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It’s always good to ask.
Category Archives: iPad Art
Have you taken a stand in or on it?
Customer service ain’t what it use to be. That’s really what prompted me several weeks ago to draw this one: when there are multiple, abandoned, unoccupied, off-line check out lanes, say for instance at a grocery store, and yet everyone is channelled into the one and only line that snakes its way toward the light as though it were the illuminated path of the Three Wise Men.
However, the bigger question is this: When you’re in this situation, are you standing in or on line?
No Pain, No Gain
Today was my final session. I feel better.
Salt Trucks
Can’t live with’em; can’t live without’em!
Blackbird in the Cathedral
The Misbelieve Tree
Watching the final episode of Treme last night on HBO reminded me of the richness and incomparability of New Orleans and the life-changing 5 years that my wife and I spent living, working, and redefining ourselves there from 2005 to 2010, roughly the same timeline that David Simon and Eric Overmyer followed in the creation of Treme. We had been there just under 6 months before Hurricane Katrina hit. That portion of my experience and memory will forever be eclipsed by the following 4 and a half years dedicated one way or another to one form or another of rebuilding. Treme helped me begin to make sense of the fullness of that experience, which I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. New Orleans is an incomparable city in so many ways, and it has an enormous lesson to teach the rest of the world; and Treme, if I may generalize, should be a central component of the curriculum.
Last night’s final episode of Treme coaxed out a pre-Katrina memory. I was reminded of one of the many trees that we had to have removed from our property in Algiers Point, one of the few things we got done BK (Before Katrina). Some folks in the neighborhood called this tree a misbelieve tree or a misplease tree. It was, in fact, a Eriobotrya japonica or loquat tree, which some called a Japanese plum tree. Its trunk had been damaged, it leaned very much, and the arborist said it had to go. Those names, I’ve read, are associated with the tree’s name in either French or Italian. I’m not sure. Any ideas out there?
You’ll see this tree in living color 15 seconds into the following short video that I put together (images and terribly slow soundtrack) to celebrate our selling the property, which I’ve been told was the last house to sell in the Western Hemisphere in the summer of 2008!
Mr. Walter White, Substitute Teacher, Drivers Ed
J. P. Wynne High School Inter-Office Electronic Mail
TO: Mr. Walter White, Chemistry Department
FROM: Ms. Carmen Molina, Assistant Principal
Walter, I hate to ask you for this favor on such short notice and since, I know, you haven’t been feeling well lately, but Ted had to leave due to a family emergency, and I need you to take his last period Drivers Ed class today. Thanks, I owe you one! Carmen
The More Things Change
As we prepare to move for the 6th time in 23 years, seven if you count our most recent move up from one upper-floor unit to another up even higher in this downtown loft building, we’ve been watching a lot of HGTV. We’ve been downtown lofters, something new for us, for nearly 4 years and have grown accustomed to panoramic views, elevators, and life without either Home Depot or Lowes. This will all change…or maybe it won’t.
2.5 Baths
Real estate and rental property ads. Those who write them should accommodate or at least consider the learning styles of those of us who take things literally.
Che! This Pope!
Say what you will about him, but this pope seems to be shaking things up. Seems like every time he opens his mouth, he symbolically knocks over another money-changer’s table in the temple! He has a way with words. In his first public address he caught everybody by surprise by deviating from the traditional script and speaking directly from the heart. Soon after we learned, that, naturally, as a Porteño, i.e., someone from Buenos Aires, Argentina – and a Tano to boot, a Porteño of Italian descent – he even threw out a word in Lunfardo for Christ’s Sake, Porteño street slang! He said, “God nos primerea!” which draws on a fútbol reference to convey the notion that God firsts us, bests us, will always have a hail mary pass up his sleeve! Che, and that was code for something bigger, something more generalizable! You name it, think of anything, and all of us, everybody, todo el mundo, we are all tied for second place, at best!! What a refreshing solidarity. “Who am I to judge?”
Sources close to Pope Francis recently reported that one day he looked out of his simple apartment’s window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, saw the multitude gathered there against the backdrop of the world he has been asked to shepherd, and uttered another common Argentine expression in sotto voce:
Imagine the pope looking out his window and seeing all of us. For those who don’t already know what ¡Qué quilombo! means, check out Item #3 here. It’s no big, mysterious deal. It means something like, “What a mess!” Or my favorite translation is “What a shitstorm!”
Over time I’ll tell the story of how the pope used to be my boss…indirectly.
portfoliolongo 