Redtree Times

Sweet Babboo

A lot of feral cats have shown up at our place over the years. Some appear for only a short time and then move on. I fear that some have fallen prey to the several known predators in these woods.

Some seem to make the areas around our place their home and eventually fade away, probably passing away from illness. That was the case with The Boys, two unlikely chums that have featured here in the past.

But several of these feral cats have made their way into our home, including the two currently there, ZsaZsa and Lucy-Furr, and my studio cat, Hobie. They are all wonderful, loving cats but are not friendly to outsiders nor to each other. Probably comes from being on their own and relatively unsocialized at early ages.

Last winter two cats began showing up at our house. They were both gray tigers though one had a subtle bit of brown mixed in, which was the only way to distinguish them at first. We began feeding them and they were somewhat friendly though they never let us touch them at all. Any move, even putting out a hand, made them run or sometimes, in the case of the brown one, bring a swat and a hiss.

They stayed around most of the winter living in the crawl space under our house during the heavy snows that fell last year. They would go away for short periods of time  when the weather allowed. They ate well and all seemed fine. We began saying that if they were to stay around we would have to trap them and find them home or at the very least, get them spayed or neutered.

Unfortunately, that discussion did not come soon enough.

One day in late spring, I watched the brown cat come up through our yard from down around our pond. She was bopping right along when I noticed she had a small shadow that seemed out of place. As she neared, it became apparent that her shadow was a small black kitten.

Kittens. Oh, no…

Within the next week or so, several more began coming back and forth from wherever the brown cat, now called Mom, had them stashed. There were four. There was a yellow tiger, a gray tiger, and two black kittens that could only be distinguished by their differing eye colors, green and amber.

They were adorable and quickly became comfortable around our place, eating well and using every tree and step like a jungle gym. Two, the yellow and gray ones, were even friendly enough to let us pet them. Their purrs were loud and intense. And even though Mom still hissed and growled at us whenever we put down food for them, she was a very affectionate mother to the kittens.

And Dad, who still came to eat with the whole group.

We began trying to find a place where we could take these kittens so that they might find a real home. We searched for months all across our region and well beyond, calling animal sanctuaries, SPCA’s and other rescue organizations. The sad news was that this past year has been a record year for cat rescues and surrenders.

There was no space anywhere. Anywhere.

We decided at that point that our only recourse was to capture these kittens as they got older and spay or neuter them and let them live outside, in and around the sheds and garages here. We would continue to feed them and care for them as much as they would allow us.

However, Mom wasn’t agreeing to waiting for that time to come. Before the kittens were two months old, we could tell she was already again pregnant. Sometime in late September she disappeared for a period of time, leaving the kittens on their own. They stayed close to our house.

After a time, she reappeared with only one kitten. A gray tiger, very young and small. Most likely, if there were other kittens from this second litter, they had not survived. The two of them took up residence under our garden tractor, with the kitten laying on the dried grass atop the mower deck once it became strong enough to climb upon it. It was small and lonely and it seemed like it had something wrong with its left eye, not being able to open it. For a while we feared it was missing its eye.

They weren’t in the most secure of spots and one day, after a night where the bears had came through and knocked down our bird feeders, Mom and kitten disappeared. Mom came back within a day or so to eat but the baby was nowhere to be seen. We feared the worst.

Then one day as we returned home, there was Mom walking up our driveway. And once again, she had a shadow– the kitten was trailing her. It struggled to keep up, stumbling and falling time after time as we watched from the car. Finally, the kitten just dropped and laid still. Cheri jumped out of the car and went to it and picked it up as Mom ran away.

It was tiny and barely responsive. Mom had most likely marched her across a small creek  that was not too far away as the kitten was soaking wet and very cold. Taking it inside, Cheri dried it with towels and warmed it up. Later, we put it in a box with towels then mixed some wet cat food mixed with warm water and fed it which it lapped at. The left eye was barely open and seemed to be infected. We cleaned it as best we could.

