My First Fashonista Blog

In the Urban Dictionary, one (of many) of the descriptions of a Fashionista is:

One who believes in the power of fashion. Fashionistas are typically either stylish women or homosexual men ( note: I am neither!).

As an example of a successful fashionist government, they cite the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas in New York City (1999) almost religiously, in which local fashionistas overthrew the municipal government.

"Blacklist that sucker! He's a Fashionista! Keep an eye out because he'll either try to anally violate you or overthrow our government."

In the Globe and Mail one day last week there was an article about Fashion Blogs written by mostly very young girls that were having an affect on today’s fashion. I thought, given my fashion sense, and both of my daughter’s constant comment on that fashion sense, that I would take on some of this contemporary fashion direction and add my own unique touch to the fray.

Rather than create another blog just for my fashion tips and trends, I thought I’d add fashion tips whenever I could to my existing and wildly popular Arthursdays. This way all my regular readers could spread the word about my fashion induced blog.

Today, for my first post, I wanted to talk about shoe trends. Before I purchased these shoes last year I did ask my older daughter if I had her permission to wear them and she agreed it was OK. As it turns out, as the shoes have aged and taken on a patina, much like bronze sculpture, they may be less appreciated by a larger group. They are working their way out to esoteric! My daughters do not like them and now consider them to be fashion disasters.

They have always been known as Dad’s Spiderman Shoes!

I did buy them at Winners, on Clearance, but of course!

I've been married three times, passed out once, and had the bowling team as witnesses

I’ve been married three times, once to my current wife and twice to my first (and second) wife. Now this sounds a bit over the top, but the truth is always stranger than fiction.

The first time we were married, we went off by ourselves to Virginia, where the marriage laws had no waiting periods, and bought a marriage license and got married. There were also, at the time, some age laws that existed in Maryland that didn’t exist in Virginia. Considering we both were under 21, this was important.

After much research, we took off for Virginia, Alexandria I think, and found the courthouse where we could purchase a marriage license. We went first in Baltimore, I believe, to get our blood tests, a syphilis prevention carryover from another time, and as I remember I passed out in the waiting room after giving the blood! The tension was a bit high and this has never happened again.

We got yellow pages and found Churches; Jewish, and found a willing rabbi to marry us. His secretary was the witness, and we were legally married in Virginia and therefore everywhere else.

The next day our parents decided that they wanted to see us married (a bit late but they needed a day to get used to the idea) and so we arranged another wedding that evening. Since we were legally married already, the next rabbi only needed to perform a simple ceremony as he was not obligated to the State for anything in this one.

The rabbi at the Liberty Jewish Center needed some witnesses, and so he found the Liberty Jewish Center Bowling Team and they came out to be witnesses. What a charming event! (It really was a nice gesture on everyone’s part as I think back on it now.)

My next wedding came some 25 years later, and it too was amazing! After long discussions over where and how it should be done, including the Elvis Chapel in Las Vegas, going up in the elevator in the Renaissance Hotel in Detroit and several more equally goofy ideas, we chose traffic court in Bloomfield Hills Michigan!

The fee for a courtroom marriage was $10, a great idea! Next, the Judge on duty that day was Jewish, and loved doing as close to a Jewish ritual ceremony as the law would allow, which included breaking a glass, although we were already prepared for this one ourselves. Our guests included my wife’s parents, my mother and two of my sons, the only ones who were available. We were each allowed to invite two friends to our reception, which was back at our new house in Troy, MI. One person couldn’t make it but the parents, our kids and three friends did it for us! The caterer was Lebanese, because we felt closest to the food, and it was great! My mother was confused by it but one of our friends was Lebanese so he walked her through the dining room spread.

So far, 23 years later, this one seems to be working, and I’m not planning any more. Although, when approached by women friends of my wife who are startled that I have no vasectomy, and demand to know why, I always tell them, “My next wife might want kids!”

John Updike's Third Rejection (of me!)

