Sunset, Thursday, 30 July 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Sunset, Wednesday, 29 July 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

I’ve spent part of the last few walks with Flint looking at sumac. Today I was investigating a little bit of a sumac puzzle, a mystery perhaps only a painter would find mysterious. A color mystery.

This was in a place Laura and I dubbed the Scrubby Field – because – it’s – scrubby. (Most of our names for things around here are pretty much on this level: the Muddy Road [muddy], the Woods Road [in the woods], the Big Field [big], etc.) A field just above the north fork of the Rivanna River. Eight or so years ago it looked as if someone had perhaps cleared parts of it expressly for bird hunters – wide lanes were cleared and covered with tall grasses, alternating with areas of thick brush. Now everything’s overgrown (hence the name). One of the most successful overgrowers is sumac – bushes verging on trees, some approaching a height of 20 feet.

In late summer and fall the clusters of small sumac berries, if that’s the right word for them, will be the distinctive velvety dark scarlet. I always assumed this was staghorn sumac, but apparently true staghorn sumac doesn’t grow this far south. What we have is a cousin, scarlet sumac. Native Americans apparently had many uses for sumac, and I once tried to make tea from the clusters, following some Boy Scout instructions, by sealing them up in water, in a closed jar in the hot sun. Didn’t work.

Right now all the sumac clusters are in one stage or another of a visually interesting transition I’d never noticed before. Some clusters are still very immature, the fruit looks like tiny light green dots. What began to get my attention lately was the next stage, as the buds turned almost the color of ripe wheat waving in the breeze, although, with the remaining green undertone, they seemed more like the color of gold grapes.

Now, the color change I couldn’t understand, the beautiful golden clusters, as I saw so many across the field, seemed like they were turning a dull brown, as if they were drying up. This made no sense. This muddy autumnal brown didn’t look like it could possibly be a phase of any progression to brilliant deep red.

I looked closer – in fact, I had to look very closely. There actually was no dull brown in any part of the sumac. What I was seeing was the opening of tiny outer petals – gold, curling back like miniature wood shavings – and then, through the petals, the inner berry. The berries are two colors of pink, like a furled rosebud of a species developed to be mostly soft, light violet-pink with an edge of strong deep magenta. I don’t know if this inner berry in any way actually opens or unfurls, but at the moment it looks as though it would, and show more of the deep color.

So the off brownish sumac that looked like a result of two colors that can’t mix, was an illusion. The artist didn’t intend for us to see it that way. 

Sunset, Tuesday, 28 July 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

In Which iPod Exposes Music Theft

No, not illegal downloads – songwriters stealing from each other. I’ll say at the outset I think the song that contains the arguably stolen material is probably even better, overall, than its model.

(Which I think is pretty unusual. For example, was Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” really worth rummaging through Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto?) (That’s O.K., Eric, we’ll always have The Raspberries.)

So, anyway, you know of course how iPod shuffle can get spooky – supposedly random orders producing weirdly synchronous sequences. And sometimes if you have a live track from a CD, at the end of that track you may hear the intro to the next song on the disk – but of course, because you’re on shuffle, that is almost never the next song you’ll hear from the iPod.

So I’m editing client work today, and playing music because the work is fairly low-intensity and it’s after lunch and I’m trying to keep from crashing face-first onto the desk. The song playing is from Concert For George – “That’s The Way It Goes,” done by Joe Brown. Song ends and after much applause for Brown’s fine performance, Eric Clapton announces, “TOM PETTY ... and THE HEARTBREAKERS!”

O.K., place goes slightly ape, but – that’s the end of that track.

To my confusion and surprise, the next song is – Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – except I knew (in the very first instants) that not only was this song not on Concert For George, I did not even have this song.

Then I realized – of course! It’s not “American Girl” – this is the other song with this intro and rhythm track! –  “Last Nite” by The Strokes.

(I realize that not just one but possibly both of these songs will seem ancient to some people. Oh, well. To put things in perspective, today I also heard “Lonely Blue Boy” by Conway Twitty ... and remembered when it came out.)

In Which Bill Saves the Planet ... Slightly

I was leaving the produce section of the grocery store today with a two-pound container of Michigan blueberries, on sale, when I suddenly realized – Wait a minute, I’m supposed to go looking for wild blackberries today!

Back go the trucked-in or flown-in Michigan blueberries, and, later, out into the briar patches go I. WHAT a hero. Off the grid!

In Which Bill Wakes Up ... At Least for a Moment

So I’m walking down the fields toward blackberries, and you know how it is some days, your mind is more or less filled with a whole lot of things you’re working on, many of which are a long long way from working out right, and there’s just a sort of jammed-up, cloudy mix of things, large and small, to think about. Well, maybe you don’t know how that is, but that’s how it sometimes is for me. And it’s a hot, steamy, not very comfortable summer day, I guess you could call it a very average Virginia summer day, more than half cloudy, the sun beating down through three or four shifting layers of thin white and dull blue and soft gray and – just not what you call a stellar, striking sort of day.

And then I stop, or actually I keep walking but I do a sort of tight but goofy-stumbly 360 while I’m walking down the field. And I realize, Man, are you crazy? Look at this! I’m walking outside at four in the afternoon, in a huge green bowl of grasses, the sky’s enormous, everywhere there are gallant stands of oak, there’s the spring and the pear tree, big hot steel blue clouds in the west ... Look at this. This is IT.

Sunset, Monday, 27 July 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

I’m happy to report today that 'my' author Dr. Dan McClure (Wednesday Evenings and Every Other Weekend, published by The Van Doren Company) (cheeseball outfit) has posted his first reply to reader questions at his site. Subject: ADHD. Even though the book is ostensibly for 'divorced dads’, several reviewers have commented that it’s a resource for all parents; anyone can enjoy and learn from Dan’s direct, down-to-earth observations.

Sunset, Sunday, 26 July 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Perspective here starts more or less directly overhead.

Sunset, Saturday, 25 July 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Thunderstorms just passed through.