Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Baklava can NEVER be off topic NEVER!" -- John F Davis in rec.music.filk 2003-07-26.

I found myself awake and not sure why. Sometimes I wake up that way -- when I clearly haven't slept enough yet, and there's no discernable external stimulus to wake me, but %ding!% I'm awake. The predicted snow had fallen, though not much of it. And the last forecast I'd heard had said it was going to start as snow, then turn to rain, then freeze again, and basically be a pain to clear off the sidewalk if I waited too long ... so I turned on the telly to find out whether it was done with the snow portion so it would make sense to put on something warm and grab the shovel.

#blink# Oh. They're not talking about weather. And that's not a local face. It's the network. Saddam Hussein has been captured. The ramifications of that are going to be very, very interesting, after I clear off the sidewalk.

I'd be happier if they'd caught Osama bin Laden, but I do have to say I'm impressed. It still doesn't make me a Bush fan, but it does mean his opponents can't taunt, "And you couldn't even catch Saddam," at him now. (And I didn't think he would've been caught this soon under anyone else's command either; I just thought he'd be that good at vanishing.) What will make more of a difference one way or t'other is if we finally get an answer on the existence or nonexistence of those weapons of mass destruction that some people are convinced weren't there and other people are convinced are just too well hidden. Or if Bush and Ashcroft suddenly realize how dangerous their moves against civil liberties and due process have been, and reverse course on that front. *sigh* Still, it's a pretty significant PR matter that Hussein was captured now.

As long as I'm up ... Some recent day-to-day stuff:

Last Sunday I didn't do very much -- watched the Baltimore Ravens on television, filled out that regional English meme, and moaned about how badly my right elbow hurt (which it still does).

( Monday, I got to see Anniemal... )

We spent a while looking at the results of the dialect survey ot of Harvard, comparing the MD and VA results to NY, and talking about our own answers. (I'd love to see MD and VA results broken down by county, because I'd get more out of comparing Baltimore, Annapolis, Frederick, and parts of the Eastern Shore to each other and to the national results, than I got out of comparing "Maryland all averaged together" with VA, NY, and the national results, as much fun as that was.) We each learned some new words and phrases.

( Tuesday I made it to Bowie to help my brother study ... )

Mom had some things for me from my uncle Ted's estate. One rather important item was a small brass crocodile whose tail flattens out into a letter opener. I saw the cast brass, looked at Mom, and asked, "Is this one of Granddad's pieces?" It is.

My grandfather made a bunch of cast-metal things before I was born, many of which were given to my father and his brothers too long ago for me to remember. But many pieces he kept. All the grandchildren remember seeing (and playing with) some of those items. When he died, the only things I remember hearing of any tension and deal-making over were Granddad's castings. My dad and my uncles managed to sort it all out without anybody become anybody else's enemy. There were, of course, some pieces I coveted, but a lot of my relatives like the same ones. (I think most of my cousins like the same iron housefly doorknocker (the wings move) that I do. And I know there was a lot of interest in the brass dog.) I don't know whether uncle Ted got the crocodile after Granddad died, or much earlier. The thing is, as much as I would've loved to wind up with certain favourites, I was much more attached to the idea of just owning something my grandfather had cast.

Now I've got one. Not one I remembered particularly well (though as I think about it, it was probably the subject of some "alligator or crocodile" arguments that I can fuzzily recall from when my siblings and I were all much shorter than we are now), not one I'd looked at and said, "I wish I could have that one," but when I pick it up and look at it, I get a warm feeling: it's a piece of my grandfather's brass, a tangible, solid, durable piece of his history, of my family's history. Something my father's father made. I've got a bit of him to hold onto. And as much as I want the fly (which as far as I know has never been attached to a door), the more important thing is that I have something he made.

I started to write a digression on my relationship to metal here, but it got longer and longer and I wanted to include more ideas in it, so I'm chopping that out to be a separate post, instead.

Mom said to hold on to her van for a little longer. There's a longer-term solution to my transportation troubles in the works.

