Wednesday

I'm ashamed to admit how lax and lazy I am. I missed art group today at Rendezvous Pointe. The power blinked the other day, and the backup battery in my electric alarm clock is dead. So I had to reset the clock and the alarm. Well, my alarm will go off at 7:45 tonight. I didn't even wake up until 9:30 this morning, and as art group begins at 9:00, I decided it was a lost cause.

I brought up a new backup battery for the clock today. and will hopefully get the AM and PM thing straightened out.

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Some pictures from Kindergarten Days

One of the finer moments of Kindergarten pictured above. Heidi and I used to take our morning class up Horse Creek for a field trip to feed at Louie and Lisa and Drew and Tawny's place. The Roberts were always so patient and were wonderul hosts for a passel of little kids.

Kasey has another ear infection, and Barrie took her to the doctor. She didn't go to Julie's until about 10:00. She was so excited, because she was wearing her tennis shoes and a light jacket instead of her clunky snow boots and parka. Must be spring.

Monday

This is so different for me, and I had fun painting it. I had seen a painting similar to this, and wanted to try the colors.




A good friend of mine and former teacher sent me a great joke the other day. I hope I get it right.

A class of small children was just learning how to read. A little boy was looking through a book and said "Look at this! It's a frickin' elephant!"

And sure enough it was!

Sunday

Click on image for a larger view

There is more interest in colored pencicls in my painting group. Pam brought hers last week and did a little experimenting with them.

This is a colored pencil drawing I did on black paper some time back. I really like working with them on colored paper.

One of the artists on the drawing forum on Wet Canvas has a quote, logo, or whater you call it that appears at the end of all her posts.

"Use the pointy end."

Saturday

Rollie and Judi wondered about the location of Silver Bell. It was about 40 miles northwest of Tucson. From what I can find out, most everything was dozed off by ASARCO and there is a tall fence around the property. There were about 20 company houses there, and they were all moved.

Click on images for a larger view

One day when I was at work, the mining engineer came in my office, and put a hard hat on my head and drove me out to El Tiro, the huge open pit mine. They were going to blast that day. At the far left in the top picture, there is a man in a red shirt, and there were a couple of pickups there too. Eveyone moved off, and we waited. I remeber the ground jumped under my feet before we heard the sound of the explosion. According to what I wrote on the back of the picture, there were over 300 drill holes and over 70 tons of blasting powder.

After the blast, we had to beat it back to the pickup and waited about 30 minutes for the dust to settle enough to see to drive back to the office. The whole top tier had been blown off.

Arizona

This morning I was straightening up some books on my bookshelves. Picked up a book on ghost towns of Arizona, and immediately got distracted. Tucked inside the book were several photos and some USGS topo maps of the area around Silver Bill, Arizona, where I once lived . I got out my oldest photo album, but am disappointed because there aren't very many pictures of Silver Bell. Maybe there are some more in a box I have in the closet.

The Silver Bell townsite was a company town, and I lived in a small trailer house there. A few miles to the west was the ghost town of Old Silver Bell. My friends and I used to go exploring there a lot. The picture is of the cemetary at Old Silver Bell.

I have a story on myself about the old cemetary. Probably shouldn't even tell it, but my two best friends and I decided we were going to dig up one of the graves. We took our shovels out there and started to dig. We didn't last long. We got scared and quit. We shoveled back the 3 or 4 inches of dirl we had managed to take off, and went home.

Oh come on! I was only 21 years old at the time and not finished growing up yet. Those were my rowdy years.

Wednesday

WWII Cartoons from New Guinea

Click on image to read.

Two different men, strangers to me, have sent me this reprint from a 1943 Life Magazine about the cartoons I have posted on my PBase page in the New Guinea album.

Some guy in Houston just e-mailed me today. He wants to clean up and restore some of the pictures and wanted to give me credit. They're not my pictures. As there were about 20 photographers in my uncles unit, there's no way to know who really took which ones. I suggested he give credit to the 43rd Bombardment Group Photographers.

There has sure been a lot of interest in these photos. I noticed today that they have been viewed over 18,000 times.

http://www.pbase.com/duener/new_guinea_wwii

If you're interested, here is the link.

Monday

Leslie R. posted this photo on Facebook showing their dog with the two cats. I hope she won't mind that I use it on my blog. These are the two white kittens who were born on the ditchbank behind my house. Their mother was wild. The first time we saw them, Barrie went up and managed to catch them both. They fought like wildcats, which they were.

Within three days, Barrie and Kasey had them tamed down, and Rod and Leslie gave them a home. That turned out well, didn't it?

The Bird that Keeps on Giving

Things are pretty bad around here when I start to take pictures of my cooking!

I baked a chicken earlier in the week, and yesterday I fixed a chicken pot pie sort of dish with biscuits on the top. Then I boiled the carcass and made a bunch of chicken broth. Then I got all the bones out of the scraps so the dogs could eat it.

I love rotisserie chicken, and buy one at the grocery store once in a while. I am always tempted by those machines they advertise on TV - you know, the one where the guy says over and over again - "Set it anf forget it."

Barrie and Kasey went to watch one day of sled dog racing at Ashton, Idaho yesterday. Last night Kasey informed me that Maddy was her dog. Barrie says she loves having a dog she can lead around on a leash and it doesn't bite people. Kasey still loves her Shorty dog, but he doesn't have such good manners.

Gina thought my cricket on the hearth looked more like a boot jack. Well, it does, but as it is only about 4 inches long, it's never been used for that.

cricket on the hearth

We find brass "crickets" constantly in stores that sell folksy things or things for the hearth and home. In old folklore, having a cricket in the house is supposed to be good luck. I wondered for years how this "folklore came about. I found that it came from a story by Charles Dickens. Hmmm. I even asked my cousin who is the University Librarian in Adelaide, South Australia, and the most well-read person I knew. He didn't have a clue!

I ordered the book from Amazon, which included both the stories "The Christmas Carol" and "Cricket on the Hearth." The story "The Cricket on the Hearth" is actually a love story, and I enjoyed reading it! My shot of culture for the year, maybe.


This is my "Cricket on the Hearth". He was given to my Mom from an aunt years ago. Don't ask me why he looks like an alligator.

And this is a picture of a brass cricket I found online. Looks much more like a cricket than mine.

Friday

Click on images for a larger view

This is Maddy with Kasey.

I painted a couple of very small "4" x 5" snow scenes. Would sure be nice if I could paint snow from real life instead of a photo. It's trying to snow right now, but I know it won't last.

The static electricity is driving me nuts, especially upstairs. I have two humidifiers running in the house, one upstairs and one downstairs. I have a metal lamp I touch before I touch my laptop computer, and it always snaps. But then it will often snap when I touch the computer. That's not good. I guess I will shop today for something - just don't know what. Tracy thinks they make a pad of some kind to set the computer on.

My garage and basement gave me a real start yesterday when I went down there. Someone had committed a major cleaning! The back of my pickup was filled with flattened cardboard boxes, Barrie got them ALL ready for the recycling center. And she cleaned and straightened out a lot more. I never heard her - can't hear what's going on in the basement from upstairs.