holiday surprises

poem,  wrappings, chocolates

letters to spell your name...

zwarte piets assist St.Nicolas

CoBrA art work on chocolate bar

In my mail box recently a package arrived from Holland. It was from St. Nicolas and his pal black Pete with a little help from my pal Cor Windhouwer, I suspect. 

St. Nicholas Day is Dec. 6th and in Holland they celebrate with the arrival of St. Nicolas and his assistants who deliver gifts and judge the kids and adults much like Santa Claus does later in Dec. Every one gets chocolate letters at their dinner place setting and the poems call them each out in ways to poke fun and have a good laugh. Most of what I know about the holiday I read on this website: 

St. Nickolas Center, "the truth about SantaClaus" -Netherlands

Our poem on the orange paper with the chocolates reads:

Dear Frederick & Keith...

again a year passed by, 

very quick and full, 

with good and bad moments,

moments of joy and grief,

some we will always remember, 

things we liked to do and some we rather not,

but friendship was there and still goes on,

an so again this year's December,

of coursed a small surprised, for Dec. 5th,

a piece of Cobra art,

but do be smart,

don't hang it on the wall,

but use it with tea... or coffee..

So Art melts in your mouth 

and warms your heart...

St. Nicolas x2

CoBrA avant garde art movement in Europe 1949-1951

This will explain that bird art picture on our chocolate art bar!

There is an exhibition of CoBrA art in a Rotterdam museum.

Thank you St. Nicolas,  this is going to taste so good!

day three: permission to copy

Today I got permission to copy my Kingsbury portrait from Doug and to post a link to his web gallery on my blog.  Doug Kingsbury What a relief, yesterday I read several pages about copyrights on the web and from those I determined that I needed to ask him. It looks like everything is subject to use by permission. I wonder how the blogs I read get those permissions. Many of the stories they quote have links to news papers or news services.  I have some articles I want to link in this blog about art shows and historical subjects that are on the Internet but I have to tread carefully. I am looking forward to discussing this with other bloggers in detail, maybe I am over reacting to the warnings. In the mean time I am saving the goods until I am clear about what I am allowed to do here.

I also heard from Doug in Florence that Scott Brooks, another Washington, DC artist, has arrived there and they had a nice meal together at Doug and Bob's swapped house. It seems they think I need to have a blog, apparently it was a topic of discussion. I got started setting up my blog this week because I told Dan Vera I didn't think my computer connection was going to let me set one up and when I went to double check my access to my surprise  I got right into this Blogger site, no problems. Now, I am wondering what all these people think I should be writing about?  

I don't have much experience writing other than my journals which I do every morning, some letters and emails. I have been a "pen pal" for many years. It began in French class in the seventh grade when I sent away for a name of a French pen pal. I could write to her in French and in return she wrote to me in English, giving us both a chance to practice our studies.  My French pen pal was Silvie and I remember her sending me a extra big post card of a "chateau" from her home town. This was in response to my comments telling her things I liked: castles and knights in armor. She had never heard the term castle in her English class but figured the old stone fortress they called a chateau was close and informed me they didn't have anyone living in them wearing armor anymore. I was bitten hard by the long distance pen pal writing bug. 

Now I have almost daily correspondence with my Dutch pen pal who has been a great friend over the past 4 or 5 years, Cor Windhouwer. I met Cor when he wrote to me about aquirring  a set of my folding book prints he found on my web site. Pictured at the top of this post.   I was happy to sell him a set and in our correspondence about the books he expressed interest in my life as an artist and I jumped at the chance to have him as a pen pal and friend. We are two of a kind when it comes to enjoying our long distance friends. One of the reasons I hesitated to start a blog was because I didn't want to take anything away from this part of my life. It will be interesting to see how blog writing impacts my other writing and story telling.

I determined yesterday that my partner Keith Stanley and I have the influenza this weekend. We both had vaccinations but as we learned on the news this year the vaccination is only good against about 40% of the bugs that showed up on our shores. In the coming weeks, I expect to be spending a lot of time at home resting to recover. Tonight with my new understanding of copyright I need to write to Cor Windhouwer and Scott Brooks and Keith Stanley and Dan Vera all mentioned in this post for permission to link their web pages in my blog.