Author: Dale

3 Old Men: the staff (day 2)

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Art is an ugly ugly business, you guys.  It just lies there, laughing at you, taunting you with its eternal and unattainable perfectability.  And you should try doing it on a curved surface sometime.

Here we see the staff wrapped in a rectangle approximately 4.75 inches across, that being the circumference of a 2-inch circle—despite my earlier calculation of 6.25 inches.  Don’t know who did that math.

I had found an image of a lizard that I liked, but it didn’t really work when I wrapped it around the staff, and so here I am free-handing the design onto the staff.  The problem is that there’s not a lot of room in less than five inches; the lizard’s claws kept overlapping.

Anyway, eventually I just traced it in marker and cut it off:

You see what I mean about art being ugly.  And the round surface—the poor thing doesn’t even have a right front limb.  It looks decapitated as well, mostly due to the fact that my original concept had the animal kind of draped over the top of the staff, i.e., the body going up one side and the head coming down the other.  But there was no room.  That’s why the creature’s left limb looks as if it’s been broken—I was trying to fit the claws in around the head.

So out comes the tracing paper:

You will recall how yesterday I referenced the joy of having the correct tools.  This is certainly the case with me and art supplies; for almost any project you can imagine, I have what we need.  Earlier this year, in fact, I swore an oath that I would make time each day to “waste art supplies.”  If I had actually done it, I would have had enough art supplies to last quite some time.  But I haven’t done it.  Good thing I didn’t blog about it.  (Or maybe not making it a public thing is why I didn’t do it…)

So this guy gets cut out, wrapped around the staff, and tinkered with.  I spent a lot of time making sure that he was “anatomically correct,” in the sense that the legs are in opposition.  I actually sliced off all four limbs and retaped them at different angles in order to get them to fit on the staff.  And it still didn’t match the mythical fuzzy image somewhere in my head.

And a final re-tracing:

You’ll notice that even in this “final” tracing, I’ve redone the right hind limb in red pencil.

I think what’s going to happen next—other than staining the staff—is that I’m going to make the lizard thinner, which would create space between the claws on the far side of the staff.

Don’t look.  It’s ugly.

3 Old Men: the staff (day 1)

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In an alternate universe, I would be nervously packing and repacking for to leave for Burning Man next weekend.  In this one, I’m just now getting started on a couple of items for Alchemy, the north Georgia Burn in October.

Each officiant in 3 Old Men is responsible for creating his own staff.  (Quick recap: the bare-chested officiant wears a long ceremonial skirt of monks cloth and carries an 8-foot staff.)

The staff must be eight feet long with specific markings:

The markings are specific because we use them to lay out the labyrinth.  The center of the labyrinth is an octagon eight feet across, so we lay out four staves in a square.  The 22-1/8” markings are the corners of the octagon, and from there we can stake out the center.  We’ll be laying out the center of each axis, and from the center mark on the staff, the 3′ and 5′ markings give the edges of the path.

Within this framework, though, it is up to each man to create whatever staff he wants to hold.

So with that background, here’s the first installment of the making of my staff.

My base is nothing more than a 2-inch round from Home Depot.  I’m going to be staining it, and so my first step was to build some stands to hold it off the tarp when I do that.

It was great fun dragging out my radial arm saw and my drill press.  As my friend Craig says, having the right tools is a joy forever.  Of course, he has this sizable quonset hut on his property with a real shop, so his joy is even greater than mine.

Still, it took no time at all to cut up a 1×6 into pieces, drill a 3-inch hole in some of them, split them, and then nail them to the bases.  I ended up with eight of them, so we could actually gussy them up a bit to serve as actual ceremonial pieces to hold our staves.

In action:

You can see the markings on my staff.  Close up:

I went out to Craig’s nifty workshop, and he rabbeted out those grooves for me.  I shan’t explain them.  I think I’m just going to show you each step of the process and let the staff grow for you as I work on it.
I sanded the staff, and thus endeth Day 1 of the making of the staff.

Yippee (not to mention Heigh-ho!)

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Look what came in the mail today, you guys!

I haven’t really blogged about M.T. Anderson’s Pals in Peril series, and so now I shall.

M.T. Anderson is a whiz of a young adult author whose range is fearsome: the dystopian classic Feed (you will never ever again think that Google Glass is a good idea); the alternative Revolutionary War history of Octavian Nothing; and on a completely different level, the awesomely silly Pals in Peril books.

