Gearing Up

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Out behind one of the outbuildings on Cousins Dean and Lori's place in southeastern South Dakota (either Marion or Freeman, I'm never sure when you leave one and enter the other) is a sort of museum to the equipment that was used on the farm when our fathers were at home. That makes sense since Dean and Lori and their kids have been living on "the home place" for as long as I can remember. Their "new" home sits on the footprint of the home in which all - excepting one - of the 9 children in my father's generation were born. If I have this wrong I will undoubtedly receive corrections from the various kin who hang out here on The Wall. The point is that the image immediately below is an item from that museum. It is called a "horsepower gear."

As I understand it, horses were hitched to the gear - much like you see on pony rides at the fair. The horses then walk around in a circle and the gear translates the round-and-round motion of the horses to drive chain motion that could power the various machines, pulleys, conveyer belts etc., used around the farm.  I have a vague memory of my father debating with his brothers as to which horses were hooked where, but I may be thinking some other horse powered implements, plows, rakes, what have you. But be that as it may that  is the "horsepower gear" from what I think of as the Schrag Farm Machinery Museum.

As is the next step in all PPP images is to use Photoshop to remove much of the image to create white space in which I draw the designs which will eventually be colored to create the final image. Here is the white space only image:

The next step is to draw in the designs. I need to remind myself, as I tend to get carried away with this step, that I will eventually need to actually color in all those spaces. Anyhow here is a semi-complete version of that step. And no, I will not share with you how long it takes to do this step.

Finally, I color in the designs. To anticipate a few questions:

1. I don't really choose the colors or where they will go. They just sort of choose themselves.  You may have heard of "dowsing for water." You take a forked stick, hold it gently and slowly walk around. When the sticks "dips" you can dig down and find water. One way color appears in my drawings is a form of "dowsing." I take the "color source," pen, marker, brush, whatever and move it slowly over the designs. It dips when it wants to color the spot below it.  .  . Or, I move back from the drawing and sort of unfocus my gaze - shifting from the design to the palette of color sources. A match occurs and I take the color source and apply it to the portion of the design asking for that color.  And I really can't offer any more precise explanation.
2. Come on, if I wouldn't admit to the time I spent drawing the designs, what makes you think I would fess up to how long the coloring takes? Let it suffice to say much longer than it to to draw the designs!
3. Why do I do these drawings? To cut to the chase, I enjoy the process. I find it calming. It makes me happy.
4. And no, I don’t see them as being influenced by other works. They have, over the past few decades, bounced between a variety of styles from quasi-representational to abstract. That too is a purely subjective process, driven by mood and circumstance.

So here is  the final version of Gearing Up!  Actually this version is a bit cropped around the edges, the result of a struggle with Photoshop. But this is about 95% complete.

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I will be glad to answer any other questions you might have at robert.schrag@gmail.com.

 

Foster Harmony 2020

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I listen to music or “books on tape” while drawing. I have just finished listening to the BBC’s radio production of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. While obviously more sparse than the 1200 or so pages in the print version, Sibley and Bakewell’s version captures much of the spirit of the original. As is my wont, I see this radio play through the eyes of my worldview - Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.

Foster Harmony is the first and dominant tenet of Distilled Harmony, so it is not surprising that I was drawn to its manifestation in this version of The Lord of the Rings.  Aragorn, who is eventually revealed as the rightful Lord of the Rings, and “King” of Middle Earth, performs all kinds of heroic deeds of arms, slays an amazing array of evil doers, orcs, nazguls; you name it, he “smote” them! But interestingly he is not completely accepted as the true King until he demonstrates his ability to heal Eowyn, the shield maiden who slew the King of the Nazguls at great personal harm because - like the first tenet of Distilled Harmony, Foster Harmony, “the hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known.”  The ability to heal is of far greater import than the ability to harm, and hence one who claims the kingship must demonstrate the ability to heal.

Back in 1776, we decided that the will of the people was of greater import than the will of any king, hence he or she who would stand for the people must manifest the ability to heal. And now, perhaps more than any time in our nation’s history - save perhaps the Spring of 1865 and the ending of the Civil War - we stand in need of healing. Somehow we have come to see those whose political views differ from our own not as “the honored opposition” but as enemies whose will must be thwarted, whose every assertion must be declared some type of falsehood. 

President-elect Biden has declared his intention to heal the corrosive divides that threaten the very notion of democracy - also put in place back in 1776. That is certainly a welcome change from the discordant confrontational style emanating from the White House over the last four years, and is still capturing and poisoning the media's attention today.

However, unlike Aragorn's mythic powers, this is a task beyond Biden's welcome declaration. As I have said before here on The Wall, fostering harmony is an individual, not a governmental, task. You cannot legislate compassion, gentleness, caring - you cannot mandate harmony. So while the government can, and hopefully will after January 20th, put forth policies that ease the path to fostering harmony; a broad cultural manifestation of harmony, of goodwill towards all is a task each of us must shoulder individually.

Perhaps the best first step is a sincere attempt to purge both our overt language and internal self-talk - and so hopefully our attitudes - of the "Us versus Them" mentality that has increasingly poisoned our public discourse. "Those Democrats" "Those Republicans" "Those neo-nazis" "Those black militants" "Those Latinos" "Those Immigrants" and, of course, the more virulent versions of all those labels, are the sad reflections of the linguistic norms that further and deepen the "Us versus Them" divide. Perhaps if we self-edit our reflections and our language, we will begin to reign in the currently common cultural inclination to fail to see individuals and see individuals only as members of groups, and often to see the group as part of "Them."

So while Biden's declaration of healing, of changing the idea of red and blue states into united states, is a welcome, and hopefully welcoming, relief from the years of anger, confusion and confrontation emanating from the fragmented seat of government, it is not enough. Each of us, in our language and behavior, must become welcoming and open to compromise, for only then can we claim to truly foster harmony and open the path to healing.

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Po'

Po’ you, po’ me

It’s an awful time

For po'etry.

Stay at home.

Go nowhere.

Take three hours

To wash your hair.

Watch another TV flick

Rehashed plots

That leave you sick.

Brush the puppy

Sweep the floor,

Collect the groceries

From the door.

Play some music

Off your screen

Oldies, new stuff --

In between,

You run some laps

Around the den

Count your steps

Then run again.

Facetime chatter

With the kids

Realtime life

Still on the skids.

Grab your journal

And your pen,

Enter “no news”

Once again.

Po’ you, po’ me.

It’s an awful time

For po'etry.

It Has Always Been at Midnight

Or, Confessions of an Insomniac

Spring  forward, fall back

A game we have to play.

But it really doesn’t matter

Makes no difference anyway.

For it has always been at midnight

Quite precisely, more or less

When the real world grows quite hazy,

Some delights tinged with distress

’Cause I’m never really certain

Just where I ought to perch

Is the footing there quite stable?

Will my next step be a lurch

Sending me careening

Out there beyond the pale?

Where my insights all can fragment

And all past wisdom fail?

So I turn the pillow over -

Seeking for a cooler spot

Switch the sounds from trains to stormy.

Hide behind the rain and thunder.

And from what now?  I forgot.

Can the patter on my window

Bring the pleasing calm I seek?

Or send me out free-wheeling

Down some other psychic street?

So it goes, sometimes, till morning

When sunlight creeps back in

And I finally claim some solace,

Blanket tucked beneath my chin.