Stuck at 36

I am thinking my Blog, this Blog, "Hang Art" has come to a full conclusion.  I began it and named it such because I was frustrated by all the empty wall space in my little town and the general lack of support for artists.  We needed space to "Hang Art" and it was supposed to be a simple blog.
   Then, wouldn't you know it, I got Cancer and my life changed considerably.  I was full of ideas and emotions and stories I just had to express.  I thought to myself "what would I do if I had a year to live?"
The stories tumbled and fell and became too much for a single blog.  For awhile I had three.  This one, my Cancer Blog and the total story of the day to day battle on my ArtWanted Art site. That can be found Here.http://www.artwanted.com/slate.
   Cancer will make you serious.  It will do that to you.  If you are worth a damn it will make you reexamine your life, retrace your trails, find old acquaintances and meet new friends.  I discover painting along the way and have shared that experience with you all.  The Blogs have been helpful to me.  When I was at my sickest
when I had lost 50 pounds and could barely walk and people might ask me how am I doing, I had an answer for them.  "Doing fine, thank you," didn't seem appropriate.  It is not the right answer for one with such an ailment.  I wanted to tell people what I was really feeling, what was going on, all of me.  The Blogs allowed me to do that.
   If you have read them you have really gotten to know me.  This is how I really am, what I do and how I think and what concerns me in life, what I value.  I have met friends from all over the world on this blog, friends I will cherish.  You know about my "little island studio" in my back yard, my isolation from the world and last year my purchase of a Tom-Tom, the first time off this island in years and years!
   I have no more stories.  You pretty much know it all.
When I talk politics on this Blog I get the feeling that I am putting you to sleep.  That is a big disappointment to me.  This is not a political blog, not the right forum for that sort of thing.  There are other blogs for that.
There are also cooking blogs and I have posted recipes here.  It is my blog and I post everything here.  It is me.
   Our country is in deep trouble.  When it is difficult to find a common ground amongst the artist community,
when it is so very hard to even get a conversation going, I am discouraged.  I never even knew that artists could not be open minded.  I always thought that we were an advancing force.  Investigators and creators.
   My Blog has run full circle and it is time to end it.  A finished book.
   I like blogging and there will be another, an excuse to sit and gather my thoughts, write them down and organize, plan and plot and think out loud.  It won't be political although I am political.  I have questions and am suspicious, cautious and diligent.  I have voted Republican And I have voted Democrat.  My eyes are wide open and I listen to my heart.  I protect the Earth.
   I don't know what it will be or even when it will be.  I might just be making longer comments on your blogs and leave it at that.  Or start the computer blog for idiots.  I have the qualifications for that.
I am happy with my little warm studio and I will be doing more painting.  I can never stay away too long from steel and that shop is only a wall away.  When I make something interesting I will post it on my
ArtWanted Site.  You can always visit me there and leave comments too. It is only the art of me there.
   I have been all over the world in this blogosphere and have friends everywhere.  One day I might show up on your back porch so don't be surprised!  I have a Tom-Tom!
   2012, a New Year is close at hand.  Those who believe in doom and Armageddon and the Mayan Calendar will be happy.  Sort of a big Y to K experience, remember that one?  Are we supposed to conquer this Earth or take care of it?  Always questions!  I hope all the best for everybody, that the new year will be prosperous in Spirit, a kinder and gentler place.
   And Merry Christmas!  I hope the Season is healthy and wonderful for all. ending now, Jerry Carlin

When We Only Hear Half

There is a problem with arguing and I seldom do it.  When we are talking, especially when we raise our voices, our ability to listen is curtailed and we seldom hear what was said.  This is probably more true about politics than  domestic quarrels.  If government were turned over to private enterprise most of them would be fired.
   It sounds so reasonable when the House Speaker wants to create a budget for an entire year.  Do you want to face this financial issue every two months?  Grinding the government to a halt and preventing real discourse?  Of course we do not want a government financed two months at a time!  That is so obvious that we know it must not be the issue!  Something else is going on.  They talk one thing and do another.  Obfuscate, I think, is the word.  God, we have to deal with this shit for a year and a half!  Why can't we all just get along?
   It is probably about several things, always more than we are told, always more than we care to listen to.
Obama's strength is certainly not in bending others to his will and this close to an election the Republicans will do nothing to make him look good.
   It is the Pipeline that bothers me.  It has been tagged onto the recent budget issue by the Republicans and it is the main reason why they can't or won't reach any kind of compromise.
   One one side the Pipeline sounds good.  Twenty thousand jobs and oil to Texas.  Oil is on a World Market Price so it will not be cheaper but at least bought from friends and closer.  I might even be in favor of this but I think it is a serious issue and should deserve a separate hearing, an argument for another day, not attached to another.
   I do not know "the real price" for this pipeline.  Will it weaken our Environmental Laws and give us the pollution of Mexico?  I do not know.  Oil from the shale of Canada is about the dirtiest oil there is, difficult and expensive to process, complicated and polluting to acquire and refine.  It is necessary to "fracked the Earth" (sounds dirty, doesn't it?) to get it.  Fracking is a process of injecting chemicals deep into the Earth to release the oil.  It destroys water tables.  Pollutes wells and destroys aquifers.
   There are good things and bad things about the pipeline.  It is a very serious issue, far too serious to be tagged along side of a payroll tax bill.  There must be a reason they do not build a refinery in Canada near to where this oil is?  and then just sell us nice clean gas?  Lots of questions!
   Most arguments are never about issues anyway.  They almost always come from a loss of trust.  They are about power and control and, of course, money.  I wonder who profits?
   We should have a deep, reverent respect for this Earth.  We are all passengers and it is our only ship.

