson River School " painters. Also a Mary Cassat and a few Dutch Masters.

6. I have / had the highest IQ in the State of New York when I was tested in the 70's. The drug culture ensued and my IQ went the way of the birds in winter. South. I'm pretty smart but not sharp and immediate as I was when I was very young. I have trouble remembering somebodies name that I met ten minutes ago lately. I still intuitively make generally good decisions based on the digestion of facts. I can make anything. I am more right brain and therefore not intellectually smart. I just have pretty good common sense. I can give you the answer to a complex math problem but have no idea how to get to the answer on paper.

7. I believe that I will levitate one day. I think there are ways of doing things with our physical being that remain untapped. I believe that, as in my dreams, I will one day hit the right combination of thought processes and lift myself from the ground. Look over my fence if you want a good laugh. I would love to be a monk and spend entire periods of time doing nothing but thinking, working, eating lightly and sleeping briefly. I believe ritual will unlock many secrets in me that I hope to discover before I am no longer here. There is great peace in ritual.

8. I love to go to the wrong side of the tracks. I enjoy walking freely in areas others may fear to tread. I am never scared of people or situations in bad parts of town because I believe totally in destiny. I think that whatever will happen is going to happen anyway. If I hide from it I will be found out and it will be magnified simply because I tried to dodge my destiny. I glide in whatever direction my heart pulls me and am happy to walk through life relatively fearlessly. I only fear the things that man has conjured up. Because the mind works as it does I fear the insides of peoples heads rather than what they are physically capable of. I think there is nothing to fear from nature. Most scary things are manmade and amplified through incorrect living.

I don't know who to tag anymore. People seem to get pissed if you tag them lol! So here goes anyhow: RobbbieDobbie, DewiCasgwent, Aubrey, Valerae, Jaypo, Brown Suga, Sol, and Lizzy

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Today's Tater is Smiley..........................................

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Sun, 18 May 2008 01:18:21 -0400

Smiley Face

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Did somebody say Roller Derby?

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Sun, 18 May 2008 01:06:24 -0400

I didn't know that there was still a circuit or even how popular it has gotten again. We had so much fun. It's a campy, noisy, cheap night out and a whole pile of us went. Many of them drank heavily. We saw The Nashville Roller Girls Music City Bruisers,lol! Slugs Bunny, Slammy Lou Harris, Leann Crimes, Megzilla, Hildabeast and the fan favorite Rambo Slambo who strips down to her red lace bra and panties.

It was nice because there were thousands of gay people. All of us don't hang out in bars. Many do, but we generally don't. The people that weren't gay don't much care if you are or not. Here are some snaps. Tater babysat the kitties for a few hours. We are still working on getting her used to being alone in the house. We brought her a bumper sticker and a Roller Girl Calendar.

Ring Girls

Kevin's head

Cathy and Denise and Kevin

Kevin and Cathy

Rock Camp for teenaged girls

Slammy Lou Harris on the Jam

So they really collect food for the Food Bank. If you give them a can of food they give you all the calendars and bumperstickers and stuff. A can of beer is $6.00 and that's $2.00 cheaper than at a Titan's football game. I'm even happier I don't drink. I would have spent several hundred dollars instead of $25.00 including several cokes and two tickets. Cathy is a very important lady where I work and I can't wait to e-mail her Cathyzilla photo. She took it off a table and stretched it over her head. I snapped a pic of her. They had it at the Tennessee State Fair Grounds. If I wasn't so lazy I would scan some calendar pics. They all have really funny costumes and personas. Six of the team mebers work at my Hospital. They have been writing about them in the paper lately.

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Robert Rauschenberg died.....................................

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:25:18 -0400

Rauschenberg

I didn't know Robert. I liked his work well enough. I knew his niece Krista quite well. In fact she worked for me for a long time in Hollywood. She was his favorite niece and had tons of his paintings in her apartment. She dated my assistant Brad for a long time.

When I met her she work for Giorgio Armani in Beverly Hills and only had to work a few months a year. Her commissions from "Oscar gowns" would provide her enough income to only work part time. The employee discount was 95%. I paid her considerably less.

