A Work Progressing

I’m a believer in three. Two times, well that’s not quite the same as three. It you are driving down the road and you see a parked yellow Volkswagen with a flat tire, you might notice it. If another mile goes by and you see another Volkswagen with a flat tire, you may grip the wheel a little tighter, but you still drive on.

If another mile goes by, and another Volkswagen is stopped with a flat tire, I will do more than just notice. I will stop my car and check to see if my tires are okay. I’m a believer in threes.

So today, my pastor called me to see if I could find the time to come to the church and pray for an hour or so, in preparation for the coming Easter. I had already said that I thought it was a good idea. So I told him I could do a Mondays from 9-10. He said that would be great, and he said he would send me a guide.

My first thought is that i’m pretty sure I know where the church is… I’ve been going there for more than thirty years.

Ten minutes later im checking Facebook and see a message from I friend that tells me about their upcoming birthday on Sunday, and that they are now old enough not to care about anybody’s ideas or bucket list suggestions. My first thought was to be helpful as I can.

My suggestion was to not have birthdays anymore because while it is nice to have one day where people are nice to you, and there might be presents, and maybe a celebratory dinner. Look at the cost! You are older, and you will just keep getting older. I thought I was addressing the problem logically.

The finally there is the Jeep, the third thing of my trilogy. My daughter had borrowed my Jeep for about a month while she was in the area. I wasn’t using it and she is very familiar with the weight and size of the vehicle. Being the person she is, she returned it cleaned up, oil changed and filled with gas. But she couldn’t fix one of the problems she noticed. According to her the fabric top had shrunk and now the top was letting the wind whistle through the cabin and soon the rain would follow.

I went outside to verify, and I could immediately see what she meant. Either the top had shrunk, or the Jeep had gotten fat, and a little muffin top was showing. I had to make a choice. Shrunk or Fat?

I’ve had the vehicle for more than ten years, what would cause it to do either thing in the last month?

My solution was obvious, I bought a brand new fabric top. If it fit perfectly then the Jeep didn’t get fat, the roof shrunk. If it didn’t fit, then the Jeep somehow expanded in the last month when I wasn’t driving it.

I brought the fabric top and tried to replace the old one. It didn’t fit. I thought about returning it and getting one size larger. I got it through Amazon, so I could return it like the pants I mistakenly purchased.

The problem was that I didn’t use the handout that came with the replacement top. So I read that, and watched a few YouTube tutorials. In the afternoon I backed up to the point of removing 32 screws for the header. It took three hours and I actually had the roof on all the way to the back. Unfortunately there were several inches right next to the windschield that would let wind and rain come flooding in. Apparently the Jeep was fat.

I slept on it. There was someone wrong with my logic. In the morning I again went backwards removing 32 screws, laying the roof upside down on the hood, tightening the screws and folding the fabric the header. This time, three hours later, the rooftop was tightly stretched, and it fit perfectly. The Jeep was not fat. It’s a good thing because tomorrow it is expected to rain.

It took the third instance to point out the fallacy of my logic. Perhaps birthdays don’t create age, it just marks the time.

Perhaps there won’t be someone in a raccoon cap and buckskins that will guide me to the church.

A warning… the power of three is for all of you!

I’ve tried organizing some of my work. I haven’t removed anything that is already here, but most of the latest stuff needed a home, so I created a new blog, with a new address.

Www.Divinesarah.art.blog

If you are interested in seeing the artwork I’ve done for the “Sarah” musical project then go to this new blog… I don’t know how to make it active, so copy/paste or type.

I have a daughter that will soon undergo a little brain surgery. What am I saying?!? How little can brain surgery be???

I mean, she was walking by a local health care facility, so she walked in to inquire about a possible elective brain surgery. After all, she had a few weeks open in her calendar.

Obviously that didn’t happen, and the complex formula of “cost analysis” is not the point here. She, and the doctors, agree that this “little brain surgery” is important.

