Naw. Never mind.

I was thinking about the German character, and had an idea for a post.

Scotch that one.

I am not all that interested in the German character, really. I know several, of course, but to have to think about the mirk that is the German mind, well, it is all too much.

What is funny, though, is that the thing that triggered the thought was listening to Edvard Grieg, who is one of our far northern cousins. Not really a German, but not really not a German.

German music? Love it.
German art? For the most part, yes.
German literature? In small doses.
German politics? Ach! Nein!
German language? Well, it is fun. Small doses.
German fascination with bowl movements? The less said the better. Scheissaffe!
German food? Now, we are getting somewhere. Tonight we had Bratwurst and Sauerkraut. Have I written about Rouladen? I should. I should. I should.
German photography? pre-war, yes. Contemporary? Spare me.
German film? Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.
German wine and German song? Naturlich!
German women? Did I mention how pleased and, yet at the same time, saddened I was to learn that Melanie had a little German ancestry mixed in with her Irish side? Fortunately her features are purely Lusitantian of the Azoran bent. We Krauts are a strange looking people, when you think about it. Of course the rest of you would kill to have eyes like mine.

So that is about it for the dear Vaterland and its Volk tonight.

People really should never live North of the Alps. It is a land of wolves and barbarians.

Now, if you excuse me, I have some jodling to do.

I hate this kind of headline writing

"Vic, Ruth: Here's the latest 411 on red meat in 94596"

oooh, how clever! The latest 411! Using a zip code to identify a region! How hip.

The surefire way to sink a declining readership is to indulge in trite hipness. It is rather, well,....liturgical dancingesque.

Ender's Game

Over the last two nights I read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. I am not normally a fan of science fiction, but once in awhile something comes along with the right recommendation that I will pick it up and read it, as did this book. I also came to it knowing full well that Orson Scott Card is a member of a demon cult, and that he is a smart fellow, one who would probably try to insert demon cult stuff into his book.

He doesn't, for the most part (there are a couple of things that look Deseretean, but he keeps pretty clean of Smithite/Youngite nonsense here), and the book is worth reading, although there is something just a little syrupy about parts of it, and the ending just plunges into it.

Overall, however, I would recommend this for a last summer read. It is not a great book, but it is a good story, well told.

French Symbolists, Roasting Pork, A Good Pinot Noir, A Bite in the Air....it must be.....ah! yes! autumn!

With the tertiary colors favored by the French Symbolists, not to mention the inherent autumnal notion of decadence in their work, it is probably natural to speak of them at the beginning of autumn. Perhaps the rescheduling (it was originally to be July or something), was a bit of Divine Providence (now, if only He would help us with the advertising!).

I love autumn. I like to cook in the autumn. I like to roast pork and saute wild mushrooms and short braise lacinato and bake focaccia and listen to John Coltrane (middle period - the modal stuff like Crescent or the duets with Johnny Hartman) and feel the bite of the evening air. Soon the fall-blooming osmanthus will make that evening air almost intoxicating, especially when tinged with the perfume of fire and rotten leaves. I can start to think of eating polenta without first grilling it in the autumn. The season for heavy cabernet sauvignons is just starting, and I can still get a good tomato (but the writing is on the wall there. We are nearing the end of that). A cigar on the porch with a Scotch. It is time to read denser stuff, too: I am always in the mood to wrestle with Eliot and Pound and Homer in the autumn.

My studio is finally coming into a form that I can see hope in. It is far from ready for work, but I can actually imagine the work space, and have some idea of where everything will go (and some of it has actually started to go where it needs to!). This means that the other website will finally go live, preferably with some new paintings to kick it off with a bang (it has been way too long since a brush of mine, loaded with oil and pigment, touched canvas).

Summer, for me, is hit and miss. If I get it off to a good start, it can be amazingly productive. But, you see, there is this thing called spring, which is a ghastly season for my productivity. Everything is in bloom. Life and excitement are bursting out all over, or however the song goes. The world doesn't really seem to need MY creative energies: look at it. I get very energized by the spring, but rarely do I do my best work in the spring.

Winter is like summer. If it gets off to a good start, with a particularly vigorous autumn, then I will will have a good, productive winter. Winter is a good season for wood working projects, since the trees all look like wood anyway.

So, if you missed the lecture last night, and most of you did, fear not. We are thinking about creating a St. Anthony of Padua Institute art series for television/video. This one will certainly be part of it. And with that, it is time to call the pupil back from recess!

