Fashion Rant

Once there was a time when you could buy blue jeans from LLBean and they were tough and would wear for a couple of years of what I do every day. My jeans have been pee’d on by a turtle, jumped into a swamp to rescue my elderly dog, collected seven pick-up truck loads of stones from a local quarry, built several buildings and they’ve been in messes that required a respirator for their occupant. They get scraped by hay bales, garden dirt gets ground into them, stove-wood tears them, sparks occasionally burn holes in them. They are on a first-name basis with horse manure, and they play with a four-year-old. You could accurately say that all of my clothes are “distressed.”

These days – if you are a woman - you try to buy a pair of LLBean jeans, and they want to know what kind of "wash" you want: stone wash, acid rinse, steep for twelve years in goat urine, or just given a gentle dragging behind an environmentally friendly hybrid car for six weeks. Needless to say, these damned things don't last hole-free for more than two turns in the wash. It seems that consumers want to look like they do actual physical WORK!

What’s a wizard to do? Well, maybe I’ll go over to Doris’ Fashion Nook in Amish country just outside of Rennselaer Falls. That’s where the lumberjacks shop, because that’s where you can get Carhartts and work boots. But do they have size 6 petite? I repeat: what’s a wizard to do?

You Are Here...

It's usually good to know where you're at, and we wizards always like to be helpful.

Fall Discovery

Well, for heaven's snakes! Look what's in the woodpile!

Git 'R Done

I don’t know how that saying caught on, much less why it annoys me. Possibly it is just so redneck that I associate it with the hordes of bible-thumpin’, NASCAR-lovin’ fools who (with the help of their bosom buddies the Very Very Rich and Greedy) put Bush in office and – with flag waving – also want to Git ‘Raq Done. It’s emblazened on T-shirts and caps and demolition derby cars, not so subtly implying that the rest of us couldn’t possibly Git ‘R Done even if we knew what ‘R is and why it needs to be.

Last week I saw another saying that essentially means the same thing: You can’t leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps. Now that one I like. It puts the hay down where the goats can get it, and it doesn’t smack of stupid.

Unfurled

The trip from my home to the neighboring State of Vermont takes me across the northernmost part of New York - an "upstate" so far north that its existence is completely unknown to people who aren't native to the area. It's a place whose natives speak with the hint of a Canadian accent.

Much of the way I drive a road called The Old Military Turnpike, following (in reverse) the route taken by some of my ancestors exactly two hundred years ago. I pass the stone ruins of Robinson's Tavern, a stopping point built shortly after the War of 1812, and eventually catch a glimpse of Lake Champlain in the distance, the mountains of Vermont rising beyond it.

About a hundred miles from home, I drive aboard the Lake Champlain Ferry and turn the ingition off. For the next fifteen minutes I'll enjoy the sun and wind, note the absence of the dozens of white-sailed boats dotting the lake during the summer months, and reflect that soon my crossings will involve stinging cold winds and the breaking of ice. I resolve to photograph one of the boat's flags, using it to frame a long view down the lake, but no matter how I try, the flag and the lake just won't cooperate. I climb the stairs to the upper deck and walk toward the stern, and as the rear flag comes into view, I see a crew member removing it from its pole!

I mutter a discouraging word. The one thing I wanted to photograph, and this guy takes it down! But wait... As I descend the aft stairs, he unfurls a brand new flag and fastens it securely to the flagpole. Frame, focus, click. The warm wind blows my hair around and I slip my camera back in the case. It wasn’t the picture I had in mind, but it's a good day on the ferry.

The Northern Arboreal Apple-eating Pincushion Sloth (petting not advised)

Outhouse Lady

Photograph courtesy of D. W. Andrus

Just when you think something is over and done with, just when you’re beginning to relax in the belief that you have fixed the problem, stemmed the tide, mended the fence, changed the subject, finalized the divorce, ended the occupation, switched the gears or slain the dragon... your cousin Don surprises you. Well, what ever did I expect, anyway? Don is a wizard too, and – as you must know – wizards never tire of having fun, so why was I surprised to receive a book of poetry entitled, “Muddled Meanderings in an Outhouse?”

