Thanksgiving Turkey

"Catching the Turkey" Grandma Moses 1940

More in the "Catching the Turkey" series here. 

Though I know little about Grandma Moses, primitivism, or art, I am a fan of Anna Mary Robertson, and enjoy looking at her work.

"A Blizzard" 1956

A Place for Everything

"Mom?"

"Mom? Where's that deer skull?"

"Ummm... . In that chest in the foyer." Right side. Top shelf.

Because, like, doesn't everyone have a deer skull in a chest in the foyer? 

The steer mandible is in the garage near the Area 51 rock. The goat skull is on top of one set of encyclopedias-- I think the stack that is weighing down some pressed four-leaf clovers. Those little bottles of model car paint with their cute teeny tiny little brushes are in the right hand drawer of that crappy old white metal kitchen cupboard under the air conditioner in the workshop. And the vintage mint-in-box Scarlet O'Hara Barbie is in the store room on the top shelf, one section over from the left.

And the truck keys are... . ... . ... ?

"The Kiss of Betrayal"

Lots going on today!

Since tomorrow is Good Friday, lots of businesses and such will be closed-- even State!-- so today substitutes for Friday-go-to-town-day. But first I have to get the first coat on. But before that I must post at least a little something. So I turned to a crappy old book, Christ and the Fine Arts, for inspiration. 

Perfect.

There's a nice little commentary to quote. But before I do that, I need to find the color version of this painting. Easy-peasy, right?

How sad is this?

Three search engines later-- including duckduckgo.com which claims to never track anyone-- and I give up. I've got things to do. 

Christ and the Fine Arts Revised and Enlarged Edition: An Anthology of Pictures, Poetry, Music and Stories Centering in the Life of Christ. Cynthia Pearl Maus. Harper & Row, Publishers, New York. 1959.

Look! Girls! I Made A Video!!

The final still. 

It ain't great, photo-wise, but it was a lot easier to upload.

Happy Birthday, Miss M. We all hope you had a great day.

Love you!

So I Went to an Art Show Yesterday

I loved it!

BIG LIFE!

Books Bygone: The Life of Anna Mary Robertson

 

Courtesy Wikipaintings.org

I have a new essay out in our little weekly newspaper. It's online at the paper's site but behind a paywall-- you may want to subscribe so you so you can keep up with what's happening. (Extra! Extra! There was an arrest made in the school flag theft!)

The essay is also available here, along with all of the others.

Daughter C did a dramatic reading last evening for our Cincinnati Friends.* She says this one is her favorite!

*below

A Country Mouse Contemplates "Art"

My photographs-- I didn't have my camera on me, I had to rely on my iThingy's "camera"-- do not do this work justice. It's fascinating.

It's a bunch of loops. Zillions of them.

There is no texture.

 

As it appears there is.

It's just a bunch of loops.

My first Country Mouse thought was closed. But as I want to be an open-minded Country Mouse, I gave it a shot. I liked it. I loved the colors-- Starvegians, it's at the Depot (next to the Barnes & Noble. Go see it). I loved the appeal to rag rugs which is what I saw. The colors of the show have a Grandma Moses scheme.

I liked that while I'm fretting about the Constitution, Lindsey is off and about doing her art.

Good times.

"So you think *you* can stack wood?"

Subject line of an email Mr. Big Food's Dad passed along.

Here's a sampling of the attached images. Hoping American Grouch will enjoy them.

Western Culture: "The Arrival at Bethlehem"

Luc-Olivier Merson (1897)

It matters not that his Bethlehem with its unpaved street, its houses of plaster and thatch, looks more like Brittany than Palestine; the setting is only a background for a very human story that concerns three people-- helpless and desperate Mary, helpless and exasperated Joseph, and a hard-hearted woman. It is the eternal conflict of human need and human selfishness... . 

"Dr. Bailey" as quoted in Christ and the Fine Arts Revised and Enlarged Edition: An Anthology of Pictures, Poetry, Music and Stories Centering in the Life of Christ, Cynthia Pearl Maus. Harper & Row, Publishers, New York and Evanston. 1959 (p60).

