Wet Dreams

Here’s the scene. California sometime in the mid 60’s. My first husband named John was in the Air Force. We were renting a little house in Vacaville. You drove out of town, through a trailer park, then came to the orchard. There were three houses in the orchard; ours, the landlords (Gerry and Vern), and a tiny cottage right next to a dried up creek where Eunice and Bill lived. 

Gerry and Vern were grandparents. Gerry babysat for her new grandbaby. She was potty training him. He was three months old. My own babies were one and a half, and two and a half years old, and I was potty training them too. We had differing philosophies on training our little watering cans.

Vern worked as a prison guard at the California Medical Facility (the prison for the criminally insane). He was a sweet, gentle man, who’d rather be tending his orchard. My babies and I loved Vern. He was grandpa.

Gerry was tough. She totted a gun. A rifle. A bunch of big brown fat birds had been marauding our shared garden, so Gerry shot one that was snacking on tomatoes. Gerry said it tasted like chicken. Later we learned that some peacocks had escaped from a nearby farm. 

That year there was rare serious flooding north of us. We heard on the news that the flooding was so bad that rattle snakes were moving south. Water was rising.The normally dry creek was over-flowing next to Eunice and Bill’s little cottage. Gerry shot a snake that didn’t have a rattle.

Water kept rising. I was terrified. We went to bed one night and I wanted the babies in bed with us. Terrible fear. What if? What if? My first husband named John tried consoling me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The flooding is far far north of us.” 

But what if? What if? 

I was starting to irritate him.

In the night all color is drained out by darkness. Fear bloats in the dark. Then morning arrives with bright blues, yellows and whites that make the fears feel silly. I slept fine, but John had spent the night reaching down to check the floor, expecting to find it wet.

The bad floods never reached us.

*

Now my second husband named John and I watch the news. Flooding. Flooding all over the place. Terrible flooding all along the Mississippi. Flooding locally. 

Water filled my daughter’s back yard, came in the door with her when she entered her house. In the bloated dark of night, I couldn’t sleep, thinking of sandbagging her back door. I need bags of manure for the garden. Could we manure-bag to protect her house from the waters? 

But then the rain stopped and suddenly it was 90 degrees in May.

I picked broccoli from my garden two weeks ago, the raspberries are already budding out. The poppies are blooming. When the poppies bloomed my grandmother used to say, “Well, summer’s over,” which made my mother and I laugh. Poppies bloomed in mid to late June. Summer was just beginning. It’s June 2nd.

*

Chicago is taking measures for a future expected to be hotter and wetter. They’re converting alleys to have permeable surfaces to absorb water. They’re air-conditioning more buildings.

“Global warming threatens the world’s security and existence,” this comes from the Vatican. Surprise. Surprise. I rarely agree with the Vatican. 

"Archbishop Celestino Migliore, apostolic nuncio of the Holy See’s permanent mission to the U.N., stressed that the scientific evidence for global warming and mankind’s role in the increase of greenhouse gasses “becomes ever more unimpeachable” and its effects already impacting the world community.”

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=24053

Meanwhile, back at the farm, or back in the cities and suburbs, some folks deny that man has anything to do with climate change. If we didn’t do it, then we don’t have to do anything about fixing it, right? “I didn’t spill the milk, I’m not cleaning it up.” “Just leave me alone, unregulated.” “I can't let down my shareholders.” “Let me put my profits in Swiss accounts or the campaign funds of some cooperative politicians.” 

It's easy to criticize the other guys. 

Me, personally, what can I do? Conserve. Use less. Drive less. Buy local. Don't waste water. Don't put toxins in the air. 

Oh, geez, am I getting preachy? Sorry.

But, I would like to know what’s happening to all those people along the Mississippi. How are they managing? Is the muck shoveled from their kitchens?

Instead the news tells me that Sarah Palin is on a bus tour and, oh yeah, having a dinner with Donald Trump.

So how’s that workin’ out for ya.

Slay the Beast

The first ten days were spent in the critical care unit with a bacterial infection chewing on my lungs. Breathing was painful. Coughing incessant. Pneumonia. 

Kristen was ten. On a visit she painted my fingernails ten different colors. Some had stars.

There was a painting of a garden on the wall across from my hospital bed. An eighteenth  century couple strolled along the path, then they sat on a bench. She wore a gown perhaps made of drapes. He looked for all the world like Rhett Butler. Walking. Moving. Sitting. Standing. They were so real. And then they were gone. The hallucinations were over. I was coming back. 

The consensus was that I would live. I was slowing getting better. When I knew for sure that Scarlet and Rhett had never been in that painting, that in fact, no one had ever been in that painting of a garden, I couldn't bare to look at it anymore. 

