Roger Collins, RIP

Well, it has been a long time away from the blog. During this lapse, my father-in-law, Roger W. Collins, passed away after a short bout with stomach cancer. The obituary in the Andover Townsman captured the highlights of his life well - decorated WW II service, Arizona State football team, resettling in Andover after graduation from ASU and service in town government (selectman) and business (real estate). He was also a warm and loyal friend and parent/husband/grandfather and father-in-law. His presence in the Collins clan will be sorely missed.

More pics from Mom's 90th...

Here are some more pictures from Mom's 90th birthday surprise party. Here is a nice pic of Mom (in unsurprised mode - for surprised see previous post).

Also, here is a picture of my nephew Derek and his girlfriend Lauren, with a youthful Mom peeking over their shoulders (from a slideshow my sister-in-law Lilly put together).

Thanks to Lilly for these pictures - as well as the cookies she made in honor of Mom's passion for all things Boston Terrier.

Mother turns 90!

Much to catch up on, but the highlight of the last 2 months was my mother Joyce Bowman Humphrey's 90th birthday party. Family, friends and fellow Red Hatters collected for a surprise party in the function hall of the Buckingham Congregational Church in Glastonbury, CT. Here's the birthday girl herself.....surprised!



Other usual suspects include me and Christi, who is excited about something...



Brother Donald Bowman Humphrey talking with Connie Sundquist, who came out from Minnesota with Mother more than 60 years ago to work at the Pratt and Whitney aircraft engine company in East Hartford, CT.



Sister Susan Jean Humphrey Amtrak'ed in from Madison, WI. Seated is my sister-in-law Lilly's niece Katina Fernandez; Lilly (in pink) is talking to old friends Alec and Charlotte Motyka (Alec has Mom beat by 5 years!)



Lilly cutting the birthday cake she made (lucky for us we have a professional cake maker in the family). Lilly tirelessly organized the party, made most of the food and invitations, and put together a 'life in pictures' video from Mother's old photographs - without her it could not have happened. Thanks Lilly!



Mother is a nature fan, especially interested in birds and Boston Terriers.



My nieces Chelsea and Carla Humphrey talk to their aunt Dora Fernandez.



My son Super Sam took these pictures and my nephew Derek and his girlfriend Lauren set up and worked the video showing. Thanks to them and many others for helping to make this party happen....and keeping it a secret for so long!

The 11th Commandment, as framed by users of public restrooms

A very cold journey, Hooters and Hall, Our Future Fat Fighting Force, and Mad, Murderous Cows

Well, I was away for two long weeks, a few days of which were spent watching the thermometer, cozily safe from the wind chill, lie to me and co-driver Jimmy V that it was 0 degrees outside. Fortunately, we got to go to Dallas and defrost. After driving by the downtown Hooters restaurant there (where a sign outside reads "The World's Largest Hooters," meaning it has the biggest dining room), we then went to pick up some items at the Women's Museum, which we retrieved from a storage room dominated by a portrait of a nursing Jerry Hall.

But enough about boobs, and on to cultural expectations. Jimmy V, a Bronx citizen on his first trip across the country, was amazed that Iowans will just leave their vehicles by the side of the highway and depart (as they are wont to do after a snowstorm crash). Weren't they afraid their cars would be stripped or stolen? No, they were afraid they personally would be crushed by one or more of the jackknifed semis we saw scattered about, and hightailed it out of there with the first cop or Good Samaritan who stopped by.

Speaking of New Yorkers, I always enjoy the way some New Yorker humorists can spin a funny story from a short, dry, news clipping. Here are two recent terrific examples.

The military's concerns about conscript fitness inspired George Saunders' tale of a platoon of porky privates. Perhaps we are soon to be defended by the National Lard....

Bovine-on-human attack statistics were the catalyst for this Woody Allen piece about a cow that plots to dispatch a whiny film director who has upset his rural Jersey Shangri-La. Recognize the artiste described thusly?:
A wormy little cipher, myopic behind black-framed glasses and groomed loutishly in his idea of rural chic: all tweedy and woodsy, with cap and muffler, ready for the leprechauns.

Enjoy!

DisastaCat astride her personal San Andreas fault

Ode to a recently purloined plasma TV

O, Panasonic 42-inch,
We hardly knew ye
Nor had time with you to share
The HD movies On-Demand we rented (so rare).
It is almost too much to bear,
To know you will never again present Scrubs, nor Simpsons, nor the Report Colbert.
And wherever you are now, we ask you please, feign poor health
And show nothing but the test pattern to those who gained you by nightly stealth.
And take good care of little IBook, and even littler Wii,
And know that we miss you most dreadfully.
How shall we ever forget thee three? What could ever replace the digital hearts of you?
We’ll read the latest gadget reports, and hear what’s hot from our friend Stew.

At the Gagosian Gallery in NYC....

I was down in New York most of the past week, packing up an artist's donation to a major museum. On one day, though, we couldn't work on that project, so I made pickups and deliveries around Manhattan. My cohort that day was an artist, and after making one stop, he suggested we take a look into the Gagosian Gallery, which was across from our truck, in the Chelsea arts district.

The Gagosian now has an exhibit by Richard Serra called "Blind Spot/Open-ended." Walking around these two sculptures was like getting a tugboat's view of a rusted hull; walking inside "Blind Spot" you felt like you were in Andrew Carnergie's idea of a maze. My artist friend said that there are only a few machines that can bend steel in this way, and Serra owns one of them (this seems plausible, although this fellow had a tendency to stretch the truth a bit).

Yes, Virginia, there is a Florida in Massachusetts...