So two things come to mind right away. One, we live in remarkable times. Developments in medicine are remarkable. Things unheard of just a few years ago are now commonplace with great success. But that reality is slow in our collective minds. A “little brain surgery” is more accurate than we know.

Two. Still, for those of us that fear root canals, this is a big deal.

It does take faith, confidence, and tons of bravery. I remember as a child watching TVs Ben Casey, neuro-surgeon. I remember the end of the introduction, when the older doctor draws the chalk symbol of infinity. It was so graphic and mysterious.

We challenge the small definition of infinity when we are brave. There is a longer view, not only for the immediate success, but the longer success of adding knowledge for future success.

Sure, I worry. Sure, I cover in prayer. But I applaud in the selfless commitment to the future. I love you Nikki.

The are a few family legends, most of them about our family characters. Some of them are about our family characters that are not alive and never had been.

I’m speaking of our brown Chevy van. I can’t remember the year, but it had that 350hp engine that ran forever. It was an automatic, but somehow the lug that put it in reverse had sheared off, so technically it was Park, Neutral and Drive only.

I drove it to work daily, the kids called it the “kidnap van” because it had no windows in back. On one rainy Halloween night, I had all the kids in the back, driving very slow in the street with the sliding door wide open. There were no seats in the back, just some side benches. The kids just jumped out at every stop to beg for candy, and then jumped back in the van. They still talk about that Halloween.

It was brown, a very soft brown, a very “oxidized” soft brown, kind of mottled in parts. I once drove to a vendor friend of mine, and we spoke for a few minutes in the parking lot while he leaned on the van. The next day he called me and asked why I had poisoned him. He developed a very bad rash where his skin had contact with the van.

So now I had two issues, I never drove into a spot that required me to use reverse to get out, and I tried not to park where someone would touch the paint.

Actually, I did keep a large screwdriver in the glove compartment. When I absolutely needed reverse, I would put it in neutral, set the emergency brake, them pop the hood. With the hood up I could use the screwdriver to pry the transmission into reverse. It would take a minute to overpower the emergency brake so I had time to shut the hood and get into the drivers seat. Most times… eventually it was moving while I was swinging my but into the seat. Fortunately I still used the reverse to get out of the position, the van was too heavy to push. My best trick was to use gravity to back myself out of danger.

It had character, that brown van. It ran forever, but the rest of the vehicle just fell apart. I gave it to my son and he tried to clean it up, but too much was wrong, so for safety sake we got rid of it. It’s engine is probably still running.

It joins the list of other vehicle characters, like the Jeep Wagoneer that never backfired unless we were in a underpass. This was where the sound was magnified. There were dozens of Vietnam veterans that had hit the sidewalk with PTSD. I waved an apology but it was hard for them to see me from the ground.

I have a friend that I have known for 67 years. We been close, and we have drifted. In some of the most important parts of our lives we never spoke. We had families that never met, yet now we still meet periodically and have coffee.

We lived next door to each other from 1st grade through 10th grade. Volatile years, filled with close companionship and banishment. We were radically different, Jack was athletic, I was not. I had official Army gear from my brother, Jack did not. We were both interested in blowing things up.

We had heard a rumor that wooden kitchen matches could be a source of pyrotechnics. Sitting on my garage floor, we made a pile of matchheads as we clipped off the striking heads of two full boxes. The rumor suggested that we fill the space between two bottle caps.

We went scrounging the local mom&pop stores. There were three of them with bottle openers nailed to the outside walls. There were folks that even then collected various beer and soda bottle caps. In a short time we had collected a bag full. Screw caps did not yet exist, they were all the crimped kind, with a thin cork disk lightly glued to the inside to help seal. Out process was to remove the cork.

Taking two bottle caps we carefully scooped into the mountain of matchheads, lightly twisting until the space was completely filled. The rumor did not specify how the caps were secured together. We had tape, lots of types of tape.

We had Scotch tape, we had masking tape, we had electrical tape, and we had plumber’s tape. We didn’t know which was best so we made a half-dozen of each type.

