The Ghost Of Me

 

The Halloweeniest House On The Block

The Jack O' Lantern Class Of 2020

 

Loveland Dairy Queen Parking Lot Sculpture Garden

Loveland, Colorado has dubbed itself the sculpture capital of the world, and a short drive around town would be all the evidence one would need to substantiate the claim. There are sculptures everywhere, even in the parking lots of fast-food restaurants.

These few are in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen.

                                       Niccolo Paganini by Sutton Petti, bronze, edition of 10 

                                      Ocean Serenade by Victor Issa, bronze edition of 12

                                        Snoked by Shari Vines, bronze, edition of 1 (?)

    The Turning Point by Teresa Hansen and Jason Dreweck, bronze edition of 11, maquette edition of  21 (as seen on the Travel Channel)

                                            Shelter by Yon Regan, bronze limited edition of 8

                                       No title found, signed by Mark Lundeen, bronze, 33 of 36

                                                            No title or attribution found

 .
                         Ocean Voyagers b George W. Lundeen, bronze 

For Perhaps The Fifth Or Sixth Time In Our Entire Lives

 Last night I had dinner with my two oldest sisters. 

We met up at a local steakhouse and enjoyed a great appetizer (crab cakes! yum!) and our individual meals (the ribeye with the sun dried tomato and horseradish sauce was excellent).

It was nice, just the three of us enjoying a meal together, talking about our jobs, the onset of winter, the pandemic that has swept over the world these past 8 months, the wildfires that are raging in Colorado, and some other minor subjects. 

Just a nice, normal night out, nothing to really write about.

Except, you know, it was a nice normal night out.

The Uplifting Aspects Of Even The Slightest Attempt To Decorate A Yard For Halloween

 

Furthering An Understanding Via Argumentative Reasoning

 Hard to see a rainbow when all you believe in is black & white

Hard to feel the rhythm when all you hear is static 

You're not apt to find peace when you're always looking for a fight

You have to open up your mind a little if you want to think Socratic

This Is A Sign For The Times

 

Inspirational sign in front of FAB metal fabrication shop on Washington near 64th

I Was Up All Night Wondering Where The Sun Went

 Then it dawned on me...

We'll Be Right Back To The Apocalypse After This Message From Our Sponser....

 

A Little Something For The Acridologists

 

The Hedgehog

A scruffy looking character walks into a bar and sits down on a barstool directly in front of the bartender.

The bartender, a middle-aged bottle-blonde who has seen and heard it all, says, "What'll it be, Mac?"

The man says, "I have a piano-playing hedgehog in the right pocket of my coat. If I have him play you a number can I get a free drink?"

The bartender laughs at that and replies, "Sure Mac, if you can pull a tiny piano and a piano-playing hedgehog out of your pocket and put on a performance, I'll give you a drink of anything you want."

So the man proceeds to pull a tiny grand piano and a tiny piano bench out of his coat pocket, along with an even smaller hedgehog. He places the piano down and sets the bench right in front of it, then puts the hedgehog on the piano bench.

The brassy blonde bartender snorts and stares at the display, then the man points a small flashlight at the hedgehog sitting in front of the piano.

"He likes the limelight," says the man, "inspires him to perform at his best."

Appearing to crack his knuckles the hedgehog then places his tiny fingers on the tiny piano keys and proceeds to play.

First a little of Debussy's "Claire du Lune" as a warm up, then the hedgehog rips right into Prokofiev's "Lentamente".  

The bartender is slack-jawed & stunned. "Wow," she says, "That's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. What'll you have?"

"I'll have a classic Old Fashioned", which the bartender quickly whips up and sets down in front of the scruffy man. The man gulps down the drink nearly as fast as the bartender made it.

"My god woman, that was quite a delightful drink! If I can show you another act that'll top even the piano playing hedgehog, can I have another?"

Taken aback, the bartender throws the man a look of suspicious doubt. "You have something that can top the hedgehog act? If you have something that even comes close to topping the hedgehog act, you can drink all night for free!"

The unkempt man then pulls a small mouse out of the left pocket of his coat and places it on the table. The mouse quickly scurries over to the piano and jumps up on it and stands on it's hind legs.

The bartender twirls a few strands of her dark rooted blonde hair and stares cynically as the mouse appears to be clearing it's throat. Then the hedgehog starts to play the Simon & Garfunkel classic "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and soon the mouse starts singing, parroting both voices perfectly, even somehow managing to pull off the harmonies.

"Oh my g-g-god," the bartender stutters out. "That is the most incredible thing I've ever witnessed. Whatever you want Mac, you got it, all night long."

The man proceeds to order cocktail after cocktail until he's barely able to stay on his barstool, and all the while the hedgehog and the mouse continue to perform.

As luck would have it, a well-connected talent agent happens to walk into the bar just as the now drunk man falls to the floor.

The talent agent stares incredulously at the performing hedgehog and mouse, and then asks the bartender, "Where did you find this fantastic act?! I'll pay a million dollars right now for them!"

The jaded bartender motions to the scruffy drunk man on the floor and says, "They're not mine, they're his."

Excited beyond the pale the talent agent grabs the drunk man and practically screaming at him repeats his offer of a million dollars for the hedgehog and the mouse.

The bleary-eyed drunk looks at the talent agent and slurs out, "No dealsh, theys not forsh sale."

"Oh come on," the talent agent persists, "I'll double that, two million - think of all the cocktails you can drink with that!"

The drunk looks up at the talent agent, squints his eyes in an attempt to make him out better, and says, "Not forsh ten millionsh will I sell yoush the hedgehosh and moush. But I'lls tell yoush what, I'lls sell yoush the moush alone forsh 100 grand."

