Thanks, Kerry, Stylish huh?

Of all the things I've been called in my life, Stylish., not so much.

Big surprise a couple of weeks ago when friend Kerry Schafer passed on the Stylish Blog Award to me and several others on her post over at KerrySchafer.com .

Thanks much Kerry for including me in this.

I really appreciate it.

Love This Life, Onward Through the Fog - I've been doing it for a couple or so years now. It's growth in quality has been slow and steady I think. I come to be having to write fairly late in my life. Kerry, and a few others have been great help and great encouragement in that(So it's really partially her fault, as well as my talented poet brothers Michael & G. Barnes, Johanna Harness, Kristina Martin, &, &, & ...

Many of those folks can be found in the "Blogs I follow most" of my newly declared stylish Blog, or in the "Following" section of my @Barnestormjohn twitter profile.

That puts us at the end of the "...thank God, and Everybody and their dog" part. It's on to the meat of this thing(unless you're a vegetarian, and then we're on to the Tofurkey & Curried anything). As Kerry and Kristina before have done, we begin the thing -

It's time for me to observe the venerable rules, rites, lefts and traditions of this most auspicious award:

1. Thank the Stylish Blogger Award giver and link back to their blog. See above.

2. Share seven little known things about myself. O-kay...

• I was born on Shakespeare's birthday, April 23rd, in the same year as were born Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson and Jamie Lee Curtis, 1958. Hmmmmm, 'splains a lot, huh?

• I was engaged, but never married, three times - in kindergarten.

• The first thing I ever learned on guitar was the bass line to Cream's Sunshine of Your Love.

• I had to take swim lessons three summers before I learned to breath while swimming(without choking).
  
• On the Myers & Briggs Character/Temperament sorter I'm an INFX(cross over INFP&INFJ), along with roughly .5% of the general population. Yes, I'm a rare & special boomer child.

• I have never been to a high school football game (Try not to hate me like I hate crowds).

• Even though John Ross was a fairly famous Cherokee Chief, I was actually named after both Gramps - John Barnes and Ross Anderson, nothing to do with the Chief.
  

3. Pass the award on to other bloggers

• Jaqueline Dick for her young but very impressive blog 1emeraldcity. Tweeting as @Fumanchucat, Jaqueline is a prolific and fine poet and essayist, part of the poetry/art gang over at OneStopPoetry(a gathering place for writers and visual artists). She teaches literature and Facilicates discussions of current events and writes. I especially like her micro poetry. Jaqueline is hilarious as well as having quite an astute sense of observation coupled with a fine affinity for words. Major Micro Poetry.
• Aliki McElreath over at Family Education. I have enjoyed the keen mind, thoughtful and very real writing, and kind friendship of Aliki it seems forever, but I guess it's really just a few years now. She is a Creative Writing Professor in North Carolina, An honest and forth coming chronicler of the life, love and laments of a parent of two great children, one of whom happens to have Aspergers. She has been a help in my endeavors to deal with our own special son.
• Jane Devin Over there, at Jane Devin .com, you"ll find the real life of a strong voiced writer, from the land of New Mexico. Researched laboriously over a long span of time and space. @Janedevin on twitter. She just finished writing a big first book. She writes killer Blog Posts also.
  
• Crazy Sister from her Blog: Graze If You Want To, But Don't Eat Dirt. Cello player , Mom, Wife, Writer from Queensland, Australia. She writes things funny, about things, that it turns out, Are Funny. She can also talk in a serious way, though much of it's camouflaged by funny.
  
• Givenya De Elba Sister, it turns out, of Crazy Sister. Her Blog: Killing a Fly with a Ukulele is Probably a Wrong Thing To Do is well worth a follow any time. Another Mom, Professional, Wife, Writer also from Queensland, Australia. It's a whole 'nother mirror world, just like and very different, from an American perspective. She characterizes her family, including the dog, by Toy Story characters. And, it works.
• Karla Archer for Living the Life Fantastic. Not only is she a talented writer & designer, she and her husband Randy met online, on twitter. She and Randy own Archer Creative in Birmingham, AL. They have four great kids that figure prominently in her family posts and in her tweets, followable as @karlaArcher. She and @RandyArcher are bigo Huge Bham fans. And yes, since I wrote that Bham has been devastated, still finding bodies, lives lost or starting over. Do what You can, pease.
  

