What I really do.

I noticed while re-reading my CV that I don't show any work any more, and I noticed while not making any art, that I don't make any art any more. Here is a brief list of things that I do while not making art.

• living with my wife Christa and our kids in my painting studio


• overhauling swamp coolers when Christa says they're making a wee'-eeink, wee'-eeink sound


• pretending to put out fires in fire school


• pretending to run the town as a member of the town council


• google-searching trivial topics like St. Florian (see below)


• learning more about the Lusitania disaster from my six-year-old than I ever learned in AP European History


• looking for things in the garage


• drinking ice water (the hot season has started)


• stirring heaps of lush compost

The quality of the compost is a result of all the fruit and coffee grounds we churn through at the Bed and Breakfast. This is the primary entry for the what-I-do-instead-of-making-art list. Since moving in in 2004, we've trimmed, caulked, painted, plumbed, or otherwise torn through five bathrooms, two kitchens, two kids' rooms; refinished floors, painted fascia while hanging from a climbing rope, and run three miles of irrigation tubing. I've also killed four adolescent cottonwood trees, nine black locusts, ruined a lawn, and forklifted a wild bee colony away in the hollow core of an enormous tree trunk. They moved back after a couple of months.

Rumor has it that Bluff honey tastes extra good because of the tamarisk pollen. If you come to town, buy some honey from Comb Ridge Coffee and have a Mocha Dugway (my favorite local pun).

Give us cool heads, stout hearts, strong muscles

St. Florian was a Roman General who rose up the military ranks as a firefighter (denoted by his trick green kilt).

He was exposed as a Christian, half-flayed while alive, and then dumped into a river with a millstone tied around his neck.

Before he was put to death he reportedly saved a town from burning to the ground by extinguishing the flames with fluid obtained at the town brewery. He is thus the patron saint of both firefighters and beer-makers.

I ran across the following prayer to St. Florian:

St. Florian, Heaven’s patron of firefighters,who once was dedicated to the servicesof your fellowmen as an official in theArmy of Rome, look with kindly and professional eye upon your earthly force, desirous of the preserving of our fellow men from the dangers to life and property. Give us cool heads, stout hearts, strong muscles an instinct for prudent investigation and wise judgment.

Make us the terror of arsonists, the friends of law-abiding citizens, kind to the frightened, polite to the bores, strict with lawbreakers, and obstinate to temptations.

In troubles give us strength to be efficient, in times of great danger, give us the ability to be calm and enable us to impart assurance to those who verge on panic.

You know, beloved St. Florian, from the sacrifice of your own life for the sake of your faith, that the fireman’s lot on earth is not always a pleasant one, but your sense of duty that so pleased God, your courageous strength that so over-whelmed the devil and your saintly self-control, give us inspiration.

Make us as fearless in practicing the laws of God as we are brave in protecting the lives and property of our fellowmen, and when we answer our final alarm, enroll us in your Heavenly force, where we will be as proud to protect the throne of God as we have been to protect the city.
Amen

What caught my attention was the part about being polite to the bores. Somehow, I feel far more moved by this suggestion of being patient to the dull than by the more flashy self-sacrifices attributed to firefighting and to St. Florian. In the end, isn't this more difficult? Does it take more inner strength to don a helmet with lights and sirens running or to listen...really listen when the grocer timelines his sciatica for you? Which would provide more cumulative benefit to mankind?

St. Florian protect us.

Goatsilk

A few weeks ago I heard from an old friend from grad school thanks to the miracles of Facebook. Being able to watch video from an organization known as Goatsilk has validated the social-networking revolution for me. For beginners, try the Turn-of-the-Century Watering Pail below. For more advanced viewers, I recommend Lawnmower Curling.

It gives me a lot of pleasure that someone has found a reason to combine words the way Ben and Caroline do.

Click for Silkblog.

Click for Lawnmower Curling.