The talent agent doesn't hesitate. "Done," he exclaims, and immediately pulls out a cashiers check and makes it out for 100k, hands it to the drunk, then scoops up the mouse and practically runs out of the bar.

The blonde bartender, blue eyes ablaze, looks down at the scruffy drunk man and says, "Are you nuts? You just broke up the most amazing act in the history of entertainment for a hundred grand?! You could have had two million dollars!"

The drunk looks up at the bartender and puts a shaky finger to his lips. "Ssshhhhssstt, " He stammers, "the hedgehosh ah ventriloquish."

Badda boom.."*tisht*

I'll be here all week, try the chicken parm.

Niwot Community Park & Sculpture Garden

Niwot, Colorado has a community park has a small sculpture garden. 

Clarification: The sculptures are not particularly small, just the area of the park they are exhibited in is.

 

 

That Autumn Beauty

 

Statement In The Sky

 

Dysfunction Sells

If you watch enough theater, or television, or even read a few books, it doesn't take long to draw the conclusion that dysfunction sells.

Across all platforms, dysfunction sells. 

The desire to in someway witness (in some form or fashion) the lives of characters real or imaginary, fall apart, implode, go belly up, get thrown to the wolves, etc., and then be resurrected, saved, reborn, vindicated - is apparently an innate aspect of the human condition - the whole vicariously living dealio.

Not many writers, producers, publishers, actors, etc., have been able to make a living spinning tales of people who live normal lives with healthy, no-confrontational relationships with family members, friends, co-workers, and random strangers.

Few characters that inhabit the worlds created by the talented (and yes, even the untalented) minds of Hollywood or Publishers Row get up and enjoy a simple breakfast with their family, go to work and greet their co-workers amiably, do their jobs diligently, stop off at the grocery store on the way home for milk or bread or whatever, and then go home to a family they love and cherish and enjoy spending time with.

Nope, that does not happen in the wonderful worlds created by the best (and worst) creative minds in the business.

In the business of entertainment the things that are least likely to happen ever, and I mean ever ever, in the lives of anyone on the planet earth, is exactly what happens to characters depicted in shows, plays, novels, etc.

Which is all fine and good until the imaginary content begins to affect the opinions and attitudes of real people - people who in this day and age have platforms via the internet with which they are able spread their misinformed ideas throughout the world with nary a fact checker to be had.

Or who sit down next to me in bars.

Hollywood has long been notorious for distorting (or re-imaging) historical facts to create more tension or exaggerate the dysfunction.  

For example (as if anyone really needs one), in the Biopic of Ray Charles released in 2004, one of the tension-creating plot elements is Ray Charles refusing to play a concert in Atlanta due to the black fans in attendance being regulated to sitting in the balcony of the theater, and his refusal to play subsequently results in him being banned from performing concerts anywhere in the entire state of Georgia, forever.

This plot point is resolved at the end of the movie, depicted in a scene set in 1979, wherein the state of Georgia issues an official apology to Mr. Charles and designates his hit :Georgia On My Mind" the official state song.

At which point Ray and his family (wife he'd married in 1955, three grown sons) are applauded by an appreciative audience and Ray sits down at his piano and performs a soulful rendition of the tune.

It's a heart-warming, uplifting scene...and it's all horse puckey.

For starters, and most importantly, Ray Charles was never banned from performing in the state of Georgia. That is 100% fiction, or as more contentious people would state, a bald-faced lie. 

The state of Georgia never held a ceremony to apologize to Ray Charles because the state of Georgia never had any reason to apologize.

However, there was a ceremony in Georgia that Ray Charles did attend in 1979, but that was his induction into the Georgia Musician's Hall of Fame and the subsequent announcement that his song "Georgia On My Mind" had been named the state song.

Oh, and Della wasn't there, they'd divorced a few years before that actual event occurred.

But the truth was lacking, at least as far as Hollywood was concerned, so something that never happened had to be inserted for "dramatic effect".

Which wouldn't be too bad if the person I was discussing race relations with (the aforementioned guy next to me at the bar - well, not actually next to me - about six feet away - 'rona social distancing and all) last night hadn't brought up Georgia banning Ray Charles from performing as support for his argument that even successful black Americans had been relatively recently persecuted by the government, and I had to use the good 'ol Google to prove him wrong.

Seriously Hollywood, black Americans, including black entertainers in the 1940's and '50's, have suffered and endured mountains of real crap at the hands of ignorant racists, there's really no need to make things up about that for "dramatic effect".

 

Eddie Running Wolf Tree Carvings In Niwot Community Park

Niwot, Colorado is a little more than thirty miles from Denver as the crow flies (providing the crow is flying northwest). The town boasts a small community park that is home to a memorial to the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes that made their homes in the area until the late 1860's, when they were forced onto reservations in what is now the state of Oklahoma.

The memorial also commemorates the life of Arapaho Chief Niwot, known as Chief Left Hand in the English Translation.

Chief Niwot was a man of peace and, while a survivor of the terrible Sand Creek massacre, he still dedicated his life to bringing peace and harmony between the various Arapaho & Cheyenne clans and the U.S. Government.

 

Biitoheinen (Bee-tay-hay-nen)

Spear Lodge Man

The park features sculptures made from the large trunks of a few dead trees, carved by the incredibly talented Eddie Running Wolf.

The sculptures feature three prominent characters from the Arapaho and Cheyenne clans, and every one of them is captivating to say the least.

Cheyenne Ma'heonehetane (mah-hee-oh-hee-tahn)

Holy Man

Niisiitenoot Nii'eihiiho (Nee-see-tin-aht Nee-ay-hee-hah)

The Eagle Catcher

 

Every Little Choice She Makes Is Tragic