The worms are now eating dead Ernest again

Above and below: Two photographs that surfaced only recently in the post-retirement agony of downsizing. They appeared side by side in an issue of The Northern Iowan, the student newspaper at the University of Northern Iowa, on October 14, 1975. I was an assistant professor then, and, as part of the freshman foundations program, had initiated a student competition called the Rube Goldberg Drawing Machine Contest, in which students were challenged to invent absurd self-operating contraptions that would somehow result in a "drawing" (loosely defined). I was also one of the judges, as shown above. The caption for that photo reads: "A judge at the Rube Goldberg content, Roy Behrens, did not seem to get a great deal of sleep the night before the contest, or he just saw a great looking piece of art." In the photo at the bottom, I have been joined in the judging by writer Robley Wilson (who was editor of the then-famous North American Review), who is attired in a fine-looking British judge's wig. The caption for that photo reads: "A large crowd was on hand…and some of them are shown looking at the first place entry in the drawing machine contest." I still remember the first-place winner, invented by a student named Mark Mattern. At the end of a sequence of absurdly unrelated events, it made a silhouette of a dog—with gun powder.

•••

A memorable humorous passage from David Meyer's memoir of his friend Ernest Summers, in Ernie and Me (c2003)—

His name was Ernest Summers and he told this joke about himself: When he was dead the marker on his grave would read, "The worms are eating in dead Ernest." 
 

Arcimboldo portrait | Do you carrot all for me?

Above A reversible painting (view top side up or upside down) by the Italian master Giuseppe Arcimboldo (c1526-1593), especially known for his portrait heads comprised of visual pun arrangements of fruits, vegetables, flowers and so on. This one is referred to as Reversible Head with Basket of Fruit. c1590. Oil on panel.

•••

Anon
Do you carrot all for me?
My heart beets for you,
With your turnip nose
And your radish face.
You are a peach,
If we cantaloupe,
Lettuce marry;
Weed make a swell pear.

wassily wassily I say unto you—please be seated

Above The latest in a sequence of historic views of various individuals posed in Marcel Breuer's celebrated "Wassily chair," Bauhaus-era. © Roy R. Behrens.

•••

Anon (children's nonsense verse)—

Come smoke a coca-cola
Drink catsup cigarettes
See Lillian Brussels wrestle
With a box of castanets
Pork and beans will meet tonight
And have a finished fight
Chauncey de Pew will lecture
on Sopolio tonight 
Bay rum is good for horses
It is best in town
Castoria cures the measles
If you pay five dollars down
Teeth extracted without pain
At the cost of half a dime
Overcoats are selling now
A little out of time
Do me a favor—drop dead.

Logo-like pictorial Native American haircuts

Osage clan-related haircuts

Above These diagrams are not as strange as they might appear. They are an ethnologist's renderings of the purposeful hair designs of Native American Osage boys. See examples below as well. Originated by Francis La Flesche (1857-1932), who was himself a Native American, they were published in a US Government report, titled "The Osage Tribe: Child Naming Rite" in 1928. I first saw them in the early 1970's when they were reproduced in Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1968), a book that was greatly important to me at a time when I was trying to grasp the process of categorizing.

These unusual haircuts are like pictorial logos. Each haircut represents a different clan, which is in turn connected with a particular animal (usually). In the examples shown above, they represent (as numbered) (1) Head and tail of elk. (2) Head, tail, and horns of buffalo. (3) Horns of buffalo. (4) Buffalo's back as seen from above. (5) Head of bear. (6) Head, tail, and body of small birds.

In the second set of examples, the patterns are indicative of: (7) Turtle's shell, with head, feet, and tail of the animal. (8) Head, wings, and tail of the eagle. (9) Four points of the compass. (10) Shaggy side of the wolf. (11) Horns and tail of the buffalo. (12) Head and tail of the deer. (13) Head, tails, and knobs of growing horns on the buffalo calf. (14) Reptile teeth.