On March 11, in my John Updike memorial, I included two rejection post cards I had received asking him to be our (Montserrat College of Art) commencement speaker. I also wrote:

I will miss John Updike, he was important to me, for some unknown, or currently undefined reason, he was a great influence,

I think, but I’m not sure how.I related to his Rabbit books, the series of four, they seemed to speak to me.I read all of his novels, most of the stories, I think, and lots of other writings as I’d run across them.I had a conversation with him once, memorable to me, but just a conversation.

We met in line waiting to pay taxes at city hall in Beverly, MA. I told him a story about meeting my friend Ken Davids, a writer, in Beverly at the train station, and as Ken was coming up the stairs he said, “this looks like a John Updike kind of town”. I told him it was “The” John Updike town, as he lived here”. Updike laughed, and I was next, and paid my taxes.

I would write him a letter each year inviting him to speak at our graduation, and he would decline. Each time I saved his declining note, as they were a unique style. They were witty, typed on an old typewriter and corrected by John himself.

Yesterday, while cleaning out some old files, I ran into a lost, third letter. You can see it here. It is witty, typed on an old typewriter and a great memento.

Clogged Toilet #3, Oh no, not again!

Living in an 1894 house in Sudbrook Park in Pikesville, MD, created some interesting problems. Nothing was standard, for sure!

I had a second floor toilet that continually gave me a hard time. It would get stuck, sort of, and I’d have to plunge and /or snake it out quite often. This house was on a septic system which only added to my problems.

I used to purchase some kind of bacteriological dirt every now and then and pour it down the toilet to encourage good septic working. The biggest problem seemed to be that the dishwasher ran through the system throwing out bad chemicals, which neutralized the action, and the dirt helped this problem. It’s kind of like eating a spoonful of garden dirt every now and then to encourage your appendix to work so it wouldn’t go bad!

The stuck toilet got worse and worse and it looked like there was only one answer, remove it and see what was happening.

This was the first toilet I can ever remember removing so I was very careful, and purchased a new seal and read books on toilets, as there were no computers invented as of yet, at least not for home use, in the 70’s.

After a careful removal of the toilet, probably an original toilet added to the house when plumbing was invented, the culprit was caught! There was a very large and water soaked tampon attached to the toilet bottom, stopping up all that tried to enter the flush tube (I think I invented that term just now!).

This was a very large and commodious toilet that I enjoyed.

I would never replace it, but was able to produce a sign asking women not to dispose of tampons in the toilet, and my problem was solved!

My Birthday Continued (I'm tired of toilet posts)

On my birthday, on January 16, I started by saying, “It’s my birthday and my wife is making a nice dinner with friends, and it’s a good thing. It’s hitting me a bit hard, but I’m still vertical and clear of head, so it can’t be that bad. I have not been this freaked out before, there’s something about 68 that’s just over the top for me.”

My dear friend, Professor Joel Cohen, mathematician, and probably the only real mathematician I know (if you’re an accountant it doesn’t even count!) wrote and said, “I also found 68 a very hard birthday, perhaps because 68 is not a prime number. For what it's worth, 67 is a prime number and so is 71. I hope this birthday finds you happy and healthy and that you have many, many more birthdays.”

OK, a mathematical answer for sure, but it didn’t make me feel better; it did make me laugh although that may not have been the intention.

My youngest daughter received a new Nikon D-60 DSLR for Christmas, so I asked her to take pictures at my party so I would have something to remember it by and my family would always have the images in case they needed them in some memorial in the future. (God, I sound just like my mother!)

We had a great time and we plan to do it again next year, with a 69 theme! I leave that to the imagination.

Clogged Toilets #2

In the early 70’s, while living in Pikesville, MD, in a wonderful old house in Sudbrook Park, I had another clogged toilet experience.

It was mid-afternoon, and my youngest son was not visible, although no one was looking for him. He was young, and must have been about 4 or 5. We were sitting around not doing anything in particular that I can remember, when there was this noise.

We heard the sound of running water (not in a good way) and screaming! It was loud wailing, clearly from within the house and clearly from our son. We ran to the bathroom and the sight I saw is permanently imprinted on my mind.

My baby was standing on the toilet, with the top down on the seat, screaming as water etc. flowed over the seat and ran all over the floor, and of course into the basement through the ceiling!

He had tried to stop it with the top of the seat, a good move for a small child, but of course to no avail.