I was moved to a new room, away from the painting of a garden, and the loud-mouthed son of the dying woman in the bed beside me. Now I had a room by myself and a TV high on the wall. People moved about on the screen. Really. Not figments of fever.

I was still wired up. An IV wore out the veins in my left hand, then my arm, then there was an excruciating attempt to put it in my foot. Monitors made zigzag lines above my head. Trapped by wires with no strength to hold a book, I stared at the television.

The Today show. Katie and Matt. A picture of a Tower in New York burning. A plane had crashed into it. A terrible accident. When a second plane hit the other tower, we knew it was no accident. I saw dark specks against the blue sky. No, not specks. People jumping. Not to save themselves, but choosing to die from flight rather than fire.

Over and over for days, I watched the planes hit the towers. A constant loop of tragedy. Sometimes I just looked at my colorful fingernails.

Nearly ten years later, I am alive. There are scars on my right lung and scars on my memory bank. The vision of smoke and crumbling buildings will always be there. 

On the night of Kristen's twentieth birthday, President Obama announced that the beast was dead. 

The master of vile, the calculator of mayhem, is dead. He didn't spend years living in a cave. He had a comfy compound where he could plan the next killing spree. 

Years ago I heard Sherwin Wine give a lecture to my liberal crowd. I don't remember his words, but the gist was that we are naive to think that there should never be wars. There is evil in the world and we can not stand by doing nothing. We can't stand by while the Hitler's out there gas innocent people. 

I am a bleeding heart liberal. I am against the death penalty. I'm not fond of wars, but agree with Sherwin Wine. And I am glad we have killed Osama Bin Laden.

***

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Papa, Taxes and the Scary Monkey

Around the middle of April I often think of my grandfather with admiration. I want to share him with you.

***

Papa sold high quality little houses to G.I.’s returning from WWII. There were hundreds of returning soldiers and hundreds of nice houses to sell to them.

My grandparents moved out of Detroit and into the suburbs (Beverly Hills) in the late forty’s. Papa was rich. They built a mansion. It was a actually a two bedroom cape cod, about 1400 square feet, but considered a mansion according to my grandmother’s siblings. He drove a beige Cadillac. It was a fat, pompous car.

***

For the record, I wasn’t close to Papa. The main thing we had in common was not liking each other. His beef: I had too much of my grandmother’s attention. My beef: he never held me on his knee.

Maybe it was the monkey incident that broke us?

At a huge family gathering when I was quite little, maybe three, Papa gave me a stuffed monkey. Gave is the wrong word. He waggled it right in front of my face. I wasn't expecting it. Just a moment before, everything had felt so safe, and then this mean monster monkey lunged at me. I screamed in terror. I screamed until I had the hiccups. I screamed until I couldn't catch my breath. 

***

In 1951 my Republican Papa gave all the family members "I Like IKE" buttons. I loved having a button. I wore it proudly. However, our Detroit neighborhood was all school teachers, policemen and factory workers. I was a political outcast until I hid my button. But I liked IKE, or anyway I liked the button and really, it was the best slogan ever written.

***

I remember Papa crying while watching anything on TV about an orphans. His own father had died when he was five and his mother soon after. His uncle George grudgingly became guardian to Papa and his younger brother. George P. Codd was mayor of Detroit for a year. He was a circuit court judge for 13 years and a United States Representative for two years. 

Uncle George was all those important things. But more significantly, he must have aspired to be a Dickens character. He was cruel to his sister’s two young boys. Cruel to the point that Papa couldn't speak of his childhood. His release was sniffing, coughing, and hiding his dripping, red eyes over any orphan on television.

***

When April 15th came around, Papa would say how lucky he was. He made a lot of money and he paid a lot in taxes. Keep in mind that in the fifties the rates were much higher than now. He was proud that he had a big tax bill. Not everyone made enough to have a big tax bill. He was privileged.

In one fell swoop every April, he contributed to the building of roads and bridges. He paid for children to have teachers and schools. He helped the poor and less privileged. He paid for returning soldiers care in V.A. hospitals. Public libraries and municipal buildings with beautiful murals came from the tax money he sent the IRS. He could do so much for society simply by paying the taxes he owed. 

He was honored to be able to contribute to the country he loved. And this is why I remember him with pride at tax time.

***

The New York Times published an expose about General Electric making $26 Billion in PROFIT in this country in the last five years. They paid nothing in taxes. 

NOTHING.

They have a tax department of 975 employees who spend half their time “looking to exploit opportunities to reduce tax.” And due to their diligence, G.E. claimed a 4.1 billion net tax profit from the IRS during that time.

