Category Archives: from the DRAFTS folder

Found a notebook

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My sister left behind quite a collection of mostly empty sketchbooks. Two springs ago, right after her death, I decided to use one for the collage project being run by Acey. I may have posted many of these pix before but I found this draft post and decided to share.

To make the paper weaving, I glued the tops of the vertical strips, then wove the horizontals. I tacked the horizontals with glue here and there.

This collection of strips hasn’t been glued yet. Actually it only has two horizontal strips. The top two thirds LOOKS woven just by virtue of jogging the tree trunks up and down.

You might wonder: why James Franco?

Well I liked his naked form against that charcoal background but also, young(ish) men often show up in my collages. Earlier in life, I’d have said they were explorations of my male side, but since having two sons they feel like attempts to understand what it means to come of age as a man in the 2000’s.

Below are a bunch more. The second one is one of two Tarot cards that I’ve made: The Fool. Number Zero of the Major Arcana.

For info on this collage project see Acey’s blog sparklinglotusink (if it’s still there)

For more SoulCollage cards of mine, go to Flickr on sidebar and open the SoulCollage album (if it’s still there). Or, track the SoulCollage and collage tags here.

I’ve noticed missing photos in older blog posts and am having trouble getting any sort of useful answers from WordPress. They suggest, knowing nothing, that it’s usually the user’s fault. And I’m certain it’s the platform’s fault. Just another goddamned thing to figure out, ya know?

The gloaming

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This photo came from the drafts file. The title was The gloaming of a lame duck November. 11/18/2020. Nearly one year ago. Doesn’t it feel longer like maybe a century? Isn’t it more than a little disappointing how tense and frightening the state of affairs remains?

In other cheery news, I made an etsy sale yesterday and cleared $2.50. The postage killed me.

Stuffed into a 4″x6″ envelope, this pile of metal bibs and bobs cost $6.83 to ship to the west coast. I charged $3.50.

One way is to think about this is that I am a fool. Another way: I just made $2.50 for stuff I picked up on the street AND I got rid of some studio clutter.

Now, I’m letting the app calculate the postage. And I’ll raise some prices.

 

I’ve been tired. Can’t blame it all on travel because I was tired in LA, too. It was great to be there, don’t get me wrong, to see the progress, relax together, to have a meal with one of our boys, to see another whole section of the city (Echo Park). It’s just: I was tired.

I glued up this collage the day after returning home. Global warming is on all our minds as Biden heads to Glasgow for the G20 and the details of the BBB bill get hammered out.

This digital mash up includes a snow-scene quilt and this week’s Paris Collage prompt. Not happy with it yet.

It’s a banner year for walnuts. Some mornings it’s like artillery out there. Passing cars add their percussion — pop, pop, pop — as they crush the nuts in the street.

Today I will: write postcards to voters and finish binding two old abstract landscapes.

‘all good words lead to silence’

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Annisquam, 2021

From the drafts folder. February 10, 2010

So the joke is, when I opened the draft titled “all good words lead to silence,” there was nothing there. A blank screen. Get it? Now you’re in on it too.

I had to scroll all the way back to 2010 to find this revised post because it turns out that if you edit a draft, even one from 11 years ago, WordPress publishes it on its original date. It isn’t enough to hit “Publish Now,” you also have to change the date on their calendar.

Annisquam, over Labor Day weekend, was lovely. We walked a long time.

Parallels to 1812 plus plants

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From the DRAFTS Folder — June 2017. Mostly pictures.

I gathered the pictures for this post seven months after the disastrous 2016 election, but wrote nothing.

My city of Newton was trying to decide whether to submit a formal recommendation to the U.S. House in support of an impeachment investigation. It wasn’t openly in favor of impeachment, it’s important to note. It was in support of INVESTIGATING the possible bases for impeachment. And yet, it was controversial.

Of course, the second trump was inaugurated, both emoluments clauses were being violated due to his undivested business interests. By the summer of 2017, the abuses of power and other egregious behaviors had piled up to a ridiculous degree. I will spare myself (and you) the litany.

My small but focused Indivisible Group appeared before the City Council to support the measure. Our philosophy was to show up. Do what little thing you can. It seemed to matter. (Does it still, I find myself asking in today’s Texas-Handmaid mood).

Most people were going to tick off trump’s impeachable offenses, as if to say: HOW CAN WE LET THIS STAND? I wanted, instead, to specifically address one council member’s objection — that is, that it was not the business of states to makes suggestions to the U.S. Congress. I hunted down an example.

What I found was that the citizens of Cambridge, Mass. formerly implored Jefferson to undo the Embargo of 1807. The federal trade restrictions stopped U.S. ships from conducting business in foreign ports. The embargo was meant to both prevent war with Britain and to make the economies of Britain and France suffer. Unfortunately, the embargo hurt our economy as well, particularly the merchants of the Northeast.

The petition stated in part: “But such is the unequal and oppressive operation of the embargo that we cannot believe that any real, true-hearted American can consider passive obedience and non-resistance a virtue.”

Timeless words, were they not?

It seems so long ago. 2017, I mean.

A Remonstrance, if you don’t know, is “an earnest presentation for reasons for opposition or grievance, esp. a document formally stating such points.”