I have to admit something to myself—this most recent crisis has been more than a “speed bump” for Bruce. This time he was in a ditch. The emergency surgery that took place yesterday was even more vital than I first realized. The medical details are starting to make my head fill with static, but now I understand that he would’ve gone quickly downhill without the procedure, and that it wasn’t a certainty that his body could handle the trauma. The intervention was just something that had to happen to prevent massive organ failure, and it worked. He’s stable and doing better already. If all goes well, they won’t have to repeat it (but, realistically, that could still be necessary). He told his mom that he feels like he’s trapped on an island, just trying to survive one more day.
Archive for May, 2005
A real survivor
Tuesday, May 31st, 2005Another day, another dilemma
Monday, May 30th, 2005Mombo seemed surprised to see me shooting with the digital camera at Eagle Nest. I suppose she’s gotten used to that 33-year-old Nikkormat FTn in front of my face. I enjoy the immediacy of digital, but haven’t shaken the nagging discomfort of feeling myself slip away from negative film. Polish cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (longtime Spielberg collaborator finishing up “War of the Worlds”) has his own more influential misgivings. He worries about “our ability to preserve history photographically,” and about “creating people who accept visually inferior images as the norm.” For me the economics are forcing a reluctant shift, so I should heed his concerns, maintaining a bank of quality images and making sure they outlive me. If “digital is degrading our aesthetics,” as Kaminski fears, there’s nothing I can do about it. I think it was already happening long before this particular development (probably began with the decline of the Arts & Crafts movement). However, I can refuse to give up my desire to document my family in a way that perhaps no one else in my generation is suited to achieve.
Various & Sundry, part seventeen
Saturday, May 28th, 2005— Marty finally convinced me to watch “Collateral.” Mann outdoes himself in this one. I won’t be the one to explain why it isn’t a flawless picture. If you haven’t seen it, I dare not give anything away. If you have, need I say more?
— Seth and I confirmed our desire to recut “Pirate Revenge,” and now I just have to schedule a block of time. He has access to the editing suite this summer, so it will be essential to have a new version before our Ohio gathering around Labor Day. If we hit the mark anywhere near my original visualization, minds will be most certainly blown.
— James encouraged me to spend time with Marty in the knobs, learning the terrain together and sleeping under the oaks. I own that land. What prevents me from claiming stewardship?
— Bruce undergoes a major surgical procedure tomorrow. I believe it will be the final turning point in his successful recovery. This is something that the providers would preferred to have have done much sooner, had he been strong enough to handle the general anesthesia, so I view it as an important step forward, rather than a setback. He’s ready for it, and it will lay to rest this stubborn condition in his internal core. May the mercy of Divine Law govern every aspect of the operation, guide every thought, and each skilled hand, to fulfill the promise of his unfolding destiny and the ultimate potential of his Christ wholeness.
A nice break
Saturday, May 28th, 2005Dana and Terie went up to be with Bruce over the holiday weekend. He’s back in his private room, but the docs are trying to pull together a surgical team to get to the bottom of continuing problem with his infectious innerds. Meanwhile, I’m hanging with the Marty Man. We hit Eagle Nest for the Clay celebration, caught episode III of SW, played the PS2 until midnight, and then called it day.
Solid steel will be like putty; he will work for anybutty
Friday, May 27th, 2005Just between you and me, I spent most of the last three days in the guise of my mighty alter ego, Website Makeover™ Man, and now I’m preparing to switch back to my secret identity—Uncle John—so I can complete my Thirteenth Cosmosaic for nephew Clayton, Class of 2005.
Wake up and smell the kookhead
Thursday, May 26th, 2005Setting the “bean machine” to automatic before bed, but forgetting to put the coffee pot underneath, is not a desirable way to start your day.
