Country Caulking

On a chilly night the new acrylic indoor storm windows leaked cold, so feeling around the single-pane window frame and catching breezes, I looked carefully and saw all three layers of the window frame needed caulking, right now, in the ever-narrower space in Missouri between hot summer and cold winter, neither of those good for caulking.

In September I spent three days caulking a historic single-pane window real nice (with "antique white"), but this one is 1969 in an aluminum frame and it rained yesterday and it'll rain tomorrow so instead of having fun I got the stepladder and drop cloths, plastic bags, nitrile gloves, wet rags and caulking gun and worked quick and dirty. Nearly every inch of this 85-year-old house needs caulking. Aproned and teetering and reaching overhead and messing up, I do it about every 10 years. This time I noticed caulk technology has changed; now soap and water will get it out of your hair and off your gloves and pants.

Inner critic: Your caulking stinks.
Me: Shut up. It's better than yours.
Inner critic: Should have cut the the tube a narrower tip --
Me: I didn't see you lending a hand.
Inner critic: Slow and steady. Don't smooth beads with your finger; use a craft stick! What a mess! Don't you have a sponge? Don't poke at that, it's almost dry! Now it's worse!
Me: The caulk didn't fill it up the first time.
Inner critic: It would have, if you'd been patient --
Me: Cram it.

The photo is AFTER I caulked and while it's curing. Yes, it's hoosier, but it looks a lot like the art downtown at the Pulitzer. In the right light.

Meet and Eat?

Where the grass is mown, I saw a lone mushroom the size of my palm, perfectly developed with a cap so artistic I left it untouched and came back later. It grew low to the ground and the underside and stem were not visible. Overturning the mushroom showed a smooth white stem and a white lace of pores instead of mushroom gills. This identified it as a bolete. Most are edible -- the prized Italian porcini mushroom (doesn't grow in Missouri) is a bolete. The pores are tubes. Now and then a bolete has six-sided pores. Not this one.

In situ

Bruised from handling

Spore print

Picking it, I removed the cap to make a spore print. This bolete cap bruised at a touch. To make a spore print, set white paper and black paper side by side and set the mushroom cap down the middle. This will then capture a spore print whether the spores are dark or light. The spore print can confirm an identification. This bolete's spores (after three hours) were a doughnut-brown.

What type of bolete? My guess is boletus chrysenteron, but I didn't cook and eat it because I'm not sure. Anyway, that summer day I was into it as an art object, and into the art it created by itself. They say that spore prints can be so lovely that people frame them. I put the cap back where I got it and hoped it had spores to spare, to replicate itself. It made me want not a mushroom but a doughnut.

"July 29, 2019"

The previous entry discusses a painting titled "July 25, 1949" and I couldn't imagine its landscape, with that spit of land all wooded with evergreens, being based in some actuality, but as luck would have it, in Ashland, WI on July 29, on Lake Superior, I saw that landspit, with hills in the background too, which I photographed at once, noticing that if the painter, John Wilde, a notable painter and lifelong Wisconsin resident, had been painting his painting outdoors, from life, he would have been standing in what is now a lakefront park, so it is entirely possible, except now the sandy flats have been filled in and a concrete walk laid down for lakefront strolls, and anything resembling a dilapidated wooden shack with a handbill affixed is long gone.

Speaking to Spiders

Spiders were once sea creatures, climbing onto land about 100 million years ago and teaching themselves how to hunt very efficiently by spinning webs and then sitting and waiting, and they've since mastered the art. These elegant creatures have three separate spinneret nozzles in their abdomens: one for spinning non-sticky "framing" thread for their webs; one for sticky thread that catches their prey; and one that's a safety or parachuting line.

These threads -- for their size, strong as steel -- are made of protein and water. A spider needs both protein and water to keep spinning, and when necessary will eat its own web to build up energy for a new one. The orange-red artist in my photo lives on the corner of my garage where my car's headlights every evening give a minute of light while I get out of the car and raise the garage door. The first night I saw the illuminated web, the spider fled to a dark corner. I said "Don't worry. I won't hurt you." It took me at my word and now we are partners. I provide light by night that attracts moths and things into the spider's web.

The daddy long legs spider -- always close to the house because it likes water -- a year ago fell in love with a scrub brush that I left outside, and they had something in common, but this year it has the hots for half a geode, unfortunately destined to be unrequited love, but I said nothing, figuring it should be allowed to enjoy its fantasy world. I wished it much happiness, and went indoors back into my web and my fantasy world.

Tiles for Miles

"These people are obsessed with tiles," I thought, because in Portugal tiles are indoors and out, town and country, fronting buildings and churches, in restaurants, stairwells, kitchens, train stations, bathrooms. There are two kinds: faience, or ceramic tiles made of a special gray clay; and Moorish tiles, much heavier, made of terracotta. Both are hand-painted but Moorish are more likely to be textured and geometric (reflecting Islamic esthetics imported by the Moors who once ruled Portugal); faience is painted with just about anything, cobalt blue a favored color. Blue tile art is called azulejo and dates from the 17th century. People don't do it so much anymore.

Pictured above is an azulejo chapel ceiling (in the seaside town of Nazare; the chapel was just a hole in the wall and I went in and beheld this), and below, a restaurant front in Nova da Gaia; a bunny-themed tile in another restaurant; a doorway with atypical monochromatic tile; a bathroom in one of our hotels in the tiny town of Pinhao; and a sampler from one of my hosts' tile collections, now tiling his kitchen wall. It was I who was obsessed with tiles, and it'd be great if we could put people to work tiling things here.

 

You, Too, Can Zentangle

The public library offered a free class on "Zentangle" drawing, and because all education is good, I attended, having not the slightest idea of what it was, nor any drawing talent, nor much interest in Zen. But that evening I made a work of art and thought it was pretty cool.

The lively woman who taught our class is a public-school art teacher named Megan, who explained that "Zentangle" is "meditative drawing," or the creation of patterns and images in a relaxed fashion, with no pressure and with no such thing as errors. She taught us to create, step by step, the most common Zentangle patterns, plus flowers, and there are more patterns we didn't get to.

"Zentangle" is as fully established as adult coloring, except the Zentangler creates the image rather than filling in somebody else's pre-made image. There are "Zentangle" (registered trademark) starter kits. Megan got us started with Pigma 01 extremely fine-point ink pens, a fine-point Sharpie, and pencils. That and a drawing surface is all a Zentangler needs. We drew on 4 x 4-inch artist's tiles, thick paper rather like the coasters taverns put beneath your beers. Megan showed us a pair of white sneakers she'd decorated with fabric ink, and a photo of a backpack; she's also done a mural on the St. Louis public flood wall; and Pinterest is rife with Zentangler wallpaper, tee shirts, gift boxes, Zentangles in colored ink and watercolored.

Megan told us Zentangle began with a monk who tried to call to lunch an artist who was busy illuminating a sacred manuscript. He called and called and she didn't hear him. She explained, "Oh, I was so into what I was doing I didn't hear you," and I suppose it takes a monk to trademark and monetize that. It was fun and I'm glad I went to get some continuing education and learned something new that anyone can learn to do. I bought my own supplies and intend to Zentangle my way across the Atlantic toward my upcoming overseas adventure.