I don’t know where Linus Pauling lived (I’m two blocks from Hawthorne, so I’m a bit abashed.) But I belonged to an artists’ guild that used the Hawthorne house (around 45th st) belonging to Doc Severinson (or maybe it was his aunt….), And the old asylum site run by Dr. Hawthorne is just down the street. I’m going to paint the industrial buildings now sitting on the ground where the pond used the be at the foot of the hill. My daughter lives in south Mt Tabor, and they may have run the Metropolitan Area Express Light Rail up the Gulch (Sullivan’s) where the golf course of which you speak used to be.

And dogs — again, resonances: I posted on my adventures and painting in Basin Montana a while back, where the dogs were, I suspect, stand-ins for the people. It was the first time I ever painted dogs and it was definitely a learning experience.

http://www.artandperception.com/2008/02/the-refuge.html#more-1855
http://www.artandperception.com/2008/02/basin-montana-in-winter-a-celebration-of-place.html#more-1827

Thanks for checking in. Southeast Portland is changing a bit, but not so rapidly as downtown Portland, where the warehouse district has turned into a boutique, loft, and gallery haven called “The Pearl.” La-di-da!

The local zoo used to have a modest prairie dog town adjacent to the raptor exhibit: a cruel juxtaposition for all parties involved.

Prairie Mary

Truth be it’s a miracle that I have any semblance of a metabolism considering the amount of candy I consumed as a kid. This was especially true in Amsterdam where I was met with a whole new world of sweets.

They forgot to bribe you with candy?

On snowy winter weekends, I often took the kids to the Metropolitan Museum because one could park the car underneath. Always, our first stop was the cafeteria. With Karl, we then often ended up at the knights.

A traffic island painted in the colors of a Premium saltine box.

There I was, an eleven year old kid, having been stuffed into a clean shirt and taken to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam to hear an oratorio. Wonderful place, wonderful music and me wonderously bored - boredom like a bad toothache.

I can remember Jer using those adjectives.

While I was an adolescent, I was desperate to be just like everyone else — particularly the elses who were featured in Seventeen Magazine. I never even came close, but oh how I wanted it.

I fear that desire was imprinted on me in the usual perverse ways — now I am desperate to be unlike my fellow artists. Perversity, thy name may well be “Me.”

Jay, I am seldom bored — almost never. Irritated, hungry, hot, tired, grumpy, exhilarated, exasperated, wired, jumpy — but not bored. “Ever to be bored,” said the poet’s mother, “means you have no inner resources.” But I fear the line comes from a philistine — the main character in the poem, who seems to be the poet himself, is horribly bored — but not boring. I can’t remember who that poet is, just the line that I’ve recited to the backseat innumerable times.

And Jay, I think you read my work almost too well. Maybe I should decide on a palette ahead of time and see what that means to the paintings.