Seascape: Dawn

This was in a travel mag as a small picture. I kept it small because of the difficulty of making so many subtle blends with gradual color change. It's acrylic on canvatex, 6x9. It uses a combination of wet and dry blends to simulate a tranquil mood--just the thing leading into the holiday tomorrow.

How Mabel Saved The World

Good evening. We grownups like to indulge our kids' imaginations, as this is how they prepare for the adult world. Today's kids are quite savvy when it comes to modern gadgets. I myself scarcely know how to operate one of the newfangled television sets. When it comes to kids invading the privileged upper echelons, we must applaud their resourcefulness. One can never know when it might pay dividends.











"Psychic Hotline." Mabel knew who the caller was--not because she was psychic, but because the payment authorization tone never sounded. How were the kids getting through without paying? You were supposed to be eighteen to begin with.

"O Great Fairy, we come to you again. The persons have moved machines and materials into our sacred grove to build their houses."

Mabel had switched to speaker for the benefit of Claire at the next station. Claire had colorless choppy hair and a scrunched up face, making her look as cynical as she sounded. "Back again?" Claire asked. "That sounds like the one who calls herself Sephora. A little kid shouldn't sound so sultry. She must be channeling her favorite pop singer."

"Go ahead, Sephora." Mabel let her glasses dangle on their cord.

"We want to call a Grand Convocation, but it hasn't been done before. Please advise us, Great Fairy."

Rather than admit she didn't know what a convocation was, Mabel chose to be conservative. "You have fairy powers, dear. I'm sure you can handle it."

"We don't know what you mean, Great Fairy." The voice of the other one was even more Kewpie-doll innocent. Yet the kids had a strange adult cadence and vocabulary. They must be reading their tall tales all the time.

"Is that you, Pommi?" Mabel didn't recall the tricky name the other child used.

Hesitation. "Why do you dishonor my name, Great Fairy?" 

Claire leaned closer. "I read somewhere how they don't like nicknames. I think her name is Melpomini."

"Melpomini!" Mabel clarified. "You know the 'persons' need materials and tools to work with."

Another pause, broken by Sephora. "You are wise, Great Fairy. We know what to do now."

Claire's shoulders shook with repressed laughter. "Cute kids. They could use some parental supervision, though. Imagine hacking into our system like that." She fielded the next caller, and the work day wore on.

Next afternoon, after the lunch break, Claire indulged her habit of sharing the internet news. "Did you hear about that construction site? Stacks of lumber turned to dust; vehicle tires, hydraulic hoses, everything organic. No tire tracks or footprints anywhere. The CEO is calling it eco-terrorism. Freaky, huh?"

That was all the country needed: a new type of terrorist. When the unauthorized call came in again, Mabel didn't bother with her pitch line. "Hello, dears. Did you take my advice?"

"We did, Great Fairy." Sephora. "You are so wise. We used a spell of decrepence to age their machines and materials. The persons have packed up and left our grove."

Mabel put a hand over her mouthpiece and leaned toward Claire. "The kids are taking credit for that construction caper." Back live again. "I'm glad I could help you kids, but I have to get back to work  now. Shouldn't you be in  school?"

*****************************************************************************

At the back of a small cave, two fairies watched the talisman screen go dark. Sephora did a regal flick of bluish wings that contrasted nicely with raven hair. She had enlisted the blonde Melpomini of the emerald wings to help carry the talisman here. Some hiker person must have dropped it. One of its buttons was marked with a daub of paint; when pressed, it summoned the voice of the Great Fairy.

"What did she mean by us being in school?" Sephora queried.

Melpomini shrugged. "She is very old, and has a right to be eccentric. Do you think the person who lost this can speak to the Great Fairy?"

"Don't be silly. Only the fey can reach her. Anyway, the Great Fairy has spared us a lot of work. Do you remember the last convocation?"

