A Work Progressing

We crossed waves upon waves, as seen from the air, and time passed, compressing the experience to a dozen uncomfortable hours, instead of months of sea and sun.

Land down under our intention, Playing music our desire.

Steam and sulfur greeted us, from Stygian depths. Welcoming threats, with extended tongues, and rolling eyes, A forever Māori bond.

Land down under our intention, Playing music our desire.

Green fields and Wooly shapes, Forced into paths by a crouch, and in ever smaller circles.

Dogs that leap from back to back, As stoic sheep chew and ponder… The audience.

Land down under our intention, Playing music our desire.

7/17/03

Palms that wave, the royal wave that comes from years of training.

An extended frond that slowly turns in the wind, greeting and beckoning, with grace and noble beating.

I have this multiple vision, of a flat horizontal sea, framed by palms, and the net of a swinging hammock. I must be on vacation.

7/18/03

Today I stepped on new earth that rose from magma deep. mother giving birth to child, as unlovely to look at as can be imagined.

Yet time will pass, and the child will develop, and gain the raiments of forest and grass, while we scamper on the surface like sand mites, barely aware of our host, and the time it takes to get here.

Today I stepped upon new earth, vaguely aware of our parasitic nature.

“The Games We Played”

(From an email by my brother Ed}

As you say, there were different rules in different neighborhoods that people played by. These are the rules that we played by on 15th street.

The marbles were purées, cat eyes, aggies, opaque colored glass, and steelies.The common marbles were mostly of a uniform size. They were mostly common cat’s-eyes and the white opaque marbles with opaque colored swirls. These were the common marbles that you gambled with, or (anteed up) put in the “pot” just as you would ante money in a poker game before the deal. 

These marbles that you put in the pot we’re often called “dates”.  I don’t really know why, but, when a game started, someone would say something like, “Okay, everybody ante up 5, “if you want to play, throw your “dates” in!

The ante could vary, but it was usually 5 or 10 marbles per player. A ten ante game, with five players, added up to a nice 50 marble pot.

Then there were marbles we called “shooters”. They were bigger than the ante marbles, and they could be of any type from cat eye to steelies.  

We called them “half-sizers“ because were “half again” the size of a regular marble.  The added weight of these half-sizers would help to knock the smaller sized marbles out of the ring.  In many games, half-sizer steelies were not allowed because they just gave the shooter too much advantage with their weight.

In all neighborhoods, these “shooter” marbles were revered by the players and would never be put into the “pot”, but sometimes they would be traded for a certain agreed number of common marbles. The “shooter” marbles were of a higher quality that we all recognized.  Today, some of the marbles that we played with are worth many hundreds of dollars each to collectors. The one bad thing with shooter marbles is that they would eventually get all chipped up from hitting the other marbles so often. It might be chipped and scratched and no longer pretty, or in collecting condition, but it still could be your favorite “shooter”.

Your “kid wealth” seemed to be determined by the amount of marbles that you owned.  

I once went over to a kid’s house, and he pulled out a big full-sized cardboard carton that was full up to 3 or 4 inches from the top with purées, aggies, commons, and “shooters.”  That box had to have marbles numbered in the thousands!  I just looked at the sheer number of marbles with speechless awe — I had never seen such wealth!  It was as if he had just pulled from the closet, a pirate’s treasure chest full of gold, silver, and precious jewels.  

Another game we played were spinning tops. The idea was to hit another player’s spinning top with your spinning top.  You would throw your top down hard on someone’s spinning top in order to break it, or split it in two. 

The only gain here was the sheer satisfaction of destroying your opponent’s top.  There was usually four or five guys playing, so it could become quite a fast moving action free-for-all.

Lagging baseball cards was another favorite. Usually played after school, we would all line up and each take a turn to toss our card — trying to land our card closest to the school building wall. Any tossed card that was a “leaner”, that is, one that leaned against the wall, won everything. When you won, it was quite exhilarating to pick up and add all the losing player’s cards to your stack.

Sometimes there would be ten or more kids throwing, and destroying some baseball cards that would come to be worth hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars today.

(We also destroyed many valuable cards by attaching them to our bicycle wheel’s spokes to simulate a motorcycle motor as the spokes would go around and hit the cards)

Marbles, Card Tossing, and Throwing Tops were kid’s neighborhood gambling games, but they all required some level of skill to consistently win. Being addicted, I played whenever any game popped up, but I never seemed to come out big winners — so I was always buying new marbles.

There were dozens of kids living in the Wartime Housing Authority in the 1950s.

Naturally, with all those kids in the neighborhood there were a few that were not so nice. In fact, some were downright terrifying. There was one slightly older kid, that was called “Icky”, but not to his face, everyone knew him as Icky. Even his mother used it sometimes.

