I'm great auntie to a passel of little boys belonging to various nieces and nephews. There are seven in all. I love each of them, but one in particular tugs at my heart strings -- a middle child like me. His Dutch name sounds like Out -- at least that's the way it often sounds when his mother says it.
One day Out came to visit with his mother and baby brother. The circular layout of our home is perfect for running, it turns out, and by lunchtime, Out's whirling socks had given our floors a high polish. I was glad when it was time for him to sit at the table to eat. While Out listlessly toyed with his food, I began returning freshly washed knives to their magnetic holder on the wall. I'd raise one up, and when it got close enough, the knife would snap onto the holder.
SNAP went the first knife.
Out perked up.
SNAP went second knife.
Leaping from his chair to my side faster than you could say "Don't jostle me when I'm handling knives," he began peppering me with questions about just how that knife holder worked. Could he try it?
"Umm, no. Maybe in 10 or 15 years."
His eyes remained glued to the knife holder.
This seemed like a good time to go downstairs to the family room, where some art projects were set up. Although the art stuff was a bit dull, the hand cords of my Nordic Track Classic Ski Machine were not. Seems they're good to dangle from.
After a few minutes of dangling, while his mother was occupied with changing baby brother, heading for the stairs, Out declared, "I'll be right back.". After a brief exchange of raised eyebrows with his mother, I followed. In the kitchen, I found Out staring up at the knife holder. Appeased with nothing less than a full description of how it worked, Out learned that metal things such as knives stick to the holder because it's a magnet.
Out began muttering to himself.
"What are you thinking about, Out?" I asked. This might be important information.
"My trucks!" he said. "My red truck is metal. My green truck is metal. My orange car is metal. They'd stick to the mang-ga-net!"
"Why yes!" I agreed, relieved that the subject had turned from knives to trucks. "Metal cars and trucks would stick to the knife holder, if they're made of the right kind of metal."
His curiosity finally satisfied, Out allow me to coax him away from the kitchen and back down to the family room.
Later that afternoon while Out was on his way home with intact fingers and eyeballs, I sat down at the computer and ordered a magnetic knife holder for him. It would be shipped directly to his home, so I emailed his parents to let them know, adding that they might want to mount it on Out's wall to hold some of his trucks and cars.
It's a very fortunate thing that Out's parents have a sense of humor, for when the knife holder arrived, Outopened the package, and -- to his vast and astonished delight -- it contained not only a magnetic knife holder, but real knife as well!
And that's how I became one of Out's very, very favorite great aunties.
Out's passion for sharp metal objects, which I had unwittingly loosed, led his parents to give him an impressively large plastic sword. It flashes and makes a lot of noise to compensate for the fact that it doesn't cut things. I feel a teensy bit guilty about this.
Postscript: Since this story was written, two great-nephews and two great nieces have been added to our crowd. AND a girl grandbaby. Now that she's two, she displays a similar attraction to sharp metal objects--in her case cooking knives like her mum uses. Glad I didn't start this one!
Please note the change from September 20 to September 27.
At some point after you begin taking casual art classes for recreation and before you decide to pawn your children and go to Tahiti to live on the beach and paint, some inevitable questions arise, such as,
"I have this growing stack of paintings. What should I do with them?"
"How can I buy art supplies without plundering our retirement accounts to pay for them?"
"How can I share my creations with others who will appreciate them?"
If any of these questions, or similar ones, have occurred to you, then you might want to attend Kathy Collins' talk, The Business of Art. Most people who find themselves drawn to art are not simultaneously drawn to business, but the truth is that the artist needs to know something about business to make the most of their work and their talent. Kathy's been there and has a lot of it figured out. She understands the business end of art from an artist's perspective because she's got her own successful art career.
Please join us for Kathy's talk on Tuesday, September 27th at 1:30 PM at the Kaewyn Art Gallery in downtown Bothell. The cost is $20 per person. The talk will take about an hour and will be followed by a question and answer session, so write down all those things you've been wondering and Kathy will do her best to help you with an answer or approach that works for you.