We loaded our pockets with our taped experiments, not considering that any one of them could explode and set fire to our pants. Safety was rarely considered.

We got to the junior high school playground, a vast area of asphalt covering almost a square block. The rumor had it that all you needed to do was throw the bottle caps. When they landed the caps would bend and compress the matchheads. The matchheads would rub one another and combust. The entire collection of matchheads would light in an instant. What happened next was not known, but we would find out.

It turns out that the tape and type of tape was important. Too much tape would cushion the blow and the matchheads would not light. Too little tape would cause the caps to separate and scatter unlit matchheads on the asphalt.

The perfect tape wrap caused a fiery explosion! The paper based masking tape blew apart, and there was a fiery, smoky cloud filled with flaming matchheads, scattering in a circle about ten feet wide. Marvelous!

The cloth or plastic tape did not separate, but the gasses inside the bottle caps had to escape, so the caps went spinning away with a shriek, and lots of smoke.

It was a great success, with the two of us throwing a half dozen at the same time. It looked, and sounded like a WWII battlefield, with smoke, shrapnel, and flames.

That Friday we made dozens of the little bombs, in order to chuck them at the opposing crowds at our weekly football games. I think we threw two, them ran away in terror.

On July 4th we had fireworks, but for us it was little black snakes, and sparklers. The grownups had wisely banned bottle-rockets. Sparklers were approved, we could light them, wave them, stick them in the grass, and toss them lightly in the air. They lasted about a minute.

Back in the garage we hit them with hammers, and broke them off of their metal wires. Soon we had a pile of sparkler chunks, and we ground that into a fine dust. We knew that bottle caps would not set it on fire. We suspected that it would burn a lot faster as ground sparkler dust. We would find a small container and jam a sparkler in as a fuse.

We found several empty CO2 green containers. We drilled out the bottoms and filled the containers with dust and a regular sparkler jammed in opening. We could light the sparkler, stick it in the ground, and wait for the explosion. We never thought about the shrapnel.

The sparkler lit the dust, the dust burned super quick and sent the CO2 cartridge high in the air with a trail of sparkler smoke. It may have gone 500 to 600 feet in the air. It landed on the neighbors roof across the street. We tested several more, until it landed in our own yard.

We thought that if we could place it in a tube, like a bazooka, then we could aim it. And if we could fill a larger CO2 cylinder we could perhaps aim it to the junior high school asphalt yard, a few blocks away. Jack offered to be the bazooka man.

Before we fired the bigger container we thought to test it one more time. We propped it up in a garbage can but it leaned over, and it hard to light the sparkler fuse. So we nailed the tube to a 2×4 placed it acrossed the can. The tube pointed straight up. We lit the fused a stepped a few feet back, feeling that the metal garbage can provided some shrapnel protection. At the last second we additional ducked behind the corner of the backyard shed.

Seconds later there was a huge explosion and lots of smoke. When the smoke cleared we checked out the garbage can. It looked like a giant colander, peppered with hundreds of tiny holes, with larger ones here and there. We looked at the fence right next to our hiding spot an found a twistedbazook piece of metal with sharp spikes firmly embedded in the fence.

Jack was planning o hold that tube next to his head as he aimed the “bazooka”.

Somehow we survived, later I went hitchhiking around the country, Jack went to college. We both went into the Army. Jack was an MP and I was a technician. Later, I became a graphic designer, and Jack joined the Oakland police force. We both survived.

Now years later, we drink coffee and talk about our dangerous times. Not about our careers, not about our “Wartime” experience. We talk about making homemade gunpowder and sparkler dust rockets.

We also talk about watching our volcano with binoculars, waiting with several buckets of water to put out the fires. It turns out that Mt. Tamalpais is not a volcano.

When Jack retired he took up a hobby of flying ultralights. Not satisfied he bought plans to build his own airplane. It took almost two years. On the day of the first test flight, he took it on to the runway and went to the field gas pump to fill the tank, and then take off. Something happened, a spark occurred. The flames engulfed the plane and everything was consumed, but Jack was safe.