On a different note I am considering starting a computer Blog for idiots!  Would that be fun?

My website is HERE

The Downward Spiral: (In)Famous Last Words

The Downward Spiral: (In)Famous Last Words

these are pretty fun and funny quotes. Bill's blog itself is pretty bleak but these are fun to read quotes.

In Mourning

My computer is seriously ill and soon I will be pulling the cables and I wonder what will happen?  In a way
I am IN there.  The images I have caught on camera,  my paintings that only exist in the digital world, every piece of steel art photographed and documented, my personal thoughts, a hundred stories from my past, my entire battle with the demon Cancer, that train ride through hell, my very first steps into this computer world, my stumbles and falls and friends I have made along the way all reside in this computer.  It is a journal of my life, the only book I will ever write.  In so many gigabytes it knows who I am.
   Oh, I can "flash drive" her.  I know that.  Like memories of first kisses they get filed to the back into obscurity, lost and lied to and misremembered.  Something "alive" becomes a computer chip in a drawer.

 I am  IN this computer!

I am hesitant to pull the plug although my new computer is sitting right next to me, tempting, sleek, modern and fast.  Beautiful, clean and shiny and black.
   My old computer is demanding and I think there are one hundred and twelve wires connected to her.  She is fat and broad and takes up a lot of room on my desk.  She has grown slow and dull and old but she is a tough old bird.  I remember when I got her she was about five then and already middle aged for a computer.  She was a gift from my daughter and I had purchased her five years earlier when she went away to college.
She was the best available in her day, $2,500 more than I paid for my first brand new car!  After five years at school she was worn out, tired and out dated when she arrived into my messy shop.
I was always told that you had to be so very careful around a computer, always clean and spotless with no dust or dirt.  That is why I never had one in my shop.  It is pretty dirty here.  Steel dust and spilled coffee and paint everywhere.

 New Hot Lover!

   "It is worthless dad, you can't hurt it," my daughter said.  And so we began.  This computer has been a tough fine friend and has taught me "everything" I know and she knows things about me that no one else knows.
   I wonder about the Internet and Ethernet and cyber space.  I wonder whether each typed word, every image, my deepest thoughts will be retrievable.  Immortality that way, huh?  The real reason artists do what they do.
   My new computer is next to me with no wires nor cables, just mysterious rays that zap from my house to my shop, though walls and around the trees.  The neighbors might have these too.  Rays hitting rays, we are surrounded.
   She is sleek and hot and fast and I am a little afraid to touch her!
   If you want to take her for a spin, help me try her out, she has a new address.  I will at the end of this year pull the plugs from this computer and my new email will be:  slate2235@gmail.com
It is a good address now because I can't let go.  I have two computers!  Jerry

Modern Technology!