We kept it inside overnight to warm it then attempted to reunite it with Mom the next day. Mom would have nothing to do with the kitten, hissing and swatting at it.

At that point, we knew we had another cat. At first, the thought was that I would try to get it integrated with Hobie in the studio, which made me anxious. Hobie is extremely territorial and at an age where she doesn’t take any crap. But after some time, as the kitten, a female, grew — she was only about 14 ounces at her first vet visit–and became more and more playful and loving, it was determined that we would keep her at the house, as crowded as they might be.

We also treated her eye infection which cleared up nicely.

We began calling her Sweet Babboo, which is what Sally would call Linus in the Peanuts comics. She is incredibly affectionate though she is sometimes a bit too playful for our other two cats. But they seem to be coming around, as well. It’s been fun and she is thriving, eating like a monster and using every inch of our home like her personal playground.

I called her a lucky lottery winner on the day we decided to keep her. I think she knows that she’s pretty lucky.

I only share this because today is the day I have to trap two of her siblings so that they can be spayed or neutered tomorrow. It is part of a catch-and-release program with our local SPCA that spays or neuters feral cat and gives them rabies and other needed vaccines. The ears of the cats are notched and their bellies are tattooed with an ID number so that they can be identified if captured again in the future. The cats are held here for day or two before being released.

The lists for this program were pretty full and this was the first available date. And there was only space for two cats. I was hoping to first catch Mom and Greenie, the green eyed black cat, as they are the females from this group. Unfortunately, both have not been around much in recent days and I fear the worst, that one or both might be pregnant.

But I have been feeding the other cats in the traps and am pretty sure I can catch two. Fortunately, Buttercup, the yellow one who was named before we noticed that he had testes, and Gary, the gray one who I named after tiring of calling him Gray Boy, are both extremely sweet and affectionate, allowing me to pet them at length. In fact, they demand to be petted, purring as loud as can be when rubbed. They will no doubt be the first to go.

I hope they understand. I am hoping to integrate them into the studio sometime in the near future. They should be as lucky as their sister, the Sweet Babboo. Their path might be longer but this is the first step.

Now, I am just putting off going out there to set the traps. But it must be done and it will be best for all concerned.

Wish me and them luck…

 Symphony of Silence — At the Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA

Go to the Limits of Your Longing

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

–Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, I 59

The Book of Hours was a collection of poem written between 1899 and 1903 by Rainer Maria Rilke. Modern editions add a subtitle: Love Poems to God.

The title is derived from the name given to devotional books from the Middle Ages that lay out the year in a calendar that included both sacred and pastoral imagery, prayers and mass readings for feast days, among other devotion related items. I have written about some of these devotionals from the Middle Ages here in the past, including the beautifully illustrated edition from the Limbourg Brothers.

Though I don’t have any affiliation or leanings towards any organized religion, I find this period of Rilke’s work very compelling. It is beautifully expressed, as is most of Rilke’s work, and speaks to even those of us who don’t view the concept of god in the same way as those who adhere to the dogmas and customs of traditional religion.

And that’s saying a lot.

A few lines of this particular poem, Go to the Limits of Your Longing, were shown at the end of the Taika Waititi film, JoJo Rabbit:

These lines worked well there and the rest of the poem speaks in a beautiful way of finding some inner power in the act of pushing yourself a bit further beyond your comfort zones.

Something we all need to do.

Here’s a favorite song that was used in JoJo Rabbit. It’s Everybody’s Gotta Live from Arthur Lee and Love. The rendition below is a bit different from the one used in the film. It is an outtake that was recorded but was not chosen to be the released version. I think it’s a really strong version of the song and it pairs fairly well with Rilke’s word.

Give a listen. Then head out to the limits of your own longing.

It might not be as far off as you think…

Bernat Marrtorell- Saint George and the Dragon, 1434-1435

Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.