Western Culture: "The Sistine Madonna"

"The Sistine Madonna" Rafael (1512-14) [click to enlarge]

This art stuff is awfully complicated for a little country mouse such as myself. Seems everyone has an opinion about how to interpret this painting. At what, for example, is the guy on the left pointing? Why does the Christ Child appear to shrink back-- be afraid? Does he appear that way? What do the Babe and His Mother's expressions mean? And so on.

As part of the painting appears in Christ and the Fine Arts

They say the woman is Rafael's lover, or secret wife!

Christ and the Fine Arts Revised and Enlarged Edition: An Anthology of Pictures, Poetry, Music and Stories Centering in the Life of Christ. Cynthia Pearl Maus. Harper & Row, Publishers, New York and Evanston. 1959. 1938.

Preserving Western Culture one 50-cent Book At A Time

"Ecce Ancilla Domini" by Rossetti (downloaded from fromoldbooks.org)*

Books are on sale at Palmer Home again. I brought home $6 worth and made an involuntary contribution of $0.42 to the coffers of the Sovereign State of Mississippi. Several were of a religious nature.

The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1943). I'll be reading this over a few winter afternoons.

Poets and Puritans Third Edition, T.R. Glover (Methuen & Co. Ltd., London, 1923, orig. 1915). All the usual suspects-- Spencer, Milton, Bunyan, et al.-- but as I don't know too much about the usual suspects, this will come in handy.

Monser's Topical Index and Digest of the Bible, Harold E. Monser, ed. (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1960, orig. 1914).  This was an amazing find. A. Leland offered me real cash money for it. Not a chance! I may write about this in the future.

The one from which the picture above does not* come is Christ and the Fine Arts Revised and Enlarged Edition: An Anthology of Pictures, Poetry, Music and Stories Centering in the Life of Christ, Cynthia Pearl Maus (Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1959, orig. 1938). "No Sunday School can be complete without this book." It contains 76 stories, 256 poems, 117 hymn interpretations, 100 art interpretations, and 100 art reproductions-- all in black & white!

As it is the Christmas season, I thought it appropriate to look through the section on the Annunciation and Nativity. It begins with with a (black and white) reproduction, and interpretation, of the  painting "Ecce Ancilla Domini."

Among the many beautiful painting of the Annunciation few,  if any, possess greater spiritual appeal than Rossetti's "Behold, the Handmaid of the Lord."

A fair bit of the interpretation is actually descriptive-- we have to know what color the curtain is in order to appreciate that it suggests "the ideal of truth which has been preparing Mary to be a fine woman since her girlhood." Likewise, the red loom is the color of Divine love. The white lilies of the loom "tell of the purity of [Mary's] thoughts and deeds."

I should make a concerted effort to know a little more about art. Maybe I'll keep my eyes peeled for crappy old art books.
~~

* And now... to the asterisk. www.fromoldbooks.org is going to become one of my favorite web sites-- I can just feel it. I can't believe I found it just today searching for a color image of
"Ecce Ancilla Domini."

About fromoldbooks.org
I have lots of old and antiquarian books, and many of them have got really neat pictures in them even if they are not very valuable or expensive books. I thought it was a shame that no-one but me could see them so I started putting them online.

I also collect old dictionaries, and over the years I've typed (and later scanned) some of the dictionary entries.

I am not a book-seller. I do not buy books to make money by selling them.

...

I use an Epson E10000XL museum-quality flat-bed scanner together with xsane and GIMP on GNU/Linux[tm].

This is a hobby, a private interest site.

 See what I mean? Old dictionaries! GIMP! 

 Check out the site. It's searchable. Most of the images are free although Liam, the site's proprietor will not turn down a donation.

"For This Is the Fall of the Year"

by Grandma Moses

I'd forgotten all about Grandma Moses until I came across the book, Grandma Moses, by Otto Kallir (Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1973).

Anna Mary Robertson was born September 7, 1860. She married Thomas Moses in 1887.  She died December 13, 1961. Although always interested in maintaining a well-decorated home-- within her means-- she didn't begin painting in earnest until her late 70s.  

What a wonderful human being she must have been! 

In 1955 she was interviewed by Edward R. Marrow. He and his crew had come to her home and they filmed her painting. Killir-- who was there-- describes the interview as not a "matter of questions and answers but an animated give-and-take that did not lag for a minute."

Here's the end of the interview:

Marrow: What are you going to do for the next twenty years, Grandma Moses?