( Wednesday I got an unexpected rest... )

( Thursday I got to hang out with Puzzledance... )

Friday ... WTF did I do Friday? [scratches head] Oh yeah, ( Friday I finally bought food and ran an errand... )

( Yesterday the Sheepie took me to the fishies... )

Today my plan is to try to get a little further on email, responding to LJ comments, and catching up on my friends list (I'm between 36 and 48 hours behind at the moment), then complain about how on one of the rare days that they're showing the Redskins on Baltimore television stations, the Redskins are playing at the same time as the Ravens (both at 16:00), so I still don't get to watch both. Assuming I don't get a nap attack and fall asleep. And maybe I'll carve some brass.

I started this as part of what I was writing about the metal items my grandfather made, but I discovered I had more to say about metal today than I'd thought, so it grew into its own entry.

As a child, at some point when I realized the significance of "Granddad made these", I decided that I wanted to learn how to do sand casting. I don't think it was the beautiful silver candlesticks we used for holiday meals that got my attention -- the geometric shapes didn't register somehow as art, despite their elegant beauty -- so it was probably the fly, a cast iron housefly with wings that lifted up, which I thought was an odd covered ashtray until someone eventually explained it was supposed to be a doorknocker, which made such a great fidget-toy for all of us kids (in its usual spot on an end-table) when we went to visit our grandparents ... it was probably that fly that made me realize such things don't just come from museums and stores and catalogs, but that my granddad made this ... nifty thing.

So I wanted to learn to make nifty-things. And I wanted him to teach me. But I never got around to trying to assemble the tools and materials and coax him to show me. Someday, I'm sure, I'll learn on my own, and I'll be proud of that, and I'll feel a connection to him as a result of it, but it would've been a very powerful thing to have learned it from him. (It also would've been significant to perform with my father, but I was never able to convince him to pick up the trombone again after I'd gotten good enough on guitar to daydream of such an event. But maybe, just maybe, someday I'll get to share a stage with my brother.)

And I have learned to make some kinds of niftythings, including some in metal, despite frequent repetition of the "you have no artistic talent", "you have no appreciation for beauty", and "you can't be an artist because you're a scientist" messages that I got along the way. So far what I do in metal is to carve it. To cut it, drill it, occasionally solder it, sometimes etch it, but largely to carve it (with the aid of motorized tools). And I feel that I have not yet explored all of the carving-brass concept that I want to, so I'm not tired of that or finished with it ... but holding this small brass crocodile reminds me that despite my interest in carving metal, sooner or later I should get around to that old interest in casting it, as well.

I'd never thought about it before, but I wonder whether part of my desire to make three-dimensional shapes out of metal is an echo of the "I want Granddad to teach me to do this" feelings from my childhood, even though I'm approaching with a different technique for now, grinding instead of pouring. There's a satisfying tactile aspect to solid metal sculpture, especially if it's small enough to lift. And I want to be a part of that. I want the shapes in my head to come out in metal, and I want to be able to pick them up and say, "I made this." And I want to be able to pick them up and say, "This shape is now reassuringly in my hand; I got it out of my head and put it in my hand." And now that I think of it, if I ever have children, it'll be cool to be able to hand them one piece and say, "I made this," and hand them another and say, "Your great-grandfather made this." I like the idea that metal sculpture is durable, that I'll leave behind Things I made.

Y'know what's funny? I still think of myself as "not very good with my hands". Really. Yeah, I play guitar ... somehow that translates to "good with my fingers" instead of "good with my hands", and I'm not sure why. (Though that phrasing brings another activity to mind as well, which I'm told I do well.) ( Musings about self-confidence )

I finally did get some metal to carve -- a block of aluminum a couple inches on a side, and six inches of one-inch diameter brass rod -- several weeks ago so that I could start some of the carving ideas I've wanted to do, but I keep having more urgent, or more important, or simply more responsible things that I have to do, so I look at the brass, and the Dremmel tool, and I think, "No, I can't play until I do these other things. I'll get to that later." Well maybe it's time to get down to it, 'cause I'm tired of looking at it, feeling my hands twitch in anticipation, and going off to do something else.

I guess I think of artists who make money from their art as "working", and artists who merely make pretty, sometimes culturally important, things as "playing". Pretty twisted, huh? (Pretty 20th Century American, too, huh?) So I have to "give myself permission" to go make art. Maybe I should print up signs that say in large, friendly letters, "To-do today: Give yourself permission to make art," and put them on the fridge, the bathroom wall, and my bedroom door.

Anyhow, what it all adds up to, I guess, is, I like metal..

Questions that were on chibidl's version of the regional English meme but not on most other copies I'd seen...