– G.K. Chesterton

I came across the quote above from G.K. Chesterton years ago and instantly loved it. Didn’t know how I would employ it but knew that sooner or later I would bring it out. As a Committed Optimist, I believe today is the day.

I could blather on about this but let’s keep it simple.

We know that the dragons, in a variety of shapes or forms, are out there. The danger they pose is real and we fear them for it.

And that’s good. Knowledge of the thing we fear makes us wary, keeps us focused.

And knowing that those things– the dragons in whatever form they take–can be overcome, that they can be vanquished, gives us the confidence and courage to continue onward to ultimately face off with whatever stands between us and our vision for the future.

Commitment, confidence, and courage are far more powerful than the sum of all our fears. They are the building blocks from which optimism and futures are built.

Remember two things:

• Our fear makes dragons larger and knowledge makes them smaller.
• We are born to vanquish dragons.

I am trying to engrave that in my mind and in my heart for this coming new year.

For the first Sunday Morning Music of 2022, here’s a most fitting song, probably one with which most of you are familiar. It’s Rise Up from Andra Day.

It’s the kind of song you need when facing off with those dragons…

As a recently self-declared Committed Optimist, I can say with certain degree of certainty that this coming year will not closely resemble the world of 2022 as portrayed in the 1973 movie Soylent Green.

Let that be some comfort in the coming days and months.

Now, 2023– that could be a different story.

Wishing everyone out there a healthy and peaceful New Year in 2022. 

The Durable Will – Now at the West End Gallery, Corning, NY

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

― Noam Chomsky

Tonight is New Year’s Eve with the year 2022 beginning at midnight. The last several year’s have been racing with increasing urgency to this moment and it almost feels like we are near the point where all the storylines merge and hopefully come to an end. The threats of pandemic, climate related disasters, potential government overthrow and civil war all hang in the air, all with outcomes that are yet to be determined.

But despite the threats that sometimes haunt my fevered dreams, I have found myself in recent days feeling oddly optimistic.

I am optimistic about the work I will produce but even more than that, I have a feeling of positivity that these more daunting and dangerous matters can be resolved.

Well, maybe not the climate related disasters. That can’t be resolved in short order, if ever. But the  optimistic part of me believes that we as a species will find the will to adapt to the coming changes in our environment.

So, call me an optimist this morning. I am proud to wear that label after the last five awful years.

Optimists sometimes get a bad name. Maybe rightfully so.

I mean, they sometimes gloss over glaring and seemingly unsurmountable obstacles. They sometimes overestimate their abilities and potentials. They sometimes forget that others may not have the same forward looking attitude and, as a result, will not assist in the mission.

And they are sometimes dreadfully wrong and their attempts fail in gloriously awful crashes.

But you know what? They fail only because they have the daring and foresight to start and do things. Big things.

Optimists get things get done. Plain and simple.

Pessimists have never accomplished a thing worth remembering. If they have, it eludes my memory.  Pessimism is easy, without any commitment or acceptance of responsibility. It doesn’t take any daring or effort to criticize, to point out flaws or the doomed outcomes that they believe will come.

No, pessimists do nothing. I know. I have been a part-time pessimist for long stretches of my life and during those periods, I was worthless and miserable.

Any great accomplishment, any breakthrough, anything that has moved or benefitted mankind, came from an optimist. They had a visions, saw a need, and plunged in. They brushed aside the naysayers, the pessimists, and did what needed to be done.

They saw a future.

But optimism is not easy. Not by a long shot.

We’re not talking Pollyanna, rose-colored glasses stuff here. I’m talking hardcore, roll-up-your-sleeves, bare-your-knuckles and show-your-teeth optimism. 

The optimism I am talking about requires steely determination and willingness to sweat and bleed to achieve the envisioned future. It requires taking on a responsibility for others besides yourself. It takes the daring to move on even as you know that you could very easily fall flat on your face and outright fail.

Most importantly, it requires absolute, unwavering commitment. This is the real key to everything.