To compensate, Jack brought a Shelby Cobra sports car and refurbished it. It was beautiful. So beautiful, that he bought another in kit form and built from the ground up another Shelby. Now he was has two. Neither one has burned to the ground

Happy birthday, my friend.

I’ve lost a very dear friend and member of my family. I first met Joanne Townsend sometime in late 1962. I’m not sure how long it took for my brother to introduce her to the family.

He had met her on 23rd street, in Richmond, nearly in front of Richmond Union High School. Those were the days when young adults “cruised the main”, in order to see, and be seen, even during the late afternoon.

Joanne was with a girl-friend in her pristine black Ford Fairlane, called “a two door hardtop convertible”, not the one that stored the hard-top in the trunk, but something similar. It was a busy time on 23rd street, lots of stopping and going.

My brother Eddie (I called him Cork), was also on 23rd Street, but for different reasons. He was helping a friend drive a racing motorcycle from somewhere in the South Bay, all the way to San Pablo. He was nearly home, only a few blocks away. It was only a remarkable trip because the motorcycle had no brakes. It was a racing machine. If you wanted to slow down, you just down-shifted. Why have the extra weight of brakes?

So naturally, there was an accident, but Cork didn’t crash into a delivery truck, or a beat-up clunker driven by an underage ditty-bopper. He was behind a beautiful blonde in a black Ford Fairlane. And she suddenly stopped.

Joanne would say later that she briefly saw him in the mirror before impact, and then he disappeared. She thought that perhaps he slid under the car, but then after a second she heard a crunch on the roof, then silence. After some moments passed she saw a person roll off the roof, onto the right fender, then land in the street. Certain that he was dead, she did not immediately open the door. Her friend was crying!

Finally Joanne rolled down her window, and he asked if everyone was all right. They nodded, and they asked if he was all right. He didn’t know it at the time but his wrist was fractured. He was still in the Army, so he would have some explaining to do when he came back from leave, Then he asked for her number, told her he would pay next week, and ran off, leaving her in shock in the middle of the street. I think she would have called him, “Gink!”

He had to make right the dent in her rear bumper. He left so quickly because didn’t want the police or insurance to be involved. I suspect it was issues with the motorcycle’s registration, or the lack of it. It was only for racing, not riding on the street. The Ford was so badly damaged, the bumper and trunk had a big “V” dent, as if hit by a ship.

So that’s how they met, and within weeks of contacting her for the repairs, they were dating. It took Joanne’s father several years to trust Cork entirely. He was a crusty character in any case.

It wasn’t long before they were married, and Cork still had a few months left in the Army. Joanne and I bonded quite a bit, while she waited for Cork to become a civilian. Later, I babysat their baby boy Robert John (Bob) in their rented house on Burbeck Street. Strange house, everything painted the same grey color.

Later on, when Bob was in school, my mom and Joanne started a business, a second hand store on 23rd Street. I went down to help out. Most of the time Joanne and I would play cards, games, and just laugh a lot. Eventually, I graduated from high school and started my independent life. Joanne was always there to support me when I circled back “home”. My parents had moved to Tacoma, WA, but Cork and Joanne maintained a local residence when I had none, and all the while that I was in the military.

We even shared the duplex for a time when I got out.

It’s true that we didn’t see each other as often as I would have liked. My life spun wildly for some time. But we did not drift apart. As I settled with my family, we always had Uncle Cork and Aunt Joanne in our lives, and our children become close to both of them.

Joanne had so many gifts, as a great wife, homemaker, mother. We will share stories about her for years. But there is one thing I would like to share now. She was known far and wide, as the “Knowledge”. In London, it is said that you can’t be a taxi-cab driver without the “Knowledge”. In the Bay Area, you can’t make money finding treasures in garage sales or thrift stores without the “Knowledge”.