Icky often had a kitchen butcher knive tucked in his belt as he terrorized the neighborhood, broke up marble games, yelled and chased kids to their homes.

He chased my brother Cork home one day, holding a Daisy Winchester BB gun. At the last few steps he aimed, and fired it at Cork, and it hit him in back of his ear. Shot in the ear by Icky! Back shot by Icky! How low can you get?

I believe the police was called, and they knew about Icky. I have this memory of me being old enough to watch through the front window as I pulled the curtain to the side. People were standing on the stoop and in the front yard. I don’t know if Icky was there. I had drunk half of my glass of milk. Left it there on the window sill, then I went out on the stoop to see better. The curtain returned to its normal position, hiding the half drunk glass of milk.

The memory might have disappeared if that was all that happened. Several weeks, or maybe even months later, I happened to move the curtains to look out the window. There was my glass from the day of Icky, and there was this “icky” blob of dried milk in the bottom of the glass. I had no idea that milk would do that over time. It smelled bad, and looked worse. I was afraid that I would get in trouble so I took it outside and threw it in the trash. We had one less glass in the kitchen, no one noticed.

I am not my brother’s biographer by any means, but on his 91 birthday I feel it necessary to celebrate his life just a little bit. If I do not have things exactly right, I apologize.

He was born at a tough time in history, the Great Depression still held the country in a cold grip. Our mother was young in age, and even younger in spirit. Bob often said that Mom grew up with him. Economics made growing up tough, and relationships were not smooth.

The war came, and the family physically split as my father traveled to the West coast to build ships, leaving Bob as the man of the house at 12 or 13 years old.

Disaster struck as our sister Gayle contracted Scarlet Fever. At that time there was no effective cure. Penicillin was known, but only available for the military. Gayle died in 1944, three days short of her eighth birthday.

Mom had given birth to Edwin Elgin a year before, and Dad still had to work in the shipyards, but Mom was determined to bring the family together, and moved West.

Bob enrolled in Richmond schools, I believe he went to Longfellow Junior High, then he went to Richmond Union High School, class of 1949. I think my mother missed the graduation ceremony because she was in the hospital giving me birth.

The family was still living in wartime housing and Bob had several jobs while still in high school. I know that he worked in the Ford Motor plant for a time, and then he worked at Felice and Pirelli, the F&P cannery in Richmond.

Bob met Dorothy Carraher, and married her in 1950, and had Robbie in 1951. I was an uncle at two years old.

At that time Bob was living in San Diego near the beach. My brother Ed when down to stay with them several different times, nearly drowned, and had many adventures. I missed out!.

The marriage relationship had problems, and I’m unsure if the Army was involved. In any case, Bob signed up for a hitch in the Army, to become a paratrooper. The Korean War was over but the Cold War was just starting.

After basic training Bob was sent to Germany to prepare to defend the Fulda Gap. According to documents discovered later on, the Soviets had thousands of tanks prepared to push though the Fulda Gap at any time. Some reports say that hundreds of tanks were started, and at idle, waiting for orders to go to war.

Bob finished his time in Germany and went back to the his post in Kentucky, with the 101st Airborne. I know this because he had given me a shoulder patch of the Screaming Eagle, which I promptly sewed on to my motorcycle styled hat. Bob had also purchased a Harley Davidson motorcycle like many veterans, and rode it cross country several times.

On one visit he left me the black cloth, white vinyl, visored hat that I wore nearly everyday. And the hat was even cooler with the Screaming Eagle patch sewn on above the visor. Thanks Bob!

I suppose it was possible that Bob would only do one three year hitch, then get out, but then another life changing event happened.

Bob went to a local bar near the post with several friends. A fight broke out between the locals and the soldiers. Fists were thrown, chairs were thrown. Bob stepped up to stop a chair being thrown at his friend. I believe it was the bartender that fired a .45 at Bob’s stomach, and he went down.

Obviously a family crisis, my mother had never flown in a plane, but she went to Kentucky to be by his side. Bob pulled through, the bullet lodged in his spine, and it wasn’t removed. His days as a paratrooper ended, they wouldn’t allow him to jump with the bullet still in him, and he shifted his Army training to helicopter maintenance. He also decided to stay in as a “lifer”.

Eventually he became an instructor in the helicopter maintenance program and was stationed in Virginia. He moonlighted as a cab driver, decided to buy a Norwegian built, 10ft sailing dinghy, to sail on Chesapeake Bay.

He eventually shipped that dinghy to my father, and that’s how I learned to sail.

