no pain yet fearful that something had happened

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Egg Head. Digital montage © 2021.

•••

Fritz Heider, The life of a psychologist. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1983, pp. 5 and 30—

My brother and I had little cap pistols [at around the age of ten]. These caps seemed to have remarkable properties, and I decided to experiment to find out more about them. The upshot was that something exploded in my face. Several small pieces of lead became embedded in my cheeks and forehead, and a few entered my left eye, injuring the retina. My father took me to our doctor right away. He was rather pessimistic about the outlook for the eye. I remember that I had to stay in bed for two weeks, with my eyes covered. I had no pain as I lay there, but I had a dim feeling that something of importance had happened which would influence my whole life. I could not judge whether this would be beneficial or harmful—I only knew that there was something serious about it, though I do not remember that I was unduly worried.…

[Ten years later, during World War I] I tried several times to enter the military service. I began to wonder whether I was rejected because the draft board considered the possibility that my injured eye might become infected and affect the healthy eye. So, on one bleak, wintry day in 1916 I went to the hospital, accompanied by my father, and had the damaged eye removed, to be replaced by an artificial one. But even after that change in my physical condition, I was not taken on.

the elephant has a wrinkled moth-proof hide

Above A construction pattern for making a two-person elephant costume, from Albert Neely Hall, The Boy Craftsman: Practical and Profitable Ideas for a Boy's Leisure Hours. Boston: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1905.

•••

Ogden Nash, "The Elephant," one of a series of comical animal poems written to accompany Camille Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals . NY: Columbia Masterworks, 1949—

Elephants are useful friends,

Equipped with handles at both ends.

They have a wrinkled moth-proof hide.

Their teeth are upside down, outside. 

If you think the elephant preposterous,

You've probably never seen a rhinosterous.

•••

VIDEO LINKS

Nature, Art, and Camouflage  

Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

a girl from new york begged him to grow a beard

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Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. NY: Harcourt Brace, 1939—

Just why Lincoln took to whiskers at this time nobody seemed to know. A girl in New York had begged him to raise a beard. But something more than her random wish guided him. Herndon, Whitney, Lamon, Nicolay, Hay, heard no explanation from him as to why after fifty-two years with a smooth face he should now change.

Would whiskers imply responsibility, gravity, a more sober and serene outlook on the phantasmagoria of life? Perhaps he would seem more like a serious farmer with crops to look after, or perhaps a church sexton in charge of grave affairs. Or he might have the look of a sea-captain handling a ship in a storm on a starless sea. Anyhow, with whiskers or without, he would be about the same-sized target.

VIDEO LINKS

Nature, Art, and Camouflage  

Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

 

i was forced to suspect i was no longer young

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Peerless. Digital montage © 2021.

•••

Samuel Johnson, in a letter to Joseph Baretti, July 20, 1762— 

Last winter I went down to my native town, where I found the streets much narrower and shorter than I thought I had left them, inhabited by a new race of people, to whom I was little known. My playfellows were grown old, and forced me to suspect that I was no longer young.

VIDEO LINKS

Nature, Art, and Camouflage  

Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

 

the thundering sound of an overhead bicycle

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Permit to Pass. Digital montage © 2021.

•••

Fritz Heider, The Life of a Psychologist. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1983, p. 12—

As I think back on the [Burg] Feistritz house [in Austria], I recall an anecdote of my parents' early married life. My father was teaching my mother to ride a bicycle. They decided to practice in the privacy of the spacious attic, where there were a few loose boards that seem to have given off a rumbling noise that sounded like thunder to people on the floor below as the bicycle was ridden back and forth. Two of my father’s elderly aunts, who had scientific interests, were living in the house. They mailed regular accounts of the Feistritz weather to the Graz newspaper—this being before the day of regular weather reporting and easy telephone communication, amateur reports like these were welcomed. According to the press, the weather that summer presented some unusual features: the skies were consistently clear and blue, yet daily periods of thunder were reported from the Feistritz area.

VIDEO LINKS

Nature, Art, and Camouflage  

Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

 

in Naples / street games of joking make-believe

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Spycraft. Digital montage © 2021.

Fritz Heider, The Life of a Psychologist. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1983, pp. 74-75—

When I think of those summer days in Naples [Italy], I have a dim memory of noisy movements of masses of people, a surging of multitudes with much laughter and cheerful, restless activity. People wanted to get in touch; everywhere one felt that they had a need for human contact. And this seemed especially strong when a stranger appeared—he stimulated them and aroused their curiosity. Perhaps the frequent cases of young people who begged may have stemmed less from poverty or greed than from a compulsion to get involved with a stranger and establish some sort of contact. What they seemed to love above everything were little games of joking make-believe, and begging provided lots of opportunities for that. Once I passed two boys sitting on a wall, and when they saw me, they begged for cigarettes. I had seen that one of them had a box full, and I said: “Why do you beg? I can see that you have lots already.” They protested, “No, no”; and one of them took the cigarettes out of his pocket and handed them to the other. He knew that I saw what he had done, and he said, laughing, “I have no cigarette!” When I told him that I had seen him give them to the other boy, he answered, “Those are my father's cigarettes.” All this was spoken in a sort of theatrical comic way, with much laughter and many playful gestures, all as if they were telling fairy tales and hoping that the listener would join with them in the game.

•••

VIDEO LINKS

Nature, Art, and Camouflage  

Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

salutations / tipping the hat mere semantics

In John Pollack’s The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More than Some Antics (New York: Gotham Books, 2011), there is an account of a famous French gourmand named Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière (1758-1837). According to Pollack—

As a young man, Grimod was known around Paris for wearing a mechanical wig that would tip politely, and apparently automatically, as ladies passed.

In reading that, I was reminded of a US patent (shown above), No. 556,248, titled Saluting Device, that was filed in 1896 by someone named J.C. Boyle. It seems to be more or less comparable to Grimod’s “saluting wig,” but in this case of course it’s a tip of the hat.

Here is a newspaper account of  Boyle's invention from The Democrat (Scotland Neck NC) on April 9, 1896, p. 1—

A patent has been granted J.C. Boyle of Spokane WA, for a "saluting device." It is a machine worn in the top of the hat. All you have to do is to slightly incline the head, and as the head starts forward the machine lefts the hat a little, holds it just long enough and in a graceful curve lets it back on your head.

Later that year, the following note was published in the Spokane Chronicle on September 30, p. 4—

J.C. Boyle, a member of the Drumheller Packing Company, but whose chief claim to notoriety rests in the fact that he invented the patent hat lift that removes the old labor of lifting the hat by hand, arrived home last evening after a prolonged visit to Kansas City and other portions of the east, where he has been for his health.