Venders and garage sale pros were in awe of Joanne’s abilities. Some would even give up if Joanne had beat them to a sale. They knew there would be nothing of value after she had gone through the items. Second hand store employees all knew her by name, and asked her opinion on suspicious items: “Was this a fake or knock-off?”. If it wasn’t a fake, then she would have already had it in her cart, ha!

Joanne would often bring the employees small jewelry gifts, or donuts, and they would save items for her that they thought she would like.

For the last five year’s, Parkinson’s has taken a deep toll on Joanne’s health, despite her courageous patience and perseverance, and it has brought out Cork’s ability to be a caretaker. An entire book can be written on the inventions that he came up with in order to make her life better. He never rested, or waivered

As Cork said, “… she grew weaker, and I grew stronger.”
That was her gift, and she shared it with everyone. I loved her so much as did our entire family.

Well, it’s Christmas Eve’s eve, and we have a refrigerator. And it came it the most unexpected way. Sherry got a call from an unknown number, and wisely ignored it. We were not expecting a call.

The second time they called, she did answer, and our refrigerator spoke, and said it wanted to come home. Actually it was the delivery company. Weirdly, it came out of the blue. We had been trained that they call the day before to see if we will be home, then they tell us the three hour window when we should be there. There is a process. It takes two weeks to just get in line.

But this was different, the voice asked if we were home to get the refrigerator, Sherry said “yes, when can we expect you?” The voice said they were thirty minutes away. Less than an hour to get all that food out of the old refrigerator and into boxes and cold bins. Sheesh!

Frantically we dumped years of frozen food, and possibly years of normally refrigerated food. The mounds grew higher, the kitchen counter space disappeared, we went to the pool table, we went to any available horizontal space. As the last bag of four year old frozen peas was removed, I heard a truck stop in front of the house.

Just two guys with belts came into the kitchen. Four minutes later the old refrigerator was gone. They carried it out!

Ten minutes later the new refrigerator was settled into the little alcove and humming very quietly. The long ordeal was over.

In the process there was a lot of conversation. This team was the elite “fixer” team, sent out to resolve problems. No one ever even suggested there was a fix-it team. They were employees of the big box store, something the last person told me was impossible. They were polite, very professional, and we thanked them.

We have had the refrigerator for three or four days, and the only problem is that some vagrants have moved in and made it difficult to open the door. As soon as the door is opened, they freeze, and look at me with some distain. I wish they would move on.

It was on a whim. Buying a refrigerator on a whim is never a good thing.

We went to a “big box” store to buy tile for our bathroom. We entered and found the signage helpful. From several aisles away we could see that aisle 7 was the place to go to find tile. We went, we saw, we decided. But we could find anyone to help us. We did find someone in an apron, but he was from gardening and didn’t have any knowledge of tile. He called for help. Help never came.

Finally, in a fit of independence, I went for a cart. It would be self service. If I can’t reach it, I could steady my smallish wife, standing in the shopping cart, while she nudges it to the edge of the shelf. Tile and bullnose edging is conquered and in the cart.

No problem finding checkers, they are everywhere!

Our contractor says we didn’t buy enough tile. In a panic, a quick search of the internet for the other “big box” stores nearby. All post that they can order it, but that there is none at hand. I think that perhaps someone has an open box, selling the tile we need one at a time. The internet is silent on this.

We determine to visit the store again, and we find an open box and purchase five individual tiles. Success… until we get to the checkout. The clerk insists that the bill is well over $200 dollars. She believes that each tile has the same inventory number as a box of twenty tiles. It takes a longtime to show the error of her calculation. Maybe the store isn’t even self-serve.

We need to search someplace else for vanities. We try a competing “big box” store. I know where one is, and we drive in intense traffic to get there. I was wrong, it is across town, and probably another 40 minutes of traffic. We end up at the nightmare of the same “big box” store. Drawn like moths to a flame. We calm ourselves, and resolve that we will just look, decide on what we like, then buy somewhere else.

The same helpful signs direct us to bathroom vanities. Then it is only a few more aisles, and we are looking at kitchen cabinets. I don’t know why, we are fine in the kitchen.