I do believe he never used that bathroom again. I am surprised he was ever able to use any bathroom again, and if he ever has constipation problems as an adult, I am sure this event will be the root of the problem.

Clogged Toilets

Clogged toilets have always plagued me, and I have become an expert over the years in toilet repair, based on my need to have it working.

My first memory of a toilet in trouble happened to me in Randallstown, MD, in my first house.

The search for the “right” house took a while, finding financing and figuring out how to make it work was complicated, but in late 1967 we moved into our first home. A nice little split level house built in 1956, with a finished lower level and a “studio” or workshop that took half the garage, and left the front half for trash, etc. Baltimore is not a very cold or snowy town usually, so cars can easily live outside.

We had two children at that point, my oldest son being almost five and the youngest, about one. We were in the house on our first day when my wife put the diaper in the toilet to soak. You all may remember that diapers were cloth, there were no disposables at that point, and even though we had a diaper service, you wanted to remove all the crap before you put the diaper in the pail.

A “new” and unusual colored toilet, a dark beige rather than white, kind of disguised the fact that a diaper was sitting in it. I went by or maybe used the toilet (I no longer remember) but I flushed it!

The diaper was stuck, I was dumbfounded, and the toilet overflowed! I screamed, but had no idea what to do; I was a novice in the world of toilets. The water overflowed, and went down into the ceiling through the calked sides of the toilet. I ran to see where it would come out and lo and behold, it was pouring through the lit ceiling light fixture onto the carpeting in the family room!

This was my first major toilet overflow experience. We all survived, the ceiling was undamaged as the water came through the fixture. No one was electrocuted; it dried out and was fine. The carpeting dried, and was replaced eventually, but not because of this event, there was a much bigger flood years later coming through the outside door from a clogged stairwell, but that’s a story for later kids!

Lichtenstein and Me

The artist, Jon Schueler, along with our new college president, Bud Leake, was in my studio in 1961 or 1962, visiting. I had done an awful painting which included the use of a tampon glued onto the canvas, and Jon started to tell us, mainly Bud, a story. This story was based on my idiotic painting, of course.

It seems this artist they knew had completely lost his mind, and began to paint all this crazy stuff. Here was a perfectly good painter, now losing it, and painting such objects as a Roto Broil 400 and Golf Balls! He surely had lost it!

The story should have died except for the timing. Had it been someone who was lost to obscurity, it would have long since left my mind. But this story was about Roy Lichtenstein. I guess the idea behind the story was to warn me not to do crazy things, like this misguided Lichtenstein person!

In 1961 Lichtenstein began his first Pop paintings using cartoon images and techniques derived from the appearance of commercial printing. This phase would continue to 1965 and included the use of advertising imagery suggesting consumerism and homemaking His first work to feature the large-scale use of hard-edged figures and Benday Dots was Look Mickey ,1961, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. This piece came from a challenge from one of his sons, who pointed to a Mickey Mouse comic book and said; "I bet you can't paint as good as that, eh, Dad?"

Not all advice one receives in school is good advice, although the advice to stop doing tampon paintings was a good direction for me.

The Biggest Shelf in the Smallest Room in our House

As I said last week:

So we now have the biggest desk we could get into the smallest room in our house!

Next, another overly large IKEA shelving piece to hold all the crap we still have to keep! And so the time came to act!

We purchased the IKEA Expidit shelf/room divider in the 6 foot square model, which comes in three boxes, each about 75 pounds. Not too bad, although they are each 6 feet long and one is unusually cumbersome as it is larger than the others. With the help of an IKEA guy we put them in the car, and later, with my neighbors help, we got them in the garage. We figured we’d build them on Sunday.

First, I had to maneuver them down the stairs to the basement, one at a time, by sliding them down the steps very carefully. Then, I had to move the very heavy steel table, still sitting in the room, out of the way so the rest of the stuff could get inside.

Now, we were able to open the boxes and stand the big pieces up and place the smaller pieces on to the big desk. We have seen the Youtube video on assembling this piece so we thought we completely understood; we didn’t! The first few pieces showed us we were wrong and it took a bit of fixing to make the thing work.

