In this picture, the family has gone camping (that was the theme at her daycare last week). The quarter-circle thing in the middle is the tent. Notice, please, that she has cleverly placed the tent on the high ground, so that if it rains, we won't sleep on damp earth. I don't know who taught her that trick, but it is nice too see.
The family is lined up beside the tent. I am right beside the tent, probably after just finishing putting it up. Mom (in the hip yellow slacks) is beside me. Ariel is next (notice the characteristic long hair. Ruth, with her signature curly hair is last in our family lineup.
On the other side of the hill is Ariel's bunny that she sometimes sleeps with (see the ears sticking up?). Ruth's Elmo doll (I think) is beside the bunny, and both of those sleep aides sit atop our multi-colored sleeping bags. I guess we need to move the sleeping bags into the tent to take advantage of the high ground.
You can also see that Ariel has placed the classic tree at the left edge of the drawing. I have drawn countless trees as a kid and they all ended up like this one. with the hole in the middle of the trunk. Ariel has chosen to color her hole yellow while I always made mine black, but she has always used a wider color palate than I.
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In other news, I have some more scrapbook pages to review today.
The smudged piece of per at the top of this page are the shorthand directions for band marching maneuvers. Back when I was in middle school I and a few other band members helped one of the high school band students perform a 5 minute marching demonstration (think the scene from "Stripes" but without the funny dialogue and guns). The high school student was John Perry and it was his job to design the maneuvers, teach them to us, and perform it in front of the high school band directors. This was part of his audition to be a drum major that year.
I won't reproduce the entire thing, but my poor 14-year-old cursive begins: "I am 12 steps from sidelines, 2 steps behind person in front of me. I am 4 steps off the center line. MT (that means mark time hut) 4 (step in place for four steps). Right flank, forward 4, right flank, forward 4 (FTL--which means "follow the leader"). After flank, forward 4 . . . etc. Plus I have notes for horn moves--I played trumpet at the time. I don't remember if John was selected as drum major or not.
The other item on this page is a Peanuts cartoon that spoke to me then . . . and still does today. Charlie Brown is in bed at night, trying to sleep.
"It's very strange," he says in the first panel. "Sometimes you lie in bed at night and you don't have a single thing to worry about."
"That always worries me."
(Sounds like my recent attitude about the job . . . . It seems I haven't changed much since 1985.)
On this page you see me on my 13th birthday. (I guess I should have discussed this page first.) I don't know why I wrote 12 years if the date is indeed October 17, 1984. (I thought my math was better than that--considering I was born in 1971.)
Don't I look laid back and don't those glasses do nothing for my appearance? Behind me are four of my good friends at the time--Stan, Ronald (who had the pool and lived next to Stephen), Nathaniel, and Jay. Stan and I got into trouble a few years later when we went walking across town late at night when we were supposed to be camping in his back yard. It was the only time I ever got picked up by the police. Jay had recently moved into town and was often misunderstood by the other kids. His family had recently lived in Pennsylvania and a lot of kids gave him hell for being a Yankee. It bothered him at times, but we got along. We both had fun playing computer games and reading L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth series. (And, to my knowledge, neither of us became Scientologists.) I lost touch with Ronald and Nate during Jr. High and High School. Jay, Stan, and I joined the band and went off to do band things.
The second picture is of me at Desoto Falls Campground, where my family spent many summer vacations. I loved camping there as a kid and sometimes wish that I made more of an effort to take my kids camping now. Tegan never camped at all as a kid, so she might be a bit against it . . . and I have never had to start my own fire and cook my own food (thought that can be solved with sandwiches). Mostly, I am being lazy and will regret it. But I keep saying when the kids get a bit bigger--but who knows when I will convince myself that that magical time has arrived.
The last item is a clipping of the newspaper show time for Dune, that Kyle McLaughlin starring, Toto soundtrackin' monstrosity of a movie. I had read the book already--having borrowed it from my oldest brother MSquared who was attending Georgia Tech at the time. This was my first exposure to David Lynch. Five years later I would be a card-carrying, cherry pie eating fanatic of Twin Peaks. And I would see Blue Velvet in college. But that was all to come. I didn't know the movie was bad at the time, but I enjoyed it a lot. They handed out vocabulary lists as you entered the theater (something that I have NEVER seen happen for any other movie, no matter how odd) and I thought my sister MA would turn around right there. To this day, I am not sure why she went with me. She's not a big science fiction fan and certainly wasn't when she was 15 . . . maybe it was Sting as Feyd Rautha.
I also saw a good movie this weekend. You can read about it here.
2 comments:
I love the line-graph-like substratum under the high-ground campground, and the butterfly is exquisite up there with the orange sun flying above a wavy blue rippling watery line. The tent is very tent-like, the figures - human and stuffed - are great. But I'm troubled by the hole in the tree...there's something Jungian about this that I don't understand.
I agree that there is something archetypal about this hole-in-the-trunk thing, but I don't know what it means.
I should also have pointed out that the butterfly is a sticker, lest anyone start contacting MoMA or anything on Ariel's behalf.
The blue line running underneath the campsite is, I suppose, a creek. What decent campsite is complete without the babbling of a brook to sooth your urban-jangled nerves?
(Take it away Lulu . . . get that nature-lovin' post finished. That was the perfect set-up for you.)
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