4. Alert the blogers to the fact that they’ve been awarded.

Will do, immediately after I actually post this.

These Writers are not necessarily that much alike in content, perspective, style or aim.

These Writers are all pretty astute observers and fine story tellers and minds.

Well, I think so.

Once again, Thanks to Kerry Schafer for including me in this. Now, everybody go read each other's stuff.

"Turn to your neighbor(penguin) and Fluff him up a little"- Loveless the love penguin (Robin Williams) from the movie Happy Feet.

the room

Walking though the dark building, lit only by his flashlight, he thought he felt the air chill. Reaching into his vest of many pockets, Phil pulled out his antiquated BlackBerry and pushed the touch screen. No bars, nothing, not a trace of a signal. He'd find the circuit box somewhere before long. He strolled down one of the old hospital's many basement corridors, checking each room for the main power box. He came to the last door in the line. Oddly, he thought he saw a slight puff of dust blow out from under the door as he swung his light around. Almost like a breath and he wondered where that came from. It turned out not to be the power room. No circuit box in there. Which is not to say there were no boxes. As he panned the light around the crowded interior he saw shelves filled with what appeared to be squat dusty plastic boxes, black with some kind of paper labels, as well as older tin cans, some heavily corroded. He started as he heard a whisper, right behind his left ear. Nothing there. As he walked back out of the room, he could have sworn he heard the whisper again.

In the old hospital, down in the basement, in that room, nothing moved that you could tell, but that didn't mean nothing moved. Dust. And ashes. And, a whisper, as though of some long forgotten memory. Forgotten, but not truly gone. At first, for long decades, there was nothing of awareness. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, they began to remember, to feel, and feeling knew loss. They knew not what they had lost. But they whispered among themselves. They whispered confusion, and darkness, and light. They whispered of bygone days out in the sun, and then of endless times confined within. but within what.

Plans were underway for demolition to begin within a few months, after all the channels had been gone through, paperwork signed, bids taken, more paperwork, then more again.

The phone rang at the Institute for Studies of the Unseen. There was something perhaps of interest down in Salem. Could they come to the old State Hospital? Yes, the one where they made that famous movie. Well, It was no big deal, really, just that they were getting ready to tear it down. No, of course demolition was not ISU's thing, but there were the whisperings. In the Room of Forgotten Souls. Where they kept the cremated remains of patients from the last sixty years. Sure, they could come today, today would be great.

The emf meter went wild, even though the wires had already been stripped out, and not a watt of power in the place. Likewise the Sub and Ultra sonic recorders. Mary and her tech team had to have new apps written to sort it all out. Five thousand voices, all trying to say their names, or the names of living relatives, all at once. The ISU team had tried to bring in a medium to talk to the voices, get them to take turns speaking. They wouldn't shut up long enough to hear the happy medium, overjoyed as he was to be there, for the Great Speaking, as he called it.

Eventually, temporary employees were hired to make the thousands of calls. No one told them where the information they gave had really come from. "We found some old data hidden away". People came from all over the country, and some even from overseas. All came to claim their long lost crazy relatives' ashes. They made great conversation pieces for one's mantle. And if you were quiet, after your dinner guests had all gone home they would whisper, happily, of freedom and release.





Note: The Room of Forgotten Souls is a real place within the old Oregon State Hospital, in Salem Oregon, where the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was filmed.

kptv-fox12, in Portland recently did a story on the room, but that link has since been removed from their site.

This Oregon State site, does however have listings of the names of the "Cremains" for those who think they may have relatives there.

Photographer David Maisel has done a fine series of photos of some of the old Cremains cans in his collection Library of Dust. I did not include them in the story because I don't have rights to them. However, you can see them Here.

For further reading on the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, you can start with the Wiki here.

It's not my hammer

I recently found this old hammer half buried under a rhododendron in my back yard.

It's not my hammer.

I was raised better than that. We don't treat tools that way in my family. But why does it still stand there, rusty and unused in the weather?

It's not my hammer.

