I live in Northwest Arkansas- painting & drawing since about the time I learned to read. As a teenager, I first worked in a commercial art studio down in Austin, Texas. Though I did little more than clean the developer trays and make coffee, I learned a lot from watching the talented people around me. That summer sealed my fate and I've been pursuing the dream ever since.
My specialty these days is wall-sized murals. These range in proportion from a corner of your kitchen - to mammoth vistas that can wrap an entire room in your favourite dream scape.

A painting for my sister, 2006

Another classroom mural, half way through the job

Inside a tanning salon in Fayetteville.

It is my desire to provide quality art work at reasonable prices -most murals, such as the one pictured above, can be purchased for about $600.00 and completed in about five business days. Call and ask about individual prices. I am always happy to work within your budget, whatever that may be. Contact me at :
ktstew4@sbcglobal.net

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Cousins, we now do big dance of Joy

...or at least break out an extra bag of Fritos, and for an occasion like this only the really curvy kind will do, the ones that each hold half a pound of guacamole.

***** A truly daunting problem has been removed from my work day, one that made me shudder every Monday morning and consider calling in dead. I finally had the guts to sit back and say "Noooo...I'll just pass on any more disrespect and thinly veiled contempt. Thanks for thinking of me, anyway."

My bosses, in their traditional custom backed me all the way and now I'm free to just do my job.

*****An unexpected birthday surprise was just lobbed our way for my younger daughter and I'm almost faint with happiness... so will she be when she opens the package. Thank you, John. You're a darling for letting us work this out with you.

***** That same daughter was just chosen for Citywide Honor Choir. It's awesome.
***** The older daughter likes me again, at least for this week. I may lose consciousness, here in a minute.

*It didn't snow this week.

**** I found the Jonathan Edwards album [ long out of print] that I've wanted for years, since the vinyl version wore out and is now emitting gases in some Carroll County landfill.

*****Patrick thinks I look Tom Hanks' wife Rita, or maybe some woman named Kim Katrall, whom I've never heard of.

***** Mmmm. Friday, February 26th...good to the last drop.

Zen by Default

Photo-Daily Mail

My job of these past six months or so has maybe been the biggest surprise of my life. I never saw myself as able to give to other people in any unusual or extraordinary way. I've always secretly been disturbed by what I viewed as having a closed up nature . A hermit by choice all these years, except for raising my children of course -but caring for one's family comes easily and on some level doesn't count in the big picture I'm thinking of. Even animals take care of their young ones.

In working with geriatric patients of all backgrounds and various degrees of health, I've learned more things than I can comprehend or relate to anybody. I'm still sorting the data, still putting the puzzle together. A culmination of tiny things learned here and there, til one day they mount up and I feel a slight shift on the inside, somehow.
I have changed more in the last six months than in the whole of my previous life put together. I'm not any good at explaining how, either- it's like standing on the surface of the moon, trying to describe the sensational rocks and stark, back-lit craters to somebody over the phone. The listener on the other end makes all the appropriate noises, but in the end, they're secretly thinking that the space capsule was probably cold, the journey endless and that those prepackaged tinfoil meals were tiresome after the first few days.
It's true that the nuts and bolts of caring for sick or elderly people doesn't make for fascinating copy. But somehow, there is a luminous glow to this job that is invisible to the casual observer. It's the unseen gift that allows it's recipient to constantly grow and stretch, round out their sharp edges and become somebody they never realised they could be.

Claims Adjuster On the Roof Again

cnn photo

...in a week or so, if the local weather guys are right. After last year's ice glazed end to January, hundreds of local houses were damaged or crushed, roads blocked by hundred year old downed trees and the stores -if you could get there -were filled with empty shelves. I don't think there was a D battery or a generator to be had in three counties. Lowes ordered more chainsaws and often the truck would be met by customers, lined up out in the cold. Some had gotten a ride into town by hiking across a pasture to the neighbor's house, who was lucky enough to have a vehicle without a tree sprawled on top of it.