Somewhere about that time Bob went to Korea for a year. My other brother, Ed, had also joined the Army and was stationed in Korea. They managed to meet up for a small family reunion.

After coming back to the states, Bob was stationed at Ft. Lewis, Washington and continued working in helicopter maintenance. For a time he entered civilian life and worked at Boeing Aircraft while maintaining his Army reserve status. He also started a family with Peggy, had two daughters and bought a home in Tacoma.

Then he joined the National Guard full-time and ended his career in the service as a top sergeant, the highest enlisted rank.

By this time the Viet Nam War was raging. Bob had tried several times to get released to go over, but he was refused as the service needed him stateside.

I was playing the odds. How likely would I be drafted when both of my brothers had served in the Army, and one was still in the service? I was drafted.

I was also sent for basic training to Ft. Lewis, the same post where my brother was assigned. On one weekend he came to visit me. I had decided to reenlist for a three year hitch and Bob gave me some advice.

I was just a private, not even a Private First Class, I had no rank, no service medals, I was just a boot with green fatigues. And I was in meeting with a “lifer”, with more stripes than all my drill sergeants put together, and more time in the service than any of my officers. It was pretty special!

Retirement did not slow Bob down. He continued to read volumes of books on everything, he took his truck on dumpster runs, and he bought ten acres of woods near Mt St. Helens.

Going to the woods was his favorite thing. He built a two story cabin with found materials from the dumpsters, and filled his house with “hidden treasures”. All the while developing his skill at creating jigsaw art.

He has slowed down in the last years, he doesn’t race dragon boats in the bay of Tacoma anymore, and he hasn’t played pickle-ball in years, but he does walk the neighborhood under watchful eyes. And he is wonderfully loved and admired, full of wit an humor.

I am in awe of my older brother, and I wish him a great year in 2023.

This is a story from my older brother.

We lived in what was called the Wartime Housing Authority. Dozens of buildings built on vacant land to house the workers who were building Victory ships only miles away. They were cheap rent for two bedroom apartments, with excellent oak floors. The war was over, but we were still there renting.

Money was tight, not as bad as during the war, but there was still not a lot of money for extras. Even .50 cents went a long way to buy food.

At the local Golden Rule Market there was the twice a week shopping trip with Mother. Naturally I spent some time on the aisles that featured toys. I had fixed my attention on a package that contained a balsa airplane. It was a long flat package with some red plastic parts, and some wooden balsa parts that had Air Force markings painted on the wings. It had a price tag of .50 cents.

Each succeeding week I asked my mother if she could buy it. Priorities required that hamburger, pork chops, bread, milk and vegetables were handled first. There wasn’t much left in the budget for tiny aviation.

Then one week, it suddenly appeared at the checkout, and I took it home! I carefully opened the package to take out the various parts. The plastic pieces needed to break loose from the plastic tree. The wooden pieces needed to be punched loose from the die cut balsa.

The directions were simple, it had a nose piece that slipped over the front of a foot long plank that acted as the planes fuselage, there were blue plastic pieces glued to the side of the plank were the wings were slid into a curved groove. The wings were maybe 8 inches long, with the Air Force symbols painted on, and the blue plastic clip made the wings curve slightly to create lift for flying.

There were more balsa pieces for the tail structure that were placed in tight fitting slots in the “fuselage”. There was also two black plastic wheels on wires that were fitted on a bracket beneath the wings as landing gear.

Finally the was the large red plastic propellor fitted to the nose piece and a rubber band hooked to the tail of the fuselage.

The secret was to wind the propellor in the right direction until the rubber band developed “knots”. Then keep winding until the knots went the complete distance. If you were brave, and the rubber band was new, you could get a triple row of knots for a longer flight time.

With a triple wound rubber band the plane could take off from the ground with a standing start. For even more excitement you could launch the plane while standing up with just a little arm motion. If thrown too hard you risked dislodging the balsa wings stuck in their slots.

I had a great hour or two flying the plane from different positions, in different directions. Then I had the idea of launching it from the porch of the apartment in order to get more height. The plane was triple knotted so it climbed quickly and did a slow banking turn to come back towards the apartment. Unfortunately it veered to the side and hit the very tall bush growing next to building, near the top.

It was a dense bush, impossible to climb, very thick, and it was only with difficulty that I could where it was. I knew it was there because upon landing the bush had dislodged a wing from the groove, and it was now laying on the ground in front of me.

This was a disaster, unreachable plane, no more fun. And I had to tell Mom.

There were many options of the best attitude to solve this problem. The attitude I choose was for Mother to immediately get ready to go to the Golden Rule Market to purchase another plane. I probably would have been wiser to use a pleading voice, but somehow it came out as a pouting demanding voice. My mother was not amused.