I am almost there!  This will be a confessional of sorts but nothing really graphic or bloody.  My computer is on its death bed and has in fact been pretty sick for a long time.  It is in my shop and black from steel dust and at ten years is just plain old.  I am told the Rams are full to the top and the gigabytes have been eaten.
There is no more room, no digital expansion, no more space between the electrons, nothing.
   Slow has been okay for me.  I have learned a great deal from this speed and often it has matched my own.
I can watch utube seven seconds at a time then it reconfigures and adjusts, pausing to get direction and space.  Some of you have emailed me or attempted "live chat" while this computer was attempting something else and, good old friend that it has been, it is incapable of doing two things at the same time.  It cannot multi-task.
   I have slowly introduced myself to this modern world.  There is another computer in the house but it is clean and sleek with no scars from actual living, not even a speck of dust.  It is the "house computer", my wife's computer and I have never touched it.  However, she is sleek and modern (the house computer, not the wife) and well connected.  High speed cable with all the bells and whistles!  Can dance and sing at the same time and knows tricks this old country boy has never heard of!
   My shop computer and I are friends and it has been a wonderful and slow friendship.  "Friends first"!
She is connected to a land line and tethered like that is a bit timid and slow with the world.  As friendships sometimes go, she remains the same while I have changed.  Breaking up has not been easy.  I am confronted with decisions that I have never faced.  I am so used to her pauses and hesitation.  I know when she is just plain not thinking!  I confess that when she was at her worst, when she was just so very slow, I was thinking about another!  Yes I was.
   There is nothing ever that will replace a first love.  You can never regain that singular experience that always comes with fantasy and unrealistic ambitions.  In a way this first computer and I grew up together.
I think she taught me everything she knew and she was patient, I'll give her that.  With a new computer I wanted an entirely different experience.  Not repeating the same kinds of things.  I want to go FAST!
   I did justify this divorce.  The old computer and its provider service have been expensive mistresses, forcing me to keep a land line and tying me to two providers, the cable for the house and connected to the telephone in my shop.  I have no cable connected to the shop and always thought that these relationships just had to be the way they were.
   Then I discovered, several years later because I am pretty slow too, Wi-fi!  With a router gadget I could free myself from the world of wires and cables!  Unbound!  Untethered!
   So for the rest of December I have 2 computers!  Then there will be changes!  I am at the first kiss stage
now and find it difficult to let go.  I'll keep you posted on what happens.  I think I will be losing my email address and have to find another.  As a part of this freedom experience I will be abandoning my land line telephone number that I have had for over 40 years!  I don't know what to do about that yet.  I am not yet comfortable with my new found freedom!

No Ticker Tape Parade

No giant parties to welcome home the troops, so sense of accomplishment, not even much of a sense of relief, not even a sigh.  The war in Iraq is officially over!  Nine years, our longest war ever and it may go down in history as the war that never was.
   Officially it was Bush's War, a misguided response to 9-11, costing over $800 Billion and counting.  More than 4,500 dead American youngsters, our very best and strongest, over 32,000 seriously wounded.  Obama ran on the promise to end this tragedy and he did.   There should be celebrating, dancing in the streets and parties into the night, but there won't be.
   This was a war that we never felt.  It was not on television every night like the Vietnam war.  On a daily basis most of us never knew what was happening and probably couldn't even find Iraq on a map.  Shiites or Sunnis, we wouldn't know which was what.
   There was no rationing for this war, no scrounging for metal bits for the war effort, not even a tax to support the war effort.  All of it, the entire nine years has been put on our credit cards.  We had no idea what we were buying, how much it was going to cost.  It was a war without education and the National News should feel ashamed.  That "fifth element" of government did nothing.
   Thank you, President Obama for doing what you said you would do.  Maybe now we can concentrate on the Home Front, jobs here at home, what we need so badly.  So sad there is no jubilation, no pride in a job well done and over with.  We know the bill will be in the mail.

The Proof is in the Pudding!

I think the most precise art, the most exacting and finely crafted masterpieces are edible.
   The microwave oven has been the most destructive invention ever to the culinary experience.  If we are what we eat it is no wonder we have lost a sense of purpose and have an empty unfulfilled sensation.  No sense of accomplishment other than to say, "yeah, I did that", heated up the instant dinner in the microwave!
   I think modern people know so much less than generations before us.  We no longer darn socks and most of us wouldn't even know how to do this.  Bread is something that comes from the store and is wrapped in cellophane, a nice meal is purchased from the deli in styrofoam containers.
   I like the Christmas Season because for two weeks in the year all of this changes.  Pots and pans almost never used are dug out from the back of the cupboard, grandma's old recipes are carefully read over and the smells of good food permiate the entire house.  People are cooking!
   There is a satisfaction in making something and sharing it with others that we are rapidly losing.  In our modern technological world we are becoming all the more capable of making nothing!  That is the sense we get.  Today I made nothing.  I am a maker of nothing.  That is who I am.  Nothing.
   So in this Season, for two weeks we can become something, a candy maker, a candle maker, cookie, bread maker.  Maker of gifts.  Joy maker.  Creator.
   I think artists are aware of this desire, this necessity to make things, to create and share.  And I think a good cook, a well prepared meal, a nice loaf of bread, a plate of home made cookies is art in itself.  All of the senses are captured, sight, smell, and I can eat it.  It is the best art, produced from the soul and appreciated by all.

 My Daughters, cooking!

I can be found HERE