Do you think that G.E.’s trucks use interstate highways, or cross some bridges getting their products to their markets? Do you think they want to hire people who are well educated? Do you think they’ll ever need a policeman or a fireman? 

Do you think they should get the scary monkey? 

Maybe they should cry until they get the hiccups.

Maybe they should hiccup up some money.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Design

I just finished designing a postcard and a flyer for an art exhibit. I sometimes forget how much I liked design. Graphic design, like writing haiku, has parameters: size specifics, clarity, a readable message. It was a great pleasure.

*

I had identical twin second-cousins. Boys. Each boy was always called "Twinnie" by all the relatives, because no one knew who was who. They grew up living next door to my great-grandmother, great aunts and great uncle in the right half of the two-family flat in Detroit. 

When we were all young, the twins showed me how they caught fireflies. Since I was a girl, they said I could just watch them do it. They showed me (no touching) their great armies of green plastic soldiers. They were four years older than me, so we had very little to do with each other.

When I was a junior in high school I wanted to go into advertising. I loved the ads in Seventeen Magazine. I didn’t want to be Picasso or Dali (well, sometimes Dali). It was more the nameless, unsigned illustrations that drew me, or that I wanted to draw.

I was living at my Grandmother’s and I hadn’t seen the twins in years when one came out to the suburbs to visit us. Both the twins had recently graduated from The Art School of the Society of Arts and Crafts where they had studied advertising. One had gotten a job as an art director at a television station in Detroit, the other was an art director in Florida. 

I hung on every word Twinnie said about the art school. Then I showed him an illustration I had just finished. It was a dark-outlined, stylized fashion piece, a girl in a Pendleton plaid skirt. I had copied it exactly from Seventeen. 

He looked it over carefully, then kindly said, “Well, it’s nice, but they never use these dark outlines in an illustration.” I didn’t tell him that it was a copy, thick dark lines and all.

*

The man across the street from my Grandmother’s was an artist’s rep at one of the big advertising studios. His daughter was my friend. One night I took some of my paintings over to show him. 

That was the night he slapped me with devastating news, “Advertising agency’s don’t hire women artists.”

“Why not.”

Now I swear to you, this is really what he said, “Because women paint everything in pink and baby blue.” Then he added, “ Maybe you should become a teacher”

I started doing everything in black and red. That was in 1961.

Eighteen years later, I became a student at The Center for Creative Studies, formerly The Art School of the Society of Arts and Crafts, where I majored in advertising design. This was after my first marriage, two kids, divorce, and jobs that involved copy editing, keylining and doing layouts.

*

Once I dated a man who thought that everyone should have a five year plan. He asked me what mine was. By that time I was working as a graphic designer at one of the best studios in Detroit. It was my dream job. 


He should have asked me what my twenty-five year plan was when I was in high school. 

*

Designing this postcard was fun. The card and flyer are for a group exhibit. Two art groups are coming together, TAG and The Reckless Prophets. There will be paintings, photography and sculpture. I'm a Taggie, so I'll be in the show. As you can see I'm first in the alphabetical list. Hey, there was a reason I changed my name to Arbor. 


Now the hard part: doing the paintings for the show. Painting for me is nothing like haiku.

http://www.collegeforcreativestudies.edu/

First, The Good News

On November 16th I wrote a post titled "The End of the Relationship". It was about leaving Ariana Gallery. The gallery owner rented one of my paintings to the ABC television show, "Detroit 1-8-7". She chose not to share the income from art rentals with the artists who created the work. The 50/50 split went out the window. She kept all of the $600 rental fee from my painting for herself.

I left the gallery.

Now here's the good news. You've heard the phrase "When one door closes another door opens". In December another door opened. 

An entrepreneur, who started a business representing artists to Detroit's blooming film industry, added me to her stable of artists. I haven't written about this before at her request. She has all the artists she can handle for the time being. 

I'm very lucky to have found an honest, enthusiastic, hard-working, creative woman to promote my work. She's also a painter, so she can relate to artists' struggles.  We've talked about all the excitement in town; one hundred films scheduled to be filmed in Michigan this summer.

In January she rented two of my paintings to "Detroit 1-8-7". They used the paintings on the set. A week later I got paid. Isn't that awesome!

Now the Bad News

Our new governor, Rick Snyder plans to eliminate the tax incentives for the film industry. The governor's reasoning is: why should one industry have more advantages than the others?

Within hours of Snyder's State of the State speech productions that were scheduled to come here this summer left us and headed for Louisiana. "Avengers", a film with one of the biggest budgets to come to Michigan, has pulled out.  The one hundred anticipated films has dwindled drastically.

Michigan is in financial trouble. However, the film industry doesn't cost us, it brings in money.

The governor should be looking at the film industry as tourists. Film making is a vagabond business. They can go anywhere.