Another aisle and we are surrounded by appliances, in particular, refrigerators. Our refrigerator works but several of the drawers have issues, we could see what a replacement might offer, then buy somewhere else. We have always bought our appliances from another local appliance store.

We found a reasonable refrigerator for $1500. There was an appliance salesperson right there. He was charming, he shared his personal story. He was a veteran. For all these reasons and more, we bought the refrigerator. That was Nov. 12th. It is now Dec. 11th, and we still have not seen our refrigerator.

According the the paperwork we were given, the refrigerator was to be shipped to our home on Nov. 24th. Twelve days seemed like a long time, very close to Thanksgiving, and slightly inconvenient, but it is what it is. According to the policy, they will call on the day to arrange to deliver the new, and pickup the old. It will be nice to have a brand new refrigerator for the Thanksgiving leftovers.

Nov. 24th comes and goes, no refrigerator. We call the phone number for troubleshooting. The person contacts the delivery people, they say that they called, but no one answers. They did send us e-mail a few days before they were supposed to come, but no email that they couldn’t find us. Then the truck driver says that they came to the door, and no one answered. Okay, now that was a lie. We were home waiting all day. We were told by email that they were coming.

I explained this to the person, and I might have used an unfriendly tone. I did not swear, but I did take umbrage to the statement that I wasn’t home. I think I told them that I had ordered a $3.50 vacuum cleaner belt from Amazon, they delivered two days later and took a photo proving that they were there. The person on the phone said they had a photo, but it was dark and they couldn’t tell if it was a house or just a bunch of trees. They didn’t share the photo with me.

I suggested that perhaps they should refund my purchase price. They said they can’t do that, I would have to come into the store where there was a register. I said that they must certainly have a way to handle this, and asked for a supervisor. She said she was the supervisor. I asked for the supervisor’s supervisor. She said it doesn’t matter, policy is policy and I would have to come in to a store to get my refund. I said if the vice-president of your “big box” store needed a refund I bet he wouldn’t have to come in, she assured me that he would. I threatened to cancel my credit purchase if they couldn’t delivery the refrigerator by Saturday. She asked if I would like a Saturday delivery? Yes, I would like the refrigerator that I bought. She then hung up.

Apparently she wrote a long electronic note that used some unfortunate language, not necessarily towards me, but towards the whole mix-up. I know this because I had to call again when the Saturday delivery failed to show up, II and I had to call the hotline once more.

The next agent I talked to was Justin. Justin was amazed about what the notes related. It took a few minutes to read them all. Justin mentioned that there was a $430 refund coming my way, and that he could arrange to have the refrigerator delivered on Dec. 10th. I thanked him for his diligence, and asked to speak to his supervisor. I was passed to Jason and I told him how wonderful Justin was, and how he tried to resolve my problems.

I was surprised about the $430 refund so I asked if that was a discount for Black Friday. Jason told me that Justin had set that up because I was inconvenienced. That was another surprise, Justin took no credit for that. Suddenly I was rooting for the “big box” store to succeed. All I had to do was to wait for Friday, Dec. 10.

On late Thursday I had not heard anything about specific times. I had another e-mail affirming the Dec. 10th delivery but not the time. I called the hotline once more. An agent took my call, read the notes, then called the warehouse. She said the refrigerator was lost, not only that, but in her experience, a refrigerator lost for this long was most likely scratched or dented by the time it was found. So she offered a total refund, and I need not come in to the store.

An earring can slip into a crack, or drop into a random box. A hair dryer can get reshelved in a strange place. But a six foot tall, three foot wide refrigerator can’t sprout legs and run away. I wanted my refrigerator.

I found out the I didn’t use my credit card, I had used my debt card. They took my money immediately, but I didn’t get my refrigerator. They had kidnapped it, they. We’re holding it hostage somewhere. At two different times it was on the truck, then it went back to the warehouse, shoved into some dark corner. A warehouse supervisor physically walked in a “dock search” looking for my wandering refrigerator. She was supposed to call me when she found it. She never called.

