A Quick Halloween Treat

Well, I'm not sure how much of a treat it is - but at least it's not fattening!😁 

Having spent the morning quickly clicking by my various news sources that are all stunningly depressing I thought I would remind you that I would encourage you to forward The Wall to any of your friends, family, or acquaintances who might enjoy "something completely different" to quote Monty Python. And if they would like to be on The Wall themselves, they can drop me a note at robert.schrag@gmail.com and I will be glad to put them on the distribution lists.

Anyhow, here the details in case they inquire:

The Wall is sent out via "blind copies" so that no person on The Wall has access to anyone else on The Wall.

There is no "publication schedule" for the Wall. I just post when something moves me, or a drawing is ready to discuss or share.

I have no way of knowing who opens the post. Just numbers of how many "hits" there are on the post.

Anyone on The Wall can comment on a post by emailing me, but there is no public site for posts, altho' "comments" made directly on the post will be seen - I think - to anyone accessing the post.

So have a good Halloween 👻💀! Pretend you bought all that candy for the kids!

Ode to a Fading Gentleman

I don't have a specific gentleman in mind - rather the idea of a gentle man; a man who is gentle. The Brits still cling to a sort of system, harking back to "the days of old, when knights were bold." At the top of the heap you had the nobility, those folks who can trace their linage to the royal family. Those who, given opportunities presented by death, war, sickness or assassination, might actually become Queen or King. A group not renowned for their gentleness. Nor were their hired head breakers - the knights, Lancelot and that crowd.

But there was another level of society, those at the back of the book in Burke's Peerage - the gentry. While not pretenders to the throne, they were thought to be models of gentility. Sort of nobility without the carnage. They were supposed to be polite, well-spoken, gentle, kind, brave, clean and reverent. No wait, those last three were from the Scout Law. But you get the idea. Gentlemen were supposed to be gentle, as were gentlewomen when given the opportunity.

I seem to seek in vain for contemporary remnants of these progenitors of human gentleness, of loving kindness. The liturgies of most organized religions do assert them - and elements of some do actually manifest those behaviors. Yet, sadly, as we examine the hot, or even the merely smoldering, spots of conflict around the world, we often discover that the conflict revolves around a disagreement as to whose god is the right god.

But I can't personally pour any oil on those troubled global waters, I'll leave that to the petrochemical companies - sorry, couldn't resist. What I mean is I can't really champion gentleness on a global scale - a task that objectively seems beyond the pontifications of the White House and other self-serving global figures who talk peace while simultaneously threatening, preparing for, or engaging in, greater armed conflict. But maybe we can each individually "play gentleness forward."

It's not really that hard. Do little things. First off - don't yell. It is a natural inclination, even to ourselves: you stub your toe, drop a glass, get cut off by a rude driver. Yelling seems natural, but fight the inclination. Try not to yell, swear, make rude gestures. It's tough sometimes, but your cardiovascular system will thank you. Keep that blood pressure just rolling along - Old Man River it.

Best place to practice this primary manifestation of gentleness is at home. Here are some phrases guaranteed to make your home a more gentle, yell-free, calmer place: Thank you. Please. You're welcome. Let me help you with that. No, you go first. I'm sorry. Is there something wrong? Want to talk about it? You look nice today. I love you.

Go ahead, add some more examples of your own. Things you'd like to say or hear in the house. We all know them. We just seem to forget to trot them out when they would do the most good. Practice. Now, once you get used to using them at home, try taking them out for a spin. While driving. When you are shopping.  Eating at a restaurant.  At work. Anywhere you rub elbows with your fellow citizens: "No, you go ahead." "Take that spot. I'll drive around.""I'm going to go grab a coffee, fruit juice, snack, apple, orangutan. Can I get you one?"

These are terribly simple things we can all do, many of them come right out of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten  by Robert Fulghum. But the problem is that these behaviors are not seen as pathways to success in American culture.