A Few Things

1. Dawn Eden is a really good speaker, and her book, which I have not yet read, sounds interesting. Her talk at UC Berkeley was quite good, and I hope she is still doing the lecture circuit when Amalia is older and needs to hear some of these things from someone who is not a (yawn) parent (especially when the (yawn) parent is a fascist, and when Amalia calls her father a fascist, you know she is not just whistling Dixie). She is also a really personable sort: easy to get along with, smart, etc.

Which reminds me: where is her blog on my sidebar? Will have to fix that right away.

2. The nineteenth century was a confused mess, but it was a confused mess that we are still living in, and it was a confused mess that produced some great artwork. The French are a confused mess, yet they are are a confused mess that still influences us, and that produced some great artwork. Want to know more? I knew you did:

Erik Keilholtz (your humble blogduce) will be speaking TONITE! TONITE! TONITE! at St. Margaret Mary's in Oakland at 7:30pm on French Symbolism and Neo-Byzantine expressions in nineteenth century art. I hear that there are refreshments, but probably not the sort of refreshments that I will be looking for after the talk. If there are others who will be looking for those sorts of refreshments after the talk, I know of a couple of very good establishments in Oakland that serve the purpose well. Of course perhaps after a talk on this French stuff, my usual post-talk beverages, which come from those islands, those islands, those miserable islands, are not appropriate. Perhaps I will have to sip cognac or chartreuse or (preferably) absinthe. Must I also pick up a package of Gauloises? Now, where is the beret?

Yes, you guessed it. 3:30. Up at 8. Fueled by espresso, adrenaline, and delirium.

3. This storm system is from Canada. I say we launch a retaliatory expedition and seize their timber and oil reserves. Meanwhile, I have a stack of mdf boards that will come together into a cabinet someday. However, in the meanwhile they are in one 230 lb. box, right in the line of the probable flood path in my studio. The door to my studio is blocked by a fallen tree branch (the rain was introduced by ferocious gusts of wind). I still have images to scan for the talk. It is a school day, and Amalia needs her lessons.

Espresso. Adrenaline. Dementia.

Talk to you later. Pray for me!

We're back (almost)

We are in Redding, en route to Vallejo. When I came on to check the blog, there were about 1300 spam comments. So much for disabling comments. I am not going to change anything until I get back tomorrow, but I have a favor to ask:

If you could attempt to post a comment on this post, I would appreciate it. Then I will see if any legitimate comments are getting through. Then, if your comment does not show up tomorrow night, when I will be changing the settings, then let me know by way of a comment on Wednesday.

This spam thing is driving me batty.

Away for a few days

We are going camping for a few days. I have turned off comments, to avoid the thousands of spam comments that would otherwise await me.

Have a good week. I will be back Sunday or Monday.

The Mixer...

Gregg mentions my fixing of the mixer.

I was able to extract the broken gear (a nylon worm gear that had become worn down to sort of a nylon putty), to replace it, pack the gears with grease and to get the whole gear assembly back together. Yippeeee!

However, in my fiddling, I managed to disconnect something from the motor, because when I went to test it, I got a dead zero. Nada.

Which is not really all that bad, because it means that the highest probability is that one wire got knocked off a terminal or I forgot to reground it or something easy to fix like that. However, cracking the thing open, keeping track of all the screws, taking apart the gears, finding the wire, putting the gears back together, etc., is going to take a good couple of hours. Grrrrr.

That, of course, is why God invented beer.

Melanie walked in the room and asked, "what are you doing?"

"Oh, just some blogging," I replied.

"It's not one of those 'I have nothing to blog about ones, is it? Those are the worst kind of blogs.'"

I will not comment on the weather. I will not comment on the weather....

I might not comment on the weather, but I am just about at the point of posting other such mind-numbing mundana, just to let the world know that I am still here.

Of course, without good content, does it matter?

Will there ever be good content here?

Has there ever been good content here?

Pro'ly not, but some folks keep coming back for more. Gluttons for punishment.

I am not even going to say "oh, check by tonight, cause that's when the good stuff gets posted," because who knows? Perhaps. Probably not. I don't know. This weekend might be a tough one. I have to finish compiling the database of my paintings by Sunday, and there are already demands on my time. Perfectly good demands, and not altogether uninteresting, but that is how it goes. The good ones are the worst ones, because I have even less incentive to wiggle out of them.

No luck in finding a good arachnid book, by the way. The hunt continues.

Speaking of hunting, recess is over, and Amalia and I are going to check out an area with ample wasps' nests (with bug vacuum and first aid kit). Wish us luck!

Chupacabra?

For those of you into cryptozoology, treat this article as an early Christmas present.