All the videos show everyone making the piece flat on the ground. A great idea if you have at least a 6' x6' area and some room around it. Even with the largest desk IKEA makes removed from the room (not possible) we still wouldn't have a 6’ x 6’ space to work in. We had to build it vertically, and that made the last screw a difficult one as I had to hold the piece up on an angle, all 207 pounds of it, so they (my wife and daughter) could complete the last one. However, where there is a will there is a way!

After some initial screaming, banging and breaking of vital parts, we got off to a smooth start. It quickly went together and not until the end did we realize it was backwards in the room. The parts that connect to the wall were on the front side so we had to turn Moby Dick around!

With careful sliding further out of the steel table into the store room, and sliding the unit out into the hall, and sliding it back and forward into the playroom with me squished into the wall, we were able to maneuver the unit around and get it back into the office the right way!

We were home free! I had to get a couple of hollow wall anchors to secure the unit to the back wall and today we have the largest IKEA desk with an IKEA 6’ square shelving unit in the smallest room in my house.

These items will be sold with the house when the time comes, because there is no way anyone can ever move this stuff out without completely separating all parts and carrying them up the stairs to be reassembled somewhere else!

Emergency Switch

One of the safeguards found in any senior citizens home is the emergency system. It may be electronic or even done by telephones placed strategically around apartments, but there always seem to be systems in place. One of these, and the easiest to understand, is the human factor. In any place, people are the first line of defense.

In my neighborhood, if we weren’t visible for a few days, someone may notice. In a senior’s residence, any unexplained absence throws shivers of concern through out the community. It was so in my mother’s apartment building, the Har Sinai House, in Baltimore.

She had two switches on the floor, low on the wall in the living room and one in the bedroom, so if she fell, she could switch on the switch and a light would illuminate at the switchboard letting someone know there was a problem in her apartment. The most immediate problem I perceived when she moved in was that this system only worked if you fell in either of these two areas, and you were near, or could crawl to, the switch. This was not a realistic choice, but it was what was available. She moved in about 1977, as I remember, and lived in that apartment until her death in 1997.

When she first moved in at 67, we weren’t worried about her falling, so it really wasn’t a concern.

Sometime in maybe the early 90’s, my mother was not answering her phone. This was not a concern at first, as she may have gone out. As the day continued, my Aunt, the closest person to my mother, got more concerned and late in the evening, with no answer, the switch in her head went off! There must be something wrong, because even if she was out all day, she would never be out all night! Something had gone wrong!

At about midnight, as the story goes, my Aunt appeared at the door of the Har Sinai House and demanded that the night manager come up with her to the apartment to view the body, for surely there was something major wrong! My Aunt had the key but didn’t want to enter the apartment by herself.

They broke down the door (OK, they opened the door) to find my mother, her hair in curlers, sitting and quietly watching television. She was, of course, scared to death.

She had a headache the night before and turned off the phone bell, and forgot to turn it on again!

After she recovered from the shock of the dynamic duo crashing through the door, she was glad that someone did recognize her absence!

Happy Birthday To Me!

It’s my birthday and my wife is making a nice dinner with friends, and it’s a good thing. It’s hitting me a bit hard, but I’m still vertical and clear of head, so it can’t be that bad. I have not been this freaked out before, there’s something about 68 that’s just over the top for me.

I’ve thought about earlier birthdays, and the ones that stand out were my 12th, 30th, 40th, 50th 60th and 65. It starts with 12 when my parents had a dinner for me at home and we had hotdogs! I thought it was great, and I had a bunch of friends and I loved it.

30 was a surprise party and I went with my friend Marty to measure a funeral home, then out of business, because some soul wanted to open a restaurant in there, a clearly bad idea. We really went to measure and I did freak out, but it kept me out of the house for a while. I was really surprised and got an aquarium from my family.

My 40th I gave for myself, and told all invited guests that it was a surprise party for me. Only Harry Smallenburg didn’t get it and brought a gift for my wife, as I remember, because it made no sense to him for me to be giving a surprise for me. I have included a photo from that party in 1982. I received a Seiko “tank” watch from the family.