Our local heroes more often leap aggressively from our various videos, sporting events, music, politics. Slam, bam! Good guys take down the bad guys in a plethora of streaming thriller videos. (Yeah. One of my guilty pleasures. I'm trying to cut back.) Sports gives us: Defense! Hit that line! Crash the boards! (Another of my trials - football for schools where I taught. I, at least, think about CTE, and don't cheer at hard hits.) Politics leads with: Liar! Fake News! Bad man! She Belongs in Jail! The City is a disaster! Send in the National Guard! Join ICE help root out the baddest of the bad! And today there are reports of 10K American troops standing off the coast of Venezuela.

But it could be worse. A dose of schadenfreude reveals these tidbits from today's international news:

"Rapid Support Forces kills 460 patients at a hospital in el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur." And "Brazilian police raid on a drug gang in Rio de Janeiro Tuesday kills at least 119 people—the city's deadliest raid on record."

It all sure adds a sour note to the morning coffee, not?  Why do we act this way? What forces the notion of gentleness back into hazy visions of romantic pasts that might never have really been? I do not know. I don't buy the notion that we are still chained to the violent inclinations of our atavistic prehistory. But I have a suggestion for at least claiming the feeling that one is injecting a touch of gentleness into a frighteningly hostile world:

As much as possible lead a personally gentle life. I'm not suggesting a kind of life of pure behavioral pacifism where you seek out a monastic retreat and spend your days in solitary prayer. Nah, nothing that extreme.  Just start by using some of that gentle vocabulary we constructed above. Then once you can "talk the talk," move into "walking the walk." Be gentle with yourself and with those who touch your life.

Suggestions that, of course, allow me to trot out my old mantra for trying to live a "good life": Foster Harmony (aka gentleness), Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.

Drawing Thoughts

It's kind of a zen thing that folks who actually took art classes probably learned in "drawing day two," just after "securing the paper and selecting the medium." But those of us who took the "self-taught" route never got that memo - especially "mature" doodlers like myself who are peeking a couple of weeks ahead to the big double 7.

I realize I had read about something similar to this notion in the "spy-thriller" novels I favor. It is the ritual the sniper goes through before shooting the mafia kingpin meeting with a group of fellow wiseguys on the patio of a restaurant a few thousand yards away. He does some breathing exercises to reach "stage zero" where no internal quiver will disrupt the trigger pull or the bullet's trajectory. Bam. There goes the bad guy! It's sort of like that, but not really.

A little background. My hands shake. Not a function of my upcoming 77th birthday - been that way all my life. As a young theater-type in high school and college, I usually made sure I had something to lean against or hold onto when on stage to anchor the shakes. But interestingly, these days they don't shake when I am drawing. Except when; well, as you have seen I often draw myself into the proverbial corner of tiny little spaces. For example, take a look at Grand Canal image.

Those little colored pieces of sky and water are maybe a half inch by 1/8 inch. The rocks at the base of the buildings are even smaller. It is when coloring little spaces like that when the shakes threaten to re-emerge.

OK, take a quick look at the current project, Carriage Ride with Flowers, or something like that. Haven't really decided on a title yet:

The triangle is eight inches on the long base, and is there to give you an idea of scale. The "learning moment" occurred when trying to decide what kind of design should fill the empty spaces along each edge of the drawing. I wanted something botanical, but was hesitant to put pen to paper until I was more certain what that would like. So I decided to do a preliminary sketch that I could position around on the big drawing to see how it would look.

So I did one, then went a little OCD and cut it out so it wouldn't block any of the big drawing as I tested placement. Here is where I am on that:

OK. The cut out image is 12 x 7 inches. So those spaces inside the leaves get kinda tiny. And it was while creating them that the shakes began to raise their trembling head. I paused. And that is when I discovered - pure serendipity, no explanation - that if I drew the tiny little spaces by pulling the marker towards me while slowly exhaling there were no shakes.

And that's it: To cure the shakes take a breath, position the drawing implement so as to draw it towards you, and draw slowly as you exhale. It is OK to pause mid-stroke, just take another gentle breath, and then continue as you softly exhale.

I don't know if this insight warranted a Wall at all, let alone one this long, but it seemed cool to me! 😁

 

Peace, not pieces.