"It was centuries ago," Melpomini said, "at a place called Roanoke. Settler persons from across the great ocean came and defiled the grove there. The fairies opened a portal to the fairy plane, from which no persons may ever return."

"Very good." Sephora looked at the talisman again. "Yes, a Grand Convocation would be a lot of work for all the fairies of the world. That would make all the persons go away."

Geo Bloom

Tonight's tale is a little gem of maritime lore concerning sailors on the S.S. Lorabelle. They've been frustrated by foul weather and are anxious to get underway again. Their captain desires to make an unscheduled detour to investigate an oceangoing enigma known as the Geo Bloom. Herewith we drop in on the spirited debate going on below decks.








Captain Trent shuffled cards in his ready room. Morning light filtered down from portholes set high in the bulkhead, revealing how much the space needed tidying. The abysmal weather conspired to keep them locked in port yet another day. He feared a general mutiny if the crew had to endure it much longer. Even the cards were wearing thin from overuse. Whist was a trifle awkward with three players, but he disapproved of gambling games like poker aboard ship; a man resentful of being in debt was not an efficient hand.

The S.S. Lorabelle was Aussie registered and sailing out of Trinidad. She had laid over in Naples for supplies and shore leave. Before sailing on to Newfoundland with a commercial cargo, Trent planned to investigate a rash of Geo Bloom sightings in the mid Atlantic. The scheme required of the crew a much-resented extension of their time at sea.We are not scientists went their frequent complaint.

First Mate Tom Willis held his cards primly, his thin face easily readable: he had nothing. Schweikert, the gruff, bearded boson, remained circumspect. Trent enjoyed these quiet times, when the great reciprocal engines were silent, the crew all tucked in, save for the watch. As usual, Willis served as the conscience Trent had a propensity to ignore. After a bracing pull on his watery tea, he pressed a constant concern since hearing of the plan. "Any ideas how to explain the delay to the Home Office?"

"You'll think of something," Trent said. "And ease off the tea--that cup is full every time I sea it. You're starting to look a little tea-brownish in complexion." He glowered at the smudged symbols of the hand he'd been dealt. "Nay, I'll not be denied my chance this time. It's become my Moby Dick!"

"Right," Schweikert mused. "And we know how that turned out." He grinned affably under the captain's glare. "Never mind me, mates--I'm a little light on the lore." A former army cargo handler, he was fairly new to the sea, having risen quickly on organizational skills.

Trent made his opening gambit in the game, having gone typically somber. There was no reason for his gloom; his niece was getting married in two months, and he looked forward to some additions to the family. Perhaps he was spending too much time afloat. It was time for a vacation. The very thought made his hand go slack in such ponderings, threatening to spill his cards on the table. How inviting it was, the idea of swinging in a hammock on a summer's day, just letting himself go.

Willis drew him out of his reverie. "This all sounds like a science show. What's the thing about, anyway?"

"The Geo Bloom," Trent said thoughtfully. "So called because it assumes geometric shapes on the water. Circles mostly, but a triangle has been seen, though most recently it took the form of a pink square miles across. It must have been an old one, because a passing plane arrived just in time to spot it. The pilot swore he saw a vortex at the center."

"Perhaps," Willis ventured with a nervous chin scratch, "it's a natural phenomenon, an undersea geyser spewing volcanic matter. But I foresee a danger for ship-borne approach: we'd never become aware of this vortex in time to avoid it."

Trent ignored that. "A natural square? I tell you, there's something not natural about it, and I mean to crack it." He kept Willis on the hook. "Something else bothering you, Tom?"

Willis met their looks defensively. "Part of it is having your sister along. It's frightful bad luck having a woman aboard ship. Were that not enough, we go traipsing into an area known at The Devil's Triangle, and The Sargasso Sea."

"You refer," Schweikert joked, "to the sea goddess. What did the Vikings call her. . .Ran, I think. Not to worry--we'll appease her with a suitable sacrifice." He leered wolfishly.

