Artist in Residence.....

Ran Horn

The Ran Horn Story. Driving throuh Van Horn, Texas, the I-10 Business Street, Broadway, one store front really stand out among some non-descript feed and hardware and ranch supplies enterprises. A banner proclaiming VAN GOGH: resplendant with colors and marks like the iconic surfaces of the Netherland master himself.

The grand obsession of an amazing man, Ran Horn, who left the ministry himself and took up painting, usuing the Dutch giant himself as his teacher. So amazing. The store is crammed inside and out with artifacts and books and paintings and reproduction and prints on every wall and every vertical space available... and a veritable maze of book shelves. The famous works are there, some supended from the ceiling, and the painted subjects, some times assemble in the same frame, La Mousme, the Zouave, Postman Roulin, his son Amond, the dealer Pere Tanguy, Madame Ginoux, the night cafe with some tables added and others drinking, ... some contemporary!

The list

When Tommy Lee Jones brought his film crew to Van Horn to shoot some of his Border epic, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada", several cast and and crew came to see Ran. Dwight Yoakam bought three or four works, Ran told us. He has his purchases with their purchasers recorded on a big list hanging in the gallery...

Ran

If ever driving west along I-10 as it goes through the wedge pressed down by New Mexico and up, across the Rio Bravo del Norte, by Mexico..... Well, do not miss Ran on Broadway in Van Horn.... Texas, that is. Oil wells and shooting stars!!!!!

Thanksgiving. 2006 edition.

Desert Campsite View
Nancy and I headed out Wednesday for the west. Through Texas, following 180: from weatherford to MINERAL WELLS, Palo Pinto, Breckenridge, etc.... finally our first camp, pulled into Monahan Sandhills after dark, that beach in the desert plains... where we rested weary on the sand. Next day, Thanksgiving, taking back roads, first to Guadeloupe National Park, where the Pine Canyon campsites were full, we headed on to Hueco Tanks, where we finally got a good place to pitch tents.

Leaving Sandhills

Boy did we bring enough stuff!!Crammed into the Honda wagon, tents, backpack, clothes bags, food food food, doggie gear, cooler full, maps, books, lit and science!, enough to spend a month it seemed.

Then back to Guadaloupe, where the kind camp hostess, who had fallen in love with Megan, Nancy's noble poochie, had a camp site for us, on top of the ridge with the view above all around.... so happy, we...

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Nature's beauty all around...This is my Father's world for sure, and mine too!!!....The Guadaloupe Mountains were this massive reef rising out of the off-shore reach of the Permian Sea. This was some 250 million years back. Time spans we cannot image. This was before there were dinosaurs. There were sponges and clams and nautilus and jellies and the like leaving calcious remains stacking up hundreds of feet, just below the waves...just off the land... after many changes... the Permian Sea went away, the continents split up and re grouped and the Dinosaurs came and went..... The flowers and bees and furry mammals the size of mice, stayed on, and became cows and men, and orchids and daisies... with another sea, more erosion, forces pushed up the reef as a long block of mountains, with beautiful El Capitan at the southern head, a ship's prow! The desert came and went and came back!! CHANGE.... the only constant. The Atlantic divided us from Europe, the Pacific floor came under us, and docked island on our west coast, fiery volcanos rose, leaving the Rockies and the Sierras and leaving the Cascades.... 10 million years, something else will be here. The whole thing will become melted down by erosion, one rock, one grain of sand, one river of mud at a time..... The Grand Canyon will disolve, and run down to fill in the Baja gulf, and on and on and on....But. Our little window on time... this beautiful earth we are privileged, yea, lucky to enjoy as it is right now. (wish I could have seen Mt. St Helens before it blew in 1980!!! for example...)

BUT. Can see it now before it blows again!!!) All you have to do! Open your eyes!!! Get on the road!!!! Stretch your mind!!! Open you heart!!! See what it is all about... Life like a Dome of Many Colored Glass, stains the white radience of ETERNITY..... said Shelley..... From our first breath to our last, life is a journey. Each of us is a book. Others can read it. Some can write it all down. But those we share our life with, our soul with, yet, our vision, our understanding, in this great and glorious library called Earth... full of glory and sadness and joy and sorrow in equal measure.... we live, we learn, we enjoy, we cry... life is to be lived!!!!