My 50th, which I have previously written about as a sort of ghost story because it took place at the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, MA, was a party for all of us, my mother, my son Brian and myself and it included my other two sons as well. My daughter Rosie was home, but she was my 50th birthday present! I also got a Sega video game!

My 60th was for 65 people using my school for the party. We had a wonderful time and there was a magician and great fun. I was given a Martin Guitar by my family.

My 65th was quiet and several wonderful friends gave me a lovely dinner with great cake and it was sweet and thankfully there was not a big deal made, no over the hill event!

Tonight will be lovely and quiet (I hope) and is limited to 10 of us which is just fine. I have chosen to quiet all this stuff down as I become sensitive to it all. I have promised everyone at work that I will make a big, most inappropriate deal, over next year, with a 69th birthday bash.

The complete double entendre event is theoretically planned with renting a room at the YMCA, so we can have a “69 party, Lunch at the Y, a pants free event!” I am NOT really planning to do this it just seems like a great idea, and at my age and style, it seems like something I would say. If you don’t understand the implications, don’t worry. Find any perverted old guy and he’ll explain all this to you.

So, Happy Birthday to me! May I live to see many more!

Mannequin in the Closet

Twice in my life I’ve been offered mannequins.

The first time was in Detroit where we were offered all the mannequins used in the filming of a “Collision Course”, starring Jay Leno and Pat Morita and shot at least partially in Detroit. I had these around for a long time and I think we eventually got rid of them, but I gave one away to my son.

There were black and white ones, actually black and white, not fake skin colors, and he took one of the black ones back to his fraternity house and got into hot water because he had a black mannequin, and there were perceived racial overtones. He had to dispose of it anyway. I guess this is the way of all mannequins.

The second mannequin story was the one I was offered here in Dundas, which is an old mannequin from Eaton’s, I believe, and sat (if it’s still here) in our still life cupboard. I picked it up nearby and brought it to school. I decided to put it in the still life cupboard, as it could be used by some inventive artist, as part of a class assignment.

Rose, our wonderful cleaner at the time, used to come into the school between four and five in the morning in order to be finished before school started. She had no idea this mannequin existed and walked into the still life cupboard early in the morning and was faced in the dim light with what looked like a scantily clad woman. She screamed, but the figure did not move!

Rose suggested to me later that morning that if I brought any more surprises into the school, that I should let her know in advance, as she can no longer take such a jolt to her system.

The Turkey Story

My first wife had an amazing uncle, who was always into some kind of amazing event. He has now passed away, but some of his exploits are legendary in her family. One of my favorite stories that says less about her uncle than it does her grandparents involves her Uncle and the Turkey.

While stationed in Europe during the Second World War, her Uncle thought a nice idea would be to send his parents a turkey for Thanksgiving. This being the 1940’s, and communication being nowhere near what it is today, he sent a live turkey to the house.

Several years later he returned home from the war, and after a much deserved welcome his parents asked him what he’d like to do with the turkey. He was confused, “What turkey?”, he wondered, as he had no instant memory of such an event from several years before. “Your pet turkey, the one you sent home”, they said.

These lovely people had lived for years in a top floor apartment in Brooklyn and had a stairway between their apartment and the roof. The turkey they had received at Thanksgiving, and mistaken for a pet (don’t ask), was living all these years in the stairwell, living on feed her grandparents had provided!

He was dumbfounded! What to do? He sent the turkey to the butcher shop, had it killed and dressed, and they cooked it.

No one was able to eat him however…….

The Biggest IKEA Desk in our Smallest Room

On Saturday I was informed that the final part I needed had come in to IKEA Flat Pack, the warehouse for IKEA special orders. The new office desk was in pieces in the basement, awaiting assembly, but the part was taking a week to get here and it seemed better to have all the parts first, although it turned out that for this model we could have done it without the part and install it later.

We’ve been working on an office redo for a while, repairing ceilings and walls, removing wallpaper and painting the place. It’s a very small room, about 8’ x 11’, with way too much stuff in it to begin with. It houses our personal files, our computer and peripherals and the sewing machine and related sewing paraphernalia. I had to remove all the shelving, photos, awards and junk before we could even figure out what we could do. All this was happening over Christmas with a house full of people and it was impossible, at best, to make any progress.

