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Once upon a time there were these two guys, Jeff and Gary, who worked for a safety equipment company run by Gary’s dad, and sometimes after work or at lunch Jeff would break out his guitar and a few songbooks

And they would sing Beatles songs or Tom Petty or Bob Welch or The Who or some of Jeff’s original songs or Jeff’s brother Danny’s stuff (“Cord Whippin Mama” was a real saga)

And then one day in 1983 Jeff suggested that Gary buy a guitar and a little Gorilla amp

And he did and some more songbooks too like Great Songs of the 60s and Jackson Browne and another bigger Beatles book and Bob Dylan

So they played stuff and then Marty K came back to town and he had what he called a Good Smellin Bad Guitar and he joined in

And the fledgling band was christened The Snot Dogs and Marty who couldn’t always be there took to saying “We are The Snot Dogs/The Snot Dogs are we/Sometimes there’s two/And sometimes there’s three”

And fellow GHS alumni Charlie and George got the word from Marty and there started to be get-togethers mostly in Jeff’s living room

And Marty went off to law school and before long fellow law school students Karen, who played fiddle, and Vicki, who played flute, started coming to the sessions

And one fateful night at Jeff’s the heavily pregnant audience member Joni, who was Gary’s wife at the time, let Gary know between songs that she had felt something that may have been a contraction

So Joni and Gary left to give birth to their daughter while the band played on

For many years.

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Though it is undated, and may be reworked at a later time, this drawing is essentially done as of today, January 17, 2022. Today is Betty White’s 100th birthday. Betty is no longer with us but her legacy of empowerment for women–she led by superb example–and reverence for animals is alive and well.

Two days ago I briefly served as a Docent for the Glendale Arts Council, spending the afternoon at Sahuaro Ranch Park welcoming visitors into the Fruit Packing Building, where the Council’s 58th annual Juried Fine Arts Show was in progress. After I had done my duty I took a long hike to my friend Martin Klass’s house. Before I had gone a mile I was walking past a mini-flock of sheep, and I stopped to take pictures, and some of them left the flock and came up to the fence, thus:

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I was subsequently compelled to write this about our encounter:

no baa, no humbug

out the gates of sahuaro ranch park
and east on mountain view
west of fifty-first ave
reside livestock
including sheep
who were clumpingly champing on grass
bout fiddyfeet from the chainlink

and were so bored
that a pedestrian with a phone cam
was a welcome distraction

and three nay four
came up to the fence
to say hello
and mouth-grab dry leaf from the links

they were mellow
matter-of-fact
and i hope not disappointed
that i gave them only
murmurs

Two days later, rereading the poem, it seems to me that it sounds eerily similar to the “voice” of William Carlos Williams in his famous poem “This Is Just To Say.” I gratefully acknowledge his influence.

As for my own poetic voice, in the form of the acrostic poem in the image above, here it is, transcribed:

risk disk

ruminate in fleece array’d
indolence: it’s toujours gai
sacrificial-lamming desks
keep it pesky–add some pesk

And the image, which was sketched and calligraphed on a card approximately 3″ by 5″, is a rather muddled blend of at least three faces. the central face is that of the ewe in the photo, the one on the right. It is flanked by a couple, one of whom has one hand on top of the other’s, though that is nearly impossible to see, what with the superimposition of ewe-face and poem. There MAY be a duck’s profile helping the ewe’s right ear do double-duty, and there MAY be a grinning clam doing the same with the left ear. (In this surreal Image-Universe, clams are every bit as sentient as were the oysters in Lewis Carroll’s famous poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”)

I say MAY be, because this image is preliminary to a much larger drawing on the same type of paper, but with 32 times more square footage. (Inchage? [smiles]) I hope to spend at least a week on the larger, more elaborated, less murky drawing. It is inevitable that I will find new things to say and draw to honor Betty White and her love for all creatures, which is ancillary but vital to this image. (Notice how the sheep is saying “Happy Heavenly Birthday, Betty White!) I love the idea of having some small part in continuing the divine Ms. White’s earthly mission. And so, inspired by the example of mypoet and professional-organizer friend Michelle Frost, today I made a modest donation to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Friends, I urge you to make some donation to some animal-advoicacy group today.

2022 0117 aspca donation

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My friend from midstate California, Bob Kabchef, grows things like pomegranates and walnuts and tomatoes, and every so often he shares his harvests with some of his friends. Yesterday a heavy box packed and shipped by him landed in the “parcel locker” of my apartment complex. I have since divested two pomegranates of their seeds, putting some of them in my morning oatmeal. Here’s a photo of the remaining seeds, with a little pom atop them for contrast and scale:

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My late, much-missed friend Karen Wilkinson often hosted musical evenings for our living-foom band The Snot Dogs. Usually the evening included pizza from locally heroic Spanato’s, plus a salad of Karen’s own making which included pomegranate seeds–the ingredient that made the salad extra-special. So this morning I called fellow band member Martin Klass (about whom more in my blog posts “Foom-Bozzle-Wozzle” et sequelae) and told him I’d gotten some pomegranates; would he like one?

