We are off for the weekend to Wallowa Lake up in the top right corner of Oregon. The spectacular Eagle Cap Wilderness Area begins not too far past where we will be staying.
It was the home of Chief Joseph. His story is not our best moment.
We will be there with Lora and her family, and on Saturday Deanna and Arline will join us.
Deanna is up from California for a few days, with her son Griff.
No cell coverage, no internet, but an inside swimming pool.
Some one has to do it!
Miriam looks cute in her new swim suit!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Cap_Wilderness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Joseph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallowa_Lake

drought year

We do a dry year or two in a row pretty well, but this time a few years ago, there was three in a row.
When full that lake is huge and a fun place to ride in a boat.

garden seeds

I hear that garden seeds sales are up this year. I think it was in the order of 20%.

They are not making a profit on me this year.

Not that I have not been buying. I ordered seeds from 4 different companies. Company G sent the order under my whole and under just my first name. Both orders were sent out the same day.

Then company C sent me my order then a week later then sent it again, and today I get a notice that my order has been shipped. I checked my bank and yep that money had gone out yet again. What started out as a $34 order turned out to be close to a hundred bucks.

So I called the C company number and talked with some one in India. Sure enough I had been over charged. Keep the seeds and they would credit my account $68 or so.

Then there was an email from G company saying that they were sending me $45.

They may have sold more, but they sure did not make a profit on me.

And, while that was going on. I changed health insurance for Miriam. Company M was getting real spendy and there were less expensive alternatives. So we changed to Company S. There is a time period when you can cancel the policy.

So in that period I changed again and went with Company A. So this month, after I had canceled the policy from the S group. They took another charge out of my bank account. So I checked with my agent.

She said a credit was being issued for the full three months. I had expected that, but that seed order stuff, and with two companies!

Still hard to understand, but do I have plenty of seeds now!

Happy Birthday Lora

Today is Lora's birthday. If you were a patient at her hospital, this is the look you might get!
I love her.

Lora a long time ago

This is Lora a long time ago. It is one of my favorite portraits of her in that era.
There is a current picture of her and her doting father on this blog a bit ago.
Another of those women I have loved as long as I knew she was going to exist.
We are going to see Lora and family Thursday. I am glad.

fall colors, by grandpa

I love this painting. It is so much in the tradition of the Impressionists.
And you know much Cezanne's paintings bring.

Grandpa the painter

In the mid ’50’s my maternal Grandfather began to paint.

He had had a minor heart attack and everyone wanted him to take it easy. He couldn't play the piano all of the time, so my mother suggested he try watercolor.

He was about 70 at the time. He had graduated from College, but his Major was Bible and Music, not art. He began painting with great gusto.

Grandpa’s style would be considered primitive: he did not know the rules of painting and color. He painted any way. And when a primitive painter shines it is wonderful.

This painting was done I the late 50’s, close to the beginning of his painting hobby. He was about 74. (He lived to be 98.) Unfortunately he aspired to a more detailed style. But at this point no one had messed with his head and no one had tried to teach him.

I wish I could have been his teacher/protector. I would have said: “Grandpa do not look at other painters, do not read any books, do not let any one change anything about your way of painting.” But with the best of motives mom and grandma bought him books, and magazines, and grandpa read and tried to paint “better.”

Grandpa was a very conservative 19th Christian man. I his view, Jazz and “Modern Art” were the same, he told me many times. “They are both an aberration of the real.” So painting like Cezanne or Van Gogh was not “good enough.” He was sure he did not like "modern art" and was pretty sure God did not either.

When Grandpa died I inherited the paintings. They have been on my shelf for several decades. But computers have changed it all. Today I scanned a dozen or so of the ones I like best. I would like others to see them too.

Grandpa, these are wonderful paintings, in spite of what you might have thought.

fear, terror and greed. details from "Requiem"

Three details from a large sculpture named Requiem that i did a few years ago. I was not happy, and that should show in the sculpture. Fully setup the piece covered an area of about 200 square feet. It was shown once, and is mostly destroyed now
The piece had a number of elements, some 7 feet tall.
"I am not dead yet and don't put me in one of your horrid little boxes."

56 Plymouth

About the time we were married cars changed a LOT. Mostly they got a lot faster! Chevy came out with an overhead valve engine that, in some configurations, was really fast. My 56 Dodge had a small V8 engine, 272 ci I think. but Chrysler made huge Hemi engines.
That year my favorite car was the Plymouth. One magazine add showed a guy washing his new Plymouth. He looks at the camera and says: "I am no millionaire, but I own it."
I wasn't a millionaire either and i never did own one either.
Right now I am not so sure it was that beautiful!

1948 Chrysler New Yorker

The nose was not quite as long as this picture suggests, but it was close.
Ours was not this rather unsettling green, but it was just a huge.
The transmission was a two speed, high and low, with an over drive in each gear.
There were very few Automatic transmissions at this time. Only GM had really good ones. Chrysler's version was not their most successful effort.

honeymoon car

We were married in 1956. I owned a 1948 Chrysler New Yorker.

That was the big Chrysler. It had lots of inside room, vented heater to the back seat, a lot of comfort and a strange transmission. It also had a straight 8 flathead engine. The head had to be 36” long. Gas mileage: 15 most of the time.

But it was 8 years old. I paid $175 for it and it was thought of as an old car. Cars did not go too far in those days. The New Yorker was low mileage and drove well. It was a decent ride.

My Dodge pickup is now 6 years old (I bought it April 1, 2003). And I consider it quite up to date. It is up to date and my New Yorker, only 2 years older, was regarded as an “old” car. Hmm.

Cars did not go too far in those days. A car with 100,000 miles was pretty well unsalable. It was worn out. Most current cars just come into their own at about that istance.

I guess that is just a gear head reminder of how things change. My last pickup, a 1992 Chevy, went for 240,000 before I sold it. The new owner was sure he could get it to go 300,000 miles on the original engine, but it was wrecked at 250,000. We will never know.

There are lot of Hondas and Toyotas out there with 300,000 and 400,000 miles and are still going strong. You can argue about the quality of cars now as compared with times past, but there is no comparison at all mechanically.

Maybe the old days weren’t so good after all. The cars surely had character, but they were not built as well, not nearly as well.

And I did not even talk about those old tires.