After the physical stuff was done, we needed to determine what we were going to do. We figured we can eliminate most of the old files and lots of junk, and we could make do with one very large curved desk that would hold both the computer things and the sewing machine, and come up with alternatives to metal strip shelving which I had just dumped.

A trip to IKEA accompanied with a few hours of internet searches revealed the best deal, and one that could possibly get down a narrow stairway was the IKEA Gallant Series, a very flexible office desk system. It also, unlike most of the other options, came in white, which we preferred.

It took lots of measuring plus actually bringing a cardboard piece into the room, which was the size of the largest piece, just to make sure it would fit in the car, down the stairs and into the room.

We took an insane trip to IKEA during the holiday sale, the wrong time to go, and we purchased the desk in the configuration we wanted. The parts have been sitting in the room awaiting the final part. Yesterday, at about 2:00 p.m., we finally got to put it all together.

I am an old IKEA shopper, and have put together many a piece, and understand what I consider to be the Zen of IKEA. I have to sit with the pictographs and get, probably through a form of osmosis, the plans in my head. At that time I can move forward.

After the fact, this morning, I discovered that some of the necessary put together instructions for non understands can be found on YouTube, I should have figured this one out in advance!

My wife and I started the task together. She has never done this before and it turned out to be challenging, to have two people work on one project, because I had an unshakeable belief in the plans and she had the old, who needs them, approach! We did not kill each other and we were, in the end, successful. It took about two hours. Most of the problems stemmed from the fact that we had a room full of stuff to try and work around which didn’t work, and we had to move as much as we could, which was limited. Each piece we tried to move to build would be close to crashing into a new wall or old computer things.

After we were finished, we had the challenge of taking apart the computer and running the wires. We had the telephone, the modem, the cable, the wireless network, the computer, the monitor, the speaker system, the web cam, the extra hard drive, the extra DVD writer and the printer, I think that’s all.

It all went together pretty well, and my wife was putting the speakers into the sub woofer, which she had never done, and she had never seem a parallel port and I got concerned she didn’t know what she was doing. The speakers did not work!

These are our new speaker system, a great Logitech system which I got refurbished (of course) at a huge discount (about 75%) and now they weren’t working and the warranty lasted about 30 minutes, so they had to work!

The computer asked for the disk to reinstall, and with all the upheaval, I looked for thirty minutes for the disk, and I gave up. Finally I was able to go to the net to get new drivers and a manual and fooled with it for another thirty minutes and finally, the sweet sounds came forth.

So we now have the biggest desk we could get into the smallest room in our house!

Next, another overly large IKEA shelving piece to hold all the crap we still have to keep!

Parsnips in the Sand......

We have good neighbors and friends. They live a block or so away, and are extremely helpful and good people. So it’s with a bit of concern that I write these thoughts, but some things need to get out! I have kept their names out of this so that no criminal intent can be blamed on me.

They were redoing their kitchen several years ago and were getting rid of their old refrigerator. They were paying the delivery company $40 to take it away. When we found out, we had it taken to our house for the same $40 (we did pay it) and it lives in my garage as the garage frig. I know it eats up some electricity, but it gives us great frig storage when we need it. It does not freeze in the very cold winter because some law of thermodynamics says freezers won’t work if the outside temp is below freezing, although frigs do work at that temperature. I asked a repair guy about it and he explained it and I never understood, I just smiled!

So, the now their frig is gone and he tells us last night that in his garage he has three or four barrels, filled with straw, and in these barrels he keeps vegetables! These are people who gave away a perfectly good frig and keep food in barrels! They live within walking distance of one supermarket and within five minutes of three more! They only have two people in the house! They keep vegetables in barrels of straw? On top of that, they tell me, they keep parsnips in sand! What the hell for? Who eats parsnips? If you ate them, how many could you eat that you’d have to keep a supply in the garage in sand?

She bought a giant size bag of carrots! She keeps them in the garage. He doesn’t eat carrots! She will turn orange trying to eat the carrots by herself!

I want to turn these people in the logic police but I can’t find their number.