Here in town, those of us with any kind of fireplace fared a little better.
Kind of.
It's 18 degrees and snowing again. We are hunched around our dining room table in heavy parkas, faces in the flickering light. Here on our street it's 1880 again, and one walking into the room would have the impression of shaggy, unwashed creatures sitting in the dark, maybe nawing on bones or a small rodent who strayed in out of the cold. No street lights anywhere; awesome in it's way , because if you were driving by on the interstate, you'd not guess there was a city of 60,000 just a block or two off the ramp - the place completely swallowed up in darkness, save the red glow of a fireplace here and there, or the occasional feeble beam of flashlight. Patrol cars slowly cruising the neighborhoods, using search lights.

By the first of the week, though, the sun was out and the ice was melting -but the town had been hit by an atom bomb. our yard sustained alot of damage, and we lost some much loved trees, some older than the house, which was built in ice wagon days. Parts of the 8 foot privacy fence gone, the storage building caved in and by looking at it sideways for a minute, like a dog - suddenly it would dawn on the viewer that there was a riding lawn- mower shaped mound underneath. So many huge branches in the yard it took six guys with chain saws four days to clear the bulk of it away. But the insurance guy came out, walked the property, made a bunch of notes and the next week we had a sizable check in the mail.
It all turned out alright, and nobody was hurt- even when the side of the house caught fire and we had to evacuate. No power for days and days -weeks for some folks.

And now they say it will be here again tomorrow.
Please be wrong, local weather personalities with blinding-white teeth.
Please.

Remembering the Spub

...was difficult for awhile. He was a good cat, cut down in the prime of his sleeping and eating career by a malady common to male Ragdolls -kidney problems. Here he is pictured during the glory days of tormenting Lucy, the young prisoner shown behind bars .

As she got older, he was not above waiting for her to pass by then swatting her on the butt. At times they would both raise up on their hind legs, wrestling like small polar bears in the living room. it's true that we around here are easily entertained, and now all we have to watch is television. They were our own reality show, complete with fist fights, ambushes and making -up sessions.
I miss seeing him sit on his skate board, waiting for somebody to give him a push. I miss his fishy breath and chainsaw purr.
Rest in peace, Pal. You were a man's man, and everybody knew it.

Hide that Coffee Pot

...They're at it again. If only one could harness that energy to... say, run the dishwasher or defrost car windows.

otterbeone uploaded a new video (21 hours ago) Friend of the Devil-Greatfu... Lightnin Bug playing our most highly caffeinated tune, Otter on Banjo, ... more Lightnin Bug playing our most highly caffeinated tune, Otter on Banjo, Mic on La Gloria Torpedo cigar box mandolin... See what too much coffee will do to ya...'-} http://www.muttmo... less

A Shortage Of Pith

...exists in full swing at my house, so instead I'm posting this attractive photo of my friend John's other friend Boogie.

[photo -John Cook]
Somehow I'm finding out that prints of the drawing behind him exist all over the country -not in abundance, certainly, but in enough numbers to make me wonder how they sprang up like mushrooms.

Pith, once a divine dessert in my life [ living in the backwoods as I do] was always in short supply and I lived in constant search of it -always on the lookout for the droll mail carrier or the cut up who sacked my groceries. Once in a while a true Pithian Knight would materialise and I would be in my glory, sopping up the arcane humor as it came off the conveyor belt, even storing small scraps for later, perhaps to hold in my cheek like snuff for when winter came and all the real jokesters had gone back to the city to write comedy for paychecks, I was left to play straight man to an army of straight men.
Now, because of the internet, I find myself surrounded by a buffet of rabid wit every morning from Kingsbury to Sherman Oaks -urban rancor, southern impishness and enough DC crispy political banter to make the grease crackle in my head.
I always thought that's what I wanted most, during those years of the long cleverness famine. But I was young.
Now it's nice to just hear somebody say 'pass the toast' with no english to it, no particular spin except for the toast passer to worry about whether I have enough butter or if my coffee cup is empty.

Musicians with a free, snowy morning...

...on their hands. My significant other- Michael- on resonator guitar, our dear buddy John on the banjer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj9dhIFjMoo

Seems like old times...

...but only for a second. Then I remember the mortgage, my smirky teenaged children [ who look so similar to the way I used to, somehow] and it all comes back into focus.

The day this was taken I was happy, wearing a new [ scratchy] shirt and it was as cool a fall day as ever happens in east Texas. My neighbour Steve's mother took this picture. Their family had just moved to Texas from Los Altos and were told that since nobody in Texas had long hair, their dad suggested they have it all cut off. Boy were they mad when they arrived and half our high school looked like Duane Allman.