It began with Whales on Stilts, and I was hooked.  Anderson took on the world of children’s book series and scored a direct hit. Lily, our heroine, is nothing special (although her dad obliviously works for a semi-cetaceous evil genius), but her friends Jasper Dash and Katie Mulligan lead such exciting lives that they’ve had whole books written about them.

Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, seems permanently suspended in 1930s brio.  (Think Tom Swift.)  Katie lives in Horror Hollow and is always having to deal with creepy supernatural goings-on.  (Think R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps.)  All three save the world from whales on stilts (with lasers!) in the first book, and from there it gets really silly.

Anderson is very funny, with the potshots at children’s literature and popular culture embedded so cleverly that most young readers will never see them.  But for adults of a certain age (mentally 9-13, I’m thinking) his wit is devastating.  Here’s a simple descriptive passage of their hometown:

Pelt—where Jasper, Katie, and Lily lived—was not a very exciting place… To pep up business on Main Street, store owners had put mannequins out on the sidewalk, advertising dusty sweaters or pillbox hats, but the mannequins were just assaulted by gulls.

No kid could possibly recognize the reference to Hitchcock’s The Birds, but the discerning adult will already have laughed out loud.

The pinnacle of the series so far is the third, Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware, in which Anderson’s world-creation is so supremely loopy that to this day it is one of the funniest books I have ever read.  It’s as if the absurdist anarchy of Green Acres were translated onto an earnest children’s adventure tale: much to the astonishment of Lily and Katie, every goofy thing that Jasper mentions turns out to be true in spades, up to and including the monks who live in grand seclusion in the mountains of Delaware.

[Our heroes are in Jasper’s Gyroscopic Sky Suite (because of course they are) heading to Dover to begin their trek to the monastery of Vbngoom in the mountains of Delaware.]

“Okay,” said Katie, “I really am only going to say this one time… [list of incorrect things Jasper has been saying about their destination] …and there are no—hear me—no no no mountains in—”

“Behold: Dover.  Capital of Delaware,” said Jasper.

Its domes and minarets lay before them, glowing gold in the sunlight amid the hanging gardens, the pleasant palaces, the spired roofs of ancient temples; in the harbor, the purpe-sailed ships of Wilmington plied the waves, and the dragon-headed prows of the barbarian kingdoms to the south dipped their oars in wrinkled waters while plesiosaurs turned capers at their sides.  The Zeppelin-Lords of frosty Elsmere drifted above the city, their balloons gilded with the tropical sun, eating sherbet on their porphyry verandas.  Huge tortoises fifteen feet across lumbered through the widest avenues, carry nomads’ tents upon their backs.  Processions wandering through the streets glittered with gold and ancient costumery.

Grand silliness, and yet at the end of the book I found my eyes quite moist as Anderson describes the monks of Vbngoom flying joyfully from trampoline to trampoline between the crags of the monastery, celebrating their victory over the robot gangsters.

But here’s a weird thing: I thought I had a copy of Jasper Dash, but I must have given it away—so I ordered a paperback copy, and Anderson has changed the ending.  It no longer includes that passage, with its boom camera pullback and pan up to sky and fade to black.  Instead, the writing fades into a montage of adventure themes before fading to black.  There’s a new appendix with the “state song” of Delaware, plus a copy of the letter the actual governor of Delaware wrote to Anderson, deliciously funny itself.  (Early in the book, Anderson excoriates writers who spend a couple of weeks in a country and then write books about the place as if they truly understand it.  He assures us he’s not that guy; he’s never even been to Delaware, so he’s completely untrustworthy.  However, since Simon & Schuster value accuracy in their books, Anderson instructs anyone who finds an “error” in his geography, etc., to put that in a letter and send it to //page turn// the Office of the Governor, followed by the full address of the Delawarian governor.)

I may have to go find a library copy to see if I’m completely inventing this memory of the ending of the book.

Still, you see why I’m excited about the newest Pals in Peril book.   Something fun without deep meaning to crack open—that’s the ticket!

I’m bored.

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Having finished orchestrating Dream One and practically finished laying in the flagstone around the fire pit, I have written all the letters I can stand to write at the moment, so I am casting about for something to occupy myself.

I suppose I could tackle Five Easier Pieces, but I’m not that bored.  I think what I shall do instead is tinker with Dream Three, the libretto of which I don’t technically have but the tone of which I think I can work on without too many issues down the road.  Specifically, I’m going to take the Minotaur’s first speech from Scott’s script and pretend that’s my text.  Even if that’s not what we end up with, I will have the opening to the scene regardless; words are easy to adapt if you use a crowbar.

