Enough With The Jars Already ! ! An Angel Jar

I'll get back to writing some other day. I just feel like putting up more pictures of another jar I haven't seen in a while.

I like angel's depictions in art. If I have a guardian angel, she has a sarcastic sense of humor and must really get a kick out of irony. They do make a pretty jar. After 30 years of collecting pictures, you end up with enough beautiful pictures to make a jar about almost anything. I know it sounds like a syndrome, like a crazy newspaper hoarder or something, but until recently, I always preferred the pictures to the words. Saved the ones I liked.


Putting pictures on something that sits in view, is like having my favorite book open to a picture I like. I look at the book case in my office and I am sane enough not to tear up all the books and paste the pictures to the wall, but don't think I don't want to! That is where bottles and jars come to the rescue! I don't know if I'm making Folk Art or tacky tchotchkes, but you'd be wise to call them fabulous to my face.

A Jar For Little Kids

I think my Mother-in-law gave this jar to our nephew's family. I didn't find a picture of the whole jar, all I have are these close-ups. Behind the glass, on the inside, are more pictures for little kids. So, if the cookies are gone, they still get a treat.






The last picture is of part of the lid. I wanted the pictures to be happy, and to reflect the time, not so long ago, before electronic toys made their way onto children's gift lists.

George Washington Jar

I love this portrait of George Washington painted by Raphael Peale. The Peales were an interesting early American family; all the kids were named after famous artists of the past, and they were a very talented bunch.

I put a mirror behind the jar to try to show what was on the other side without taking so many pictures, but they are too little to see anyway. The weird, long, "scratch" marks are just light reflections.


It is hard to see, but the green "We the People..." at the bottom ends with, "are sick and tired of getting the run around." And I liked the weed whacker, etc., in the spoof on G.W. Crossing the Delaware.


Below the picture of the puppy in the helmet, and the rare U.S. coin, is a copy of the telegram telling of President Kennedy's death. I wanted to make this jar a combination of the humorous and the serious.



There are many pictures that aren't easy to see here, including very small pictures of the World Trade Center in happier days, slave shackles, old coins and flags, the U.S.S. Constitution (the ship), former Presidents, eagles, bison, Native Americans...


This is the inside of the lid.


This is one of the jars I still have. This is the inside bottom of the jar.

Pro-Choice Means You Can Choose To Stay Pregnant

Everyone who is "pro-choice" does not believe in abortion. They believe that it is each person's private choice to decide how it goes.

Everyone has different circumstances to deal with. Sometimes a woman is too poor, or ill, or abandoned, or on the edge of mental collapse, to cope with another child. Not everyone in the world lives in a nice place, or has an income, or a husband, or any family to support her through a pregnancy or after. Perhaps she loves this child but feels she is backed into a corner and will not survive. The people who told her that "if she ever really needed help, they would be there for her" have backed away.
What they had really meant was, that if they ever saw her run past their house, while being chased by a man with a hatchet, they would call 911 or yell for help from the neighbors.

It is a heart breaking choice to make, and I don't think it is done lightly by very many people. Many times a girl has been victimized into becoming pregnant.

I knew a woman who had an abortion when she was young. She was a person who was pro-choice. But personally, for herself, she would never resort to an abortion. However, she lived in very bad circumstances, was victimized. She had never imagined being in this situation and felt she would not survive.

When it was done, she was not prepared for what the doctor did. It was a pregnancy that was only a couple of weeks along, probably not much past the blastocyst stage. After the contents of her uterus had been emptied into a jar, the doctor dumped the jar into a colander in the sink and dug through it with his hands. He then turned on the water, dumped out the colander, turned on the garbage disposal and began to rinse off his gloved hands. A situation that should have been solemn turned gruesome. Her mind shrieked but she was too frozen with shock, to make a noise with her mouth.

She suffered tearful, heart breaking anguish, and was crushed by the memory of it, for the rest of her life. She remained pro-choice though. Knowing that no one would have helped her. And knowing that other women feel they have no other choice, because they will not live through it, and no one will help them. Taking the choice away will result in deaths too: they will be young helpless women.

Pre-Raphaelite, Aesthetic Movement, Art Nouveau Jar

I thought I had lost the pictures for many of the jars that are no longer in my posession. Happily, I found the file some of them were in! I still have this jar. It is one of the large ones. I should take new pictures of it, but it is cloudy and I'm going to use that as an excuse not to do it today.