“I would love one,” he said. “You know, because of Miss Karen.”

I knew. So tomorrow I’ll deliver him one. And I’ll also ask our piano player Katie Wood, who loved Karen as well.

Friendship and Love are transmitted many ways, Friends.

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The house on Krall Street inhabited by my unique friend Martin Klass (see Foom-Bozzle-Wozzle parts 1 and 2) is nestled in diverse overgrowth of bucketed flowers, crawling vines, and trees. Marty is a horticulturist and a hoarder, so much so that the City has issued him at least one citation, and not the good kind, either.

Yesterday I made my public-transport way to Marty’s place, and found to my mild dismay that a ceramic vase, which I had made and either given to Marty or had it dumpster-dived by him when I cleaned out my former workshop after my amicable divorce with the very nice small-town Minnesota gal Joni née Froehling, was in one of Marty’s flower-buckets, toppled over. I grabbed the vase and tried to open the screen door of the house, but it was strangely stuck. “HELLO…”

“Bongo!” replied Martin son of Max & Betty. (He calls me Gary infrequently. “Bongo,” “Ca’Bear,” and “Bernanke” are more frequent forms of address.) “Jussaminit!”

Inside his enslovened abode, I brandished the vase, told him how I’d found it, and accused him of neglect. He nodded in agreement and assured me that many other works of my creation on his property were being neglected, and that some in his back yard had been destroyed in storms. (I knew that already and it didn’t bother me–a lot of what Marty had were “factory seconds” of mine, unsuitable as showpieces. Prolificity’s downside is also its upside.)

I had a proposition for Marty, spawned when I picked up my vase. I was there to pick up the bird sculpture that had been rejected by Bruce Cody, the juror of the Glendale Arts Council’s 57th annual Juried Show. But I would rather have the vase, made by me on the 19th of May 2003 and having a suggestion of hard-to-capture antiquity, of ancient days, about it, than the rejected bird, made recently, which I could easily replicate in a couple of hours spread out over a couple of bisquing/glazing weeks. How about a trade?

Marty instantly agreed, and also agreed to pose for a photo illustrative of the trade:

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I left soon after, but before I left I said, “You’re my best friend,” perhaps quoting Jessica Tandy as Miss Daisy, or perhaps telling him a simple truth.

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Behold Bart Turner, mainstay of the Glendale Arts Council. In this photo he is in the act of bucking the tradition of not making any presentations nor announcements during Opening Night of the annual art show, and I’m glad. Among other comments, he gave some history of the show, whose first incarnation was in 1963, and outside, and used clothesline to display some of the artwork. Later I asked him for a one-sentence quote for blog publication. His charming companion said, “Bart doesn’t do one-sentence quotations…” but after some thought Mr. Turner said, wisely and accurately: “Our show is a favorite of Arizona artists.” He then added, “Tell them to Like us on Facebook,” so it turns out his charming companion was right.

Speaking from authority, since I am an Arizona artist, the show IS a favorite of Arizona artists. Each year they pick a juror who has proven herself or himself to be an artistic force to reckon with. After the jurying, a preview opening is held that features not just the juried-in entries, but all entries deemed acceptable for jurying. The venue is the historically significant Sahuaro Ranch Park Fruit Packing Plant. The show lasts about four weeks in what is usually extraordinarily balmy weather for January.

Sorry, Mr. Turner–I am not going to tell my independent-minded readers to Like the show on Facebook. I will, however, invite them to check out the Glendale Arts Council Facebook page for themselves, and will provide this link to do so: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Glendale-Arts-Council/147185502008516

Lastly, since this is and always has been a Blog for the Aggrandizement of Gary W. Bowers, here’s some related me-stuff:

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Here’s my “Planes and Plenum.” Note the blue and green stickers. Blue means it’s in the show; Green means it’s getting an honorable mention.

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Here is Martin Klass, a man I have known for more than 50 years. Though we are not always friends, for this picture he friendlily and obligingly scrunched a little, while I stood on tiptoe, making me appear to be taller than he. Marty’s mom, Betty, 90 years young and a saint of a woman, was also in attendance.

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Here is the young man Marty calls his “nephazoo,” Tom. The name on his tag, Tom Klass, is not the one he was born with, but that’s a long story, untold here. Tom is a caregiver for Betty, and an excellent one at that.

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Here are a trio of ladies, 2/3 of whom I have known for a long time. The one in the middle is the brilliant artist Marilyn Michelle Klass, daughter of Marty. To her right is her mother, Dorine; to her left is her friend, Emily, who, though not named after Emily Dickinson, is familiar with that wonderful poem which wonderfully begins, “Hope is the thing with feathers…”

Long story a little longer: it’s a good show, with a wonderful variety of styles, viewpoints, and media, and well worth seeing, and I hope you do.