Death by Gabardine

"Oh, Mom. I'm sorry...I just forgot with work and finals and..."

I sigh and crack one eye open. Such a fragmented, meekly uttered sentence usually means the rest of my day is toast and I'm never wrong.
The impending disaster this time involves a sadistic band director with a misguided sense of economy and possibly a vendetta against parents who need to be somewhere on a daily basis and don't have time to express their Oleg Cassini inner selves. The rest of the blame falls on my daughter, who really needs to write notes to herself. Last year, I was up making one of these nightmare band costumes while battling the flu. It looked as though vandals had broken into my home and completed the band uniform for me during the night.

Black gabardine, that most vile of fabrics, was once only used by victorian widows in mourning and Dominican nuns for their winter habits. It's cumbersome, slippery and shreds like crazy. But after hunting down the last pattern in the metroplex [ everybody else had theirs made two weeks ago, I'm thinking] I sat down and fought the good fight. Meanwhile, I broke my last heavy duty nachine needle, my significant other came in and added a few potatoes and more garlic to the deer stew [ a fine thing] but cranked up the heat to 'high' [ NOT a fine thing] He swears he had nothing to do with it.

My daughter's floor length, black gabardine skirt is finished now, and she looked lovely last night in her tuxedo shirt, jacket and skirt as she played in the Symphonic Winter Concert. I sat in the audience, everything blurry from trying to sew without my glasses [ vandals took them when they came in and turned up the stew] And I'm wondering: Is there any jail time attached to assaulting a school department head with an unattractive bolt of fabric? Or would that just be a hefty fine?

Monday's spiritual clearing house

On cold, wet mornings like this one, I find myself in traffic- praying under my breath, tapping the steering wheel, sometimes whistling between gritted teeth- sitting at stop lights. The endless dirty semi's roar past, the blonde women in those swingy -looking haircuts and driving huge SUV's, the school buses. Everything looks dark and slightly condensed from the cold.

I pray for lots of things, pray in spite of some stuff, pray twice as often over a few things. With each nail hammered, every joke told, every word typed we take another step along the journey. Though I worry about things in my own life [ kids and money, for the most part] It's somehow going to be okay, and the realisation of this sifts down into my heart even as I am watching traffic, either complaining to God or thanking God in what seems to me a slightly bi-polar manner. I am pleased, however, that God is familiar with the way I think and probably doesn't bat an eyelash, no matter what astounding thing I might communicate to Him. He's pretty much heard it all by now, and is politely waiting for me to finish so He can start arranging things the way He planned to in the first place. Notice I didn't say 'fix'. Maybe navigate on my behalf is a better choice. After all, this is a fallen dimension and stuff happens. Through our own choice as a species over thousands of years, we have made God into but an interested bystander -one who longs to help, but has been shut out like a dowdy brush salesman on the doorstep. His only recourse is to wait on the prayers of individuals, one by one, for random chances to help us through the chain of events on this planet. Yet He never seems to give up on wanting to offer assistance. This probably explains why He's God and I'm not.

The lady packed her ethereal trunks...

...and sometime on Wednesday morning drew her last troubled breath. She was a wide eyed girl at 83, always smiling and gracious, even when lucidity finally betrayed her and she couldn't remember why she was smiling. I got to take care of her for a while, greeting her almost casually at our first meeting. She was placid and friendly, and you'd never know how very sick she was. She talked about how the leaves would turn soon and wondered out loud what was for lunch. Who could've known our lives would become intertwined in a few short weeks?

The bright blue eyes and puckered Irish face are peaceful now. She attended her own wake down in New Orleans this Thursday. Then onto a memorial service in her adopted suburb of Belle Chasse. Finally, like the fallen Lincoln touring the country from the dignity of his Pullman car, Miss Charlene rolled into East Texas to her own ancestral resting place.