Humanities Iowa | Program opportunities 2019

WPA mural by Orr Fisher

Since the mid-1990s, I've been associated with the Humanities Iowa Speakers Bureau. For all those years, I've been available to speak on subjects that pertain (in one way or another) to the history of the state. I've often given talks (sometimes as many as ten per year) at public libraries, historical societies, community centers, and so on. The talks are free and open to the public. They are funded by Humanities Iowa, which is part of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The requesting organization is charged only $50, while the HI picks up the additional costs of travel expenses, speaker's honorarium, and so on. What a great program.

Over the years, the talks I've offered have usually been about Frank Lloyd Wright, Grant Wood, Buffalo Bill, World War I camouflage (which Iowans contributed to), and so on. A few days ago, I gave my presentation on Buffalo Bill (which includes an account of the plight of the Native Americans during the dreadful Indian Wars) at the Story County Conservation Center, just north of Ames IA. The large audience (around 100 people) was absolutely wonderful, and, as usual, I had a truly delightful time.

The downside is that it was probably the last time I'll present my talk about Buffalo Bill, which has easily had the most requests. With my retirement from teaching, I decided it was time to offer new topics. My new talks are listed on the HI website here. One of those talks is about the WPA (Works Progress Administration), one of the government programs set up by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Depression Era, as I described in an essay I wrote years ago. One facet of that enabled unemployed artists to apply to create public murals for permanent installation in US post offices. It's surprising how many of these have survived. Reproduced above is one of my favorites, titled The Corn Parade, a painting by Orr Fisher in the US Post Office in Mount Ayr IA.

Montage | he is shooting a gun in the house

Digital montage, Roy R. Behrens © 2012

Above Roy R. Behrens, He Is Shooting a Gun in the House. Digital montage (©2012). 
•••
Anon—
Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the engineers are German, the administrators are Swiss, and the lovers are Italian. Hell is where the police are German, the cooks are British, the engineers are Italian, the administrators are French, and the lovers are Swiss.

New talks & posters soon at Hartman Reserve

The fourth and final installment in an on-going series of poster exhibitions will be on display during November and December 2019 at the Interpretive Center at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. These new nature-themed posters (created by author and designer Roy R. Behrens) are intended as promotions for a series of informative talks on nature-related topics, one per month, always on the second Sunday.

The upcoming presentations include a program by Robert Pruitt, Executive Director of the Cedar Valley Arboretum and Botanic Gardens (Sunday, November 10, at 2:00 pm) on "Creating Monarch and Pollinator Zones in the Cedar Valley," and a talk on area water trails, titled "Paddling the Cedar Valley and Beyond," by well-known area naturalist Vern Fish (Sunday, December 8, at 2:00 pm). All presentations are free and open to the public.

Concurrent with the Second Sunday Speaker Series talks and other events at the Hartman Center during November and December, the poster exhibition will be on public view in the Interpretive Center. In addition, all items in the exhibit can also be viewed online.

Apache | Excerpts from an ethnographer's diary

Digital montage © Roy R. Behrens

Keith H. Basso, "Strong Songs: Excerpts from an Ethnographer's Journal" in Daniel Halpern, ed., Antaeus. No. 61, Autumn 1988, pp. 26-37. These are fragments from a diary kept by a Yale anthropologist while living on the Apache reservation in Arizona during the summer of 1960—

July 11. I spent most of the afternoon practicing my meager Apache vocabulary. It has grown a bit during the last two weeks but my confidence to use it has not. This morning, while Dudley and Ernest [Apache friends] were here, a grasshopper crawled across the floor. I pointed to it and spoke the word for "insect." Dudley burst into laughter. What I had said, he informed me, was "vagina."  He went on to point out that the difference between grasshoppers and vaginas was quite considerable, an astute observation which prompted a broadly grinning Ernest to ask me if I were a virgin.

July 16.…I will attend the ceremony [an Apache healing ritual] with Dudley Patterson and Ernest Murphy. Although I am eager to see what happens, I know [as a White outsider] I will feel conspicuous and self-conscious. When I asked Dudley how I should conduct myself, a quizzical expression crossed his face. "Show respect," he said. Then he grinned. "And don't talk to nobody about grasshoppers."