Benicio Del Toro IS Emilio Sandoz
Wednesday, May 25th, 2005As every reader knows, there’s a turning point in each good novel when the author has you hooked. We’ve just reached it with
The Sparrow. I say “we” because Dana and I are taking turns reading it to each other aloud. Bob and Carol gave us this idea a while back. Cold Mountain was perfect for it, and A Man in Full was a hoot. Not every work lends itself to the practice, so we’ve had a few false starts. Inevitably we “cast” the main characters like a motion picture, so we can concur on physical appearance and general persona. Ethan Hawke as Inman and Ashley Judd as Ruby were engraved in the imagination before Hollywood made its own choices, and now I’m certain that only Salma Hayek could portray Sofia Mendes. Brendan recommended The Sparrow to his mom (my sister Joan), and she enjoyed it so much we borrowed it next. Bruce will want to read it when we finish. I already know that I’ll immediately want to start again from the beginning, but we’ll probably go find a copy of Mary Doria Russell’s sequel instead—Children of God.
Another speed bump
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005Bruce faces a temporary setback with his return to the critical care unit, following the onset of symptoms that require continuous monitoring—fever, low blood pressure, anemia, and nausea. He’s stable, and they replaced a stint near his collarbone that was probably causing new infection. Dana’s taking this one hard (I think she had her heart set on his imminent release and transition to a physical therapy center). It’s a reminder how touch-and-go his resistance is, but I’m hoping he’s back in a private room before this weekend.
There must be something about this I don’t get
Monday, May 23rd, 2005Here’s the way I’d characterize what the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate is proposing:
“We want to prohibit a parliamentary practice that has rarely, if ever, been used prior to the election of George W. Bush, specifically, the filibustering of judicial nominees, and would leave the rule intact to employ in legislative matters.”
That doesn’t seem to me, despite the rhetoric of Democrat leaders, to be a radical assault on our system of government.
Various & Sundry, part sixteen
Sunday, May 22nd, 2005— BCA’s Frisco
makes me want to draw it as a comic strip, as Lisa did with Fortado. A while back I realized I’d have a difficult time creating a comic strip as a solo enterprise because, even though I could draw it, I knew I didn’t have the mind to develop dramatic or humorous ideas at the same level. And so I would require a partner, if I ever chose to fulfill the dream. It makes me think of some of the great collaborative efforts, like the strips created by Lee Falk (Mandrake the Magician, The Phantom) and, of course, Parker and Hart’s The Wizard of Id.
— Spent Friday morning compensating for the substandard transparency of the Tapley painting being featured within our Brass Band Festival poster design. It was a relief to know my teamwork with the printer’s pre-press technician achieved the anticipated result. All along, my goal has been to showcase a fabulous work of art without messing up, and having to take possession of the original and haul it around added a bit more stress to the process. Then we had lunch in Louisville with Bob the photographer and he pointed out that shooting a high-res digital could have avoided the entire ordeal of fixing a donated scan. No doubt, but that’s the sort of thing you get pulled into with a freebie project. There’s always time to salvage a botched plan, but never any money to do it correctly from the beginning.
— Within almost every “mandala” of friends there’s the individual or two who act as the “glue.” For a group that’s met twice a month for over a decade to experience “shared silence,” that primary person has been my friend Milton. He’s retiring from his long tenure at Centre College, and it was fun to “toast and roast” him at the cabin this morning. His energy, compassion, and “brutal” honesty has always been an inspiration. One of the harsh realizations of middle age has been to understand that one doesn’t know quite as much about quite as many subjects as it seems in youth. And special care should be taken when claiming any authority in the areas in which one has gained some depth of knowledge and expertise. For the most part, I learned this from Milton, a true scholar who knows how to keep things in perspective—that even though we all have our limitations as students of life, it need not inhibit our enthusiasm for learning, nor deter our quest for illumination.
— The remarkable recovery by Bruce continues as he enters his tenth week in the hospital. He had more surgery on Friday to take out tubes and is down to a single drain (which may come out tomorrow) and a line that delivers nutrition directly to the small intestine. Dana and I spent the afternoon with him yesterday. He did some hall walking and powered his own wheelchair for a while on a visit to the rose garden. He’s off antibiotics, keeps gaining strength, and can now concentrate on a little reading, which is one of the good signs I’ve been looking for. Nobody loved to read more than Bruce, and he’s surely on his way back to his former avocations. And yet I sense that the perilous chasm he traversed this spring is his portal to a new and different life that can be unlocked only by monumental perseverance.