It's a remnant of some previous tenant, some prior existence there, in my back yard.  I don't have to take charge of it's care if I don't want to. That was someone Else's responsibility.  I'm leaving it out there for a reason, several really. I like the way it looks by the blue box.  It has some meaning there, beyond that of a discarded hand tool, unused and uncared for.

It's not my hammer.


I could take it inside, try to clean it up & make it whole. It may not even be safe to use. Structural integrity and all that. I've had a chip off an old tired hammer break off and stick in my arm before. Yeah, really.  Part of me wants to feel guilty about not making the effort to bring it back to usefulness.

I have been fascinated by this forgotten object though.  It seems to be trying to tell me things. I've been visiting it out on the patio, watching it, listening for what things it might have to tell me, or to teach me.


Whoever left it out there in the first place is probably not a bad person. Sometimes one might forget, regardless of a proper upbringing, as regards the care of one's tools. One might be a young child, or easily distracted, or just plain forgetful. Not everyone recognizes or considers the value of a tool. Or perhaps they were just really busy, too busy to deal with one more thing. Life can be that way some times.

It has been said that we all live in a world of symbols and I believe that's true on a number of levels.  I've also read and heard that we Native Americans have always lived in worlds of symbols and I feel that to certainly be true of myself and those close to me.

A hammer is a tool. It is also a symbol, an overall abstraction of a thing you can use to make something else, repair something else, Create new things in the world. Having a hammer and exploring what a hammer can do changes the way one perceives the world around them and the possibilities therein.  It gives us a new way to relate to the world and those in it.

A talent is a tool.

For too long I have let some of my talents, some of my tools, lie rusting under the bushes so to speak. I was raised better than that. Here on this page I've been working on some of that.  There are a couple of other talents I also need to get back to.  It can be difficult to make the time. There are a lot of other things in my life that require my time, energy and attention.  It's a work  in progress, my life.

It's not my hammer.

But they're my talents, wherever they came from. I have sometimes tried to deny that. If  a talent is not mine, not there in sufficient strength to be of use, then I'm not responsible to it, right?  Ok, I see that's weak.  We all have more than one talent. No, really. Some are shiny and bright. Easy for us and for others to see their strength, their beauty, their usefulness. Other talents, not so much. 

It's not my hammer. Or is it?

So we have to pick and choose. Which talent to nuture and use, which to let go. Which tool to pick up and use,  which to let go of, at least for a while. But I see some tools, some talents won't let you go. So work on the writing, let the  knife throwing go.  Work on the guitar playing, let the painting go.  And on and on and on. Little talents. Big talents. Useful, or not.

They're all my tools to use, to be responsible for and to enjoy as I choose. 

I'll work in some more writing, more guitar and some visual art, photography - yes, knife throwing - not so much.  And, of course, that weak talent, that rusty tool,  for making money - that's in need of some pretty big work I see also.

In all of that it's important to not forget, not neglect what may not be a talent, but is certainly important.  The taking care of others - family, friends or to some extent, whomever I might come in contact with.  Sometimes Kind is more important than Competent.


I guess the hammer is mine now. I think I'll go bring it in and put it in the garage, maybe see if I can clean it up a bit, even if it's not my best hammer, it's my hammer now.
 

Bright workin'

This day they are working on a boat down on the Multnomah Channel, out just south of Scappoose off Highway Thirty. Driving down the road, gazing at the bluffs on the one side, there are dozens of small cascades from the recent heavy rains. Some are no bigger than your fore arm, others big enough to drown a goat. The little water falls come rushing from the seeps and holes in the rocks, between the mosses and ferns abundant there.

Turning in off the Highway, one would never imagine that a few hundred yards down the road was an affluent community of floating homes and boat houses. It's very rural here. This place is not like the manicured lawns and pristine monitored parking beyond the coded iron gates at Columbia River Yacht Club. Entering in there is all about the image of The Club.

Going down the dock ramp, under the moss covered blue canvas awning, Hank spies the resident great blue heron standing ankle deep in the chill river's edge. It is stoically ignoring the cavorting and diving black cormorants as well as the big gray geese on the bank just down from him. They say one will always be known by the company one keeps.