IMPORTANT: To guarantee a seat for the talk, please preregister by emailing kathy.collins2 @comcast.net (remove the spaces in the email address).
Topics covered will be:
How Kathy got into the art world from the world of science and medicine
Week Two of Kathy Collins' summer session, we did city scenes. I painted this from a B&W photo of Kathy's. The street looks European, so she probably took the picture on her last trip there, earlier this summer.
I started on the left-hand buildings, nearly frozen in fear, repeating, "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" under my breath like a mantra, while applying lots of paint thinned by the teensy bit of water clinging to my brush. By the last stroke on that side of the painting, I was feeling a bit more confident. Turning to the other side, I used some warmer color combinations, painting more freely as I started to get the hang of it.
Street Somewhere in Europe Probably
Just as I once said to my daughter, Liz, after screaming all the way down a particularly difficult Blue ski run, and then realizing at the bottom that I was still alive, I thought "I'd like to try this again sometime."
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Overcoming Fear of Paint - Someone once said to expand your abilities and horizons, you should do one thing a day that makes you afraid.
Recently, my young friend Lori wrote about paring down her possessions so she can move to the east coast and attend a writing program. In her post, she lists five benefits of owning less, including
saving money,
gaining appreciation of the stuff you decide to keep,
traveling and relocating more easily,
making other people happy by giving them your castoff things, and
reducing the urge to buy more stuff and thereby overspend.
To Lori's list, I'd add this bullet:
feeling great about "treading more lightly on the earth," counteracting the trend seen in this terrific, and terrifying, video:
Anyway, the subject of stuff is one I've been thinking about for years. It started with a study I read in Utne Reader about 15 or so years ago. It reported that the happiest people on earth were living in a tiny town in India, where a person with a stool to sit on was considered rich. In spite of the dearth of physical possessions, the people in this village managed to educate their children from a communal library, maintain good health, and have strong social bonds.
This shocked me. I haven't been able to find it on the web to share it with you, and it may not still be valid, but the point is, it got me thinking. Up until then, like many people around me, I'd measured success in monetary terms. For example, one of my goals was to earn enough money to buy a pair of gold hoop earrings. When I finally had enough extra money for them, I judged I'd really "made it."
BUT -- what was next? What would really make me and the kids happier? (We were already happy, I should add.) More stuff to follow the earrings?? Accumulating possessions seems to be the goal of many of us in this country. I kept thinking about this. And buying more stuff.
I found it difficult, if not impossible, to go against the flow, to take a different direction than the larger society, regardless of any intentions otherwise. As time went on, though, I began feeling weighed down. Possessions were supposed bring happiness, but the pleasure was short-lived, and then I had to worry about housing, cleaning around, and moving an ever-increasing amount of stuff.
When the kids left home for college about a decade ago, I started paring down, hoping to lighten this burden. About halfway through that process, Bill and I met, married, and merged households, so I got to weed out even more stuff. Then the kids needed us to store "just a few boxes" for them. During that time, I felt like I'd acquired some very bad "garage karma" because no sooner did I get it cleaned out, than it would magically fill up again, with no help from me.
Now, a few years later, I'm in the final stages of what turned into a gigantic effort. Last year, Bill and I moved into the city to be closer to his work and cultural activities. Because homes here cost nearly twice as much per square foot as the suburban home we'd left, and we wanted to tread more lightly on the earth, we bought a small house, small enough, in fact, to be considered a "cottage." However, in spite of my efforts up to now, we still had way too much stuff to fit in it. Now, after another whole year of weeding out, and with some things still to give away, we can finally walk around the house without tripping over too many things.
We fit everything into our cottage, almost.
While it's been a big adjustment to live in such as small space, by today's American standards anyway, I'm pleased to report being much, much happier here than when living in a far larger house with lots and lots more stuff.
In sum, if I had it to do all over again, this would be my theme, as gorgeously performed by Ella Fitzgerald:
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World Environment Day - I never would have heard about this, but for a comment from a reader in Indonesia.