If you smell it, too
Saturday, May 21st, 2005I’ve finally discovered the blogger’s hazard of embedding links that fester and ooze and eventually shrivel and dry, like a dead mouse carcass.
Warm heart vs cold eyeball
Friday, May 20th, 2005I realized that our financial pinch has been going on for over a year. Lots of reasons for it. I just need to identify and deal with them, one by one. We’ve been giving away a lot of work, that’s for damn sure. I watched Rose interview Lucas tonight and was taken with the film maker’s remark about when he got started. He just expected his films to flop because nine out of every ten movies made are failures, but he learned the value of persistence and the importance of manipulating the system to one’s advantage, because talent and intelligence aren’t enough.
The State of the Artisan
Thursday, May 19th, 2005I’ve been dealing with vendors for 30 years now—printers, sign fabricators, product manufacturers, film labs, paper mills, display companies, et-cetera—and it’s true that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” The landscape has been transformed (long gone are the typesetters, photostat technicians, and dot etchers), and new services never contemplated in the 70s are commonplace (stock photo agencies, Web hosts, and digital technology suppliers), but one simple fact remains. People who appreciate quality, pay attention to detail, and have respect for their craft are still the gold standard in the graphic arts industry. All the rest are just going through the motions, and will never understand what I’m talking about.
Free concerts in Danville (be there—aloha)
Wednesday, May 18th, 2005We’re coming down to the wire on our graphic contribution to produce various merchandise designs for the Great American Brass Band Festival (Centre campus,the weekend of June 11 and 12)—silkscreened shirt, collector’s pin, and commemorative poster—which reinforces another cosmic law of the studio: whenever you decide to do pro bono artwork, you end up doing twice as many things as originally discussed and each one takes twice as long to complete (and that’s if you’re lucky).
Runnin’ Back to Sigurd Jorsalfar
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005There is perhaps nothing more subjective than taste in music, which can shift and evolve throughout the life of an individual. This has certainly been true for me. It would be pointless to attempt any explanation of my improvised excursion from Burton Cummings to Stanley Turrentine to Jackson Browne to Herbie Mann to Claude Debussy to Alexander Glazunov to JS Bach.
Lately I’ve had an unquenchable thirst for various “greatest hits” of a Scandinavian nationalistic flavor, primarily those by Edvard Grieg and Jan Sibelius. I’m finding much pleasure in pieces that others have judged to be bombastically second rate. And I love how a personal connection with music can trigger new areas of interest and investigation on the Web, such as Nordic dramatists of the late nineteenth century (Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson), Finnish folklore (Lemminkäinen), or medieval Norwegian history (Heimskringla).
Skip the sequel with Sean Bean, if you don’t mind
Monday, May 16th, 2005Marty loaned me his DVD of
Troy, so I watched it late Saturday night while Dana was out of town. Although it kept my interest, it didn’t have much to offer. The workmanlike performances, clumsily directed, were squandered on a bastardized plot that should leave even a lukewarm admirer of the legend unsettled. When a screenwriter “fornicates” with one of the most exquisite stories ever produced by human culture, the punitive amputation of keyboard fingers should be given serious consideration. I’ll begrudge some credit to a talented cast who approached the script as if it did justice to its classic source. As I said, not much to offer, except for a few scenes of brilliant action choreography, which makes the motion picture worthy of attention by all but the most discriminating fans of stylized movie combat. Watch it for the craftsmanship in the fights, and then reward yourself by viewing
The House of Flying Daggers (Shi mian mai fu) or Hero (which Brendan found superior, but I haven’t seen).
How to draw a Frankenstein head
Sunday, May 15th, 2005Latest news is that my nephew
Ian graduated from college. I’m dying to find out if he had to pay all those old parking tickets (ouch), or whether he managed to talk his way out of it (if so, send him immediately to the U.S. Senate).
