Since the end of drawing class, I’ve not been really keeping up with my sketchbook. So I started this game where Erin names 10 nouns at the beginning of each week, and then I spend the week drawing them. Today: radio. It took me 2 1/2 hours to draw this vintage Philco. So..hopefully some of the other nouns (umbrella, shovel, winter jacket, coffee pot, broom, backpack, beer, rocket, button) will be a bit easier.

In 1986 and 1987, my parents sent me away to a summer camp in Minnesota, with a bunch of other kids whose parents were leftists. These were unique experiences in my life because I got to hang out with a bunch of other overly serious children who had weird parents like I did. Of course, I had friends in Davenport that had parents like mine..Sara..but this was cool, because we were a whole gang. All ages, up to about 17. The adults brought in speakers from various orgainzations, like NPR and Peta. I remember the NPR guy looked just like Mark from Doonesbury. The Peta people showed a horrifying movie, which I still remember partly because it utterly traumatized the 9 year old sitting next to me; I’m sure she is a vegetarian to this day because of it.

Anyway, it was really fun, and really terrible, as summer camps usually are. We ran wild in the woods (there was not much organized supervision at these camps, so we were frequently left to our own teen-aged devices), we burned things, we played capture the flag all night long while being eaten alive by mosquitos. We rowed on the lake for hours, or went for long hikes. In between, we learned things, or did interesting projects, like come up with our own slogan stickers. See above. If We Had To Eat Everything We Killed, There Would Be No War. Hmmmmm. I wonder if that is really true.

In the box my Dad brought me in November, which has spawned these Relics posts, there were 3 very old rolls of film. Enticing! Mysterious! Were they still good?

I took them to University Camera on Dubuque St. and had index prints made. Alas, only one roll turned out, the black and white. Color film must be more sensitive to age and travel. But, fascinatingly, the BW roll contained long-forgotten pictures from my 2nd year at Peace Camp, the same year we made the Sticker.

I only remember 2 people in the pictures. The girl with the wedge haircut rowing the boat. That was my friend Melissa, with whom I grew up in Davenport. Her parents were great buddies with my parents. We all went to protests together. I also recognize one other girl, standing in front of a propane tank, Sonja..I think she was from Wisconsin.

I think it is funny that I took pictures of my shoes, because I actually still do that. For some reason, I like taking pictures of my feet. I have pictures from just a year ago, where I am also wearing Chucks. I wore Chucks nearly every day for 20 years. I can’t wear them as often now, because the flat soles are so terrible, my back would hurt all the next day. Ah, old age.

I will end the post with one entry from the journal I found in the box, that contains entries from one of those years at Peace Camp.

7/30/1987
So far, not much doing today. I’ve skipped breakfast and lunch. I swear, I’ll probably die of nutritional deficiency. I’ve been eating junk food since lunch yesterday. The cornbread I had for supper yesterday made me sick. The mosquitoes here are TERRIBLE. I’ve got TONS of bites, and they all ITCH like crazy. We’re listening to The Clash!

Noah came for his annual Christmas visit on Dec. 20th. My Mom, Bob and I met him in Chicago at O’Hare airport. Then we spent a day or so in the Windy City, which wasn’t windy at all, but rather warm and rainy. We had lunch at Berghoff’s, spent several hours at the Art Institute and saw a great exhibit on Charles Sheeler, an early 20th century painter/photographer with whom I was previously unfamiliar. Sheeler’s work is really striking..lots of fascination with industrial scenes, and with the transition from static pictures into moving pictures. He did this awesome film with Paul Strand called Manhatta (Google Video) that was playing at the beginning of the exhibit.

Of course we spent at least 45 minutes touring the Hall of Armor. looking at armor from all over the world, and the various grisly swords and spears that go along with them. Noah and I also saw this great and macabre painting by Ivan Albright: The Portrait of Dorian Gray. We looked at it for a long time, and I explained Oscar Wilde’s story about Dorian Gray to Noah, who was fascinated by the whole topic. It really is quite a painting. Lots going on in there. I quite enjoy this photo of people looking at the painting when it was installed at the Art Institute in the 1940s. It really is offending their sensibilities! “Lots of gooey flesh” as Erin commented. Indeed.

After returning from Chicago, Christmas came and went in a malestrom of driving (and lots of rental cars), visiting and eating and presents. We got Noah his first Dungeons And Dragons game, complete with collectible plastic miniatures. I thought he’d really enjoy this because whenever we visit Grandpa John we spend hours setting up Grandpa John’s knights/dragons/wizards and discussing who will defeat whom based on their armor and weapons. He’s a natural for D + D! And as it turned out we spent a few happy hours rolling the d20 and seeing which creatures would prevail during battle. It all depends on the die!

After Christmas, Noah spent a few days with Grandma Linda and Bob in Davenport, doing art and Aircraft/rocket experimentation. Between Aircraft experiments, he hung around with his friends and visited the snazzy new skate/bike park that is down by the Mississippi River.

Noah’s hair is long and beautiful. He’s turning into a handsome, intelligent and sensitive young person–I’m so proud that he’s my kid! As he gets older he shows great independent thinking and insight into human interactions. And it’s so nice that he enjoys coming to visit Erin and I so much.

During quiet moments, we all sat around reading our Christmas books, snuggling and introducing Noah to Star Trek: The Next Generation. It all came to an end far too soon on New Year’s Eve, when we had to drive the young man back to O’Hare and send him back to Tucson. There were lots of bear hugs and speculation about what summer will bring.