They come into town and spend loads of money. They eat out, stay at hotels, shop in our stores. The set designers rent all kinds of things, including fine art from local people. The hotels, restaurants, shops, artists and many many more local people earn income from films.

Then they pay taxes on those earnings to the State of Michigan. 

Films also advertise to the world our beautiful, diverse, gritty, lush and serene State. The tax incentives are a bargain for us. Tourism? Who wouldn't want to visit the newest film capitol of the midwest. You might have lunch next to George Clooney or Clint Eastwood.

The Other Good News

The fat lady hasn't sung yet. There's supposed to be a town hall meeting March 3. We have until May for the state legislative vote. Snyder's proposal is not a done deal. 

Please, if you want films to be made in Michigan, please call your state representative and the governor. Send emails. Write letters. Share this blog post with your friends and encourage them to call, write and email. Please.

Thank you.

To find your districts State Senator:
http://www.house.michigan.gov/find_a_rep.asp

Governor Rick Snyder
P.O. Box 30013
Lansing, Michigan 48909
Phone: 517-373-3400
Phone: 517-335-7858 - Constituent Services
Fax: 517-335-6863
E-mail: Rick.Snyder@michigan.gov

Touching The Art

I didn't go to the Detroit Institute of Art or local art galleries when I was a child. They were there, but I had no idea of their existence. 

My Brownie Troop went to the Verner Factory. We took a trip to the War Memorial. We rode on the commuter train downtown once. If the troop went to the art museum, I must have had chicken pox and missed the trip. 

The art I saw growing up was at the kitchen table. Mom taught me everything she was learning at Cass Tech. Art was more about doing than seeing.

There was never a field trip to an art museum in high school art classes in Ferndale, Palo Alto, Birmingham, and San Mateo (yes, four high schools, two states). We painted, drew, sculpted, made pots. But we never looked at grown up art.

After two kids and six years of military life, my little family came home. I went to Oakland Community College. My ex (before he was an ex) and I took a couple classes together, specifically, art appreciation and film appreciation. We didn't share the Bergman films with our kids, but the art museum was family friendly. 

I'll always remember the first time I saw it. The smooth, yet voluptuous, little-headed figure reclining in the center of one of the contemporary galleries, a Henry Moore sculpture. It was love at first sight. 

This is "Art" with quotes and a capital A. Art that makes your heart beat. Art that makes you feel all swoonie and alive at the same time.

The wood was polished to a golden, lustrous patina. I wanted to touch it. Run my hands all over it. Of course, if everyone touched it the wood would turn black. The glow would be gone. It would be wrecked.

John likes to touch art. I try not to be in the same space with him at museums, especially if there's a guard nearby. 

A few weeks ago Alison took the grandkids to see the Henry Moore sculptures in the Denver Botanical Gardens. I want to share her pictures with you. 

I wish we were seeing them live. I wish we could all touch them. 

Hands

I sit in the sun coming in the window looking at my hands. They are really old. There are brown spots and dry, tiny waves of creases on the backs of my hands.  If the skin was any shade of green they could be part of a scaly lizard. 

I always thought my long fingers must be from my father’s side. He was tall, therefore it seemed a reasonable conclusion. But then one night I was sitting on the couch next to Nan, my grandmother (Mom's Mom). I held her hand in mine. It was warm, soft and made me feel happy. I looked at our hands together. I held hers up to mine, palm to palm. We matched exactly. 

She had some arthritis. Her index fingers were twisted like cork screws. This made the index nails twist toward the long finger (The FU finger) almost facing the palm. If her nails were sharper she could have opened a bottle of wine. 

My hands looked old (I thought) when I was only forty. Thin skinned. If the hands were arranged in a downward position all the veins filled up. The backs of my hands appeared to be wriggling with earthworms right beneath the surface. I’d raise my hands up in the air and the veins disappeared. Wave those hands in the air. Hallelujah. People think you're nuts if you walk around with your hands up in the air all the time, and your fingers go numb after a while. 

I worked at a advertising studio in the Renaissance Center in Detroit in the eighties. One night many of us were working late. One of the illustrators needed to illustrate a woman's hands. I was the only female in the place, so Mike came into my room and asked if I'd model my hands for him. I said, "Sure". Then he checked out my big hands, looked totally distressed and said, "I'll check Joe's hands".

Oh, well, I never had modeling ambitions anyway.

*****

But know this: I have magnificent hands. They do things. Most important, they feed me. I really like that. They can pick a white hair off a black sweater with no problem. They type. They squeeze the cheeks of my husband when I want to give him big smashing kisses. They can hold a paint brush and move it wherever I want it to go. They are wonderful tools. I should learn sign language, then they could talk.