Honcho the second-hand dog

My husband, Paul, didn't notice the dog until he was halfway across the vacant lot he was traversing on his way to get his haircut. The lot was adjacent to his office and rather than follow the sidewalk around it's parameter he cut a diagonal path through the overgrown, dried grass. It was the dried grass that obscured her at first being the same golden yellow as her coat. He came close to stepping on her but stopped just in time when he realized what was laying before him. It was a large, pale yellow dog. She stood up, her tail gently wagged back and forth and looked at him with a wide grin and clear brown eyes. It was then that he saw the chain running from her collar snaking back to a plastic dog house with food and water bowls nearby. He was careful not to pet her (she was a strange dog after all) but instead greeted her with a "Well hello". She wagged her tail with enthusiasm while dancing in place in reply.  He looked around and noticed the building adjacent to the lot. "That must be where owner lives," he mused as he continued on to his appointment.

After that first meeting, Paul couldn't seem to get the big yellow dog out of his mind. He could see her out of his office window chained in the same spot day after day in sun, rain or snow. Then he came up with a plan. After dinner one evening he casually asked me if I was interested in getting another dog. Well, that's like asking me if I want more chocolate! While we were usually a two dog family, at that time, we were down to one dog, Zelda, having recently helped our elderly dog, Buster, cross over the rainbow bridge. But really, even if we still had two dogs, I would have happily said yes to a third. "Don't get too excited," he cautioned after he explained the yellow dog's situation to me. "I haven't even approached her owners yet. They may not take kindly to me asking if I can have their dog." I promised to tamp down my enthusiasm with my fingers crossed behind my back.

The next day Paul again took the path across the vacant lot. He paused and said "hello" to the yellow dog who wagged her tail and smiled at him. Taking her grin as a good sign, he walked to the front of the nearby building and knocked on the door. A man in his early thirties opened the door and greeted him with a questioning look. Paul introduced himself and then said "You're either going to think this is a good idea or you're going to yell at me to get off your porch. I think I can give your dog a better life." The man looked at him silently for a moment before asking "Are you the one who reported me to animal control?" "No," replied Paul. "I've watched your dog day after day from my office window over there." he said pointing to his nearby office. "It seems as if you don't have much time for her," he continued. "I live with my wife and two boys on three acres in the forest with a large fenced yard. We have one dog already to keep her company and she would have daily two mile walks in the forest with my wife." 

The man listened to Paul quietly and then related his story. The yellow dog (her name was Honcho) wasn't always tied up alone in the yard. The navy man had found Honcho and her brother (whom he named Gocho) when they were puppies wandering along a highway when he was stationed in Japan. His service in Japan inspired their names, "Honcho" which is Japanese for "squad leader" and Gocho meaning "corporal". He loved Honcho and Gocho and spent time teaching them commands in Japanese, "Suwaru" for "sit" and "Taizai" for "stay" to name a few.  His life in the Navy brought him to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island with Honcho and Gocho along for the new adventure. After he retired from the Navy, he met a woman (now his wife) and they had a new baby. As it turned out, his new wife was allergic to dogs so Honcho and Gocho were relegated to living outdoors. He tried to still spend time with his dogs but his new family and fledgling martial arts business required more and more of his attention. Not long after, Gocho (who was now 10) passed away and Honcho was left to continue her lonely vigil in the overgrown field of weeds. 

When he finished his story, the man looked at Paul and said "You're sure she will have a good life?" "Absolutely," said Paul without hesitation. The man took Paul out to meet Honcho who was wagging her tail wildly at the approach of her master and her new friend. Honcho was as friendly as her waving tail suggested and well trained. "My wife and boys are going to love her," said Paul. "Thank you for asking," said the man. He insisted we take the dog house and her remaining bag of kibble as well as her veterinary records and a check for $100 so we "could get a vet check for her". And just like that, we had another dog. 

Honcho came to our home and fit into our family life seamlessly. She got along well with our other dog and cat and our boys were thrilled to have another pet. Her greatest joy was laying on our back deck in the warm sun with the occasional foray onto the lawn to roll back and forth scratching all of her itchy spots. She didn't have to be chained or contained in anyway. She never wandered off. This was her home now and she wasn't going anywhere. Honcho was with us for five years before she also crossed over the rainbow bridge. She came to us as a second-hand dog but left us as a dear part of our family.