Walt Whitman spoke and wrote it all..... Meville sailed the seas.... Darwin, too!!!! Galileo saw the Moons of another world (and was arrested) Aristotle and Linneaus who continued to give names to the natural world..... John McFee telling us how California was assembled!!!!

As my pal Bill says, "the unlived life is not worth examinating", an Ambrose Bierce style epigram on Socrates, "An unexamined life is not worth living" or something...

Good Morning Earth: How Are you??????

Megan

Buddha of Suburbia

Sunset near Thorp Spring

A merry heart doeth the spirit good like a medicine:
but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

Bert asked where that quote came from. I guessed it was a Proverb. The Book of Proverbs, put together or created by wise old Soloman. I wrote: "...sounds like a proverb out of the Bible.... could be just in the "style" of such a proverb...." and sent it on to friends: Shirley wrote: "Isaiah 28-31, The Bible Somewhere along in there I think?"
Ronnie actually looked it up: "It is in the Bible in the book of Proverbs 17:22.
and added:
Here's another 'Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones'.
Proverbs 16:24"

Some people like my ideas. I will become the Buddha of Suburbia.... gather the faithful and bestow blessings... distribute my weight in words to the poor......

to a friend on OM early this morning:

.......Keeping positive is the main thing. There is so much to learn and enjoy about this amazing life of ours, this improbable and unique world, with its wonderful, seemingly infinite aspects.

I think many religions agree: The first question in the Westminster Catechism of the Presbyterian church, I grew up in, almost literally, is:

What is Man's chief end? the answer: To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

The river that formed the lake below me was named Los Brazos, by the Spaniards first Whites to encounter it... brazos means "arms" and the full name was Brazos de Dios, arms of God. I like to think I live above those, in those, and praise Him for that. I am not near as religious as I sometimes sound, though...

I set up my bird feeder in a clearing, well not exactly, but among shrubs and trees, here in North Central Texas, 30 miles south-west of Ft Worth, in rolling limestone hills, I built my cabin above canyon-like gullies, covered with thickets of oak, elm, sumac, hack-bury. I have a good view of Lake Granbury, an impoundment of the Rio Brazos, which cuts the town, 8 miles away, in two, the lake being very thin, with a mesa formation, called Comanche Peak just to the south, over the town... which dates from the 1870's (the town that is) and is quite "charming". I prefer to live in the woods, 9 miles north, 20 acres, but I ramble off into a thicket of TMI...

...all the birds have not found my new site, after 2 years, but maybe if is a change in the food I give them. I get a lot of cardinal, chicadee, tit-mouse activity, but cannot get the finches. I think they need a more open area like before. Plenty of doves, at least two breeding pairs of road runners, who are like chickens who hang around wherever they like. One likes to perch on my roof peak and sing a plaintive song. I fancy a sad soul who cannot find a mate. They are beautiful birds, improbably goofy looking at the same time!!!! If I leave a glass or mirror outside they will come and admire themselves.

Some white-throats and rufus crowned sparrows are here, but the latter along with the bob-white quail, I do not see anymore, recently, and guess that the exploding fire-ant population is the culprit, getting the babies, since they nest on the ground. Road runners do too, but they may be a lot tougher... I can sometimes hear, occasionally see one of the virios, and some summers, the painted buntings come to the feeder. I mean to add some more feeder locations. Would love to get the goldfinches coming back.... Down on the lake there are the usual shore birds. ducks and egrets... and every now and then big bunches of white pelicans with their 8 ft wing span.... recently during dry times, there were sand-pipers. Oh and some little ruby crowned kinglets and junkos in the winter...

birds birds birds.... love them all.....

Let Freedom Ring

I guess I was in gloom and doom mode...buying into an IDEA that the school yard bullies that seemed to have taken over this country, were here to stay. All their tricks worked in their favor in 00, 02, and worst of all, 04. I forgot one thing. I forgot where I live. I forget that this Amerca, ur, United States, can unite to overthrow any leadership that does not respect its true values. When Thomas Jefferson set the course with the reason we all are here, that "all men are created equal..." and we all have equil rights, under the law, in our neighborhoods, towns, states, the land we live in... Just like grade school history tells us.