Another agent by the name of “Princess”, gave me another $150 refund. It will come to me by mail, 4 weeks from now. I still haven’t seen the first refund.

Princess tells me that the “notes” have been edited, or modified, but it still reads like a novel. I just want my refrigerator.

I have a vision of a 25 cubic ft. appliance, hitch-hiking east on Interstate 80, looking for America. I hope it turns around and finds my kitchen by Christmas.

A few years ago I decided that I didn’t know enough about color. I knew the color wheel. I knew the different levels of complimentary, colors and I even had a good idea of color frequencies. Basically I knew the graphic design elements of color, the Pantone system for printers. I hadn’t developed a painterly palette.

So I thought, what better way to learn than to colorize some old black and white photos, not in a Ted Turner movie fashion, but in a more artistic impression. I started with my own archive of black and whites. The trouble was that the people were generally way too small, and by the time I enlarged the image I was getting too low of a resolution.

So I began to look to the internet for high quality black and whites. I found the great collections of early movie stars. For about a year, on and off, I played around with some classic “stars”. I learned a lot, most of them were familiar, some were very familiar. A few I only knew by name. One of them was Sarah Bernhardt. I really did know the name, but that was it. The image that I choose to colorize was this one…

The odd thing was that it reminded me of one of my favorite portraits that had just worked on as a tribute to Edouard Manet of Berthe Morisot…

Okay, this was odd. The Manet was painted in 1872. Certainly Sarah wasn’t from 1872? Or was she? Then I realized I didn’t know much about her, apart from her name. Was she French, and not English? Was she from Paris, and not NYC?

I must admit I was not particularly interested in the image, or the person behind the image. I finished it and went on to colorize Audrey Hepburn, and I promptly forgot about my questions on Sarah.

A few years later, a good friend sent me a wonderful email, as is her habit. And she included her signature “last sentence” in the paragraph, about something entirely different, knowing that it would interest me. June wrote, “After nearly fifty years, I’m finally considering to finish that play I wrote on Sarah Bernhardt.” WTF?

I hadn’t the slightest idea that she had started to write a play on Sarah. Naturally I knew Sarah, I had made an image of her with the Hollywood crowd. I looked at my source. Sarah Bernhardt had a star on the Boulevard of Stars, she made movies, she has the earliest birthdate of anyone on the Boulevard. She was born in 1844 and died in 1923. What the hell? 1844? And she was French! And mostly a stage actress, although she made some of the first movies. And she didn’t sing, she spoke, she was the “Golden Voice”.

Okay, time to learn some more about Sarah.

The best thing occurred, I got a copy of the original script written years ago, by June. She had made this after years of researching Sarah. She was going to update it with current information, but it was a wonderful summary of what was generally known.

At the end of Act I I knew hundreds of things, at the end of Act II, I was completely sold out on Sarah, and yearned to know more. June had once again deployed the “famous last line in the paragraph.”

So, for the last few months I have made several dozen images from sketches of artists, faded photos on cabinet cards, and a few great photographs from excellent photographers. It is safe to say that there are at least a dozen different looks of Sarah, as she had her image captured at least once a month for about sixty years. Yes, she did age, but it wasn’t just age, and it wasn’t the costumes or make-up. She just projected different images!

I recall reading about her performance in “Joan of Arc”, when she was 65. She had a line in the script where she had to state to her interrogators her characters age. The line she said was, “I’m nineteen!” At 65 she was was playing a 19 year old! Successfully!

It was not lost on the audience, because they consistently broke out in applause after she said her line.

I am by no means an expert on her life. There is so much that can’t be known. In some cases there is a void… in most cases there are multiple conflicting stories. My favorite is that she is actually French Canadian, and she moved to Iowa as a child, then to Paris, to enter the theatre. What was the source of this? As near as I can tell it is based on three things. 1) America is the greatest, so she must be American. 2) She had nine different tours of America in her lifetime. 3) And someone wrote once that she spoke French with an American accent. Hahaha!

