Trees 9"x12", acrylic

Dream Whispers

A few weeks ago, I had a dream. I was sitting outside people watching at a park. It was warm and sunny and I felt, well good. Somebody next to me whispered in my ear, “Your camera is not dead. I patiently replied without looking at the unidentified person, “Yeah, it is. I can’t focus it. The auto focus is dead.” The person whispered back, “That is a lens issue. You need a new lens, but your camera is fine.” I woke up, for a few minutes I thought “YAY, Nikki can be fixed!” I then realized, “ …..Oh, stupid dream.” and proceeded with my day. At this point everybody who has bothered to read their digital SLR instructions, is thinking, “Duh, moron, listen to the camera whisperer…she is right.” It turned out, it took me a minute to think, wait a minute, it IS the lens. Long story short, Nikki the Nikon is alive and well after a quick, (as in let’s break speed records) trip down to my favorite Camera Department.

Who was the camera whisperer?

Several decades ago, my then fiancé’s brother was getting married. There was a problem with a detail in the wedding plans and Joe, my fiancee needed to talk to him about it. Joe went to be early leaving instructions with his father that when Pete his brother came home, he should wake Joe up so they can talk about the problem. Pete worked late shifts and would not be home until quite late. The next morning I went to Joe’s and he said Pete had not waken him, that his father probably forgot to tell him to do so. Later that night, Peter, Joe and I were hanging out, when Peter told him this story: It seems Peter indeed went downstairs to wake up Joe after Joe. The conversation went like this:

“Hey Joe, Pop told me to wake you. You say there is a problem with the wedding plans.”

Groggily, Joe seemingly awake said, “Yes, the current and the voltage don’t match.”

Confused and amused Pete tried again, Joe, Joe, what the hell are you talking about. Wake up.”

“Yeah, Pete, I’m awake, what?”

“What’s the problem with the wedding plans?”

“Pete,” replied Joe, “The current and the voltage don’t match”

“Yeah,” said Pete, resigned that Joe is obviously to far gone in dreamland, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow”

Joe was fast asleep before Pete could finish the sentence.

It was a good thing that Pete told him what he had said in his sleep that night when it seemed like Joe was awake. You see, Pete gave him the answer to a problem Joe, an engineer, was having at work.

The brain was my camera whisperer, and Joe’s work whisperer. Somewhere in the parts that Scientists say we likely do not use consciously we have answers and we have to go to sleep to get the answers. This is a simple explanation for something so small, our brains but so unbelievably amazing and maybe magical, supernatural and maybe theological.

"Past and Present" Digital Collage

Our brains look out for us. We learn from either older wiser people who have smarter gray matter than us or we learn from trail and error, but when we do, we can survive because of our brains. Instincts start in the brain, taste, smell, sounds are processed in the brain. We do not step in shit because we learn if it smells like shit and it looks like shit, then maybe just maybe it IS shit, and we don’t smash our Keds in them. We tend to be smart that was most of the time.

Oh Canada!

Today is Canada Day, and my birthday, which makes me happy because I am rather fond of our neighbors to the north. Here in New England they are not even that far north. I had gone to Canada several times in my life and never had a bad experience. Ok, I did get sick in Falmouth for a day, but that wasn't Falmouth's fault! My feeling for our neighbors were cemented on a trip we took many years ago. We took our car on a ferry  to Nova Scotia. Arriving in Halifax we could not find parking anywhere and just decided to park just anywhere downtown.  We took a nice walk, did a lot of window shopping, found a really great antique place and saw some art. We were gone a long time and worried we would get several tickets, or worse our car would be towed, as was our fate in Manhattan just the month earlier. In that case we left out car for just 20 minutes, 20 minutes!!!  This time we got back to our car and indeed there was a ticket. I wish I still had it so I can post it online. It said:

                             You have violated a parking regulation here in Halifax. But you are excused! Welcome, visitor to Halifax and have a great stay!

In the back of the ticket was tourist attractions we can visit during our stay. My friend says that was brilliant marketing on their part. I like to think Canada is just that nice!

Just a quiet moment to look at Murals, Pleasant Street and Shrewsbury Street, Main South......

 

 

 

 

Around the Corner

Cambridge Street, Acrylic on Canvas 6"x9"

