Selfies

 

Life's What You Make It

Same same

I am writing a new course on FDR for the university I supplement my income writing for. Because of this I am studying a lot about World War II. And something flashed the other day when I was reading. When Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938 it was under the guise of protecting Sudetenland, a Czech province that had a lot of ethnic Germans living among the populace.

Hitler's designs led to the Munich agreement with Britain, France and Italy which allowed Germany to annex the area in exchange for the promise of peace.

We all know how that worked out.

Germany broke the agreement within a year and went on to occupy Czechoslovakia, the first domino to fall in the war.

Interestingly to me, Vladimir Putin voiced the same justifications in the conquest of Ukraine in February of 2022. He was only looking out for the Russian speakers in the Dombas area. He, like Hitler, fabricated a genocide against the ethnic Russians and the rest as they say, is history.

Funny how this stuff happens over and over again.

Imagine if Mexico invaded California with the guise of protecting the local Hispanic population. How do you think we would react?

I feel for the Ukrainians. They gave up their nuclear weapons in 1994 for a guarantee that the United States would step in if Russia ever invaded. I would say that we have done the bare minimum, if that. Probably not a good idea to take Uncle Sam at his word. 

At the time Putin also said that Ukraine could join NATO if it wanted to. Guess he has changed his mind again.

Trump recently said that Ukraine should let Russia keep all the land it has tried to steal in the invasion, ostensibly to stop the killing. Once again, he bends over to give Vladimir everything that he wants. 

Some ally.

Moody Blues - Bye Bye Bird

I guess I think of the Moody Blues as a soft comfy pillow of sugar sweetness that bought us down ever so gently from our jangly trip. But many do not realize that they started out as a smoking hot R & B band back in Birmingham in 1964.

This album was released in 1965, this track a very good cover of a Sonny Boy Williamson II song. 

Bye Bye John Lodge.

Rare Bird

I woke up to this nice yellow bloom from my bird of paradise this morning. 

Bill Cade gave me this unusual cultivar about fifteen years ago. 

It is rare or it was at one time anyway.  

Things don't stay rare forever.

I used to think that I liked the orange ones better but honestly this thing is growing on me.

99th Floor

Secret squirrel, Antelope Canyon

 

Scruggs and Baez

Aumakua

 So, what to talk about? 

My old pal Brett painted his first surf board ever, if you can believe it? 

Great job, Mr. Stokes. You have quite a talent, mate.

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I was caught in a terrible traffic jam on East Mission the other night, near Hamilton and Fallen Leaf. Bad accident. Cars were dead stopped for about forty five minutes, many turning around. Suddenly a wonderful woman appeared and walked up to me and my fellow unfortunates on the dark road. She beckoned to us, then guided us on a road through her private property and back to Mission around the accident.

Thank you kind woman! 

That was so very cool.

*

Allan Seymour sends a pic of his new doorbell. 

*

This is a rare shot from my back yard, with the sun just catching the flanks of Gavilan Mountain in the distance.

If you will look closely to the bottom right, you will see our little two story house nestled away, about twenty feet tall.

I mention it because I want you to gauge the height of both my redwood and my oak.

I didn't plant the redwood, the original owner Jasper Lolli did back in 1972.

I estimate that it is seventy five to eighty feet tall now, with an enormous girth that somewhat resembles my own ample spread.

We had two of the sequoia sempervirens but the drought took the smaller one out a few years ago.

This one is really looking good and greened up again, the top now a familiar resting place for red tailed hawks.

I wanted to talk about the oak. It is a coastal live oak quercus agrifolia, and I planted it as a sapling not much bigger than a broomstick. Tom Pecore helped me plant it about thirty eight years ago. We planted lots of stuff on my ranch that is now enormous. Like the Mediterranean fan palm I grabbed from in front of the dozers on Interstate 15 construction in 1983, now towers above the house.

I have three beloved dogs buried under this tree. You can plant me with them but please wait until I have died.

It spreads forty to fifty feet wide and near just as tall.

It is a special tree for me. When I was getting divorced thirty five years ago a psychic helped me rebalance my life by instructing me to put my hands around its then slender trunk and do a series of affirmation and liberation exercises. 