Maybe I won't move to Mexico after all. Maybe the new shape of Congress will right some of these wrongs. At least, I believe it will try....

I was thrilled to read Frank Rich in the NY Times this Morning... I think you have to subscribe to the internet Times to get it... How undemocratic! (But thats all about the freedom to sell your brain produced work, part of what this all is about anyway....)

He talks about the fall of the Virginia senator, how he shot himself to death with a word: Macaca!!!

"The macaca incident had resonance beyond Virginia not just because it was a hit on YouTube. It came to stand for 2006 as a whole because it was synergistic with a national Republican campaign that made a fetish of warning that a Congress run by Democrats would have committee chairmen who are black (Charles Rangel) or gay (Barney Frank), and a middle-aged woman not in the Stepford mold of Laura Bush as speaker. In this context, Mr. Allen’s defeat was poetic justice: the perfect epitaph for an era in which Mr. Rove systematically exploited the narrowest prejudices of the Republican base, pitting Americans of differing identities in cockfights for power and profit, all in the name of “faith.”"

O Tempus O Mores

N.B. I still like Laura Bush, Stepford wive that she seems. She was the sweet kind lady at the door of the big banker's house, who gave you cookies and said sweet things to you as her husband was forclosing on your Daddy's farm!!!! And we all went to the same church!!!!!

HOORAY AND HALLELUJAH/you had it comin' to ya...

REJOICE, REJOICE: WE HAD no CHOICE

Yes, this means you, American people. The voting electorate has turned the tide. Our brand of Democracy has spoken... Season of doubts has ended for now. Now the Dems have so much to start un-doing...

here is the Bard's sonnet no. 100, complaining about the his truent muse. I enter it because some sensibility has returned to the American psyche...... O Tempus, O mores...

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem
In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay,
And make Time's spoils despised every where.
Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;
So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.

I been accused of not reading my blerbs and being angry. There has been much to be angry about, maybe this is a Spring thaw..... a few months early.... Now, about 2008.... LOOK OUT!!!!!!

OK: some anger.

I just want to congratulate that egotistical show-off, yes, you, Kinkster, and your fellow whatever goof-ball Grandma for our continuing wonderful Republican rule of this could-be great state of Texas...... I hope Kinky sells a lot of books and records and can afford to booze it up with his talented country addict buddies... They are good at that, all a big joke, no??? Hahahaha...... said something about Goat Farm? Try funny farm, Kinkie Baby. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA DAMN!

I despise the way politics spin out these days, O tempus, o mores.... oh dammit all anyway. I sometimes want to sell out and move to Mexico.... where slime-ball politicos have always been in charge, and there are no laws that money won't get you around!!!!! Saved by poverty and corruption, you might say. Land of fantasy and magic. People who insist on living...

Drying Lake Dying

Cattails springing up among the debris


Lake Granbury is drying: sandbars with sand pipers feeding, freshwater clam shells shining
mother-of-pearl, cat tails starting to grow....

a bay that was once pasture... sometime floodplains....
This lake is dying.... let it go. Free the Brazos... Let it return
to the canyons that have been cut, the meanders, the great bends,
since the dinosaurs stalked the Cretaceous shores... since the snows
of yesteryear melted, and filled the Permian Basin.... since the
Rockies rose.... Since the old Lipan Indians made their arrowheads
on the Cliffs of the Brazos...

The House on the Crumbling Cliff

Down with the damn dam!!!!! The lake will silt up anyway and there
will be a grand waterfall where De-Cordova dam now holds the water
back..... after we are all gone.... Mother Nature will have the
final say!!!!! OR: God is not mocked! (take your choice)

Ghosts of Driftwood

Now revealed: ghost-like, blanched driftwood, now drying, that
soaked up the saline waters of Lake Granbury........

Films by Leonardo DeCaprio: http://leonardodicaprio.org/

Bonjour le froid

outside

ah, it is finally autumn. Season of mists and gentle fruitfulnes, as I mis-paraphrase old Keats or is it the Lord B????? (Keats! see below) anyway, playing with color and enjoying the exuberance of nature.... Spectacular, the dying of the green... death in all its glory.....

pool


Ode To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats