Past Blogs

I married into a family that is famous for throwing away the directions. From faucets to furniture assembly, the instructions get ditched.

Early on in our marriage, I naively asked,”Why are the instructions in the garbage?”

“We need to figure this out ourselves,” my husband replied. “That’s the way to learn how to fix stuff.”

How logical, and how lovely to be the recipient of my husband’s handiness. My guy can fix anything. Broken computers, dripping faucets, strange noises coming from my car’s engine, he can tackle any job and invariably succeed. I estimate we have saved about two million in repair bills in the course of our marriage.

I believe genetics plays a role here. My husband’s grandfather invented the V8 tractor, a dandy cherry pitter and a high tech apple picker.

My father-in-law could repair anything; cars, roofs, swamp coolers and unicycles to name but a few. But I must admit he was also a first rate jerry-rigger. After his death, his widow was visited by an electrical inspector. “Who wired this house?” he inquired. It suddenly dawned on my mother-in-law why her electric bills always had been so amazingly low.

The younger generation is carrying on the  figure it out yourself tradition with flair. Our son is working on a solar heated hot tub. His cousin has sent several satellites into space. I doubt that NASA had a stock instruction booklet for their assembly.

Having recently seen an exuberant production of Hairspray, my thoughts wandered to hair. Unlike those girls in that 60’s era musical, I am hair illiterate. I don’t even know how to operate a can of hairspray. The only time a can of hairspray has ever been on our property, it was being used to ignite a potato cannon.

Growing up lacking sisters and a Barbie doll, I never played “hair” when I was little. My mother chose sensible braids and bangs for me. I was an active kid, and those braids were always a mass of tangles. Hair and torture were synonyms for me as a child.

The braids morphed into a ponytail which required a rubber band and minimum hair skills. By college, ponytails were woefully out of fashion, but I remained faithful to the style. Being an art major, I did not want hair flopping in my eyes and getting into paint, clay, power tools and printing presses.

Somewhere in my twenties, I finally freed my hair and gradually shortened it up. And it has remained that way ever since with one addition… I intend to remain a redhead. I may be prejudiced, but I’m inclined to agree with Mark Twain who said that,”While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.” I like cats.

After a disastrous experience with a hairdresser who turned me into a brunet, I found my current stylist. Mary is a very glamorous, stylish grandma who understands that I can’t benefit from all the unique and lovely hairstyles she is capable of creating. She knows that the most fantastic hairstyle in the world is useless if its owner can’t duplicate it after the first wind gust or trip to the shower. Mary keeps me looking like me, a wash and wear redhead, and for that I am exceedingly grateful.

Hairspray, The Musical

Potato Cannon

I’m guessing our red squirrels sleep soundly at night. They spend all their daylight hours racing around our yard like acrobatic wind-up toys. When they aren’t playing chase, they’re stuffing their faces; a huge part of The Tooley Cafe’s entrees ends up in Tamiasciurus stomachs.

The red squirrels are also the most aggressive and vocal of the three types of resident tree squirrels. Their vocalizing has earned them the vernacular names chickaree, boomer, chatterbox and chatterer. The Ojibway called them gid-a-mon and the Potawatomi, zee-sin-ko. We call them “little reds”.

Red squirrels announce their displeasure with intruders by a scolding chatter. This noise is accompanied by foot stomping and tail jerking. The faster and louder they chatter, the faster they stomp and jerk. Then they dash away through their tree top freeways.

Between sunrise and sunset, through all the seasons our little reds are totally energized. They are mostly arboreal, jumping from limb to limb and tree to tree with total ease. Little reds can span from 8  to 10 feet in one leap.  Across the ground, speeds up to 14 miles per hour are reached.

On several occasions, I’ve seen these guys race through the yard to our low feeding table by leaping right over a startled bird or chipmunk.Even the big gray squirrels scatter when the reds come zooming in to have lunch.

The other day I was enjoying the show, when zap, the red squirrel I was watching disappeared. I did a double take! The mystery of the vanishing squirrel was quickly solved when it popped out the opposite side of the long snowbank. A closer examination revealed several entrance and exit holes. The little reds have excavated a complex subway system in our snowbanks.

I know that many ardent birders spend serious money on “squirrel proof” bird feeders and other squirrel defying paraphernalia. We feel that a bucket of bird seed is a reasonable price for admission to a three-ring circus in our own front yard.

Click above for full size image.

Note the subway entrance to the left of the post!

March is Youth Art Month. All across America, teachers will be decking the walls with brilliant, joyful art created by our young people. And, as Picasso noted, all children are creative as they view the world with fresh eyes.

My career as an art educator began exactly fifty years ago, and I am as excited about teaching art now as I was then.

A spectacularly failed marriage launched my art teaching career. It was the summer before my first year in college, and I was signed up to be an art education major. I had landed a prize summer job, the assistant to an art teacher at a gigantic art summer school. The teacher was married the week before the classes began. One week into the program, she realized that her marriage had been a huge mistake and began divorce proceedings. Her life was in turmoil, and she quit the job. With hundreds of kids coming every day, my employers had no time to restart the job search. I became the art teacher. It was baptism by paint. By summer’s end, I knew with absolute certainty that teaching art was the right job for me.

Over the years, I have hung many Youth Art Month shows, but what you are about to see is a first. With technical support from my husband, I’ve created a digital gallery to celebrate YAM. Bravo to my students (K-8) at Port Catholic, Saint Marys, Lake Bluff and Saint Roberts. We were inspired by works of Edgar Degas, Paul Klee, Jean Dubuffet, Faith Ringgold, Ashley Bryan, Hundertwasser, Picasso, Australian Aboriginal artists and the Impressionists in winter. Click below to start the show, it takes about a minute to load.

Virtual Gallery

It’s coming. Any day now a huge wave of euphoria will wash over us bringing hope. The temperature will hit fifty degrees, convincing us that winter was just a bad dream.

Unfortunately, winter probably has a few more tricks (a.k.a. blizzards) in store. But I intend to bask in the euphoria, no matter how fleeting it may be.

At the moment, however, Mount Tooley  is sitting on our front porch and blocking our door. Since we have two other doors, we are making no attempt to remove this towering pyramid of snow. The euphoric days should take care of it.

On a more positive note, we have made the 70 foot descent down our stairs to the beach.We were accompanied by a snow shovel. Spots of soggy sand are appearing in the midst of the ice fields, and we’ve found the first six pieces of this season’s beach glass.

Years ago, my husband bought a T shirt with artwork perfectly depicting the burst of joy which will accompany Spring’s arrival.

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