I hold it very dear. 

Our roots go very deep together.

*

I sold this 17th century painting of San Isidro to a couple who have been very good clients over the years.  

It is framed in milagros.

It was in terrible shape.

I took it to my restorer in Imperial Beach and she did an incredible job bringing it back to life.

 Many painstaking hours.

I picked it up yesterday in my van and drove it to their home.

San Isidro is beloved in the hispanic world, the patron saint of farmers and working people.

*

Roy Costello and I judged the 5150 Ratrod club's car show at the Bonsall school this weekend.

It was a really nice show, not too hot.

Great cars, great halloween sendups.

I used to judge the vintage car show but stopped getting asked when Tom Long died.

I enjoy the ratrodders, they are very creative people who mostly do their own builds and don't take themselves too seriously. 

Nice guys too.

*

I met a fellow from Texas while I was there heavily involved in Firefly conservation.

Ben Pfieffer. 

Neat, smart guy, I love fireflies, I bought a shirt.

*

I was talking to Warmboe the other day and he had a cool experience. 

He was in Northern Michigan, had gone back to Minnesota to see his ailing mom and her husband.

He told me that he had just drove past a shrieking bald eagle. I asked him if he took a picture and he said that he had not.

A little while later he did in fact send me a picture, not bad with a cell phone, not easy to grab a flying creature on the wing.

Later I asked him what was up and he turned me on to the Hawaiian concept of aumakua. 

He said that initially he didn't stop because he was worried about hitting a deer. Hitting deer is bad for the deer and for the van, for everybody involved really.

In fact a fellow dealer hit one in Texas and it nearly destroyed her car and definitely shattered her nerves for a few days.

Anyway, after we talked, Bill stopped the car, drove back and shot the picture of the eagle. A mile up the road, where he had been previously driving, a woman was now pulled off the road, in fact she had just hit a deer.

Bill had a premonition that that deer was going to hit him and he acted on it, aumakua and was fortunately spared.

Obey your intuition! Honor your ancestors!

In Hawaiian mythology, an ʻaumakua (/ʔaʊmɑːˈkuə/; often spelled aumakua, plural, 'aumākua) is a personal or family god that originated as a deified ancestor, and which takes on physical forms such as spirit vehicles. An 'aumakua may manifest as a shark, owl, bird, octopus, or inanimate objects such as plants or rocks.^[1] The word ʻaumakua means ancestor gods and is derived from the Hawaiian words au which means period of time or era, and makua meaning parent, parent generation, or ancestor. Hawaiians believed that deceased family members would transform into ʻaumakua and watch over their descendants with a loving concern for them while also being the judge and jury of their actions. ^[2]

ʻAumakua were believed to watch over their families and hear their words, give them strength and guidance, warn them of misfortune or danger, give punishments to wrong-doers while also rewarding worthy people with prosperity in the after life, and pass on prayers from the living to the akua (gods).^[2]

*

Speaking of birds, I saw two red shouldered hawks on a treebranch on my road at the same time the other day. I can't recall ever seeing a pair hanging out on my road before. What were they trying to tell me I wonder?

And in deference to June Lockhart I can only surmise "What are you saying Lassie, Timmie is now trapped in the well?"

Thank you great spirit.

Debris

Coming back from Texas

This has been my least productive year for blogging so far, by a long shot. I'm actually very happy about that. 

I needed a break.

A mere 147 blasts. Even if I was to go on some amphetamine addled literary burst, which will never probably happen because I've never indulged in such substances in my lifetime, my past record low of 246 blog entries in 2014 will not be declipsed or jeopardized. Some of you might remember I took six months off that year for burnout. 

In any case, this has been a crazy year for me, forgoing weed and alcohol and writing and photography to a great extent. One glass of cabernet and a glass of port. All year. I don't miss the alcohol much although the thought of a nice bloody mary does sound quite thrilling but I have been thinking how nice a puff of a joint might taste for a week or two now, found myself craving a bit of weed inspiration. I didn't succumb. Who knows how things will turn out in 2026? 