It’s safe to say that she was French, and always performed in French wherever she traveled.

The following images are some of the favorites that I’ve done…

I am so excited for the play to be finished.

According to one Wikipedia article, “the Concord Spirit Poles were a controversial public art project installed in the Bay Area city of Concord, California in 1989, at the direction of artist Gary Rieveschl, at a cost of approximately $100,000. They stretched along the median near downtown on Concord Ave. Rieveschl has said that the poles signify “our increasing interdependence in an electronic age of digitized information.” The 91 pointed aluminum rods ranged from 8 to 50 feet in height and weighed as much as 100 pounds each, prompting residents of the suburban bedroom community to object to their harsh appearance. The city used the poles to hang banners and flags in an unsuccessful attempt to soften the sculpture’s look. The Spirit Poles ultimately became unstable and cracked, with one toppling during a windstorm. The Concord City Council voted in 1999 to remove the Spirit Poles.

At least that is part of the story.

Ordinances had been adopted that required 1 to 2 percent of new building projects to have a budget for public art. Building office complexes had art, traffic circles had art, even paving streets had artistic manhole covers. concords medians had Spirit Poles.

This wasn’t a direct gift to artists, there was a selection process, there was a proposal, there were conceptual drawings, there was a presentation, and there was a budget. The committee apparently had no difficulty with the selection, no one remembers the other presentations, and soon enough the installation took place. There was something called “the Heritage Park Project” that was budgeted for $400,000, and the Spirit Poles were just a part of that. Perhaps that’s why it had an easy pass through committee. Installation for the poles went forward in 1989. That’s when opinions came pouring in.

In either case, for the general public they missed the artist’s intention, and called for their removal. It was public art, paid for by the public, and they felt they had the right of an opinion.

Unfortunately the contract was negotiated by a representative for the public, and the contract had a clause against the removal except for safety reasons.

The public was outraged, as more and more people offered their opinions. As for the falling spirit pole, I have not found proof that any pole fell during a wind storm.

Finally, a enterprising city inspector looked at the base of a few of the “pointed aluminum” poles, and found some suggestion of aluminum “corrosion”. With the remote possibility of one or more poles falling onto the roadway, all the poles were removed and placed into storage, until a plan to fix the problem appeared. No plan appeared, it was never assigned, the contract didn’t allow the city to recycle them. They remained in storage for years. In 2001, the artist was paid $75,000 and he released any claim for the art. They were cut up and recycled. Perhaps you have had a beer, or soda, from the recycled aluminum poles.

The end result was so concerning that Concord repealed the two ordinances for public art, instead of fixing the process of selection.

So how did the “cancel culture” begin? The internet was too new to be involved, so it was the traditional media: letters to the editor, talk radio, media outlets. They took up the banner and found that the public wanted more of the story. The National Enquirer called them “the ugliest publicly funded sculpture in America.” What gave the National Enquirer the skill to critique public art? No one asked. Everybody can have an opinion, and anyone can shape further public opinion.

Gary Rieveschl was a respected visual artist specializing in “landform” installations. Working with earthmounds and flowers, he has art installed throughout the Midwest and Europe. He actually had a small book published on his installations from 1973-1987. It’s curious that I haven’t found anything that he has done since the Spirit Poles. He is now 79, and living in Indiana.

I did find an article from Cincinnati, that mentions another work of his, “Autooasis”, that was a 1973 Chevy with doors, trunk, and hood open, filled with growing vegetation. It was a vehicle as a potted plant. Eventually it was evicted from its space and crunched as scrap metal.

They most common photo of his art was one from Germany of a bank of earth, and a weaving “snake” of daffodils. Perhaps it’s gone as well.

Interesting fact, Gary’s father, George Rieveschl, invented Benadryl, and this helped Gary by having the financial support to send him to Harvard and MIT. Maybe he wasn’t cancelled, maybe he inherited.