July 17. Today, I produced my first comprehensible sentence in Western Apache. Sitting outside with Alvin Quay [an Apache boy], I pointed to my horse and said, "That horse eats grass." Alvin, who turned six last week, glanced at the animal, fixed me with a disbelieving stare, and responded in his own language, "Horses always eat grass."  Although my observation failed to impress Alvin, I thought the fact of its delivery—and of his responding to it in Apache—was nothing short of astonishing. Perhaps there is hope for me after all.

Walter SH Hamady | Perishable Press | RIP

Walter SH Hamady

Is it true: Oregon, Arizona, and Canada Named

vaudeville

Flora Spiegelberg, "Reminiscenses of a Jewish Bride of the Santa Fe Trail" in Sharon Niederman, ed., A Quilt of Words: Women's Diaries, Letters and Original Accounts of Life in the Southwest, 1860-1960. Boulder CO: Johnson Books, 1988, pp. 27-28—

During the long expeditions of the Conquistadors, Coronado went from Mexico to Colorado in search of gold and silver treasures. He was greatly surprised to find among the peaceably inclined Indians a well-regulated community life in their pueblos or villages. While the Conquistador was transversing what is now Oregon and Arizona, he met several tribes of Indians with very large ears, so he called them "orejones," or "Big Ears." Another tribe that had very long noses, he called "Nazizones," or "Big Noses." We Americans have translated these Spanish names to "Arizona" and "Oregon." 

Another similar incident: the first explorers of what is the province of Canada today, were Spaniards, as usual, in search of gold and silver, and not finding it. As they marched away, they said, "Aqui Nada," meaning, "There is nothing." Later on, when the French explorers came and asked the Indians the name of their country, they replied what they had heard the departing Spanish say, "Aqui Nada," and thus the French changed it to, "Canada."

Graphic Design Alum | Matthew Menz at UNI

Poster © Phil Fass (2019)

Coming Thursday evening of this week: Matthew Menz, graduate of the Graphic Design Program at the University of Northern Iowa, and now Amazon Web Services Director in San Francisco, will speak in the Art Auditorium, Kamerick Room 111, at 7:00 pm, September 12, 2019. Free and open to the public. Made possible by funding from The Elena Diane Curris Endowment for Design.

Typecasting | Twain translated from the jug

Digital Montage © Roy R. Behrens (n.d.)

Mark Twain, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger: Being an Ancient Tale Found in a Jug, and Freely Translated from the Jug. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. This is very odd novel, perhaps one of the strangest books ever written by the American humorist. This passage is a description of a character called Frau Stein, as if written by someone who sets metal type by hand—

…she was a second edition of her mother—just plain galley-proof, neither revised nor corrected, full of turned letters, wrong fonts, outs and doubles, as we say in the printing-shop—in a word, pi, if you want to put it remorselessly strong and yet not strain the facts. Yet if it ever would be fair to strain facts it would be fair in her case, for she was not loath to strain them herself when so minded. Moses Haas said that whenever she took up an en-quad fact, just watch her and you would see her try to cram it in where there wasn't breathing-room for a 4-m space; and she'd do it, too, if she had to take the sheep-foot to it. Isn't it neat? Doesn't it describe it to a dot?

Einstein and Wertheimer | Street Peek-A-Boo

D. Brett King and Michael Wertheimer, Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2005, p. 122—

He [Albert Einstein] seemed also to relish his intellectual and social exchanges with [his friend, Gestalt psychologist Max] Wertheimer. Wertheimer was once amused when he and Einstein consecutively covered their right and left eyes with their hands to test the effects of retinal disparity (the slightly different images of the same object on the two retinas because of the spatial separation of the eyes) as they stared at a church steeple.  Watching these figures on the street corner, a crowd soon gathered and the two were surprised to see that the onlookers were also engaging in this curious behavior, shifting their hands back and forth over their eyes. more>>>

Saying so much with so little | such a poster

Above An extraordinary poster (unfortunately, haven't found the graphic designer's name) that says so much so powerfully—with such unbelievable brevity. Thanks to former student Amanda Chan, who passed it on.