I liked Krista very much. I know she is heartsick. I haven't seen her in over ten years. I hope you're okay Kris. I know this will be very hard for you.

I never bought Armani. Kevin bought me a blazer from one of the movie studios and it was several thousand dollars. They gave him stuff for pennies because he managed a big Hollywood thrift store that benefitted AIDS Patients so all the studios donated tons of movie props for him to sell.

Krista, Kim, and Suzie were the Hollywood girls. They all worked for me for years but generally either were late or called in sick a few times a week. They were my "extra" help and had tons of guys that they would wait on so I kept them on. Kim was in music videos. She formerly worked at the Cafeteria at Three Mile Island (NO SHIT),lol. Slash from Guns and Roses had the hots for her and gave her his kitten. I had to take her to the vet and it ended up having feline Leukemia and died. She was sad but more pissed at him than anything for giving her a sick kitten and then not paying the vet bill.

Suzie Park was the early equivalent to Tila Tequila. Really rich guys would court her and follow her around and send limo's for her. Krista just hung with the pretty girls and she was very pretty also. Brad, my assistant was the son of a fish farmer from Michigan and he fell for her literally the minute he laid eyes on her. She broke his heart so many times. Not by cheating or anything because she wasn't like that. She was just solitary. She really liked being alone in a crowd. Fun times.

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The Chicken has come home to Roost.....I mean Gully ; )

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:02:35 -0400

The homecoming

I picked Gully up at the Vet this afternoon on my way home. When I walked in the door I set his little albino cube on the floor and Tater ran over and started wagging her tail and licking the box. She was all smiles. I'm glad he's home. I have a little bathtub stopper of Gully with a life preserver on and it floats around the bubbles in the tub. I am going to put it on top of his ashes until I can find the perfect container. I don't want it to be too perfect. You hear about people's houses getting broken into and Grandma ends up at the pawn shop. Kevin made cheeseburgers in his honor. He loved cheeseburgers. We took Tater down to the river over the weekend and I collected driftwood to make a little odd fence out of and daddy Kevin walked baby all over the riverbanks. They are playing ball right now. Gully is eating very big peanut butter cups and humping something. Perhaps a heavenly tree stump. Or a passing angel.

Down by the river

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I just heard from Janice Langbehn................

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:02:48 -0400

You guys were all so great writing to that shitty Hospital in Florida oh behalf of Janice, her kids, and her partner Lisa who died alone in that Hosital because Janice was not allowed in to be with her. She attended the GLAAD Awards and a tribute to her and the kids took place. They are still fighting the good fight and I will let you all know from time to time what I hear about what this Hospital has to do to make it up to this family for the indignities they have suffered.

I related to Janice that when Kevin and I took Gully to be put to sleep the Vet staff joined us in our sorrow and treated us with the most beautiful care and respect and made the entire process that much more moving and memorable.

I still can't get over that Hospital treating this family that way. I hope you don't mind but I pledged support and may call on you again for another letter writing campaign. This story is a world wide civil rights case and I wanted to thank all of you again for sharing the Lisa Pond story with others and writing that Hospital and sharing your disgust with them.

You are the diggity bomb. (old guy trying to be hip but failing miserably)

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Hey slugger. I've been thinking about you allot lately.......

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:50:54 -0400

I remember Mama

Mama,

I miss you very much. I'm doing fine and nothing to worry about. I sold your house. They were nice people or I wouldn't have. Gully left us last week and I know you loved him very much. As I clean through the house and dust and iron and mop I think of you. You were the best damn housewife I ever met. Thanks for teaching me all these things. My house and my partner thank you. I better get back to the kitchen. I only wish I was half as cute as you when I set the table.

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Who has the best Mother-in Law? I do, that's who!

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:45:18 -0400

Not only was I blessed with a wonderful mom but I also had the good fortune of finding somebody to spend my life with that has the only mom who can hold a candle to mine. Miss Jessie Elliott is the finest Mother-in-Law a guy could ask for. My life is fuller and richer because of her. Not only do I love her son but I also love her. She is perhaps the most kind and generous person I have met and in addition to being a good person she has also been a good mom. I am grateful every day that I have her in my life. If I had an idol, she would be it.

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