The matter was settled for Trent, who anticipated the upcoming port call in the far north. "You'll like it up north. Some of the Eskimo tribes migrate that far south. I once tasted a delicacy of theirs, little birds called auks stuffed in a seal carcass for slow pickling."

"Do tell us," Schweikert said, enjoying Willis' discomfort. The man looked like Death warmed over.

"Right then," Trent said. "You reach into the gullet and fish out a bird, little more than black goo after some months in there. Pull off the beak and feet, and toss it in your mouth. It munches like oily bubbles popping on your tongue."

"I say," Willis began, looking even more sickly. "Haven't we heard this before?"

Schweikert made a gurgling sort of laugh, his tea having gone done wrong. "If you'd heard it before, you wouldn't be going all seasick on us!"

Trent experienced a niggling doubt of his own. He had indeed gotten into a rut, seemingly going through the same routine day after day in this accursed spell of bad weather.

A shadow blocked the porthole light, but passed in due time, admitting a view of a watery sun trying to break through the clouds. Could the weather be breaking at last?

"By the seven hells!" Trent crowed, "we'll be asea on the morrow!" He eyed the first mate's unhealthy countenance. "Blast my scuppers, Willis, you look a proper corpse in need of some sun!" Trent brushed a skeletal hand in front of his face. A fish had bumped it in swimming past.

Do You Use Folklore and Mythology?

A General Survey
One of the most common tropes is the vampire, who features in every media. The best known comic book biter is Vampirella, scantily clad (how else?) in red and white. Strangely, her fangs are on either side of the two center teeth, rather than at the canines, third from center. TV was home to Barnabas Collins in the soap Dark Shadows, and his brethren later fought Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Filmdom played host to vampires in the Hammer horror series starring Chris Lee and Peter Cushing. Even cartoons get into the act with the pixie Vampirina. The Hotel Transylvania franchise stars Dracula and his hip daughter in a CGI hodgepodge of the entirety of monsterdom.

Ghosts haunt the cartoon zone in the guise of Casper, along with more sinister counterparts from the early years. Our old friend Hammer contributed films like Thirteen Ghosts. Nineteenth century England was the high point of the printed ghost story.

Returning to the ubiquitous Hammer, we have a fine snake-hair entry in The Gorgon, again starring horror kings Lee and Cushing. A close companion is the basilisk from Harry Potter.

Mythology doesn't automatically resonate; I wasn't able to get into a book where centaurs flew helicopters.  But I did adopt one of the gorgons--Stheno--in a comic. She represents the youngest sister, formerly a spoiled Greek princess.

Still Life: The Potter's Shed

This 9x12 acrylic originated in one of the home and garden mags, which focused on sheds. I seized on the little rusted can with its arrangement of flowering weeds, a nice variation of the floral still life. The trowel, glove, and seed pack were added to give it that carefully-tended look. The wood panels make a rustic background to enhance the theme. Who says still lifes are trite? There must be any number of other ways to approach the subject.

The Drawing Room Event

Professor Chaduray scanned the firelit drawing room which seated two dozen of Westerbury's upper crust socialites. They'd come to hear his lecture on the fourth dimension, a popular topic owing to recent advances in mathematics. Chaduray had rashly advertised his intent to not only explain a fourth dimension, but to access it. Nonsense, of course. When it failed, he'd simply confess to a bold experiment having come up short, and modestly offer them a refund. They in turn, much entertained, would naturally refuse.

His assistant tonight was a medium called Madame Sezny, whose Gypsy attire was no stage costume. Chaduray, lacking the arcane machinery of high science--not yet invented--sought a back door approach to the problem. Were there no mediums on the other side? Let them make the connection between each other. So went his spiel to enthralled audiences hopeful of a world-altering epiphany.

Mademe Sezny set up an easel for sketching diagrams. Next, she pushed to the fore a large, black-draped box, the erstwhile focal point of tonight's activities. Lady Tibbets, their genial hostess, shifted her bulk in the fireplace wing chair, the better to command attention. She raised opera glasses on a slender stem and fixed Chaduray with a look of matronly doubt. "Well, Professor, shall you finally prove the existence of the fourth dimension?"