Alfred Nobel established five categories for the Nobel Prizes which were first awarded in 1901, the fifth anniversary of Nobel's death. The five original categories were Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. The prize for  Economics was added in 1968.

Nobel, who made a significant fortune largely based on weapons and munitions - the most remembered being dynamite - seems to have turned the other cheek late in life by endowing the now world-renowned prizes to be conveyed to individuals who contributed the "greatest benefit to mankind" in those specific fields.

The awards in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature are duly noted by the media. Especially when recipients are themselves media figures, as when Bob Dylan won the Prize for Literature in 2016 "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." Despite being a Dylan fan I shook my head at that selection until I read his acceptance lecture which ended thus:

"Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They're meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare's plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, 'Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story."  Hmm. Hope the "songwriters" of today are listening. We can always use well sung stories.

But the Dylan prize is only one of several that might make us stop and think. For example:

The 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Fritz Haber. A bit strange, not because it was awarded for his work in the mass production of ammonia, but because Haber had overseen Germany's chemical weapons program during World War I.

And then in 1949: Antonio Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist and brain surgeon was awarded the prize in medicine for devising the lobotomy, a practice that is, well, no longer in practice.

Still, what can we really expect from a series of prizes awarded by a committee, any committee!

However, it is the Peace prize that generates the most coverage and controversy. And there have been many controversial winners among those individuals and organizations receiving the award in the 124 years of its existence. And, realistically, one would be hard pressed to find a singular example of an individual or organization who have contributed the "greatest benefit to mankind" by making the world a more peaceful place. There are undoubtedly many worthy individuals and organizations laboring unseen "to benefit mankind" in the trenches and byways of this troubled world trying to bring peace. Few will win the Nobel Prize for Peace, and perhaps that is because they do not "campaign" for it. Instead they focus on their task as peacemakers.

The same cannot be said of Donald Trump, who has claimed in a New York Times article regarding the Nobel Peace Prize: "I deserve it, but they will never give it to me." Well, I hope this is one statement by President Trump that actually proves true - well, not the deserving part, which is a reflection of the fact that he really does not understand what it takes to deserve the prize.

Much of Trump's claim for the prize rests on his claim to "have ended eight wars!" Most prominent at the moment is his claim to have ended the war between Israel and Hamas. That claim seems to be very much up in the air as claims and counterclaims continue among the participants. One can certainly be thankful for the lives repatriated on both sides, but I'm going to wait a few months before checking this one off the list of Trump Victories.

More germane perhaps is the war that Trump declared he would end on his first day in office - the war between Ukraine and Russia. Well, as of today Trump announce 100% tariffs on Russian oil because his one time "good friend" Putin won't follow Trump's playbook. Just another example of a frightening litany of reversals of policy and alliances that have marked his brief tenure in office.

A review of the claims of ending the other six "war ending interventions" seem to reveal Trump lending some impetus to ongoing negotiations where others did the major heavy lifting; sometimes successful, other times not. Not a stunning argument for being the one person in all the world who providing "the greatest benefit to mankind." And then of course his claim to "have never started a war!" Let's keep our eye on Venezuela, or maybe Columbia.

But most damning in my mind is the farce this would be Nobel prize winner is perpetrating on his own country. Using his party's shut down of the government to throw thousands out of work, or to force a reduction in health benefits for millions. Attempting to force universities to kowtow to his ideas of who should be admitted and what should be taught. Using the Department of Justice to attack anyone who might ever have attempted to contradict his beliefs. Loosing ICE agents into cities to arrest anyone whose accent or skin color or former country of residence he finds offensive. And sending armed National Guard troops into "blue cities," aka cities with democratic mayors or voting histories.

This man who covets the Nobel Prize for Peace seems quite content to tear his own country to pieces.