Commitment is a dangerous thing in the hands of the misguided or the more evil among us. We see evidence of this all the time. But in the hands of those who work and struggle for a better future for all people- even those creative sorts who want to leave the world evidence of the grace that resides here– commitment is a force of nature.

Commitment in the hands of an optimist is the engine that makes the world a better place and creates a better future for us all.

Look at the history of human achievement– it gets stuff done. Plain and simple. 

I want to see a better future. I want to see it in my work but, more importantly, I need to see it in the world around me. And I am optimistic that it will be done.

So for this last entry in the year 2021, let me state that I plan to enter the New Year as a Committed Optimist.

Might even put that on my business card, if I had one.

Let’s play one last song for this year. This is When Your Minds Made Up From Glen Hansard, from his creation that became an enchanting movie and stageplay, Once. I chose it because this performance is filled with commitment. Its finishing moments are filled with absolute, primal and ethereal commitment.

And that– absolute, primal and ethereal commitment– is my wish for the New Year.

My mind’s made up.

Paul Klee– Redgreen and Violets-Yellow Rhythms, 1920

He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.

–Paul Klee

Been doing some pairings of quotes, music and paintings recently, trying to highlight the connections between them. At least, as they appear to me. Today the painting and the quote come from one of my favorites, Paul Klee, the Swiss artist who died in 1940 at the age of 60.

He knew a little about style.

You can usually immediately spot a piece of art as being from his hand and mind. The compositions, the colors, the way the paint is applied, the rhythm– it all speaks a one in his voice. One that creates and describes its own world, its own environment.

As his words above infer, he had no choice in the matter.

This wasn’t something I totally understood until I was well into my career as an artist. Early on, nearly everything in a piece of mine was done with conscious intent, even when I didn’t know what the outcome might be.

But as time passed, the decision making process became less conscious, more ingrained and intuitive. As a result, the work had a certain look.

It was certainly in my voice. I guess you could call it style.

At that point, I began to recognize that that was the only way I could work effectively. I couldn’t do it any other way.

It was only then that I understood what Klee meant.

For the pairing with Klee’s work, I have selected a piece from another of my favorites, the late blues legend John Lee Hooker, who is the musical embodiment of Klee’s statement. His work, his style was unique and unmistakably his own.

It was well described in SPIN magazine:

Hooker’s style is style, the blood essence of style, a style so strong and so fiercely established in the self that there’s no more chance of another man copying his sound than there is of trying to steal his heartbeat.

Even though he was a musician and not a visual artist, Hooker was a huge influence early on in my career. I used the quality of his uniqueness as a goal to hold in mind, a mission to fulfill. I wanted to create something that would be instantly recognizable as mine yet would be difficult and hopefully impossible to fully replicate.

It’s an ongoing mission.

Here’s song, Chill Out, that is a collaboration with Carlos Santana, another man who knows a bit about style. I think this song shows off Hooker’s singular style, even as it combines with Santana’s own signature work.

Neither can do it any other way…

“Fire and Ice“- At the West End Gallery

XXX Others, I Am Not The First

Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, ’tis nothing new.

More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their reins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.

Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there’s neither heat nor cold.

But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.

–A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

In a bit of a hurry but I thought I’d share a trio of offerings this morning. They are somewhat connected, mainly in subject but not necessarily in tone.

The poem above is from A.E. Housman and his 1896 work, A Shropshire Lad. It has to do with fear and desire, represented in the forms of fire and ice.

The painting at the top is Fire and Ice. I think it can also be viewed in terms of fear and desire, maybe with a sense of resolution between the two. Here, the cold lifelessness of the snow and ice is set against the deep blood red of the living trees.

The final piece of this trio is a song below, The Snow It Melts the Soonest, from Sting and his performance at Durham Cathedral. This song dates back to 1821.

Not too challenging a puzzle, I know. But who needs a challenge all the time?

Night’s Desire– At the Principle Gallery

 I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life. 

― Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being

Desire is often associated with the tangible– the desire for money, sex, power, or simply more of anything. Nothing good usually comes from such desire.