"Nay, Madam." Chaduray inserted his monocle in silence broken only by fireplace crackle. "I shall posit the existence of multiple realities!" He drew on his easel the X and Y axes of the Cartesian coordinate system. "On a flat surface, we find distance between two points as the square root of X squared plus Y squared." He drew a third line through the origin, perpendicular to the others. "With the addition of a Z axis, we have our three-dimensional universe."

An old gent in back spoke up. "I say--does the equation still hold true?"

"Indubitably." Chaduray's goatee  widened around his grin. "We now find distance via the square root of our new sum: the added squares of X, Y, and Z."

"But. . ." Lady Tibbets lowered her spectacles. "You have quite run out of planes, Professor."

"Have I?" Still looking impious, Chaduray added a W plane to the mix, yet another angled line through the origin. The square root of the four sums still yielded a valid number, though it was a little smaller than a point plotted right beside it.

A portly banker. "But where is that point?"

"Right here in this room," Chaduray said. "But not in this physical plane. It is a fact that any number of planes will yield a valid numerical result. May we not conclude an infinite number of realities?" During the applause, Chaduray motioned his assistant toward the draped box. "In another such drawing room, somewhere in the cosmos--if not close at our elbows--there must exist other practitioners of the occult arts. Madame Sezny shall attempt contact, using a representation of the fourth dimension to bend her energies to that end." At his nod, she uncovered the box with a flourish.

Hushed muttering broke out, as if the company feared provoking some reaction from the black, tubular structure. It portrayed a cube within a cube, its vertices connected by slender wires.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the professor began, "I give you our best understanding of the fourth dimension, the tesseract, a 3-D representation of a fourth plane. In this iteration, it's known as a Schlegel diagram, in which all sides are equal. The tesseract is to the cube what the cube is to a square."

"Here now," objected the banker. "Obviously the smaller cube cannot have sides equal to those of the larger."

"Not in this reality," Chaduray explained. "There is a time element we cannot duplicate here. You see, the tesseract is forever in motion. Picture the inner tube passing through the larger tube's front wall, growing to become the front wall, folding back to engulf the whole, then shrinking to re-enter the back wall as the smaller cube once again. If we could unfold the tesseract at an instant in time, we would have the Dali cross: four stacked cubes attached at the next-to-topmost cube."

The audience could not comprehend the thing, none of them having a rigorous grounding in calculus. It was a necessary skill for manipulating objects mentally.

"Can you simplify it?" Lady Tibbets enjoined, studying the machine through her lenses. "I mean--can this device serve as passage to another dimension?"

"A good question," Chaduray said, pleased with the segue. "With present methods, lacking unheard-of amounts of electric power, we may only endeavor to access the adjacent universe." He made a bow to Madame Sezny. ""My assistant will now attempt contact with someone over there."

Madame Sezny went into deep concentration. Chaduray relished the apprehensive, excited faces fixated on her. His fee was well earned at this point, no matter the result.

"Look there!" a man called.

A hazy image formed with the tesseract. The manor began to creak, and windows shook in a rising moan of wind that failed to rouse the drapes. Everyone's hair and garments stood out in static charge. The image remained flat, ghostly.

"This is a symbol!" Madame Sezny said breathlessly, "conveyed by one with more skill than I!"

Chaduray paced about the visitation, noting how it quite disappeared when viewed edge-on. It was two dimensional.

"It's the knight of wards!" Sezny exclaimed. She put hands forth, to Chaduray's alarm. "It's a message from one who uses a tarot deck. This knight represents the messenger, one who speeds the journey. My journey, can't you see?"

Lady Tibbets rose from her seat, voice raised in the din. "Professor, I believe we've crossed a forbidden boundary! You must end this!"