No, sweetheart, you’re just wrong…

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Encountering the right-wing mindset on a daily basis is extremely wearying, and I only do it by reading the blogs/websites of people who actually dive into the fever swamps of The Blaze or Twitchy or—Chthulhu help us—World Net Daily or Focus on the Family.  I can not imagine a more soul-numbing job.

For me these days, it’s the jaw-dropping ignorance combined with the absolute certainty that the worldview which they have created from whole cloth inside their minds—completely divorced from evidence right in front of them—that gives me a bad feeling in my tummy.

I will give two examples, the second of which I would like to examine in a little detail.

The first is the right-wing nutjob [RWNJ] who went on the teevee and simply lied about how before the 1970s gun safety instruction was standard curriculum in elementary schools.  Why would anyone make up something like that?

The second example is equally egregious.  In Alabama:

In an effort to educate the public on the divine origins of America’s founding documents, Jackson County Commissioner Tim Guffey (R) has proposed erecting a Ten Commandments monument, as well as displays of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, outside the county courthouse.

“If you look at the documents that was written — the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence — they are all stemmed from the word of God, from the Ten Commandments,” Guffey, who proposed the projects at a recent commission meeting, told WHNT on Thursday.

The commissioner insisted that the Ten Commandments proposal is “not for any type of religion” and would only serve to “make people go back and study” the sacred history behind the country’s founding documents.

—HuffPost, 8/15/14

Where does one even begin?

A good start would be to get a copy of the Constitution and a copy of the Ten Commandments and put them on the table in front of you.  Get yourself some colored highlighters.  (I was a little worried when I started this thought experiment, because it would not be easy finding ten different colors of highlighters.  Then I came to my senses…)

Get yourself a black marker, too.

Highlight the first Commandment.  Let’s use pink.

Now read through the Constitution—remember, it’s short, barely three pages—and highlight all the parts of our government that originate in the first Commandment.

What?  Nothing?  Okay, take your black marker and mark out the first Commandment so we can reuse the pink highlighter and not get confused.  (“Confused”—get it? Because Commissioner Guffey can’t… never mind.)

Highlight the second Commandment and repeat.

I won’t belabor the point, although if I were in a room with Tim Guffey in front of teevee cameras, you’d better believe we would pursue this to the excruciating end.

Even the most sociolegal of the Commandments are not found directly in the Constitution.  That is actually one of the glories of the document: it doesn’t engage in direct legislation, unlike most of the written national constitutions since then.  We get to change the laws willy-nilly; the framework not so much.

Mr. Guffey might dig in his heels and say that the ninth Commandment about bearing false witness is the source of our right to a jury trial, but a) I myself would guess that this document had more to do with that; and b) that whole “bearing false witness” thing might not be a good topic to bring up in his situation.

Because, as one commenter in one of the evil liberal blogs I read on the topic said, the authors of the Constitution argued over Every. Single. Word.  And if they had used the Decalogue as a source, they by Chthulhu would have said so.  (It’s worth noting, too, that Benjamin Franklin proposed that they have a chaplain open every session of the Constitutional Convention with a prayer, but the delegates shot that idea down with prejudice, possibly because they thought Franklin was punking them, as was his wont.)

I can vouch for this historical view—one summer (1987) at GHP I read every single volume of Max Farrand’s The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787.  Besides Jemmy Madison’s exhaustive diaries on every single motion and debate appertaining thereunto, Farrand collated everyone else’s diaries and letters to reveal the stunning process of cobbling together the world’s first—and best—written constitution.  It was an amazing event, and a fascinating read.

Further, we have The Federalist Papers, in which Madison, Hamilton, and Jay got completely down in the weeds and explained very publicly the reasons for the document looking the way it did.

In neither artifact do we have our Founding Fathers praising Jesus and just lifting our nation up in His Name, O Father God, amen.  It. Did. Not. Happen.  (Nor, to be brief, did it happen in any other source documents from the period.)

So are Tim Guffey and his fellow Christianists ignorant or lying?  They can’t be ignorant (oh all right, of course they probably are, but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt), but given that whole “bearing false witness” thing, how could they be lying?

One explanation for this inexplicable mindset is that they are not lying—they actually believe these things to be true.  Their minds require these things to be true in order for them to make sense of the world, and remember that, to the conservative mind, the world only makes sense if it’s full of unimaginable horrors, horrors against which only their faith, their courage, their version of reality can save us.