It feels good to duck into a tidy boathouse from the chilling rain. Bob the owner is considerate about getting the place heated up before their arrival.  An advantage to working in a boathouse just across the dock from the owner's  floating home.  Retired Dr.s sometimes do alright for themselves and Bob has known what he wanted to wind up with for a long time it seems. His boat is a thirty eight foot Grand Banks Classic. A well respected and seaworthy trawler with a comfortable salon, state rooms fore and aft, and all the amenities of home. A good boat to cruise up the coast to the San Juans aboard.  Bless his heart, makes good coffee too.
 
Hank digs in the supply boxes for the two-twenty grit sand paper, his towels and his deck boots - no street soles or hiking boots on this boat. He'll get up on the boat and then remember his rubber gloves. Best not to get skin oils on the surface of the varnish. Fold the paper and fold it again. It's got to be the right stiffness, the right flexibilty to both form to the curves and hold up to the edges. Long strokes when can and not too much pressure. He wouldn't want to leave scratches too deep or they'll show through the next coat. Where paint is said to hide a multitude of sins, varnish will expose all transgressions against the wood. Stroke and stroke and stroke some more. Wipe the dust off and see what he's got. Gotta maintain that balance between concentration and relaxation to get as light and even a sanding as can. Take the high points off but leave the deep. That's how you fill in the grain for that solid smooth shine. The goal is what they call a "Steinway" for that lacquered deep glass look.  It takes about ten or twelve coats to build up enough varnish to hold off the elements. It has to be sanded and prepped between each coat. Varnish adheres by mechanical, not chemical bond. It has to have a surface with some tooth to grab.

After a couple or three hours between Hank and Sally the sanding on the brow trim up high and the transom aft will be done. The cap and top rails will come later along with the door frames. Then dry dust wiping and alchohol washing to take off more dust. Dust is one of the main enemies of the bright, along with mositure, too much temperature, too little temperature, too much wind or any kind of contamination.  Sally likes to mix the varnish, she's better at getting it just the right thinkness for conditions she's best at gauging.

You can tell within the first few seconds sometimes, how the mix is going to go on, how you have to adjust your technique. It's all about the feel and the flow then. Still one needs to look back behind, check for dry spots or sags to be touched up if can before the wet edge is lost. If you lose the wet edge it will never be smooth, requiring more trouble on the next sanding, or worse causing a final coat not to be a final coat.  At several hundred to a thousand dollars a coat, owners don't like do overs. As soon as the coat is applied it's off the boat and don't go back near unless you have to. To bump it then is not good.

Cleaning the brushes and the cups, or packing them to be done thoroughly at home is the last to do before getting clear and letting it dry and cure for a couple of days. The varnish has to be good and dry before it can be sanded again.


They will find out then just how well they have done, or not.

Hank Johnson Searches For the Word, among other things.

                                                           no connection, I just like it.

Kristina said that writing was a little bit like dying one word at a time some days.

Hank liked the sound of that some how. Not the dying so much as the words.  Yes, that was it, the words, the worlds, the feeling and the meaning. Like dying. Like giving it all.  Like that favorite song, Witness, by Sarah McLachlan - "...And when we're done soul searching, and we've carried the weight, and Died for the Cause - Is misery made beautiful, right before our eyes, mercy - be revealed, or blind us where we stand?"  Sometimes it's like that, to carry the weight and die for the cause.  One more, as Bono says, in the name of love.


Rod Serling used to say "You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone." Again, he liked the sound of the words, & the feeling. Yes, there it was again - the feeling and the meaning.

And from somewhere in the Bible, the beginning of the Book of John, the beginning of the world, "In the Beginning there was The Word. And the word was with God. And the Word was God ."

There it was. Again. Words, God's words, created the world. At least in that one interpretation of the scene.

Hank's brother had once said something about words being how we thought as adult human beings. That we thought in words. He knew that was true, but not always, or perhaps not always the whole of it.

How much of his Dream Time was spent in an absence of words? Not all, but still much. A dimension of sight, of sound, yes, and of touch and smell and time and space, of feeling, and of fog. Always that fog in his mind.


Hank remembered something they talked of once, in the old time, he and she. Coming up, or perhaps across as it were, from one of those long twilight zone times of senses all alight and more somehow, to the knowledge, the absolute certain knowledge that there was and is a place of being where light and sound share a same frequency.   He had  later lost that taste, that touch of that realization. For years lost.