After all, Buddha did state that desire is the root of evil.

But what if you have, as Virginia Woolf wrote, an inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life?

I can’t say with any degree of certainty what Woolf would recognize as her desire. I can only imagine that she desired a world that gave her peace of mind, one that was filled with gentleness of spirit and love.

One with revealed moments of grace.

Is that sort of desire in the same category as the lust and greed associated with other desires?

Unfortunately, it probably does. Especially in a world such as ours, one covered in deep layers of obvious evils such as greed, hatred, and injustice, to name but a few.

This inarticulate desire for something more in such a place can only lead to despair.

And that certainly is disheartening for those of us who have felt that desire.

Perhaps you can reconcile it in your mind and soul that this desire is most likely unattainable in this world.

So, you live your life as best you can, doing those things you can do and trying to not be crushed by those things you cannot do or control.

But even then, the desire remains within you and you often find yourself on the lookout for mere glimpses of anything that might give you hope that this desire could one day be fulfilled.

That’s what I see in this small painting above.

Dark wandering and an inarticulate moment of grace and light– enough to make you continue the journey.

Sometimes that’s all we get. And need…

Where Memory Rests — At the Principle Gallery

The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.

― Czesław Miłosz, The Issa Valley

Though I had never read this particular book from the late Nobel Prize winning poet Czeslaw Milosz, the spirit of his words above have served somewhat as a mantra for me in my life. I have always been interested in the lives and stories of others from the past, especially those who were often overlooked and otherwise forgotten in the time since their demise.

For some unknown reason, I have felt a duty to keep their memories alive.

This has been a natural lead-in to genealogy where the stories and lives I reveal have ancestral links with myself. Piecing together connections and clues to recreate the storylines of ancestors gives them a fullness, a living quality, that has faded through the years since their deaths.

I find it personally satisfying but as anyone who has spent any time doing this sort of thing knows, these stories often don’t interest many other people, even those who share the same ancestral connections. I love to tell these tales, to share the oddities and the connections to history we share.

But I have to learned to quickly stop when I see that faraway look in their eyes, that glazed over gaze where I can almost see their mind beginning to focus on what they are going to have for dinner later in the day.

I don’t blame anyone for this reaction. After all, living mainly consists of looking and moving forward for most folks. One’s own immediately recalled memories are all that most folks feel a need to maintain. Stories and memories of people they never will know seem to have little to do with their lives going forward.

I certainly get that.

This time of year around the holidays always makes me more reminiscent of my own memories and these stories of my ancestors, most notably my parents and grandparents. You want the memories of those you loved to remain beyond yourself. I feel like I do owe it to them to tell their stories, to have their memory stay alive and to create a connection to those who will follow them, even those who have never known them.

It’s a fool’s errand, I know.

But it somehow feels like it has a real purpose and that satisfies some part of me that I will never fully understand. Makes it feel worth doing.

Are all fool’s errands foolish?

Who knows? Maybe not…

Georgia O’Keeffe- Sky Above Clouds IV, 1965

I was reading Saul Bellow’s “Henderson the Rain King” on a plane and early in the book Henderson the Rain King is also up in a plane. He’s on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too, and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did.

— Joni Mitchell, On her song Both Sides, Now

I knew immediately when I heard Brittany Howard and Herbie Hancock performing Both Sides, Now as part of the Joni Mitchell section of this years Kennedy Center Honors, that I would put it up for this week’s Sunday Morning musical selection.

It is a lovingly performed version that respects and honors the song and Mitchell. It’s a song whose power is derived from vocal pauses and quiet passages from Hancock’s piano, and the spacious venue at the Kennedy Center really accentuated that aspect of it.

Simple and elegant.

One of my favorite covers of this song which is saying a lot since it has been recorded by over 1000 artists.

Do yourself a favor and give a listen. On the morning after Christmas, a pause and a bit of quiet does the soul some good.