Dogs and fish

sometimes I just want to paint dogs,

and fish.

illustration todd t. norman

Growing up in New Jersey, my dad and I threw knuckballs back and forth and I’ve always loved the way the pitch moves. This story is about an expert knuckleballer. R.A. Dickey

learning to make fabrics— time for test swatches

oilstick on canvas 2010  todd t. norman

I don’t consider myself a photographer but I’ve taken photos for a long time with painting in mind, or framing in mind, or some sort of composition. Sometimes I think that’s all art is or becomes, someone deciding where to put the frame. Or someone working through an idea and then deciding– It is done, walking away, coming back and still having that feeling. Sometimes, I think something is done and I come back, and it isn’t. Is there any part of art that isn’t intuition? Besides the decision to work at it, or play with it, rather it is a need. I’m not sure there is anything besides feeling. A feeling that a work is done, and now, it is time to move on.

Every so often I’ll turn over a piece of paper from off the floor, or turn the page of a student journal, and wow! something brilliant shows up– here’s one by Eli  E-P. You can’t teach how to draw like this!

When I moved to Michigan from New Jersey I noticed some words and pronunciations that just didn’t exist out East. I also was told that I talked funny. Here are a few that I remember and have noticed over the years.

1. scooch    /skoo ch/     a small amount or distance
   Could you please scooch over so that I have room?  Scooch over!
2.  comeer    /ka meer/  Come over here.
   Comeer a second so I can explain somthing to you.
3. yacomin  /ya komin/   a question that encourages you to hurry up.
   The movie starts soon, yacomin?
4.  couple three  /cup le three/   a few, more than one,
   How many days are you going up north?  I don’t know, couple three.  (my wife swears that this isn’t a real one, but I know I’ve heard it more than once.

The above are my own observations but Michigan Native has some nice ones too.

listened to The Record (NPR) on the way to school this morning, haven’t dug deep, but worth the time,

The Sound Recordings catalog comprises over 17,400 digital audio files, beginning with Lomax’s first recordings onto (newly invented) tape in 1946 and tracing his career into the 1990s. In addition to a wide spectrum of musical performances from around the world, it includes stories, jokes, sermons, personal narratives, interviews conducted by Lomax and his associates, and unique ambient artifacts captured in transit from radio broadcasts, sometimes inadvertently, when Alan left the tape machine running.

This is a different sort of site. 750 words is more about working out thoughts and getting the rigmarole out of the way. I’ve been using it to dig for triggers, places where writing gets interesting. This is a short excerpt that needs more, but it triggers an exploration.

He stands on the last rung of the dock looking out over the lake. It is that day again. It is July. His sisters and brothers are inside the lodge watching cartoons or mythbusters, or just walking through talking with Hoppa or Nana. Nana is pulling up a stool and inviting someone to make pie and hoppa is walking to the shop with a paintbrush and a can of yellow paint.

There is a spot out there, and his goggles are ready. He tugs them on, ties his suit again. There is a spot out there on the bottom of the lake, waiting for him. There are crayfish, old golf balls, pop cans, snapping turtles, but they’re not what’s important. What’s important is what he hasn’t seen yet. Something really old or brand new. Something man made or natural. It doesn’t matter what it is, what matters, is that it is there, waiting.

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.

This is one of those drawings that I don’t remember thinking about. Therefore, maybe, a bit of flow?

genius title work

Reading a post by about rebranding teachers, and came across this little snippet.

To put it another way, most teachers don’t place a greater value in their own ability to learn and model learning. In that way, the word “teacher” connotes someone with something to give, some piece of knowledge or skill or content that must be taught. But lost in that interaction too many times is the most important learning of all, a student’s ability to learn on his or her own, to ask his or her own questions, find the answers, and create new knowledge around those answers.

will richardson  post

sharing colored pencils with my kids

the short story ”Now I Lay Me” by Hemingway, Nick is trying to delay sleep. He tries to remember everything in his life, made me think about visiting my grandparents house as a kid–

shed with tools, dirt, fertilizer, trees with bricks protecting the base, drop in holes, hill for sledding, running down to a pond with ducks, giant piles of sticks, improvised bridges, bonfire piles, neighbors with freezing cold pool,

basement, old pool table, bomb shelter, presidential pictures, signatures, file cabinents, water softener bags, doors  to the outside,

closets, tennis raquets, raincoats, galoshes, hats, baseball hats, a bathroom with bird wallpaper that would go 3-d if you let your eyes relax, a hallway with a mirror table, drawer with g-mas gloves, cigerettes, lighters, smoking, bricks painted white,

family room,  slide projector, slide carousels, trips to Europe, table for board games,  mononpoly, risk, gin, hearts, yuker, bridge, gma watching the tigers doing a crossword puzzle, perfume, wood square tile floor,  grandpa balling up newspaper into the fireplace,

kitchen,
coca cola, vanilla ice cream, knob microwave, shag carpet, table by the window, casserole, laughing, smiling, family,

Fictionalized account from my childhood fishing spot, a rough sketch,—

The eel looked like it was floating. We had never seen one up close, so close. Neither of us wanted to take it off the line so Mike started banging it against the side of the concrete dam. I felt bad for the eel, but started laughing because he looked like a maniac. I couldn’t help it.

A window in old mill opened above us and an old guy with a beard stuck is head out.

“knock it off!

“that’s what we’re trying!”

He shut the window and a minute later he came out his front door tucking his shirt in.

“Don’t kill it.. Let me help you” He ran over the lip of the dam, and grabbed the eel, held it slithering in his hands.  He started whispering to it and us. It can’t hurt you, it isn’t a snake. “Look, its beautiful”– and then he told us all about eels and how they mate out in the middle of Atlantic somewhere. Somewhere no one even knows about, and how this eel swam thousands of miles. We could tell he really loved eels.

“Well this one is dying so we might as well cook it up. You want to try some?” Neither of us had the guts to say no, now that we’d killed it. “You keep fishing I’ll yell when its ready.”

this one reminds me of middle school afternoons in pine creek bay, Frendt knows, Sheephead!