And then The Ring.The ringing in his ears. The ringing in his brain, or was it his mind. He didn't know when it started, at first only noticed when all else was silence. Then gradually The Ring asserted itself as a real thing. A certain tangible thing in of it's own right, it's own reality and reality changing existance, undeniable. Inescapable.

And then he remebered that place. The Place where Light and Sound and Touch and Taste and Love were all the same. The same frequency.  The same meaning.
And Hank knew again, The Ring.

Could he somehow catch that light by paint or by photo process?
That light, that equal to The Ring.

And what of words? At once pure abstractions of things more tangible, more Real, and yet very Real and tangible things in their own right.  To capture the word, the just right word to abstractly or concretely represent a thing, a dimension, of sight and sound and touch and smell and Feeling, for which he was just not sure there was a word or even a combination of words.

And there again, he found The Ring.

Hank will keep searching, living, loving, reading and writing, for the words, for the word.

Experimental stream- o - consciousness thing.

Seven something am, pink clouds at sunrise. Boxed Lincoln Town Car taxi, raised about six inches above factory and sporting blindingly shiny 22's - among the minis and smart cars.

Then, after waking up from a mid day nap, tripping in a movie. Then he's driving to the Indian clinic listening to the theme from the X-files - turned way up loud..

White noise machines in the halls of the clinic, wouldn't matter to him, could never hear private conversations behind closed doors over The Ring in his head - tinnitus in the extreme, just adds to the surreal feeling of his perceptions.

Aaron waking up damp, coughing, taking allergie medicine - packing the vintage superman lunchbox.

Elizabeth Moon book - Speed of Dark, a fine slightly sci-fi exploration of being Autistic in a *normal* world.  The question of  treating Autism for Normalcy  vs. Rights of  Neuro-Diversity.

His 20 year old, multi-functional Moog tuner has died, doesn't really need it, but just in case still has his late 70's plastic pitch pipe. Remembers watching his daughter as a child, tuning fork behind her ear, tuning up her cello. Then listening -  Gomez, playing Airstream Driver, acoustic on 101.9 Kink fm live studio ...

Reads  this, found stuck in an old English 101 notebook,  from when J.L. Burke was his teacher:

I heard him ask you "Who can count the apples in a seed?"

But you never understood  that the joke was on us both.

I'd been playing Three-Mile Island, Ayatollah  Bingo

I'd been playing Toxic Waste Roulette

Glenfiddich, Mopar, Valvoline -

Shakespeare, Thorazine, Rock-N-Roll.


Onward Christian Soldiers - what?

Sitting,  Feeling, on the hill. The wind is in my head

Waiting here for Everyman, Hoping I'll see Jesus.

Hoping I'll see.

Hoping.

things I remember

Walking out the back door, across the flagstone patio, down to the creek he saw that it had shrunk back down. The earlier heavy rain had brought the tiny creek from a foot deep to more like ten, roaring at flash flood speed over all in it's path. He watched closely along the bank, scrubbed bare now. There, just there, some oddness, a hole too big for frog or snake.  He dug, and digging down found the shell. A painted turtle or what remained of  one.

Some would find it grisly. To him it was a marvel of design and more. A symbol for his people, some of them, of strength and protection, even though it couldn't protect the inhabitant from the earlier flood.

Turning from the bank he caught the smell, musky and sharp, taste of an old penny on the tongue. He froze in place, knowing that taste, that smell for the only thing it could be. Cotton Mouth. It was the only creature here to be feared, killer venomous, evil tempered and devious.  Picking up his staff he swiveled slowly at the waist, not daring to move his legs yet. It had to be close. After standing there, half crouched for some long minutes, sure it was not directly under foot, he retreated into the creek. If he could smell it, it probably was not in the water.

Wading back upstream towards the house he kept a sharp eye out for any movement, any sign. Finally, coming abreast of the back porch, quickly charging up the bank, glad to be getting out of the snake's territory.  He carried his treasure, the new old turtle shell into the basement to be put with the other half dozen collected over the last couple of years. Some day the inspiration would come, he would know how to paint them, to bring luck, power, or perhaps just the connections with this place and his people he cherished.