Joseph Podlesnik's Phenomenal Photography

Photograph © Joseph Podlesnik 2019

An Arizona-based friend and artist Joseph Podlesnik recently sent me a visual metamorphosis, the stages in the development of chair design. I thought it was appropriate because Joe himself is a metamorphosis, albeit not one you should sit on.

This fall he is teaching an online course in photography for Cornell University, his graduate alma mater. When I first met him forty-plus years ago, he was an undergraduate in painting and drawing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and admired for his skillfulness at drawing from life. His drawings were astonishing because they were so “true” to immediate sight, and yet they appeared to have happened effortlessly.

Here is a favorite self-portrait I’ve posted before. He does look squiggly in real life—but not that much.

Some years later, he began to make short films about his family, that relied on those same virtues of looseness entwined with precision. In recent years, he has evolved into photography. But not just photography, but Joe Podlesnik photographs.

A recent one (for which he received a prize in a nationwide competition) is shown above. But I am also reminded that in 2016, two years before my retirement, my students designed a series of posters, called Almost Seeing, about the photographs he was making then.

For more, see his website here.

New talks and posters soon at Hartman Reserve

Hartman Reserve poster exhibition and talks (2019)

A new exhibition of twenty-five posters pertaining to plants and other natural forms will be on display throughout September and October 2019 at the Interpretive Center at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. They can also now be viewed online.

This is the third exhibition of posters in a series of four, intended as promotions for a series of informative talks on nature-related topics, one per month, always on the Second Sunday. The upcoming presentations include a program on dinosaurs (which kids and adults will both enjoy) by Sherman Lundy (Sunday, September 8, at 2:00 pm), and an illustrated talk about various prairie-based creatures that fly by photographer and writer Bill Witt (Sunday, October 13, at 2:00 pm). All presentations are free and open to the public.

The posters in the exhibition are focused on the forms of plants, some of which are native to a prairie setting, while others were among the plants that flourished in the age of dinosaurs.  All of the posters in this exhibit are derived in part from the black-and-white plant photographs of German photographer Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932).  His plant photographs were first published in 1928 in a book titled Art Forms in Nature, and are now in public domain. For these posters, graphic designer Roy R. Behrens has adapted the photographs by removing the backgrounds, zooming up on details, cropping, and adding color effects.

Talk on birds at Hartman Reserve Nature Center

Poster © Roy R. Behrens (2019)

Above One of twenty-five posters pertaining to birds, designed as promotions for a series of informative talks, one per month, always on the second Sunday. Coming soon is a talk about area birds by members of the Prairie Rapids Audubon Society (PRAS) (Sunday, August 11, at 2:00 pm) at the Interpretive Center at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. All presentations are free and open to the public.

In connection with this presentation series (called Second Sunday Speakers), an exhibition of bird posters, designed by Roy R. Behrens, was installed at the center on July 1 and will remain on view during August. All the posters can also be viewed online.  This is the second in a series of four poster exhibitions on nature-related topics.

His students remember John Dewey

John Dewey

Will Durant, Transition: A Sentimental Story of One Mind and One Era. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1927, pp. 262-263—

Finally I came to Professor [John] Dewey. I smiled as I saw him cross the campus on a winter's day, hatless and overcoatless, collar turned up and hands in his pockets, hair unsubdued and neck-tie awry; none of us would have supposed, from his bearing or his appearance, that he was the leading figure in American philosophy. Nevertheless his lectures were almost the worst in his university. His voice was a monotone and his pace an even drawl,—except when he sought Flaubertianly for the fittest word, and stared out upon the lawn till it came. Some of us went to sleep; others of us copied his lecture in longhand word for word in order to remain awake. But he was slow because he did his own thinking, and ploughed virgin soil. Most lectures are compilations; and if they flow easily on it is because they follow a beaten path. But where Dewey thought there were no paths; he had to make them as he went; and like a frontiersman he had no time for ornamental delicacies. When, in the leisure of the evening, we read over what we had taken down during the day, we discovered gold in every second line. We found that without excitement, and without exaggeration, this man was laying a firm basis, in biological psychology, for the progress of his country and his race. Sometimes he spoke so radically that only the obscurity of his speech and the modesty of his manner saved him from the sensationalism of reporters or the hunters of heresy. And then at times, with a quiet sentence of irrefutable analysis, he annihilated a theory or a movement, and brought the eager ideals of youth within the circle of reality.