She did go out to see if she reach the plane, she couldn’t. Then she calmly said that I should have been more careful, and “I’m not buying another”. I repeated my demand several times, my mother continued cooking in the kitchen.

Finally I sat on the couch within her sight, holding the wing in my hands, thinking about my next move. Slowly I turned the wing over and over, then I snapped the tip off with my right hand. Maybe the sound alerted my mother, in any case, she turned her head from the stove to watch me snap another piece, to fall,on the floor in front of me. “Stop that, you are just doing that to make me mad.”

Snap, again and again. The mound of balsa at my feet was growing larger. “I’m not going to buy you another one.”, she repeated. I snapped the last few bits of the wing, then went out on to the front porch.

I wasn’t crying, I’m not sure what I felt, but it wasn’t normal. I looked over the neighborhood remember how wonderful it was to fly my plane. The wind took it higher than I had ever gone. Even now the wind hit my face to remind me of what it was like for my plane.

The bush was also hit by the wind, and it brushed on the building also like a broom sweeping. I noticed movement to my left. I saw the rest of my plane being dislodged, floatng to the ground, the propellor still turning from the last few knots in the rubber band. It lay there upright, on it’s landing gear, perfect… except missing a right wing.

That was 72 years ago, and I remember it like yesterday.

Whoa, I’m stepping into my own world of ignorance. I certainly can use the words, spell them correctly, and add the two dictionary meanings to define the field, but I’m pretty sure I don’t know a thing.

I’m now commenting on it because recently the phrase has been attached to several fields of art, where I spend a great deal of time.

The first connection is with photography. I suppose that anything powered by a battery could “loosely” be called “artificial intelligence”, but we photographers allowed it as “automatic” features. We could do it the action, but it was faster to put the camera in “A”, instead of “M”.

Big deal… we would manually select the f-stop, and the battery would power the camera to select the shutter speed.

I remember the days when the battery only powered the light meter. If the battery went dead you could still shoot pictures if you remembered the basic daylight rule.

Now, with the battery in charge of the shutter, your camera was dead as soon as the battery was dead. Within a few years the “auto” function took charge of the shutter, the f-stop, and the focusing. Of course the manual option was available, but only if the battery was charged. Hmm, that’s a clue. Manual operation needed a battery?

The last few years, especially with digital cameras, it was obvious that “artificial intelligence” was alive and well in photography, but we didn’t really call it that.

Last month I purchased a unit that attaches to my camera with a cord, then sends data to my iPad/iPhone in order to control the action of the camera. It could be called a remote controller, but it does so much more. It takes multiple shots at different settings, then blends them into a final product. It truly makes quick decisions to make a very complex photograph. It deserves the title “artificial intellence”, because it goes beyond my ability to duplicate the process.

I paid good money to get images that I could not generate with the normal skills that I have. My control of the machine is minimal, but the images are breathtaking. Question: Are they mine? Just because I paid for it, and hit the start button?

So now I jump to digital art. I’m very much beyond the arguments that define “what is art?” DuChamp settled that decades ago. Digital art just uses digital tools. If the tool is a stylus or a mouse it is still art. If the computer use a data program, it still has a programmer. Or does it?

There are programs that make fractal based designs that are spontaneous. Not common, but they exist. There was a time when “computer art” was seen as very “unartistic”, but that has disappeared for awhile now.

Naturally the argument reoccurs with AI for art programs. The typical program begins with digital images uploaded into memory, and after a few minutes an image pops out that is almost entirely created by the machine.

True the facial features may resemble the image uploaded, but the colors, the background, and the clothing may be completely different. Is it better? Is it the artist’s?

In some regards it’s just a filter. Digital artists have learned how to make filters for years, and recently even free programs make use of filters, and using them is second nature in order to get the desired results. You pick and choose the results that are revealed. You could make them yourself, but it’s easier to use a program. It’s still very custom, and tightly controlled.

This is a new AI program is not the same. If you input a portrait that is full face, straight on- it may give you a version that is a three quarter turn, because it placed markers on the original image, and calculated the turn, and filled in the data to make it right. The program is judged by the amount of correct decisions made.

The program also has gigabytes of memory for models and backgrounds of all sorts. So, the question is not whether it is art, but rather, who is the artist? In order to use the program you must be connected to a remote server to access the computing power. It takes a small fee to generate 100 different images.

I’ve spent about $50 to generate thousands of images. I’ve had a lot of fun, but I haven’t taken ownership of any of them, even if they did use my art in the initial upload.

I do upload my digital files to a company that prints the files on canvas. I sometimes send files to get images printed on metallic media. I have ownership for these files, so why not AI? And I really like the images too.

I need to ponder this…