Of course, that’s being generous, because Tim Duffey is lying.  Go back and read the other part of the words that he made with his mouth: this display of a specifically religious document on state property is “not for any type of religion,” which he immediately follows with

“The Ten Commandments is a historical document and it has nothing to do with religion,” he continued. “It shows that these founders had great beliefs in God and the Ten Commandments and His Word and it helped them get to the point where they were. Their feeling was God helped them build the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. If you read all of the writings of John Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, they speak about how that was their foundation that helped them interpret and write a great Constitution.”
Read more at http://wonkette.com/557310/alabama-idiot-thinks-constitution-based-on-ten-commandments-is-incorrect#bMSLpDJrm7ivvFDd.99

Highlights mine to underline the jaw-dropping contradiction.  (Not to mention the complete untruth about the writings/mindset of all the men he mentions, of whom only Madison had a direct role in writing the Constitution.)

So we’re back to the eternal dichotomy: is this man stupid or lying?

I have devolved into heavy sighing, shaking my head, and mixing another modified margarita.

update: Go look at the last seven paragraphs of this article on this year’s Faith and Freedom Coalition in DC.  The fear is palpable.  It’s pitiful, it really is because it’s not based on anything real.  Look at the sheer number of future tense verbs and infinitives: “wants to,” “plans to,” “going to.”  It’s all in their heads, and bless their hearts.

update redux [FFS edition]: Dear Mrs. McCarthy: Judy, sweetie, a raised eyebrow and pursed lip is not persecution.

A new drink

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I have a spiral bound recipe journal, one of those cutesie retro things. The only thing in it is cocktail recipes, a mix of favorites and my own concoctions.  Go figure.

One of the earlier entries is a drink called the Burnt Orange.  I forget where I found it.

Burnt Orange

8 pt. vodka
1 pt. bourbon
1 pt. triple sec

Shake with ice, strain into cocktail glass.

I’ve made it with varying proportions depending on my mood.

The other night, I had all this fresh lemon juice that I had squeezed and, not wanting it to go to waste—naturally—I explored cocktails using lemon juice.  There was one, kind of a sidecar, but it was overwhelmingly citrusy.  My lovely first wife suggested adding a little bourbon, which I did, and it worked.  It reminded me of the Burnt Orange, so here is the Burnt Lemon:

Burnt Lemon

5 pt. cognac
3 pt. Cointreau
2 pt. lemon juice
1 pt. bourbon

Shake with ice, strain into cocktail glass.

It’s still pretty tart, but the bourbon mellows it out quite some.

There’s also a drink I worked on earlier in the week, but I will have to report back later after I’ve had time to make another one and get some taste tests around here.

Dream One, “And what of us?”

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I think this worked out quite well.

Dream One, 4c. “And what of us/Let us joyfully gaze” | piano score [pdf] | orchestral mp3

While working on this bit, I dug into Finale and figured out lots of keyboard shortcuts for the things I do the most.  It’s incredible how well hidden some of them are.  I learned two or three versions ago to buy the Trailblazer Guide to accompany the software.  It’s not very in-depth, but it does have a lot of helpful hints on how to approach your workflow.  I got a lot more efficient with this piece—which is good, since I have six more Dreams to go!

And in case you hadn’t noticed, Dream One is now completely orchestrated.

The man with the pearl earring

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A couple of years ago I decided that what I would give myself for my 60th birthday was a baroque pearl earring. Something to do with Shakespeare, maybe, although he wore a simple gold hoop.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Ray DuBose (of R. DuBose Jewelers here in downtown Newnan) in scouring the world for a suitable pearl—I rejected about eight before we found one that matched my mental image—I have been successful.

Here is my latest folie:

I’ll post another one after I get a haircut and Ray finishes adjusting the setting—but I was too excited not to share.

Dream One, “My mother, bored and pampered”

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In the best tradition of artists everywhere, I am declaring Ariadne’s aria abandoned completed, at least until I have to fix it for good.  It kind of works, and right now that will have to serve.

Besides thinning out some of the accompaniment in her big moment, I also finally got Finale to pay attention when I asked it to slow down the tempo.  Something got borked in the tempo marking itself; I deleted it and created a new one.  Who knows?  Finale’s technical support (staffed ENTIRELY BY UNICORNS YOU GUYS) certainly doesn’t.

Dream One, 4b. “My mother, bored and pampered | piano score (pdf) | orchestral mp3

I am hoping that the last section, “And what of us,” is going to be clear sailing, since it’s all motifs from earlier—Daedalus’s fly/fall motif and the machine music—and then the end is straight up copy/pasting from the opening number.