The Turkey in the Basement It was the one thing that kept him alive, otherwise my grandmother would have chopped his head off yesterday. He was a smart turkey. He had discovered a hiding place, under the kitchen, in a space that was never dug out when the basement was excavated. It was now a crawl space littered with turkey droppings, barely enough space for an escaped turkey, not enough for a grown man to slither into to trap a turkey. The gobbler my grandmother had been raising, unbeknownst to her grandson, had fled the coop. He was evading capture in the basement. How he had gotten there, I never learned. As I tell this tale, you might be tempted to hope the bird will become a folk hero or befriend some spider with a bizarre talent and perfect spelling. But no. This will not end well for the turkey. Today is the third Wednesday in November. We all know that by some magical and fragrant means, a delicious celebratory feast is due tomorrow, and the centerpiece is a golden ...

The Former Studio in Ohio My first painting studio Was in an apartment With oak floors I protected the wood with Plastic sheeting and A layer of masonite My muse failed to Warn me What might happen Hardwood studio floor Stained blue and green By accident Warped here and there More by water Than color Young artists Are not taught about This in Art school This is a post MFA Surprise bonus A free lesson visit Sandy Kinnee.com

A Celestial Ceiling of Rorschach Something in the wiring of our brains makes us look for patterns. We need to recognize our surroundings and identify experiences. Familiarity breeds comfort as well as contempt. But we seek comfort first. Comfort comes once we find our bearings. Contempt is a luxury. To find our place in the universe we examine and mark and lay claim to those things we can hold. Some of this claiming and marking is physical. Other knowledge is held in the eyes and mind. We impose patterns to reveal the rhythms beyond them. We look to the clouds, scan the stars, stare at paint stains, listen to repetitions, we look at random and fixed items and seek for reference points. We want the world to make sense to us. If something isn’t ordered if something isn’t clearly organized, we organize it. Intently searching the stars, we construct constellations. We gather colored sand and arrange it on a board, forming a mandela. We are organizers. What can be ...

Going to Monet's Garden Too Soon I grew up with an ingrained sense that flowers must be grown. No matter where I lived I would plant what I knew best: marigolds, cosmos, bachelor buttons, and any of the various fall bulbs. Daffodils were my lifelong favorites. If I didn't have space, I'd go back to my parents house and plant something. In the late 70's I'd heard that Monet's garden at Giverny were being reclaimed. In 1979 I was working at Stanley Hayter's "Atelier 17" in Paris and decided to visit the garden with my wife, Gale Murray, and two Canadians. We found the location of the gardens and plotted our trip via the train to Vernon and received directions that Giverny was only 5 kilometers away. We had prepared the typical French d'jeunier: a baguette, a hunk of Caprice de Dieux, Jambon, tomats, vin, Volvic, some cornishons, and a selection of tartlettes. Our plan was to eat our lunch in the garden. The weather was hot and sunny;...