Spanky is not Robert Blake
Saturday, May 14th, 2005Anyone who accepts the legitimacy of yet another chain email and passes it along without first checking for accuracy is like a person who wants to believe that professional wrestling isn’t phony. And this is coming from somebody who has an admitted weakness for trivial entertainment. Hey, I just like to know the difference between what’s real and what’s fake, but what do I know? Maybe if Homer was alive today he’d be having fun creating goofy chain emails.
Splitsville
Friday, May 13th, 2005Dana heads north to Indiana, while I head south to a rare meeting of “The Wood Duck Society” at a not-so-secret location between Bradfordsville and Gravel Switch. Nothing at all sinister. Just some cabin time with friends… relaxing, talking, drawing, shooting, reading, and throwing together some good chow. And there’s nothing quite like watching thundershowers from a porch rocker as the low clouds drag themselves through the knobs.
The creative equation
Thursday, May 12th, 2005The word “miracle” keeps coming up in my conversations with others
about Bruce, and appropriately so, but I can’t help but think that such
profound intersections of the physical and the divine may not be as
extraordinary as we often believe, nor as rare as the term implies.
Perhaps they’re just the proving of the Universal Law, and are meant to be
the rule, rather than the exception. Haven’t the sages, prophets, and
Christed Ones told us as much since the beginning of recorded time?
And yet it appears that I only participate fully in this
“creative equation” when traumatic circumstances shatter my
daily mode.
Tonight I was part of The Salvation Army’s annual appreciation
dinner and had the opportunity to hear a talk by Commissioner Fred
Ruth, who recently retired as the organization‘s representative to the
United Nations. From New York to London to Eastern Europe to
Russia to Indonesia to New Guinea to North Korea, this dedicated
officer has literally served around the globe and witnessed countless
examples of the Light of God intervening on behalf of those in need,
but only when an individual’s heart, head, and hand are in the right place
at the right time with the right intent, positioning oneself in service
to His eternal Law.
Miracle? Until we come up with a better term—and it’s time we do—the word will have to suffice.
Everything ain’t satisfactual
Wednesday, May 11th, 2005Brendan’s headline critique made me smile, but the Mayo Clinic’s “fitness fibs” content in that MSN item
is actually quite good. It’s surprising how many of these maxims I’ve proved (or disproved) over the past couple years. One couldn’t tell it after the last eight weeks. I got so totally out of shape that it feels like I need to basically start over. Thankfully it coincides with switching to Centre as my main workout site. I don’t know if I can get back into triathlon condition this season, but I should be back up to a mile swim within a week or two. I can’t believe I’ve fallen off so much since Muscle Club, but that’s how it is—you can’t store fitness. Every month is a new ball game.
Oldenday VII
Tuesday, May 10th, 2005Since I worked on this series last month, a few more early influences have come to mind, one by one. Joan reminded me of the illustrated dinosaur book with the green cover that she recalls me studying for hours. On Sunday I thought of another. During our trip back from Indy we stopped at the Speed Museum on UofL’s campus to see the Remington-Russell exhibition (typically, the last two hours of the final day, but thank God I didn’t miss it). I remembered the puzzles—a series of simple childen’s puzzles—that were all reproductions of Remington works. I’d forgotten about them, and how much I loved them! I doubt they lasted long in a household of youngsters. They were so powerfully evocative for me that I don’t think I even recognized them as art at the time, but thought of them as true representations of the far West. I’m sure that most of those specific images remain undiscovered to my adult eye, otherwise I would carry a stronger emotional connection to Remington. I came to Russell much later and felt a deeper identification with his sketch techniques and pictorial preferences. I’ve been especially drawn to his pen and wash style. His illustrated correspondence influenced me from the moment I first saw an example. Yes, I know there must be sophisticates who still don’t think he was one of the greats, but his work came to the Speed, dangit! If you don’t think he was a master, just try to copy his modest doodles. I’ve certainly tried and failed. There will never be another quite like him. Marty and I looked at his boyhood sketchbook in the gift shop. The drawings showed more potential for visual imagination than artistic achievement. “But he got good ’cause he never stopped,” I told the lad…and he understood.