Jen’s “spankings for the bad {grade school} boys” comment swept me back to Cincinnati, to my seventh grade grade art class taught by Mr Ertel. Mr. Ertel looked like a thin-faced version of Richard Nixon with black greasy hair and bald temples. He taught us to draw and he snapped us out of our day dreams with morsels like, “You don’t kill time, time kills you.” He wanted us to be good students, but more than that he needed to prepare us for what lay ahead, and he used his own blend of hard knocks and disappointment.

Mr. Ertel’s principle project that year was Steve Kugler, a solid juvenile delinquent, who went away to military school for two years and returned to us, endlessly polite – sir this and sir that – but unrepentant. Mr. Ertel, a shepherd of Steven’s wayward soul, repeatedly sat him down at empty tables during our drawing periods to counsel him about a young thug’s dim future. I admired my art teacher’s efforts though years later Steven and his father were sent to prison for running a chop shop.

Anyway, Mr. Ertel backed up his set of class rules with a long, heavy wooden paddle that he used to send fifteen year olds back to their seats with burning bottoms and watery eyes. My transgression? I clumsily knocked my chair to the floor. “The paddle or a quarter,” he said to me. Meaning I could walk up in front of the class while he took batting practice or pay a quarter to avoid the pain. What did I do? I froze. As I used to when called upon to answer any question. Surely, in this case, I knew the answer, and surely, given that my own father used the narrow strip of leather that held up his pants to discipline his sons, the pain would be far less. Still, I froze. I knew I couldn’t cough up a quarter because I would have been labeled a chicken shit. But what if that broad piece of wood hurt more than the belt and tears cascaded down my cheeks in front of my friends? Fortunately, for me, my long lack of a response gave Mr. Ertel a chance to back off. He asked, ” Didn’t you know knocking your chair over is a paddling offense?”

“No,” I squeaked. And that was that.

Molly, Mark and Ginger’s actress daughter, is in an Indie slasher movie premiering (one night only) in Providence tonight, and we’re all going down to be part of the event. Molly’s presently in summer stock, this winter she’ll appear as young Louisa in WGBH’s upcoming life of Louisa May Alcott , and she was recently hired as an understudy for the Huntington theatre. Soon she’ll be good enough to appear in one of my home movies.

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The last of the Plymouth pics.

The title has nothing to do with dinner at John and Karen’s Thursday night, it just happens to be playing in the background as the thunder rumbles.

Four Poems

I think it will be winter when he comes.
From the unbearable whiteness of the road
a dot will emerge, so black that eyes will blur,
and it will be approaching for a long, long time,
making his absence commensurate with his coming,
and for a long, long time it will remain a dot.
A speck of dust? A burning in the eye? And snow,
there will be nothing else but snow,
and for a long, long while there will be nothing,
and he will pull away the snowy curtain,
he will acquire size and three dimensions,
he will keep coming closer, closer . . .
This is the limit, he cannot get closer. But he keeps approaching,
now too vast to measure . . .

——

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.

——

Let us touch each other
while we still have hands,
palms, forearms, elbows . . .
Let us love each other for misery,
torture each other, torment,
disfigure, maim,
to remember better,
to part with less pain.

——

We are rich: we have nothing to lose.
We are old: we have nowhere to rush.
We shall fluff the pillows of the past,
poke the embers of the days to come,
talk about what means the most,
as the indolent daylight fades.

Vera Pavlova

I moved from rock to folk in the 70’s and missed Queen altogether.

Wikipedia: “Freddy Mercury is noted for his live performances, which were often delivered to stadium audiences around the world. As a performer, he displayed a highly theatrical style that often invoked a great deal of participation from the crowd. One of Mercury’s most notable performances took place at Live Aid in 1985, during which the entire stadium audience of 72,000 people clapped, sang, and swayed in unison. Mercury’s performance at the event has since been voted as the greatest live performance in the history of rock music.[18][19] In reviewing Live Aid in 2005, one critic wrote, “Those who compile lists of Great Rock Frontmen and award the top spots to Mick Jagger, Robert Plant et al. are guilty of a terrible oversight. Freddie, as evidenced by his Dionysian Live Aid performance, was easily the most godlike of them all.”

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A few more photos from our weekend in Plymouth.

First, the wide view and then a short gallery of those fisherman.

Porch dancing? Now what does that have to do with painting? Three guys painting a porch? Dancing around the house with paint brushes? Nope, it’s got nothing to do with paint. Just so happens I wanted to update the crew’s progress in the same post as this.