Renaissance Joe

US Lithograph Co 1903

S

He sits in front of me, or anybody else he talks to - earnest, attentive, gravely listening. He crosses one long leg across his knee and shifts his weight, getting settled in. A conversation with Joe is always gratifying, simply because one feels they have his entire focus, that he is completely present to the other person -whoever that might be. The mail carrier, the minister who stops by to see his elderly parents -they are all equally important to Joe, at least on the surface. Although glib in his own right under the correct circumstances, he is always careful to answer any question lobbed his way, giving it the consideration of somebody about to win a million dollars on a game show. This endearing quality also makes him seem a bit surreal, and often leads to questions about Joe which really have no easy answer.

He is one of three brothers whom I've known for many years. He is simple and appears to be straightforward, yet a closer check reveals him to be a most complicated human being. At 52, he's my contemporary and yet I always feel a lot younger than he is. Joe can rebuild an engine, play the stock market with quiet intuition, making money when others are losing it. Knead his own perfect bread or hail a cab with equal aplomb. He can play any stringed instrument with ease, and yet the playing isn't passionate. It's perfect, a solid performance, for he and his brothers have few musical equals. But there is a glossiness about the music which leaves the listener confused, maybe a little disappointed. This might be because whoever interacts with Joe encounters only a reflection of themselves. His brown eyes are mirrors of those he meets- no smoke to accompany the mirrors, for Joe is an honest man and what you see is basically what's there. But a little less,too. After losing three sons -two who were infants, dying just a few days old and expiring in his arms at the hospital. The third a teenage son in a senseless traffic accident. A wife who walked away after years of marriage-the burden of association too great, maybe.

And now , in many ways, he's a guy for whom everything is easy. Once you shut down the main artery to your heart and set the auto pilot, your worries are over. He laughs often, is unendingly gentle and is always busy. Lately, it's been figuring out how to launch a helium filled, LED blinking UFO over Springdale without being arrested. He would briefly note the ensuing chaos, then move on to something else . His brain is always alive, planning the next practical joke or building the next motorcycle in his mind.

Life is good, as long as one skims along the surface, chuckles gently and [ thankfully] doesn't have time to read things like internet blogs.

The road less taken

PDI image


October galloped up behind me again this year-it's been hectic and there have been times when I wondered about the wisdom of it all. My decisions, that is - not this being October. Like I could do anything about moving whole months around, although I've considered it.

Back in August I added the final touches on Getting Over Myself. This ego altering project included realizing that I'm not going to meet any more rich people who are desperate for murals in their overly mortgaged homes. Well, okay. I'm down with that. After all, I've done lots of things -and one of those things included taking care of elderly home bound patients for a year, when I was in my twenties.
They seemed to like me and I them. I'm a quiet person except for when I'm not and they seemed to feel comfortable around me. Couple this with my ability to talk Benny Goodman and and War Bonds -well. It all fell into place. A year later, however, I was offered a position with the local paper and found myself unable to resist the chance to write for a living -even if it was only the school page, the jail report and the occasional column. Lots of check passing pictures, local politicians shaking hands.

Fast forward to a few months ago. I decided to retake the health care course I muddled through so many years ago. This one was so hard- intense enough that I felt foolish for telling my instructor I had taken one twenty three years ago. So much had changed and there was so much more to learn it was as if I'd never darkened the door of a classroom. But I passed, and made a good grade for the course. Meantime I had accepted my first patient in decades -Miss Charlene B, who is in the fourth stage of lung cancer. I accepted the job, for our families had been friends for many years. I was clumsy at first, but I grew to love my patient. Our society was interrupted while I took the refresher course...but by that time, her six month prognosis had dwindled, seemingly.
Last Sunday was spent with her on the fourth floor at Washington Regional while her exhausted daughter slept. She is as blue eyed and pretty as one would want any 83 year old person to be. And no matter what her level of pain [ which has been considerable lately] she is always a lady. I'd like to be Miss Charlene when I grow up, but first, I've decided - I want to go on and become a hospice nurse. That's the end goal, though for a while I may have to be content with an attendant's certificate.

My classes for Certified Nursing Assistant [ CNA] begin in January, and I'm dreading them while looking forward at the same time. I'm doddering, rather middle aged and have little short term memory these days. But I have decided to do this thing, even if I have to test twice. This afternoon I walked into the hospice facility when they have moved my lovely patient, and knew right away that this or some place like it was where I was needed. I'm still somewhat in shock, because it's been some time since I've had a real epiphany of any description.