The main images on this jar are inspired by my love of Pre-Raphaelite art, the Aesthetic Movement, Mucha, Art Nouveau, etc.



These two pictures, one of the "dancing" teapots, and one of a Japanese lady with a kitten are from the art on the lid.

The Black Elk Jar

This Native American inspired jar is called the Black Elk jar because there is a quote from him on the bottom. There is no photograph of Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux, on the jar. The quote by him on the bottom, comes from an exerpt in the postscript in the book about his life, "Black Elk Speaks" written by John G. Neihardt.
It was bought, with another of my jars, by a collector from Indiana, as wedding presents for herself.





Near the end of his life he asked to be taken to the place where the spirits took him, in a vision, when he was young. Spoken by Black Elk, standing on the summit:

"With tears running, O Great Spirit, my Grandfather - with running tears I must say now that the tree has never bloomed. A pitiful old man, you see me here, and I have fallen away and have done nothing. Here at the center of the world, where you took me when I was young and taught me; here, old, I stand, and the tree is withered, Grandfather, my Grandfather!
Again, and maybe the last time on this earth, I recall the great vision you sent me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds. Hear me, not for myself, but for my people; I am old. Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree!
In sorrow I am sending a feeble voice, for I may never call again. O make my people live!"
It isn't on the jar, but, then the postscript ends with Mr Neihardt's observation that, "For some minutes the old man stood silent, with face uplifted, weeping into the drizzling rain. In an little while the sky was clear again."

A Day In The Country Jar

This jar is supposed to be a happy day in the country. The last picture is of the inside of the jar.
I think this one is now in the Boston area.

Blue Deruta W/ Falcon Jar

This is the jar, "Blue Deruta W/ Falcon". Blue Deruta refers to the large circular picture, in the photo that is second from the top, that has a lady's face at the center. It is from a picture of an old plate, made of tin glazed earthen ware. I wanted to evoke a feeling of Europe's past. It feels most like Italy to me. It is one of the jars that has found a new home.







This is the outside bottom, and the last picture is of the bottom from the inside of the jar.

Long Day's Journey Into The Carpal Tunnel

I've got a raging case of carpal tunnel; my hands are somewhere between tingling numbness and pain. Spring is upon us and I have many things to do to get my new parking lot finished. I am too cheap to pay someone to do it for me, and besides my truck holds about a ton of crusher run. So, I only have about 30 more tons to shovel out of the back of the truck. And many more plants to move before I sleep. OK, I've got to stop that!

Savant and I aren't speaking, sort of. The drama has been thick for a couple of weeks. One late night visit to the E.R. He had leaned back in a chair and it flipped him onto his neck and head. He called 911, but, didn't have a ride back to the dorm when he was OK'd to leave. I drove all the way to the town he is in to give him a ride back to his dorm in the wee hours of the morning, because I was too sleepy, worried, stupid, to tell him to call a cab.

Becoming intoxicated is sort of a tradition with some college kids, and he's one of them. But when he does it, all sorts of complications come along for the ride because, while he has a new found love of Canadian whiskey, he hasn't given up good old dextromethorphan hydro-bromide (used in Dexa-Trim and cough medication). Again this week, another call to me to take him to the hospital. He thinks the three bottles of OTC cough medicine, he drank a few hours before, might be causing a brain bleed, and he's worried. Well duh! Stupid is as stupid does, Forrest! I'm pretty sure his brain is not bleeding, but he is really upset. Again it is a middle of the night call. I called his sister, who lives in the same town, but sometimes works late, and she and her boyfriend drove over to do the honors. They talked with him for a while and he decided that he would not go to the hospital.

What is the attraction to frying your brain? Is that like asking why anyone would smoke? You'd think schizophrenia would be enough, but I think alcohol takes the edge off, that the meds aren't. He started drinking cough medicine before he became schizo'. I'd love to know if there is a connection. Is anyone out there studying this?

Anyway, when I spoke to him the next day, I wasn't exactly supportive and he wasn't exactly appreciative, so I turned off my phone. That night he called a different phone and apologized. Which was nice, but I was badly in need of a time out. So the phone has been silent. Perhaps his Dad gave him the warning that I had crawled into the rabbit hole, and needed peace for a while.

Damn hands are numb-pain again!