Grandma: I am going up yonder. Naturally-- naturally, I should. After you get to be about so old you can't expect to go on much farther.

Marrow: But you don't spend much time thinking about it or worrying about it. Do you?

Grandma: Oh, no. No. No. You don't worry because you think, well, what a blessing it will be to be all united again. I'm the last one left of my brothers and sisters... .

Marrow: So this is something that in a sense you have no fear about or no apprehension?

Grandma: Oh, no. Go to sleep and wake up in the next world. I think that's the way. Did you ever know when you went to sleep?

Marrow: No, I don't think so.

Grandma: When the last thought came-- you didn't know?

Marrow: No. That's true.

Grandma: You might wake up the next morning and think, well, that's what I was thinking about, but you didn't know when that last thought came. Well, that's the way you'll go to sleep.

Marrow: Well, you will leave more behind you than most of us will, when you go to sleep. 

 You can see more of Grandma Moses' art here.

Keep Talking... | Dinner Party Conversations

❤

Is this true?

* Kat tried to pull a 2-fer, arguing that her two submitted quotes went hand-in-hand. They did. But she had to choose one. And she did. But because the Rules of the Game are sympathetic to larger issues, here's what Patrick Stewart didn't get  to say:

WE INTERRUPT ... THIS ... FILIBUSTER

TO ... BRING YOU ... SOME ... CONVERSATIONS

from "an interview" 

[Note. I see the missing "." Not A. Leland's fault. I take full responsibility. It was a copy-paste mistake I didn't see until it was way too late to re-do.]

Is it? Sounds like an X-Phi question to me!

Testify.

Yes. We are missing Robert Johnson's (Miss M) reply to H.D. Thoreau (Miss M's Friend). Miss M has been busy making a cake in the shape of a Tardis-- and getting the color quite right, by the way. A jury of her peers voted to cut her some slack. 'Cause, you know, as an American, she has an individual right-- it's hers, you can't take it away-- to be judged by a jury of her peers before the game-rule drones can swoop down and splatter her with Tardis-blue paint balls just 'cause she didn't come up with a Robert Johnson quote. 

This is just how things work in a Democratic Republic.

 AND NOW ... BACK ... TO OUR ... REGULARLY SCHEDULED ... FILIBUSTERING ... ... ...

Paper Buildings, Paper Buildings

[Updated. I do know Frank Lloyd Wright's last name!]

In between watching what passes for football these days and being thoroughly disgusted by commercials, I began putting Christmas back in boxes. 

What remains to be packed is on the dining room table.

There are a few items, however, that I cannot bear to hide away. Rather, I'll showcase them on the buffet for all of the Farm's Winter and early Spring visitors to see.

I speak of some crafts the kids made earlier in the season using old file folders, wax paper, exact-o-knives and various other implements artists and architects just happen to carry around in their vehicles.

Some paper buildings, each with a fascinating story.

On the right, we have Miss M's Golden Rule Store with swinging doors, and paned-glass windows 

papered with snow flakes.

Long time readers may recall that The Golden Rule Store was Mr. James Cash Penney's first retail establishment. I've shared many thoughts about Mr. Penney and his stores before.

Second from right we have Mr. Bow Tie's intriguing contribution. It was intended to be one of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses in Chicago.

Mr. Bow Tie spent a lot of time measuring.

Unfortunately, despite his precision measurements, Miss M and Daughter C thought it looked more like a Sweat Shop. Perhaps one that supplies T-shirts to JCP stores.

Second from left we have the first of Daughter C's

modest two-story homes.

Associates of The Golden Rule Store could have afforded a lovely home such as this. Nowadays, it's probably owned by a JCP employee. Note the condition of the chimney. An associate of The Golden Rule would have had the wherewithal to get that fixed. I don't think JCP employees got Christmas bonuses that would cover the repair cost.

In terms of number of structures, Daughter C was the most productive. Here is the first she constructed.

The moment she set it up, it fall over.

It was immediately condemned by the Authorities (although it really just needed some minor repairs). The Sweat Shop workers descended upon it, propped it up with a piece of plywood, and proceeded to Occupy it. 

I'm not sure, but given the rock-shatter second story window, and the number of bullet holes near the front door, I assume that-- like Mr. Bow Tie's Sweat Shop-- this property is also located in Chicago.