Great Circle Tour

Yesterday I went with friends from Lowe's on a 170 mile journey through rural Illinois and Iowa. First to Erie, Illinois, to see Joy and Alan's modern log house-home and to see their Belgian Draught horses.

From there we drove through very rural roads of Illinois into Iowa. We stopped at Alamosa to visit the terminus of the "Orpahn Trains" that, for nearly 100 years, brought orphans from New York City to relocate them to Iowa and Illinois farms and factories. Not always a good adventure for the orphans, some just infants, many were adopted but used as farm laborers or factory workers, and all lost all their ethnic or cultural identities, many from Eastern Europe, or Jews from Poland and Russia, today there is a statistically high incidence of Tay-Sachs Disease in Iowa-Illinois areas where these orphans were re-settled.

We went to Maquoketa Caves State Park in Iowa and from there to a restaurant about three miles down a gravel round called Bluff Restaurant, where we enjoyed the "all-you-can-eat" fish dinner--Pollock, an ocean fish, cole slaw, thick broiled potato "chips" and a pitcher of beer...a great feast in a very unlikely place.

On the way home we stopped at the Mississippi Palisades State Park (Illinois) and watched as the sun was setting to the west, over Iowa. We travelled to Savanna, Illinois and went to the Savanna Produce Market an in-door/outdoor ancient barn, loaded with tons of local produce, and for autumn celebrations, gourds, Indian corn, pumpkins and squash.

A great adventure for me; probably the best trip I've had since living here...good company, great adventures, good food...I had a wonderful time.

( PHOTOS ABOVE...I haven't learned how to place photos into text, so, as they appear here, they are a little out of order and have no discriptors. The first photo (top) is pumpkins at the Savanna Produce Market; the second photo is "Honey, Joy and Alan's female colt, born May 1o, so about 5 or 6 months old; third photos is the depot in Alamosa where "Orphan Train" kids disembarked for new destinies.)

Der Kinder Rosenbaum

My Rosenbaum grandkids, (L-R) Cate, Anne, Meg in Hallowe'en drag, like sweet insectual Fairies in combat boots, Anne in the middle, a plump pink bug of some kind. These, the Rosebaum kids, children of my daughter Lauren and her husband Mike.

Curly's making fruit..(Epiphyllum guatemalense monstrose)

This is an "update" photo of the cactus fruit--October 3, 2007. I came home from work and birds had been working over the fruit. I tasted it, bland to sweet, maybe a little like fejoia or guava...very seedy, gelatinous...a new adventure.

The strange flowering cactus is making fruit...a Flickr friend, Tony from Sydney, say it's very likely edible. So, comes the time, I'll take a bite and let you know. The fruit starts small and green and turns to a very bright neon pink. The plant flowers in mid-summer, only at night and each blossom last only one night. Apparently the flowers are self-fertilizing because there isn't another pollinator near this plant; I simply rubbed pollen to stigma with my index finger...two hours later the flower closed and the next morning looked dead. Yet, fruit formed. This plant hangs outside on the back deck from about mid-April or May to about mid-October; then, it goes down to a sunny window in the basement room--now my painting studio. It stays there from mid-October to about May, then back up and outside on the deck.

two days off!

The sunrise from a few days ago
magnificent and brief!

The first of two days off from Lowe's; weary in my hips and ankles, and hugging my shoulder, a life lived these days on hard concrete, not beach sand. Oh...I should have painted today but I didn't. I went to Lowe's and bought a trellis for the "Ballerina" rose at the steps of the back deck, and to Fairway for groceries. Tonight, ham steaks for dinner and potato salad and Bush beans, tomatoes with basil for me....mid 80s today, hot, it seems, so a summery dinner.

Those paintings started in the basement, unretouched in all this time. Tomorrow, a goal to paint, one looking like clouds, some solids repainted, more opaque, keeping in mind the colors should bounce a little, not harmonious, not cacaphony, but unexpected edges, one to another...busy areas, calm areas. I've been thinking the surfaces are too small and confining--precious--and that maybe I should work into bigger sizes, still wood panels; maybe some detail to the moulding around the edges, decorative, 1930-ish, or hinges to make tryptychs, piano hinges with a rod down the center so adjustment, reconfiguration would be easy--pull out a central rod and re-attached the panels differently, maybe mantle paintings that could roughly undulate or "corner pieces", convex or concave at interior corners; that's possible, the size of the painting important for the narrative, as important--maybe--as color. New supplies will have to wait, I'm broke, Lowe's forgot to pay me for a week of my recent vacation. They say it'll be added to my next pay period. Meanwhile, no expenditures for art studff, and truck insurance is due, liscense plate renewal is due, $35 due to Dr. Baner, the head surgeon. It'll work out.

Autumn in the air, moments of it, last night at 1am, insomnia, the old, breathtaking shoulder pain, a front rolled over us out of Iowa, no rain but very hard sustained wind that whipped the maple and poplar leaves off the trees outside the computer room window--maybe 25 minutes of that, then calm, the temperature dropped, a few sprinkles. The verdandacy eroding daily, winter in the wings. This riles a depression on the theme of "oh no, again...winter's coming...what am I doing here...no one loves me," it's harder each year to survive, last year, I drove off the interstate in my truck, in the ballet of circles, down into four feet of snow, a long walk home...this is not Santa Barbara!

oh no....back to work!

Monday and back to work, 6:30am to 3:30pm. The two weeks of vacation has ended. The return was not so bad, a social environment, I was glad to see people and they were seemingly glad to see me. My schedule, seven days in a row, my next day off is next Monday. There's talk that I've been moved to work as a cashier in Lumber--which is okay. A nice t-shirt from Yellowstone National Park, delivered to me today via Joy at work, but from Karla--I'll take a picture of it soon.

The cactus "Curly" put out a flower last night...nice.