Another image oozed through the back side of the large cube, forcing the knight forward, where it grew to encompass that side, then folded back to re-enter the small cube--just as Chaduray predicted. The new image, a chess-type tower, alternated places with the knight in precessing fashion, each taking turns folding back upon itself. Chaduray winced at the similarity to writhing intestines.

"The tower," Madame Sezny said, mesmerized. "A symbol of relocation. I know what I must do!" She reached into the tesseract, eliciting screams from the ladies, was drawn into the infernal engine. Now it was her tortured image precessing through the device, turning inside-out upon exiting the front wall, and re-assembling to enter the rear wall.

Abruptly the thing imploded with a thunderclap, leaving only drifting ectoplasm behind. Of the device there remained no trace. In the shocked aftermath, everyone crowded about, demanding answers.

Chaduray raised hands for calm. "Good people, hear me! In spite of the unexpected turn of events, I believe we have arrived at proof of our exhibition."

"What does it mean?" Lady Tibbets inquired, near tears for the victim.

"Somewhere," Chaduray said, "others like ourselves have just proved the existence of our universe. Lacking Madame Sezny's intestinal fortitude, they invited us to make the first move."

An elderly gent: "Can she hope to return? Is she all right?"

Chaduray stroked his goatee. "We can find out by hiring another spirit medium. Shall we attempt to reach out to Madame Sezny in her new reality?"

Two dozen heads nodded "no" in unison.

Monolithic Nightmare

If you think it can't happen, it can. During the course of three years I finally finished my second book. Years and years of revisions and modifications that it was finally finished in a way that I could go back and fix areas that need attention. During that whole time I forgot, literally forgot to back up my work that was all on my flash drive and not anywhere else. It was that sense of panic when my flash drive stopped connecting to computers. It was a sense of devastation of a different kind.

So I began a search for the right place and person to recover my data on a flash drive. No two flashdrives are alike. Beware of the monolith flash drive which I had. I looked at companies that quoted thousands of dollars to five hundred dollars. It would require surgery and attach wires carefully so my monolith flash drive would be recovered correctly. Many companies said it would be difficult and time consuming How depressing that most companies were into price gouging to the unsuspecting consumer in a dilemma.

It took a month and a half to do some soul searching for myself and reaffirm what my goals are. I could rewrite my story, go back to the previous saved work before my entire updated version. And never think you will not use the paper print out of your work as a physical backup.

So I prayed to God about this problem. I asked him if he wants me to make this book, show me the right person to be trustworthy and good person. My search eventually led me to a place that only recovers flash drives. He had a five star rating and a 98% success rate. I emailed my problem and he was able to identify my monolithic chip and find an exact model that was disassembled. He impressed me beyond. I thought he did something the other guys didn't. He knew exactly what he was doing. The quote was reasonable. So I slept on it, night after night and my gut told me countless times this was the guy. So I sent my chip way north, and I waited. The wait was overwhelming day after day. Finally I got an email that said my chip was fully recovered. I hesitantly paid the quote which was quite reasonable than what I got. The guy sent me a link to download my work, and within a few days he sent me my original monolithic flash drive and a new flash drive with my complete work on it.

Whew. What a long wait of agony. God was directing me and said yes, get this literary baby published. Now I have printed copy of my fully recovered work and peace of mind. My experience to this, back up your work, such as your phone, your external hard drive and flash drive etc. Be aware of people out there waiting to gouge unsuspecting customers lots of money. Monolithic chips are the newest thing, but keep to the regular flashdrives for future reference. 
In a devastating case scenario, it turned out good.


Some have you knew of this, but since last May 2019 all is well.   So far the Chromebook is wonderful with my work saved on the Cloud which is on multiple devices now.  I still use my main laptop for multiple files since it has more room. It does guzzle up the battery faster than the chrome, which lasts about nine hours for battery life.  Even if I move my story around, it is on the desktop and a simple new flash drive, if need be.