•••

Earl K. Peckham, quoted in Robert Bruce Williams, ed., John Dewey, Recollections (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1970), p. 12—

[American philosopher John] Dewey was speaking slowly and very carefully [in an evening class in 1935 at Columbia University], also in simply constructed sentences, which was typical of his style. I was listening intently to a point. Many of the class seemed to have left the area of thought. Dewey himself seemed to have left, to have gone into his own world. I felt that I was with him regardless of the seeming absence of the other members of the class. He hesitated after his point was made, and he looked at me through his thick bifocals. I said to him in a too loud, nervous voice, “Doesn’t emotion play a part in this thought process?” His stare fixed on me. I was embarrassed. He was silent—then he walked slowly over to the window and looked into the night, for the better part of two minutes. Then he looked back and fixed his stare at me (at least that is how I felt) and he said in a very slow and almost inaudible voice—but he knew I heard and he seemed to me not to care if anyone else heard or not—“Knowledge is a small cup of water floating on a sea of emotion.”

Frank Lloyd Wright and Ezra Pound

Frank Lloyd Wright Posters © Roy R. Behrens 2017-18

I ran across this recently in Humphrey Carpenter's gargantuan biography, A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound New York: Dell, 1990, p. 832. It has to do with the controversy in the fall of 1957 about what do with American poet Ezra Pound. At the end of World War II, he had been arrested in Italy by the US Army, and charged with making treasonous (and anti-Semitic) wartime radio broadcasts against President Franklin D. Roosevelt and in praise of Mussolini. Brought back to the US, it was decided that he was mentally unfit to stand trial, and was instead committed to St. Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital in Washington DC.  A dozen years later, when his release became a possibility, there was much debate about where he should be permitted to live (he moved back to Italy). Lots of people offered suggestions about what should happen to Pound—even architect Frank Lloyd Wright—

[Editor and publisher James Laughlin] reported that Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, was willing for Ezra to come and live with him at Taliesin West, the house had designed for himself near Phoenix AZ.  This prospect greatly tickled [poet Robert] Frost, especially as he had feared the spectacle of Ezra leaning across his own fence. "I can hardly resist the temptation of putting Ezra and Frank Lloyd Wright in the same gun turret," he wrote, "but we must be serious where so much is at stake for poor Ezra. I should think he might acceapt a house from the great architect for the great poet at a safe distance."

Below A spread from our book on Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie. It is not a book about his marital indiscretions, his arrogance or his leaky roofs. Nonetheless, it has often ranked among the top selling books about Wright on Amazon since its publication in 2017.

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City

Bird Posters at Hartman Reserve Nature Center

A new exhibition of twenty-five posters pertaining to birds was installed on July 1 at the Interpretive Center at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. The posters will remain on view throughout July and August 2019. All the posters can also now be viewed online.

The posters are promotions for a series of informative talks, one per month, always on the second Sunday. This is second in a series of four poster exhibitions that promote presentations on nature-related topics. The upcoming presentation include a program on nature and poetry by storyteller, poet and teacher Laura Sohl-Cryer (Sunday, July 14, at 2:00 pm), and a talk about area birds by members of the Prairie Rapids Audubon Society (PRAS) (Sunday, August 11, at 2:00 pm). All presentations are free and open to the public.