Eulogy to Nikki and Cameras Past

I love photography so much. I am by nature....nosy. I want to know the back story to everything and the why's. My father was an Engineer, but dabbled in photography. In Hungary during the '56 uprising he took pictures of the fighting, the molotov cocktails being thrown at Russian tanks, a burnt head in mid  scream propped on a tank.....scarey haunting images.....that I never had the nerve to ask my father about. I do know he his negatives to an American journalist and was able to buy tons of oranges for my mom, who loved the fruit that was hard to come by then in Austria, where they stayed for awhile.
       He still tooled around with photography when they came to the US and settled for awhile in Brooklyn. When I was a kid and we moved to Long Island, he set up a darkroom in the basesment of our house, a sweet setup because there was a kitchen downstair where he set up the equipment, so he had the sink and a bar for the chemicals and enlarger.
        My brother did photography and was very good at it and in College, I decided against Psychology and went into art. I grew to love art and photography more than anything! Strangely enough it was the process I loved, more than the finished product. My art to me was like a conversation, once it is out of my mouth it is shared and belongs to the person listening. The moment us gone. For me, what I get attached to are tools. I never had the highest end camera and these days I paint with very good paints, but just okay brushes, but I love my tools, I love what I can doo with them. My father bought me my first camera, a konica rangefinder. One day, on the Houston Street Subway platform, some kids wanted to take my camera:
"Give me your camera", the big one said.
"No," I replied. And I hit him with my huge bag, but protecting my camera.

Now, I don't recommend doing that because that is a great way to get killed. So just insure tge damn camera, and give it up to save your life.

"Damn, you crazy bitch!" Said the big guy with now a bloody nose. For some reason, they just all went away instead of hurting me. I was lucky. But that is me and my precious tool.

I wasn't so lucky later on in college, my apartment was broken into. My roomates lost their musical instruments and my newer camera, an olympus was stolen. In California, somebody came through our open door and stole my backpack, and two Nikons I had inside. Back in Mass, in Worcester, our apartment was burglarized while we were at work, and they stole my Pentax 6x7. It was painful. After each of those thefts, I would have dreams that I still had my cameras and were using them, like nothing happened and all those dreams were so vivid. My father, who was born 81 years ago today, died in 1993. Strangely enough, to this day, I dream very vivid dreams that he is still alive, that the cancer was erradicated, that rumors of his death were premature.

Back to my cameras, my conventional Nikons went with me to Paris and Budapest and to a great drag event in New York City called Wigstock in 1994. The images I took that day were priceless, but as with fishing, the best image was the one that got away. I was sitting on the concrete barrier reloading my film and talking to a gorgeous drag queen, when ahe pulled out a compact and lip gloss and started touching up her lips. Justat that second on the other side of the barrier and station wagon stopped for the light right next to her and 3 little Hasidic boys stared at her with awe! I had the right lens on the camera- a wide angle, to make that an amazing shot, but I couldn't get the film in fast enough and I missed the shot!

My cameras I felt had a spirit in them and they were trying to help me come to terms with my lose....that or my mind is trying to, which is the more plausible scientific explanation. But I was always intrigued how in Judaism or among the Japanese, there are those who believe inanimate objects carry spirits.

Nikki, my latest camera, my first digital camera, a nikon just died. She served well as my tool for 7 years and was a beloved gift from my Sweetheart. I haven't dreamt of Nikki and shooting away, but I sure wish I can take the pictures I need to of this crazy ugly city and my citizen family.

An open letter to a Slut

For three days 2 weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh felt it necessary to degrade Sandra Fluke, a law student at Columbia who was speaking in front of House Democrats on behalf of a fellow student who, because of an inability to pay out of pocket for contraception, lost an ovary.

How do I start, do we start at "Hey Rush, this is the last straw in your long, never ending string of misogynistic rants?" The knee jerk emotional reaction? Okay, let's go there first,

An open letter to Rush:

Rush, you are and always had been a pathetic blowhard who never matured passed the age of 14. Your taunts are that of an awkward kid whose body proportions and hormones are torturing him inside and out. You 'like' girls, but you hold a strange Madonna/whore complex close to your heart even though you live in the wrong decade for this kind of thinking. Sad, Rush, pathetic. But the worse part Rush, is you get paid to say these things and you have a lot of listeners who think you are God. Unlike other pundits who have said disgusting things about women, you go after a private citizen, a young girl, who was just exercising free speech in an adult mature manner. I hope against hope, she sues you for slander and takes you for every ill gotten dollar you made through the years.

As a woman who matured way too early physically, I remember traumas that I received from older men speaking to me and attempting inappropriate things with me, not realising I was 9 and 10 years old. It sickened me and distorted my view of love and trust and society. Sure Sandra is a grown woman, but still quite young, and unlike my humiliation, hers was public for the whole country to hear, from somebody who was the leader of an army of 'dittoheads'. You are now and have been training your 'dittoheads' to disrespect, if not outright abuse women in their lives. There are people out there who say routinely, "Rush is the only one who tells the truth." So, your truth two weeks ago is, that women who get their contraception paid for should upload their sex acts for the 'taxpayers' to see. And all women who use birth control are sluts.

You take precious air wave time, and instead of using it for good, and for the betterment of our American Family, you use it as a bully pulpit for you pathetic agendas. If you had something legitimate to say, you would be able to say it, and reasonable people would respond. However because, you do not have a reasonable agenda you lie, cheat, make outrageous comments in the name of 'satire', and you divide a country that is falling apart; and you are doing this now because you don't think contraception should be covered by insurance???