But that is not what frightens me most. These grievous acts against our country are not, in my mind, the acts of an evil person. They are instead the acts of a man in a fairly advanced state of dementia. His inability to construct meaningful sentences. His forgetting of his own previous statements. The implementation of projects he has previously disowned, like the destruction of portions of the White House. His dizzying 'on again - off again' relationships with other countries and world leaders. These are all examples of behavior that, if we observed them in parents or friends of his age [79 - 80 in June], we would be concerned.

"Sure, Dad. Sure, Aunt Martha. Sure, cousin Jo. Sure, dear. You deserve the Nobel Peace Prize."

Horseless Carriages: Update

Hi there -

We have been busy. Trip over to the Cratin Cottage on Klinger Lake in Michigan, then down into the city for a fascinating lecture by Lech Walesa. But I try to steal a bit of time to work on Horseless Carriages.

So let me try to get you up to date.

As you may recall this composition started with a photo I took of one of our favorite objet d'art - or neat thing. A cool little carriage, with a tiny carriage on top:

I then pulled that image into Photoshop and removed all the background stuff to create a "cartoon" version of the image which could be used as a template for various "designed" version of the carriage. That template looks like this:

And that version was replicated for the current design.

Then I created various designs for each of the 13 - no hidden significance there - just happened to fir in the larger design. Here is an example of a "designed carriage":

The next step is to paint each of the designs with my various versions of markers. I have shared some of those with you. There are two types of design.  Here is one of the "full dress" versions in which all the elements are painted:

The other version is the "Pinto Version" named not for the bean, but for the patchwork ponies characterized by their patchwork hides. Here is an example of that version:

I have completed 10 of the 13 carriages, and designed the last 3. But face some new challenges, or opportunities, depending on my mood at the moment. I think I have mentioned that the whole design is 36x46 inches, too big to fit on my drawing table.So I have moved the image to the floor of my bedroom which is the only unoccupied space in the house large enough - excepting the tables upon which we occasionally eat - to accommodate the image:

So I tiptoe around the edges, masking the pieces I am not working on with a blanket and weighing down the edges with books and whatnot. For those of you who have, or have had, small children, know that they can contort themselves into pretzel-like shapes on the floor for extended periods of time and bounce up with no seeming discomfort. This is not the case in the current situation. I realize that I am not painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel here. But Michelangelo was 33 years old when he started that task - completed it 3 years later. Well, I've got more than 4 decades on him. So, yes, this hurts, hence I pace myself, and down the occasional flagon and advil to self-medicate.

But that's not all! You may have noticed that there some significant white spaces between the carriage pathways. But fear not! I have a plan - developing, but still a plan: flowers.

The idea is to fill those with spaces with flowers. They are still in the "design" stage. But here are couple evolving ideas:

This is the basic idea, which will, of course become a full circle:

Each flower will have a unique petal design. Here are the ones I am currently considering.

And here is an outlier that I might consider, based on some rose-like designs I have used in the past - like for the bathroom in the strange refurbed factory Christine and I first rented in Raleigh.

OK, now for the last challenge/opportunity.  Many of my markers are several years old. The ability to smoothly apply color with a marker demands a smooth flow of the ink. It will soon become mandatory for me to test and replace some of my markers. Sooooo many markers, the task seems daunting. But as Buzz Lightyear says - "To infinity and beyond!"

Slip-slide'n Away - To Irrelevance

 "God save the King!"

No, I don't mean the wannabe king in the White House. I mean the real king of the Brits, who lives in Clarence House and whose office is in Buckingham Palace, - an actual King.

You see I have always felt a special connection to Charles, who was born at 9:14 PM on November 14th, 1948. I said hello to the world on the morning of November 15th, 1948. So I occasionally muse that but for a few hours, a few thousand miles of ocean and different parents, I could be sitting on the throne of the British Empire.

The British Empire aka TBE - now there's a golden oldie from the WayBack machine. True, those imperialist dreams got their first stuttering start here on our side of the pond. But in the big picture of TBE, we were an initial hiccup on the way to global domination. Who would have guessed that the whole "taxation without representation" thing would boil over when the King billeted troops in Los Angles - er, Boston - against the wishes of the colonists?