....and a few days ago, on our trip to the Williamstown Art Conservation Center, it looked like this.....Previously called "Bernardston Grant" or "Zoar", it might have named by town fathers upon its incorporation about the time the US bought the future home of the Dolphins and your parents' retirement condo.

Your daily Bible history - Zoar
was a city near Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the destruction of those cities it was preserved to "afford shelter to Lot." Lot, on a low-sodium diet, forsook his wife and produced two children from dalliances with his own daughters. These strange offspring were hard-rocking Moab and cool-blowing Ammon. So be it.

Lady Godiva and her trusty steed on their way to the Walmart....

for the big special on Oreo Double-Stuffers.

Art history in the hills of Cow Hampshire....

Deep in the woods north of Manchester, I recently met Dr. Andrew Stangel, professor of History and Art History at the University of New Hampshire, European tour guide extraordinaire, and enthusiast of Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline. "Andy" is donating (to his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin) some of the rare books, prints, and military medals he has collected during 20 years living in Europe, and 35 leading art tours throughout that Continent. He began guiding tours for the US Forces in Europe in the 70s, and now does so for UNH alumni and others. When I mentioned my interest in it, Andy encouraged me to sign up for his tour - "I'm not one of those 'That aisle to the Mona Lisa, that aisle to the Winged Victory, and meet back here in a half hour!' kind of guides".

As Willie and Patsy alternated lamentations for lost loves from the kitchen, our art-handling crew packed up Andy's gifts, ably advised by the school's registrar, Andrea Selbig. Andy was intensely interested in how things were packed, and proclaimed awe at the care we'd taken with his things, and with our big, bright, new blue truck. He also regaled us with stories, one of which betrayed his deep love of the pun; after his Berkely apartment suffered a vicious 1970 earthquake in which his fishtanks almost toppled, he returned said tanks and occupants to the pet store, telling the owner, "The age of aquariums is over".

[I have a U-W connection also; my sister Sue is a U-W graduate and employee, and as I write this I proudly wear her gift of a "Wisconsin 1994 Rose Bowl Champions" sweatshirt. Christi doesn't like me to wear this aged garment outside the house, perhaps thinking that something so old could have only been retrieved from the Salvation Army. When I do, though, strangers will accost me with the latest Wisconsin athletic news, which is how I heard their men beat DUKE in basketball.]

After we finished packing and loading our truck, Andy snapped a photo of us all, which I hope will keep good company with his other 100,000-plus art-history pictures.

Where Frodo and Gandalf shacked up when they reached the West....

is this cozy place I saw near the Mulvane....

The one thing Spock could never be rational about...

.....is Mrs. Spock, whose portrait hangs in the famous and fabulous MOBA.

Update on Mulvane stickworks project

It looks like they are done creating their stickworks project at the Mulvane, mentioned in my first post - the pictures are here.

Germans, Germans everywhere.....

I'm in Milwaukee tonight after a trip through St. Paul, Minnesota, where we made a delivery to the Science Museum of Minnesota. It's like a skyscraper built into a cliff. The main entrance is at the top, but you can descend outside stairs (or an internal elevator) down to the lowest level, where the outside exhibits look across to the Mississippi River. The receiving dock where we made today's delivery is guarded by Iggy here....

I was struck over the last few days how much German heritage I've come across on this trip. It's no surprise there is in actual city named Germantown near Milwaukee, home to Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, etc. I didn't expect the cable network in Topeka, though, to have a German channel with coverage, in English and German, of political events in Germany. According to this article, some 40% of Kansans claimed German heritage in the 1990 Census. And who knew Columbus, Ohio, had its own German Village, a pleasantly cobblestoned town on the southern end of the city. A book on the area says that one-third of Columbus was German immigrants by the 1850s. The German Village Society, a preservation organization, notes the "...enormous impact brewing had on the community." Although brewing died out due to business conditions and Temperance, the

modern village did spawn an institution still impacting communities around the Midwest - Max and Erma's.

Stickwork and fretwork at the Mulvane

Today I braved the windy raw rainy weather to see the Patrick Daugherty stickwork and Ken Butler "Hybrid Visions" exhibitions at the Mulvane Art Museum here in Topeka.

Stickwork is basically branches entwined to 'sculpt' particular shapes. The exhibit consists of pictures of Daugherty's stickwork installations and the artist's commentary on each, plus an under-construction stickwork outside the museum's front entrance. On this uncomfortable day a volunteer was dutifully knotting its damp branches - putting one of these things together is a team operation. When I get back to Massachusetts I'll have to go see his installation at the DeCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln.


Ken Butler is a musician who also builds instruments from unlikely objects, like hatchets, metal detectors, and chair backs, among other things (if I could create guitars from my room fans the way Butler does, I could field an ax for everyone in the house including our tabby, DisastaCat). The exhibit includes many examples of these, as well as a video installation showing Butler and friends playing them. His music can be found on his myspace page here. The most recent work is entitled "Voices Of Anxious Objects," probably something your local Top 40 station won't be queuing up after the latest Beyonce output.

Today finds me weekending in Topeka, Kansas, at the lovely Quality Inn, faking attention to a series of Important SEC football games on the tube. It's big-box and faux-authentic-regional-restaurant heaven at this exit, but the weather is warm and its walkable.

I hope to get to the Mulvane Art Museum tomorrow, forgoing the 1 pm game to get a look inside this university art center which, like many places I've been, I have only seen from the rear. I'll give you a report tomorrow.

Monday my partner and I head off a little further west, then its up to Minnesota. Let's hope the cold weather holds off while we breeze through the Great Lakes area next week.