The year off has been good to me, I am definitely more productive and through a variety of deals and machinations am slowly getting my financial house in a little more order. But I may be turning into a bit of a bore. Glad to not be constantly triggered by politics, hoping that one day I/we will wake up from our current national nightmare.

Anyway it is good not to share so much, not to opine, record or take photographs, flip the paradigm around a bit.

I have just returned from my second trip to Texas in a year. This has necessitated two shots of steroids and a nerve block in my foot, which has ached horribly since the first trip. 

I just got back from the podiatrist. 

Ligament strain and tendinitis. 

Says I need to take it easy. 

Right.

Actually the foot is just the start of the problem, foot and ankle, all the way up to the hip, my body can no longer endure the agony of two fifteen hour days driving in a row.

My right leg was on fire on the way out, the last three hours before I reached Comfort, Texas, at the start of Hill Country.

I was suffering in agony and no place to pull off the road. Crying in pain, tortured.

Just gut out the I10 east and try to live to tell about it.

No rest stops and little light, tailgated for the last two thousand miles by a retinue of drivers who don't understand how a normal human being can drive a box truck at 65 miles an hour in the slow lane of a freeway?

My grandfather drove the same way, slow, maybe the slow driving gene skips generations like alcoholism?

Anyhow, I have returned from one of the longest antique roadies of my career, a sixteen day swing to Texas and back. Physically and logistically difficult, trying to figure out such basic things as the socks and underwear count, make sure I have enough relatively clean Hawaiian shirts for the trip.

I left my house at 4:30 in the morning on the morning of the sixth. 

The dipper still sparkled brightly above my home on the crisp and clear night.

It has been so beautiful around here the last month or so.

I stopped at a gas station and made the acquaintance of a female grackle who was giving me the side eye.

I drove to Phoenix to drop off some consigned rugs that did not sell.

Had lunch with a couple of friends at Little Miss, a great barbecue spot.

I wanted to get to Las Cruces the first night but unfortunately ran into a grisly accident scene near Casa Grande that shut down both lanes of the I10 for a couple hours.

Have to deal with what the road gives you.

Eventually the road re-opened. 

I enjoyed the sunset and finally limped into Wilcox for the night, a mere hour or two past Tucson.

I left early the next day and crossed Texas. 

It was a brutal ride, hit rain past Ozona and cussed myself out for not getting new wiper blades.

It was about fifteen hours in the car and my right leg was on fire. I don't ever remember suffering like that but I only had one option, move forward.

Which I did, finally hitting a b and b in Comfort, the Meyer, that would leave me only three more hours in the morning until my eventual destination. Nice place, wish that I had more time to enjoy it. I was absolutely dead, sucked dry by the West Texas passage.

I got to the show at 9 the next morning and started loading in. 

This is how my booth turned out. Last time I had back to back twenty foot booths with a pass through that gave me 80' of walls, this was a forty foot straight shot.

I kind of liked the first way better but they aren't doing that anymore. Take what they give you, but it was a track meet covering all this ground on a bum leg.

My booth was quite Western this time, which happens to be what I have been into of late and after all, I was in Texas. I was sure the cool western furniture would sell, it did not. Maybe too western, they sniffed.

I had a three day setup and then the show started. I did exceedingly well the first three days and then the doors clanged shut, barely anything for the remainder.

So I started looking around the show for stuff to buy and managed to cobble another 10k in sales I engineered from the floor. Take it anyway I can get it. Sold a Rookwood, Tiffany candlesticks, brokered some Tiffany lamps. Bought a beautiful and rare Sara Mayo basket with human figures, a great bracelet. Found a nice Doel Reed aquatint, some rare New York WPA prints. Wish that I had more time to shop but it was almost impossible to move on my bum leg.

I shared a motel room with my old comrade Steve. Steve did really well but will probably not come back, the time it takes is just too much for a sane person who doesn't need to do it for the money at this point. Saved me five hundred bucks sharing the room and we went out for some great meals.

But back to the shows. 

Maybe I got lucky the first time or maybe the right people didn't show up but this show seemed to have more decorative arts buyers than knowledgable collectors. It was not Santa Fe or New York for sure. 