Bird poster exhibition at Hartman Reserve Nature Center

Future presentations will take place in September-October, and November-December. Each time, a new series of posters will be designed and exhibited in connection with each pair of talks. Created by Iowa-based author and designer Roy R. Behrens, these posters are digital montages, made by combining components from public domain photographs and other graphic elements.

Hartman bird poster exhibition

Hartman Reserve Nature Center Talks Soon

Poster © Roy R. Behrens 2019

Above Currently nearing completion is a new set of posters in connection with upcoming public presentations at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. As noted in an earlier post, during the remaining months of 2019, one hundred posters will be installed at that center's Interpretive Building in four exhibits of twenty-five each.

Posters © Roy R. Behrens 2019

The next two presentations are Saplings, Songbirds and Sonnets: An Exhuberant Celebration of Nature Through Poetry by Laura Sohl-Cryer (2:00 pm, Sunday, July 14) and The Birds of Hartman Reserve: Bird-Friendly Communities by Prairie Rapids Audubon Society (PRAS) (2:00 pm. Sunday, August 11).  All presentations are free and open to the public.

Each set of posters promotes a new pair of presentations, one each month. This new set of twenty-five "bird-themed" posters will be on display during the months of July and August, for the presentations known as the Second Sunday Speaker Series.

Poster © Roy R. Behrens 2019

Henry Miller | As blind drunk as Mister Magoo

Henry Miller, as photographed by Carl Van Vechten (1940)

Dan Davin, Closing Times. London: Oxford University Press, 19175, p. 131—

[Welsh poet Dylan Thomas] told me a burlesque story of meeting [American novelist] Henry Miller in London. After a prolonged session in the pubs they went to a little dairy in Rathbone Place which served sandwiches and which I well remember as being a very simple, clean, unpretentious place. But Miller was drunk and also extremely short-sighted. He was convinced that Dylan had taken him to a brothel and that the plain uniforms and innocent bearing of the waitresses were the last word in lubricious sophistication. Dylan had great difficulty in averting calamity and never succeeded at all in convincing Miller that he was mistaken. We speculated on how many similar misunderstandings might underlie the exploits so boringly recounted in [Miller’s] Tropic of Capricorn and Dylan went on to improvise a new work of Miller’s of which the dairy was the transmuted center and in which Miller played a grotesquely comical role, rather like Mr. Magoo.

Also, see an earlier post about Anthony Burgess’ comparison of himself to Mr. Magoo. I am also reminded of Buckminster Fuller’s account of his impaired vision as a child—

I was born cross-eyed. Not until I was four years old was it discovered that this was caused by my being abnormally farsighted. My vision was thereafter fully corrected with lenses. Until four I could see only large patterns, houses, trees, outlines of people with blurred coloring. While I saw two dark areas on human faces, I did not see a human eye or a teardrop or a human hair until I was four. Despite my new ability to apprehend details, my childhood's spontaneous dependence only upon big pattern clues has persisted.…

Hartman Program on Sources of Natural Dyes

Poster © 2019 by Roy R. Behrens

Just a reminder. Tomorrow at 2:00 pm, Sunday, June 9, Angela Waseskuk will speak about Connecting Through Color: An Exploration of Natural Dye Processes at Hartman Reserve Nature Center (Interpretive Building). Waseskuk is an artist and teacher at the University of Northern Iowa. In 1918, as Artist in Residence at Hartman Reserve, she researched the use of indigenous plants as potential sources of natural dyes, then used them in subsequent artworks. All presentations in the Second Sunday Speaker Series are free and open to the public.

Artist Angela Waseskuk

Dylan Thomas | Mistakes Friend's Hat for His

Above Cover of the paperback edition of Dylan Thomas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. New York: New Directions, 1968.