He has retired. When he was semi-retired they redid the kitchen. Now that he is retired, he has fallen into the retiree renovation stereotype, the need to redo all we can see. He has redone the whole living room and dining room, ripping out the ceilings and replacing them, and now he is redoing all the bathrooms, so there are thrones available everywhere one can go. He keeps vegetables in the garage but will crap on a throne! The logic police must exist! We need them.

Next, after they run out of things to replace, they will probably sell the house, buy a condo and start taking cruises, along with all the other people who have done the same thing!

I want to go another way! I hope to be shot be a jealous husband while climbing out of a second floor bedroom window in about twenty years!

Students Teaching

In the old days, we had a teaching program which included, among the traditional class work, three teaching related experiences. In the sophomore year the student visited public school classrooms in a group with an instructor, and observed teaching in a most “unnatural setting” (large group of college students in the back of the public school art classroom on chairs). In the junior year, the student participated as a classroom assistant in the Saturday kids programs, getting increasingly more experience and in the end, taking over the teaching responsibilities. In the senior year, the student had a traditional student teaching experience.

Today I have a tale about a third year student, who was assigned to a Saturday class, and in the end of the classroom experience, as an experiment, an opportunity to fill our a report card for the kids. While we never graded the kids in the Saturday programs, we felt this would be a good opportunity for the student teachers to have a chance to complete evaluations.

The idea was that the report card experience would be a learning experience, and the cards would remain with the college as helpful examples in the college students learning experience.

One of the students, not clear on the concept, wrote about a child, “ Grade C- . She is not a particularly good student, but you can understand why if you met the mother”.

She then copied all the report card forms, kept a copy for our records, and sent the other one home with the child…..

The Drawing Class

In the early 70’s, in the office of the Extension Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art, late one Tuesday evening, there was a phone call from an adoring wife looking for her part time student husband. She was informed that except in emergencies, students could not be contacted during class time. While she had no emergency, she did need to talk to her husband, and could they get a message to him that during his break, that he should call home.

The assistant at the desk assured her this was possible, and asked her in what class her husband was registered. The woman told her it was a life drawing class, but she wasn’t sure which one.

The assistant pulled the records and looked to find the life drawing class offered that evening, and asked the woman for her husband’s name. She gave her the name and the assistant said, “There’s no one registered by that name in that class”.

“There must be”, said the woman, “he’s been going all semester on Tuesday nights, and he comes home with drawings of nudes”.

She checked all the class registrations and said, “He’s not registered anywhere in the school”.

We guessed the nude drawings may all have been from the same model…..

GPS- The Story

My GPS is a wonder.

OK, it’s not perfect, and it sometimes takes me in weird ways, but I love to use it.

Basically I can’t really see it from where I sit, without some very special glasses, but I can hear it so I know where I’m going. It has helped me through all sorts of problems, both locally and all over North America. I will admit that you are better off using it if you really know where you’re going, just in case it gets a bit weird, but in any case, it works.

In my drive to Washington, D.C. last summer, it took me (the fastest way was what I chose) through Pittsburgh which was, in fact, the fastest way, not the most direct. The most direct takes me west into Pennsylvania and South through PA to the PA turnpike and east to Breezewood, south through Maryland to D.C. I had a MapQuest with me so I could try and make sense of which way I liked. I chose my own way returning and it was much shorter but took an hour and a half more.

Yesterday, I took my daughter to Union Station in Toronto so she could get a train back to Montreal. My GPS had been in the car for the last few weeks, nestled in a back compartment and freezing. Like most electronics, it doesn’t like freezing and I figured it would need to be warmed up to use it. Unfortunately, that didn’t work, and it was dead!

After much shuffling of papers last night I found the bill of sale and the warranty sale slip. It had only a 90 day warranty, but a guy had convinced me to take a two year replacement warranty for money. I felt duped but I ended up taking it and I was happy until I realized I had a slip proving I bought one, but didn’t have the warranty itself, which I think is from a secondary party and I would probably need it to make this thing work.

As well, I need the GPS tomorrow, so it would do me no good unless I could get a new one quickly, not a possibility. So, I decided to see what I could find out there and looked at all the net possibilities.

I had to look at places I could go to on a Sunday and buy one and it would still be the last day of Boxing Week in most stores.