You see, my mother was known by many as “The Outhouse Lady.” She was an artist, and her gimmick (the thing that caught the eye of potential buyers of her more serious work) was her display of small outhouse paintings accompanied by a sign which read: Hang an outhouse in your bathroom and count your blessings! $5 She would paint the stand of hollyhocks next to each privy to match the colors of the buyer’s powder room. People loved them, and my mother’s newfound notoriety solved the birthday and Christmas gift-giving problem for all the relatives: They gave my mother’s outhouses to their friends; they gave my mother everything ever produced that immortalized the outhouse.

I thought that part of my life was behind me...


Outhouse Lady (for Don)

She went out back in younger days
The Sears and Roebuck book to read,
Passed some time (if nothing else)
Seated by hollyhocks grown up from seed.

In later years she’d paint that place,
(Not the interior walls as you might assume),
But tiny pictures for five bucks apiece
To hang in modern indoor rooms.

She was dubbed “The Outhouse Lady”
And was known both far and wide;
Her children suffered embarrassment,
As from her fame they tried to hide.

Gifts would come at Christmas
From the painter’s nephews and cousins:
Calendars, puzzles, books of rhyme;
Outhouse pictures by the dozens.

The family bathroom became the repository
For this mounting pile of privy lore,
Until it became so full it was impossible
To use the place for what it was intended for...

What to do? And where to go?
Asked her desperate kids and spouse -
The solution (thanks to Port-a-potty)
Was a modern out-back house!

Through wind and snow we then took the path
To the new bathroom way out back,
(At least there was Scott tissue
Replacing that damned old almanac).

Years later we lost our privy painter,
And her “collection” was garage-saled away,
The bathroom was clear and clean once more -
‘Till your gift arrived today!

How important the inheritance
Of family lore and memories,
But I must scratch my head and wonder
How this mantle has passed to me?!?!

Fitting Together

This was yesterday's photographic challenge: to illustrate "a perfect match" by showing the final piece of a puzzle fitting into place. It is to be used for a print piece my husband is working on. The tricky part was getting the yellow "head" of the dinosaur to float above where it should come to rest when the puzzle "fits together." 'Wish I had a "real" studio instead of my back porch, but this was an entertaining challenge! Cute critter, isn't he?

Hollyhock Haiku

Stalks of pink splendor
Standing beside gray fence rails
Beckon bees and me

But First This News...

Yesterday I received an interesting piece of mail from my hairdresser. It began:

A person can hear,
But a friend listens for the meaning
A person can look,
But a friends sees the heart
A person can know
But a friend understands your path
Thanks for listening, seeing, and understanding!

Okay, so far so good. It then went on to say:

“[We] would like to take this opportunity to announce our success in our criminal trial in Chicago. We were exonerated and found not guilty on all counts, as well as announcing the complete eradication of the cancer that [one of us] was diagnosed with.”

“We will be pursuing civil suits against all of the people who were responsible for this gay hate crime, as well as the Archdiocese of Chicago, the individual police officers who lied and propagated this farce, the Oak Lawn Police Department for false imprisonment, the Oak Lawn Village Hall, and the State’s attorney’s office for malicious prosecution.”

“At this point in time we will be able to finally say Business As Usual and open our doors again regularly at our current location... Thank you for your patience, patronage, and cooperation during the past year and a half.”

Say what??? Am I so far out of the loop that I missed all this??? This guy is a prima dona, and – about a year ago – I went grumping off to another hairdresser because he was always rescheduling me. I hated to do it, because he’s as good as any big city stylist (a rare gem in this rural area filled with hair cutters who went to beauty school and learned the difference between a comb and a pair of scissors...) But is this for real? You have to admit it’s a unique way of saying you’re accepting clients. I think I need a haircut.