•••

Dan Davin, Closing Times. London: Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 134-135—

In those days I often used the George restaurant upstairs for business lunches and would usually find [Welsh poet] Dylan [Thomas] and his wife and friends installed when I went to meet my own guests in the downstairs bar. On one such occasion after he had stayed the night with us I was surprised to observe that he was wearing a shirt I recognized as mine, a blue one. But I was appeased on returning home that evening to find he had left behind a dirty one of much better quality after my wife had surrendered mine. On another day I was for some reason or other wearing a hat, a rather extraordinary blue felt hat I had picked up in Paris and one to which I was deeply attached; perhaps because it was the only hat I had ever found which my wife thought suited me. I left it in the bar while I went upstairs to lunch. When I called back again after lunch I was surprised to see it stowed away in an open bag Dylan had with him for his visit that afternoon to London. I insisted on reclaiming it, rather to his chagrin. He explained that [his wife] Caitlin though it suited him and it was the only hat he had. I did not risk asking her if it suited me also but replied that my wife thought it did and it was the only hat I had. I might as well have given in at once. For the next time we met in the George the same thing happened, only this time I didn’t notice till he got away. And when I inquired later about the hat’s fate, with even some faint hope of getting it back, he explained that he had left it on the rack of his compartment while he went to the restaurant car and in his absence some unscrupulous bastard had swiped it; no doubt someone who didn’t have a hat and who thought his wife would think it suited him.

Throaty chucklings, indignant hoots & snuffles

Rosamond Lehmann, The Swan in the Evening: Fragments of an Inner Life. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968, p. 31—

The trains are much loved by me; their language is companionable, familiar, pregnant with interest and surprises: triumphant masculine crescendos, gently lamenting diminendos, hoarse throaty chucklings, indignant hoots, unbridled snorts and explosions, exhausted sighs and snuffles. Even the shunting goods trains are dear to me, especially in the dead of night, when their screech and cackle speak to me not of dementia but of hope and comfort…

Above Rosamond Lehmann, her brother John Lehmann, and British writer Lytton Strachey (c1920s). Cropped. Photographer unknown. Public domain.

Hartman Reserve Posters | A Composite 2019

Hartman Reserve Posters © Roy R. Behrens / 2019

These posters will be on exhibit in the Interpretive Building at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA during May and June 2019. Three other exhibits will follow, in July-August, September-October, and November-December, with twenty-five posters featured each time. more>>> and more>>>

Hartman Reserve Speaker Series Posters 2019

Hartman Reserve Nature Center

Above We are currently designing a new series of posters in connection with upcoming presentations at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. In the remaining months of 2019, one hundred posters will be installed at that center's Interpretive Building in four exhibits of twenty-five each.

Each set of posters will promote a pair of presentations, one each month, on topics related to nature. The first set of twenty-five posters will be on display during the months of May and June, in what is called the Second Sunday Speaker Series. The first exhibit of posters can also be accessed online at this link .

The first two presentations are Photographing Wild Iowa by Randy Maas (2:00 pm, Sunday, May 12) and Connecting Through Color: An Exploration of Natural Dye Processes by Angela Waseskuk (2:00 pm. Sunday, June 9).  All presentations are free and open to the public.

Hartman Reserve Second Sunday Speaker Series 2019

I Could Be Bounded in a Nutshell

© Roy R. Behrens

William Shakespeare, Hamlet—

I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

2019 Graphic Design Portfolio Night at UNI

Portfolio Night Poster by Madelyn Stillman, 2019

Above Each spring semester, the graphic design students and faculty in the Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa celebrate the achievements of the graduating seniors. The event is the annual Graphic Design Portfolio Night, as announced by this exquisite poster, designed by one of those graduates, Madelyn Stillman.

On Friday, April 26, from 5:30 until 7:00 pm (drop by anytime, leave whenever you'd like), fifteen current BA Graphic Design Majors will be at tables in the hallway of the ground floor of the south wing of the Kamerick Art Building. Their print and online portfolios will be on display, with the students there to talk to visitors (parents, fellow students, faculty, professional designers, prospective design students, alumni, faculty emeritus, you name it—it's open to everyone, and on-campus parking is easy on Friday evenings) about the work that they've achieved.

The person on the graphic design faculty who tirelessly oversees this always impressive annual event is Professor Phil Fass. The works in these portfolios were produced by the students of Fass and his very capable colleague, Professor Soo Hostetler.