Pretty girls in sun dresses out to be seen. And I am okay with that too. People having fun. 

Roundtop is a definite must do event for the people in Texas and surrounding states and I am grateful to finally be a part of it.

Luckily I brought enough lower end decorative work to keep myself covered and managed to sell some high ticket items too.

This was sort of funny as a way to illustrate the situation.  

I had this great photograph of Georgia O Keefe taken by Dan Budnick in 1995. 

I was asked if it was Frank Lloyd Wright twice and Salvador Dali once. 

Sad, but there is practically no art education left in our schools.

What are you going to do?

The Thomas Hart Benton below the Budnick, arguably our greatest regionalist? 

Perhaps one in ten had a clue.

No matter, I made money, the people were sweet, the women incredibly attractive.

I noticed some trends. Very little ink on the skin, relatively speaking, which is fine with me, and very slim physiques. Lots of backless dresses, not a lot of boobs evident.

I read recently that a lot of women are opting for breast reduction and was wondering if I was seeing the titular augmentation in women this young?

Did see some seriously distorted botox duck lips.

The Texas look is a trip, hat, cowboy boots and sun dress. 

I like it. 

But I saw another fashion trend that gave me mild pause. 

The puffy, ruffled sleeve. 

That sartorial element sure has not made its way to California. 

I think I remember it from some reruns of little house on the prairie.

The woman across from me said that it is indeed a "prairie style" look. As in flour sack dresses. I was informed that there is a burgeoning "trad woman" movement with long hems and puffy sleeves for the woman who knows her proper place in the home. There was even a booth there which catered to the subordinate distaff set.

God bless them. Saw a lot of once trophy wives with men twenty or thirty years their senior, who took the deal some time back and now were entering the sunset hours together, with a slightly different date stamp.

I'm down with what floats anybody's boat. Viva le difference, we all make and live with our choices.

So I had a lot of good sales and a lot of maybees and near misses.

All good. Maybe I will get a call back one day, who knows?

Steve and I ate at Las Patronas in Giddings like five times.

Delicious quail.

Parradillas with fajitas, ribs, quail and shrimp cooked on a sizzling iron grill.

The best beans you ever had in your life.

We also had great prime rib at Santa Fe steaks.

We became fast friends with the owner of the establishments, Manuel. 

He bought us dessert one night. 

It turns out that he was once a farm worker in California, picked tomatoes in Carlsbad in the seventies when I was building houses nearby.

Great guy.

In the morning it was Cafe Chihuahua for breakfast burritos with a line out the door. Great tamales, I had the Carne Guisada, which you can't get here. Lousy coffee, which is pretty much everywhere these days. Hit up the donut shop one day for kolaches, a contribution from the large local Czech population.

Surprisingly, no barbecue this whole time in Texas although I did travel an hour out of the way for my favorite quesobirria tacos in Brenham. Went to my fave barbecue place in Luling but it was closed on Sunday.

So the show was good but long and not helped by not or barely selling the last day or two. I left on Monday to start the long ride home. I ended up in Fort Stockton the first night, then dropped off to see Sublette and buy a couple cool things from him in Tucson including this beautiful blanket. 

I bedded in Gila Bend the second night. I bought some stained glass windows for a friend doing a remodel in Coronado and delivered them Wednesday afternoon, in heavy traffic, now operating on fumes.

I was starving, hadn't eaten in a day and stopped for beef brisket and Chinese noodles at Shanxi Magic Kitchen.

Can't beat hand ripped noodles and spice when you are dragging.

Home now, mostly unpacked, a victory charted up, no regrets. Did my best and was rewarded.

Next month a much abbreviated trip to Santa Barbara and I get to do it all again.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

By the way, I will be at eleven million views before you know it, closer to it then ten.

And I want to thank you all who have been by my side with this thing.

I talked to an older reader yesterday who doesn't get out that much and have come to realize how important my writing is to some of you.

We have forged a human relationship, despite all my warts and bitching, politics notwithstanding, like it or not. And that is what keeps me going.

Love you.