Whidbey Cows

14x11 inches, oil on linen canvas, 2020

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Whidbey Cows - auction ends on Sunday, December 13th at 10:00am PST. 

A mother cow and her calf enjoy the late afternoon sun in a pastoral setting on Whidbey island. 

The Art Show

Ahhhhh summertime. For a kid, the days stretch out endlessly with so many possibilities for the imagination. It was no different in the summer of 1968, where a group of kids loafed on the grass, in the shade of a large maple tree in a backyard in northern New Jersey. The group consisted of myself, sisters Susan and Sheri and our friends Holly, with her sister Kathy, brothers Chrissy and David (A.K.A Boo) and Jimmy from down the street. We pondered what to do with the day that lay before us and for some reason plucked "Put on an Art Show" out of the air. I have no clue why that idea sprang to our minds, but I can only surmise that my Mom (quite a talented artist in her own right) had something to do with it as she always encouraged our creative pursuits no matter how messy they ended up. With the decision made, we quickly got to work. The fact that we had no art didn't deter us. We broke out the crayons, paper, poster paint, scissors and glue and got busy.

We spent the better part of the next two days at our house furiously creating art, from your typical sketches and paintings to intricate shadow boxes (or as intricate as we could get using old shoe boxes and dime store construction paper). Now that we had the art, plans went into effect for our gala opening. We chose a date and venue (the next day and our backyard) and set to work curating and hanging the art. Curating was easy, we divided the artwork up by subject matter: Nature Art, Ship Art, Dinosaur Art*, Flower Art and the ubiquitous catchall: Art.

*A side note on the Dinosaur Art: it was all mine. Even though, throughout most of my childhood, horses were my artistic subject of choice, there was a time in second grade when I went through what I like to call my "Dinosaur Period". This was not unlike Picasso's "Blue Period". During that time, I could whip out a likeness of any dinosaur from an Ankylosaurus and Stegosaurus to the more familiar Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex. This detour in my career may have been due to the fact that the first love in my life, school mate Lyndon Cochran, was also an aficionado of dinosaurs but that's a story for another time. It's just a happy accident of fate that we produced our art show during this time otherwise the Dinosaur Art phase of my career would have been buried in the annals of history.

Hanging the art was a bit trickier. We had few vertical surfaces (trees) in our backyard for suspending the art and Dad was not to keen on us pounding nails into the trees willy nilly and tape was out of the question (Have you ever tried to scotch tape paper to a tree? It is not happening.). We needed some sort of surface (wood) that we could nail or pin our art to (scrap wood) and be portable enough to place around our backyard for display (scrap wood from Dad's shop!). After promising to return every bit of scrap wood, sans nails, when our show ended its run, we raced to my Dad's shop and found our hanging surfaces.

While the decorating committee went about carefully hanging the show, the publicity committee set about creating and delivering the gala invitations. No common, pre-printed invitations for us! Each invitation was lovingly hand calligraphed in crayon on fine, school grade construction paper and then delivered via Schwinn bike (no helmet required, gasp! it was 1968 afterall.) to the recipient's mailbox. Many gala events also feature swag bags for the attendees. As we had no swag, or bags for that matter, we chose small bunches of flowers carefully gathered the day before the event from our garden (yes, we asked Mom); each with a scrap of tin foil binding the stems together to add a bit of flourish. In addition to the flowers, Jimmy's mom made us cookies to offer our guests.

At last we were ready, the art had been created and hung and the invitations delivered. The day of the art show dawned fine and clear. We set up a small card table near the front gate leading from the driveway to our yard. On it lay the miniature bouquets in their crinkled, foil wrappers next to a plate of homemade cookies. Boo, being the youngest of us, was given the job of handing out a bouquet to each mom as she walked into the show. And what a show it was as our parents and neighborhood friends walked around admiring our efforts. The local press was on hand to document the event as evidenced by the photo above (that's me on the far left.) In our minds, the show was a resounding success. It was every bit as good as art shows that took place in fancy galleries and museums in the big city. All it took was a little imagination.