The student exhibitors this year are: Philip Adams, Jessica Allen, Kaitlyn Bown, Riley Green, Ellen Holt, Craig Johnson, Kumari Kincade, Josie Love, Mercedes Mancilla, Libby Schwers, Cameron Sievers, Kristin Stein, Madelyn Stillman and Carly Weber.

A Sweet Disorder in the Dress / Robert Herrick

Above A parody of a painting by either Angnolo Bronzino (Jacopo Carucci) or (possibly) Pontormo, titled Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog (c1537), providing current portraits of the charming, smart, beautiful women, Mary and Lola, with whom I delight in life.

•••

Robert Herrick
Delight in Disorder (1648)

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, that when art
Is too precise in every part.

Walter SH Hamady | Perishable Press Limited

Walter Hamady

We have now posted the third and final segment of our restored, revised and somewhat redesigned series of websites about Wisconsin artist Walter SH Hamady. On each of the three sites, there are active links to the other two. This one is mainly a listing of the 131 books that Hamady produced as The Perishable Press Limited, beginning in 1964. more>>>

Walter SH Hamady | His Gabberjabb Books

Walter Hamady / The Gift of Gabberjabbs

No, you are not seeing double (or maybe you are). This is not a duplicate earlier post. Many years ago, we designed and posted a trio of websites having to do with the letterpress books and box assemblages of Wisconsin artist Walter SH Hamady. One about his boxes, a second on his Gabberjabb books, and a third that featured a list of all the books he published as The Perishable Press Limited. A couple of years ago, those sites were disconnected and destroyed in the confusion of adopting better web software. So we are now rebuilding them. You've seen the first in our previous blog post, and now here's a link to the second. The third will follow very soon.

Walter SH Hamady | Books Boxes and Collages

According to someone, there are two types of people in the world: Those who believe that there are two types of people—and those who don’t. Among the former was the Greek poet Archilochus, who believed that people tend to be either foxes or hedgehogs. Foxes are centrifugal, hedgehogs centripetal. “The fox knows many things,” he said, “but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
     

For years I have admired the work of Walter Hamady (his extraordinary handmade letterpress books, his collages and assemblages), but now and then I’ve asked myself: “Is Walter a fox or a hedgehog?”…more>>>

National Parks Posters | Roy R. Behrens 2019

National Parks Posters

In late December and early January 2018-19, we designed twenty-three posters to commemorate National Parks and Monuments. These are currently on exhibit in the interpretive building at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. They will remain on view throughout March and April 2019. The exhibition is free and open to the public. It can be viewed any time during building hours (it's open every day but Saturdays).

As of today, they have also been posted on our website in an online virtual exhibition.

Good, Bad—and Philip Evergood (in Iowa)

Philip Evergood in Iowa

Above Back in the late 1950s, the American painter Philip Evergood was a visiting artist for two summers at the Department of Art at the Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa). Some people still remember it. We wrote an essay about it in 1998, which we've now revised and posted on our website. more>>>

Oh, the farmer and the cowman must be friends

Dude (2019)

Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma! (1943)—

The farmer and the cowman should be friends,
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
The cowman ropes a cow with ease, the farmer steals her
butter and cheese,
But that's no reason why they cain't be friends—
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.

•••

The American poet Robert Penn Warren (whose voice I love to listen to) came from Southern roots, and some of his ancestors had served on the Confederate side during the American Civil War. In Warren's wonderful memoir (which I have just finished reading), Portrait of a Father (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988), he recalls a misunderstanding he had when, as a boy, he was visiting his maternal grandfather's home. Here's the story—

There was another remark among the daughters which seemed related to the notion that the old man [his grandfather] was a visionary. They had said, more than once in their protracted and loving diagnosis of their father, that he was a "Confederate reader." Or so it seemed. I would wonder what a "Confederate reader" might be. But as my vocabulary widened, it suddenly dawned on me that the old man was an "inveterate reader." In fact, he was. As long as eyes held out.