"Oh well," thought the Brits, "There is the rest of the world to filch." And they did for next three or four hundred years, giving birth to the axiom "the sun never sets on the British Empire!" Until it did; as each of its colonies came to realize that The Crown primarily served the interests of The Crown as opposed to the home folks in the various colonies. True the British Navy and the soldiers of The Crown could usually be depended upon to maintain order. But that "orderly state" was usually defined as vouch saving the British head that wore The Crown. So now TBE is an island of about 50,000 square miles, or the size of Alabama. [For the curious minds - Alaska is about 650,000 square miles. Ed.]

So where did it all go wrong for TBE? Leaving my good buddy Charlie presiding over an Empire the size of Alabama, but without the sunshine or the football [American not British] team?

Well, a few things. First, a procession of Royals clung to the belief that only "real Englishmen" - and one supposes "Englishwomen" to a lesser degree, were of import. Everyone else - the natives, colonists, etc., - were sources of labor, conscripts, and most importantly revenue. Hence, one used whatever resources were available to protect the position, power and resources of the "Real English" throughout the Empire; even if that meant intervening militarily should the natives occupying those lands object to the policies and practices of TBE.

It is somewhat ironic that it was the colonists who came to call themselves Americans who were the first British colonists, and the first British colonists to rid themselves of TBE. But over the next 3 or 4 hundred years the rest of TBE followed our lead, leaving my buddy Charlie [in partnership with a surviving cluster of Royals] as the territorially reduced, but still immensely wealthy, ruler of Alabama Britain.

There is another oft quoted axiom: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  -- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.

I can imagine myself sipping port in Buckingham Palace with my pal Charlie. After awhile, and into the second bottle of excellent port from somewhere in the former TBE, he begins to wax philosophical:

Charlie: "So Bobby old boy, this Trump lad - can he read?"

Bobby:  "I believe, occasionally, from teleprompters."

Charlie: "So not Santayana?"

Bobby: "I would guess he would assume you were talking about a rock group from the sixties"

Charlie: "Well let me share some observations with you based on my own view of our history here on 'this sceptered isle'"

Bobby: "Pray do."

Charlie: "Bobby, America is becoming irrelevant."

Bobby: "Huh?"

Charlie: "Think about it. There are a few things that are absolutely imperative on the world stage if one is to maintain a position of leadership."

Bobby: "Such as?"

Charlie: "We'll, for one, consistency. To lead others a state must stand for a consistent set of beliefs, actions and relationships."

Bobby: "Go on."

Charlie: "Trump is a willow in the wind. One day he supports the Ukraine, the next he cozies up to Putin. Turn the page it's Ukraine again. One day he will end the war in Gaza, and turn it into a resort. Then he disappears only to resurface with new plan for that trouble regionto that will fail to past muster with either Hamas or Netanyahu. And one day he wants to annex Greenland. What? To relocate Hamas there?

Bobby: "All right some inconsistency, I admit."

Charlie: "Then there is this whole fiasco of stationing National Guard troops in your own cities. Insane. As any read of history will reveal it cost us the American colonies - maybe eventually the whole empire."

Bobby: "Point taken."

Charlie: "And finally this legal witch hunt. Using his Justice Department in an attempt to imprison those who oppose him? Would the name Robespierre, or the phrase Reign of Terror strike a chord with him?"

Bobby: "Robespierre, not at all. And he would preempt the phrase 'reign of terror' to talk about the Biden administration or cities with Democratic mayors."

Charlie: "Oh, Bobby, Bobby. Don't you get it? MAGA is a recasting of The Emperor's New Clothes. With the bizarre behavior emanating from your President, the world will just stop paying attention. Unless, of course he does go completely off the deep end and employs his personal version of a final solution, pressing nuclear buttons that will eliminate us all. Barring that, America will become a punch line, and then be forgotten. Irrelevant and unimportant on the global stage.

I know, I've been there. I am there.  .  .  .  just a rich old fart hanging out with his rich buddies. Going through the motions of forgotten relevance. . . . Would you like some more port?"

Bobby: "Do you have anything stronger? Maybe from Scotland?"