Now, how about the intellectual reaction: Rush, you don't take a pill every time you have sex, so your statement about Sandra having so much sex that she can't afford, was just plain stupid. Rush, the pill is a Hormonal therapy and is used for more than birth control, not that there is anything wrong with birth control. And if you feel there is something wrong with birth control, my man, please tell me why you have had four wives and no children? I digress, hormonal therapies are used for woman with heavy, life threatening periods like I've had and other medical conditions that wouldn't enter your horny little brain. Sandra was speaking on behalf of a friend who lost an Ovary, so how did your radio discourse turn to Sandra's sex life? Don't you listen? Or more likely, were you changing the story to fit your little comedy act at her expense? Rush, taxpayers are not asked to pick up the bill, it is private insurance companies, yes in the case of medicare, taxpayers would pay. First of all we all pay for taxes on things we do not like. It is called sharing the burden with your fellow citizens. You claim to be a patriot, then be a patriot and help other American. This is how we maintain a strong country. It is cheaper in the long run to pay for contraception than for the Insurance companies/tax payers to pay for the consequences down the line, simple logic. The way you speak, you might as well have a bumper sticker on your oversized limo that say, "I love my country, it's the people I can't stand".

To paraphrase what you said about our President back in '09, Rush, I really hope you fail this time. You have gotten back up through drug scandals and more importantly your hate talk. This must all stop! You need to re-examine your moral priciples and do something good with your life.

Art in an Ugly City

Worcester
This is a gathering of misfits,
Thrown togther in a shallow grave.
We dig to the surface
with anger and a purpose.
Because art in an Ugly City, not redundant
But a narcotic.
We need out fix.
-E. Garamy 2000

Street names

I live on Ashland Street, bordered by Pleasant and Elm. Pretty names, names of trees, or neighboring towns, Shrewsbury Street, and names of families who owned farms years past, Bullard Street. Some are positive descriptions: Sunny Lane, Morningside Drive. Famous People, Martin Luther King Blvd. Pretty, so pretty. And then there is the name of streets in Hungary.
When my father died, my mother moved back to Hungary to be closer to her brother and friends from College. She found a wonderful little flat on a section of Buda called Rose Hill. Pretty name. Street name: Vérhalòm Utca. Let me breakdown the name for you. Loosely translated it means 'Street of my bloody death', which if you know my dear mom, it's not terribly surprising that she would find a home for her golden years on the 'street of my bloody death'. She is not the most cheery woman and she does carry a lot of baggage from her youth in wartorn Hungary. Still, I had to ask.
'Anyu, Vérhalòm utca?!! '
'Vell,' she sighs,'It's named after a big battle against the Turks....'
'And in one thousand years they couldn't come up with a new more cheerful name??
'Vhy does the name have to be cheerful?' (Yes, Anyu pronounces her W's as V's)
She is right. It would be much easier if street descriptions were more realistic, then instead of Ashland street, where I live would be called 'Crack House Corner,' and maybe people may not need a Nav system to get to my home. Practical, not pretty, but practical.
Vérhalòm u., despite its name is a pretty street. Here on the east in the U.S. there are plenty of ugly, if at least practical streets with pretty names. I love ugly streets. They are real and they are a catharsis for the living, breathing anger that is all around us.

New At the Job

Sometime ago, Silly, my partner and I went to the Boulevard diner on a Sunday. It was crazy hectic, but always with a smile was the small blonde server. That day, however we had Butch. Now I don't know if that is his real name, but we will call him Butch for now. Butch was new, he took 20 minutes to come over, and when we asked for coffee, it.....just never arrived. Ms Blonde nice lady server kept looking over apologetically, we thought it was funny. Butch was saying, 'I got it, I got it!' everytime Ms Blonde nice lady wanted to help. We eventually got our meal, but we had no utensils. When we asked he said, 'You'll get it, you'll get it!...' At this point Ms. Blonde nice lady quietly slipped utensils onto our table in the most clandestine manner.
        Now Butch was a sight to behold, intense eyes, bald head with a scar running diagonally on his scull.         I leaned over to Silly and asked, 'Your take, brain surgery or prison knife fight?'
          She gave Butch a sideways look and said to me, 'I'm going with knife fight'
          We never got the coffee, and as we left Silly left a big tip. I said, 'Really?'
           She said, 'Yeah, I'm afraid.of him.'
       Boulevard Diner, the prettiest diner in Worcester.

You need to eat in an ugly city



The Owl Diner Fitchburg, Ma. Acrylic on canvas 6"x9"

Fancy restaurants are so ridiculous in an ugly city. Why does Worcester have 111 Chop House or The Sole Proprietor? Sure they are popular restaurants, and high end, but they seem silly  in the embrace of triple deckers.  The only restaurants that make sense in Worcester are hole in the wall ethnic joints and diners. Both have good food and resonably priced. Also you are not shamed when you spill the food on your clothes. This is why I paint diners.

New Year

How did it become 2012? That was a date in Science Fiction, not reality? Where are the flying cars?