The bargains were not overflowing.

I want a GPS with a voice that announces the street names. Size was not important, and a refurbished one would be great. I was willing to pay around $100. They were willing to sell me one for around $200-300. This would not do.

I knew that I would return my Magellan (refurbished with a voice for $99) and maybe get a new one if I could work out the details of my warranty. I figured I could give it to my wife to use. It would be nice to have one with new maps as there are a few roads that are currently not recognized and the GPS thinks I’m lost in the woods.

I did my research, found a Magellan on line that may be in the store, refurbished, in a 4 ½” size (bigger than mine).

I took a shower, got dressed, got in the car, picked up the frozen GPS and before I left, plugged it in one more time to see if I could use the reset button (I hadn’t noticed before) to start it.

It started up as soon as I plugged it in!

Who knows? Maybe the planets aligned. Maybe the sun was out. It just worked!

I brought it into the house and put away my coat and gloves. My shopping day had ended!

Vegetarian Chili

I was at a meeting on the west coast many years ago at a very well known U.S. art school, and at the end of the morning session it was suggested that we go to the college cafeteria for lunch. Arrangements had been made for us to be given cafeteria privileges for the day instead of going out for and taking way too much time for lunch.

The Dean of the school suggested we should try the vegetarian chili, a local favorite. The cafeteria was run by a dear older woman who had been doing this for many years and her chili was a favorite on the campus. We all went in and were introduced to the cafeteria manager and she welcomed us.

I chose the recommended chili myself as it sounded good and healthy and had a salad and a bun to go along with it. I probably skipped the milk and had a diet coke as usual, but can’t remember that far back.

After my delicious lunch I went back to find the manager to thank her for her wonderful meal (it was) and tell her that while I loved the food, there was meat in the chili!

She laughed and said, “Of course there’s meat in the chili. How are you goin’ to make good chili without meat?”

I asked her, “What do you tell the kids?” She laughed and said, “I tell them that’s protein!”

After Boxing Day

Boxing Day is a big holiday in Canada. People start to line up early in the morning, similar to Black Friday in the US to get “bargains” the day after Christmas. I seldom need bargains after Christmas, and try and get them for Christmas. As well, they are all appearing very as Christmas bargains, and great things also appear as Boxing Day specials on line, so why wait in the cold. I know there must be a romance to it; it’s just not my thing.

I didn’t wait in any lines, however, at 8:00 a.m. two days later, I found myself taking my daughters and two teen aged friends to the early opening of the Salvation Army 50% off sale! Why would anyone care, and why would anyone be dragging out to get old clothes for less. We rushed out to beat the crowd, and we did. We were the crowd!

It did start to get busier a few hours later, as I found out, because I waited for them!

I looked around, and unlike Value Village, the Sally Ann has a much smaller selection.
There was nothing for me, not that I really cared, but I needed something to do as I waited. I mean, how long could it take? Four teens bargain shopping for used clothes? Two hours was about it.

I decided to go to Tim Horton’s to get a hot chocolate, and drove down the road for about a mile, I found none. I drove back up the road and found a Tim’s, directly across the road from the Salvation Army! I guess I didn’t look.

I sat in the car and listened to a book and didn’t fall asleep. Finally, as I needed a bathroom, I went back inside to find the girls getting ready to check out and the bathroom out of order. While I waited, I went next door to Wendy’s to find it not yet open, and back I went to the Sally Ann.

My oldest daughter had the biggest bag and spent the most money. I looked through the bargains, and I will admit that a pair of used Doc Martins, in pretty good shape, was worth $4. The other bargains were questionable, but I didn’t have to wear them or pay for them. My other daughter spent less, and had some nice stuff, including a new ”Friends” t-shirt if you’re into that sort of TV trivia.

I guess that what ever day this was, it was not such a special event for me. They had a great time and I imagine lots of the clothing will be used before it gets back to Goodwill or the Salvation Army the next time.

Having my older daughter home for a few weeks creates a level of activity I had grown out of as she’s been gone. We have these mini-events and activity every day it seems, and it will grow quiet again after Saturday when she goes back to Montreal. I will look back on this time and miss it, in a few weeks!