Well, now.
Thank you, Barrack Obama and George Bush and whoever else has sent our financial future hurtling through space . Because of your treachery and arrogance, one tiny, almost invisible yet fine thing has solidified in the life of an ordinary person. Otherwise I might have never realized. I wouldn't have been forced outside my comfort zone.
Painting is my first love, but I feel as though another part of my reason for being here is waiting to be discovered, too.

New Life Through Your Firestone Credit Card

I'm confused by this photo, though duly impressed. Does this mean there are 'hot boys' inside? Or is this chrome limo advising all 'hot boys' [ or even luke warm ones ] to climb in and take advantage of the air conditioning?

I can't even begin to know what this means, being so far out of the loop. The Extreme Money Bunny is not a frequent visitor here and as a result I am often ignorant of how to best spend my money. Are people demanding on a routine basis that their cars spell things out in chrome now? A brave new world with such people in it... what do such folks want their cars to say, anyway?
I am just happy to have my much humbler [ ancient] PT out of the shop, with a shiny new fan unit, guaranteed to actually cool the engine off - as God intended - by shutting itself on and off, thanks to a new thermostat. Last week the sound of frantic coolant trying to re-enter the reservoir sounded like hailstones pounding my hood in. I was a mere 55 miles from home and managed to take it all in stride, though it sounded a bit like the Four Horsemen rounding the corner, to me anyway.

My car is not glamorous. Bits of the blue are dinged by callous people in parking lots who slam their car doors into the nearest vehicle, cackling into their cell phone. Thanks to a gravel truck, it also has a cracked windshield.
Look at the showroom beauty pictured above and imagine some chewed -up bits of walnut hull, [ squirrels sit in the maple tree out front and spit at my car during appalling rodent contests, apparently.] a bit of brake dust on the passenger side hub and a dingy Union Jack sticker on the back rear window.

From the time I drove it off the Chrysler lot [ with 12 miles on the odometer] it has used more oil than a Sherman Tank. After all these years, I don't question. I just top it off on a regular basis. If I continue the synthetic oil, maybe [ I am told by helpful males close to the project] I can get another 100,000 miles. I've loved this car and will drive it until large hunks of it fall off in the driveway, but...next time...I loves me the Toyota pickup truck , in some festive, pearly, irridescent colour -sort of like looking into a puddle at the gas station.

Patrick Swayze was more than a fine dancer and handsome leading man. He was quiet, strong and knew who he was as a person. He wasn't showy and tended to stay out of the limelight.

I will miss this courageous fellow Texan for lot of reasons.

SO...you wanna be a Ho

That's right. Need to purchase a home to use for your new...ah... 'Performing Arts ' enterprise? Don't worry about those pesky taxes. We can get around that..you want to employ illegal immigrant 13 year olds as working girls?
In the words of this video taped ACORN acountant...."no problem".

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,548827,00.html

This amazing news is somewhat darkened by Joe Wilson's apology, which hit the president's desk before dawn. Nice try, Joe, but it would've been better to keep your mouth shut rather than grovel later.

At Rest In Glendale

I heard earlier this morning that the much refrigerated, overly gawked at remains of Michael Jackson will finally have a home in Forest Lawn this sundown.


It dawned on me that I had visited Forest Lawn Cemetery back in the 1980's. We went just to see the Pickfords and Flynns and remains of other famous folk...it's a serene and beautiful place , filled with my second favourite tree [poplar], gentle knolls and always a little breeze blowing in the open spaces. It also helps that the phenomenal Walt Disney is buried there, too.

I didn't know back then that the man who would someday be my closest confidant and political sparring partner has an older brother buried there - way back in 1955. James was 15 years old and the light of his parents' life. They went on to have other children, but on this little rise in the real estate in the middle of two busy freeways- yet silent and far way from them - James would always be brown eyed, good natured and a mystery to the brothers and sisters who came later. A family enigma, the absent tie breaker in every squabble, whom they still wonder about.
My significant other is pleased his unknown brother is buried near the endearing Jimmy Stewart. It seems right somehow. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington is not only one of Mic's favourite movies, but his bashful, wonderfully accurate James Stewart impression is possibly why I hooked up in the first place.
I never get tired of being called 'Virginia'.