Decorative things on display in my house.../with photos in These titles mean nothing.

• First I saw the gun. It came with the farm. It’s ancient as things like that go. It’s totally non-functioning. It rests on nails driven into a partial wall my husband made when we were taking out walls in the house. It’s a long gun and it’s heavy. It is the only gun we own except for the 22 rifle that was my fatherinlaw’s varmint gun that may or may not be in the closet.

• Next I saw a cheap little framed picture of a pheasant in flight that I bought at a home decorating party thirty or so years ago. It hangs on another part of that wall over the door to the living room. The picture is getting faded. I’ve used some of the frames from those party pictures for other purposes but I don’t do that sort of thing anymore. I have retired from home decoration.

• Then comes a clutch of fair ribbons from back in the day when I took flowers and baked good to the fair. They are dusty and gaining age but I’m not ready to throw them away. They hang from a nail beside the pheasant picture.

• On the closet door, on the nail my mother would hang the religious calendar the funeral homes put out, is a a set of gold color jingle bells and a silk poinsettia bloom - my year round tribute to Christmas.

• On the wall between the closed door and door to upstairs is the plate rack that also came with the farm. The top shelf holds three pairs of china creamers and sugarers that I collected back in the day when I was interested in old china. That was before I got into books. On the bottom shelf is a weird collection of found objects: the ink scraper I bought home from my last day at Kolor Graphics - it knows my hand, a sparkly red and silver ‘gimcrack’ that the grandkids gave me last Christmas, a postcard of a painting of the Decorah diner that I made Jim buy me on ebay, a couple more things I can’t quite identify at this distance. I know my now too small wedding ring is on the bottom shelf too. It has the little (but good) diamond in a platinum setting that was in my mother’s engagement ring that my dad gave me in the 1980s. I had a hippy jeweler make it into another ring with gold from a plain wedding band I bought after I lost the set my husband bought me.

• Under the plate rack on the bench that held the TV when we had a
  TV are two of my paintings. The heavy plywood abstract masterpiece that lbh and I labored on is behind the yellow sky, green grass and pink tree painting that I did at the class we went to. The paintings aren’t hung, they just sit on the bench and lean against the wall. In front of them is a pottery bowl son John made in an art class at school.

• On the wall between the stair door and the west window is Paul Muth’s seascape that I bought when we were both on OD. It’s long and narrow and is on wood also but lighter wood that an be hung. Above it is a fragment of a Coors graphic we made at Kolor Graphics. And a painting that anther OD friend sent me. It’s painted on both sides - one has a woman who could be either of us, and the other has words that I cannot read from here. Beneath the seascape are year’s Christmas cards - the ones with family pictures on them. We have received one new card so far this year but I haven’t put it up yet.

Note: card on bottom right is Brick Paver’s fire hydrant nativity scene.

Possessions are funny things. They have significance. Real art has provenance, a history that establishes authenticity. The items in our daily life, the things we live with have provenance too.

By the way, I just gave wiki ten bucks so I’m feeling virtuous.

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I made a list of things to write about at work today but I left it on my cart. As I recall I wanted to write about Hillary, about White Christmas and Black Friday, and about people saying, “I ain’t seen” something or other. Plus it’s deer season. Plus I gave up my mail reporting jobs.

Last updated December 06, 2015