THE OLSEN BARN, CHESTER, CA

14x11 inches, oil on linen canvas, 2019

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The Olsen Barn, Chester, CA - auction ends on Sunday, July 26th at 10:00am PST. 

This is the iconic Olsen barn located in Chester, California on the shores of Lake Almanor. It sits flanked by a large Cottonwood tree with the setting sun casting shadows on it’s gnarled exterior.

Manhole Cover

You've seen them around, those lists of everyday items with hidden uses. Things like the hole in a soda pop pull tab being a place-holder for your straw or the tiny pocket in the front of your jeans being the perfect spot to keep a pocket watch handy. Apparently, the humble manhole cover is one of those everyday items that has multiple uses as well or so I learned a few years back when I recorded my Dad relating stories of his life. (Something, I would encourage everyone to do. It doesn't have to be a parent; siblings, cousins, spouses, children, friends all make excellent storytellers.)

For those of you not up on your manhole cover knowledge, it's main function is to act as a removable plate forming a lid over the opening of a manhole in a street for access to sewer, electric lines, or water lines. It's designed to prevent people and things from falling in and to keep out unauthorized people and material. Manhole covers are most often made from cast iron, concrete, or a combination of the two. This makes them relatively inexpensive and pretty darn heavy. To remove manhole covers, most covers feature "pick holes" into which a hook handle is inserted to lift them.

But to my Dad, Herb, as a young boy growing up in the Bronx, New York in the late 1930's and early 1940's, a manhole cover meant only one thing, home plate. Like other kids, he was a devoted fan of his beloved "Bronx Bombers", the New York Yankees. If he and his pals weren't listening to the baseball game on the radio, they were playing stickball. Stickball is a street game related to baseball usually played in large cities in the Northeast. The equipment consists of a broom handle and a rubber ball about the size of a tennis ball but without the felt usually a "spaldeen" (a high-bounce pink rubber ball made by Spalding) or a Hi-Bounce Pinky (also known as a "pensy pinky" and, you guessed it, is also pink). The rules come from baseball but can be modified depending on the location of play such as a street where a manhole cover becomes home plate and the buildings on either side constitute the foul lines.

As my Dad told the story, it was a bright summer day and he and his buddies were engaged in a rousing game of stickball. It was hot and humid as Herb stood at the plate (manhole cover) clutching the worn broom handle his friend Eddy had swiped out of his mom's cleaning closet (boy, was he going to "catch it" when he got home). Herb ignored the sweat trickling down his temple as he gazed at Billy, the pitcher. He wasn't just a kid in a t-shirt and dungarees rolled up at the cuff anymore, he was Joe DiMaggio facing down Bobo Newsom of the Detroit Tigers. Already he had hit two foul balls bouncing them off the same brownstone row house. The boys had seen the owner of the house shaking his fist at them through the window but they paid him no mind. I mean, come on, they were in the middle of a game!

The ball "thwacked" off of the broom handle and careened to the left where it banged off of the brownstone row house just below the window with the shaking fist.

Billy reared back and threw the bright pink spaldeen. Herb watched the ball all the way to the plate where he took a tremendous swing. The ball "thwacked" off of the broom handle and careened to the left where it banged off of the brownstone row house just below the window with the shaking fist. The window was wrenched open and an angry voice reached their ears. "I've had it with you kids!" the voice shouted. "I've called the cops!" Off in the distance came the wail of a siren.

The boys jumped into action. Eddy scooped up the pink spaldeen and shoved it into his pocket. The other boys scattered leaving Herb still standing over the manhole cover clutching the broomstick. It took him only seconds to realize yet another excellent use for a manhole cover: hiding incriminating evidence. He inserted the broomstick into one of the manhole's pick holes, released it, and watched it drop out of sight. As he ran away to rejoin his pals he thought "Now poor Eddy is REALLY going to "catch it" when he gets home."

BAA, RAM, EWE

14x11 inches, oil on linen canvas, 2019

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Baa, Ram, Ewe - auction ends on Sunday, January 19th at 10:00am PST. 

I love the way these sheep are backlit by the setting sun. They look like woolly gems. At least, I think so.