Ghost Turtles

Close Enough for Vitruvian Man

Posted on April 29, 2023 by Mark Willis

On hot summer days when I was a kid I would lie in the grass in the upper meadow at my grandparents’ farm. I stretched out my arms like that guy in Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing. I kept my pants on, though. I stayed as still as I could, pretending to be dead meat. I hoped to entice soaring Turkey vultures to land this close to me. They were never fooled.

Vitruvian Man (via Wikipedia):

The Vitruvian Man (Italian: L’uomo vitruviano; [ˈlwɔːmo vitruˈvjaːno]) is a drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1490. Inspired by the writings of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, the drawing depicts a nude man in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and inscribed in both a circle and square. Described by the art historian Carmen C. Bambach as “justly ranked among the all-time iconic images of Western civilization,”^[1] the work is a unique synthesis of artistic and scientific ideals and often considered an archetypal representation of the High Renaissance.

The drawing represents Leonardo’s conception of ideal body proportions, originally derived from Vitruvius but influenced by his own measurements, the drawings of his contemporaries, and the De pictura treatise by Leon Battista Alberti. Leonardo produced the Vitruvian Man in Milan and the work was probably passed to his student Francesco Melzi. It later came into the possession of Venanzio de Pagave, who convinced the engraver Carlo Giuseppe Gerli to include it in a book of Leonardo’s drawings, which widely disseminated the previously little-known image. It was later owned by Giuseppe Bossi, who wrote early scholarship on it, and eventually sold to the Gallerie dell’Accademia in 1822, where it has remained since. Due to its sensitivity to light, the drawing rarely goes on public display, but it was borrowed by the Louvre in 2019 for their exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death.

Posted in Memoir, Naturalist | Tagged 15th centyry, 1960s, art, birds, iconic images, Renaissance, The Farm | Comments Off

Take Care of Yourself, Jerry Springer

Posted on April 28, 2023 by Mark Willis

R.I.P., Jerry Springer: I remember a time when Brendan, Chenoa, and I played hooky from other responsibilities and made it a point to watch “The Jerry Springer Show” together. It was an opportunity to commune with twisted people who had worse problems, and less shame, than we did. My show favorite was the bald bouncer who roamed the set breaking up brawls. He looked imposing like Mr. Clean. I think his name was Steve. When the audience chanted “Steve! Steve! Steve!” we howled for blood with them. Family values like that is what makes America great. I always hoped the three of us would get tickets to do the show in person. Not on stage, mind you. Just in the audience.

I am proud to say I voted once for Jerry Springer. That was back in the day when sketchy characters did politics first before turning to reality TV. Jerry would have made a great Governor of Ohio.

In 2008 Jerry was invited to give the commencement address at Northwestern University, his alma mater. “I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a comfortable measure of success in my various careers,” he saidd, “but let’s be honest, I’ve been virtually everything you can’t respect: a lawyer, a mayor, a major-market news anchor and a talk-show host. Pray for me. If I get to heaven, we’re all going.”

Let me send him off with the homily he used to end his show. “Take care of yourself. And each other.”

About the Image: Steve “the Bouncer” Wilk0s (left) and Jerry Springer. [Via Entertainment Tonight 042723]

Posted in Memoir, Rants and Kisses | Tagged 2000s, Brendan, celebrities, Chenoa, obits, TV | Comments Off

Listening to Trees at Ellis Pond

Posted on April 27, 2023 by Mark Willis

Full of bees on a spring day, this fragrant Dogwood sounded like a dynamo humming in the sun.

The location is the Lloyd Kennedy Arboretum at Ellis Pond in Yellow Springs, Ohio. [Photo by Mark Willis]

Posted in Ecology of the Senses, Naturalist | Tagged Ellis Pond, listening, scent, sounds, trees, Yellow Springs | Comments Off

Lessons My Mother Never Imagined

Posted on April 26, 2023 by Mark Willis

On a trip to a new, unfamiliar, dentist office, I made a mistake when I tried to exit the lobby. White cane in hand, I opened the door and was surprised to see someone standing behind it, back turned to me.

“Excuse me,” I said, shutting the door. I felt embarrassed. I hoped no one else in the lobby saw me do it. I didn’t hear anything on the other side of the door. I wondered what I’d just done. Then I opened the door again, gingerly.

No one was standing there. It was a long winter coat on a hanger. I’d just apologized to a coat closet.

I make this kind of visual mistake all the time. In my life it goes with the territory. I can accept it with aplomb once or twice a day, but more embarrassment than that rattles me.

At such times I try to remember my mother’s good-manners basic training. “Please, thank you, and excuse me will carry you a long way in the world,” she would say. She could have added “…when you screw up!” but she never talked that way.

She was right. Her lessons squeezed me through some tight spots over the years. Then the world changed in ways she never imagined.

Before 2001, I used a white cane as an ad hoc mobility tool only when I needed it – walking in unfamiliar terrain, descending stairs, entering dark hallways. After 9/11, airports became a mandatory addition to my white-cane list. Airports were no place to stumble and get it wrong. Misread a sign or step into a restricted area and you could get tasered.

Now I use the cane every time I walk in public. I don’t see people approaching me until I’m right in front of them. Sometimes I trip over their little dogs. When I sweep the cane in front of me, I am safer, and they are safer, too.

I still make the kinds of innocent mistakes made recently by fully sighted people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lost and looking for directions on a lonely country road? I’ve been there. Knocking on a door at the wrong address? I’ve done that. Climbing into the wrong car in a parking lot? Guilty. To the extent I see them, all cars look alike.

The next time I do this, with or without a white cane, I will stand my ground. I’ve worked too hard to maintain my independence to surrender it now to an unsafe world. Before I resort to my mother’s “Please-thank you-excuse me” social mantra, I need to try something else. “Don’t shoot!”

About the Image: State Representative Justin Jones leaving the Tennessee House chamber after being expelled for leading a gun-control protest on April 5, 2023. [Credit: Jon Cherry for The New York Times]

Posted in Memoir, Rants and Kisses | Tagged blind, foot rage, gubs, Mary Lou, walkable community, white cane, Yellow Springs | Comments Off

A Living Fossil (the tree, not me)

Posted on April 23, 2023 by Mark Willis

Brendan planted a Dawn Redwood for me in the northeast corner of the garden. I need it to fill a gaping hole in the tree-line left by unfinished construction work on the other side of the fence. It should grow quickly. There is a beautiful specimen on the west bank of Ellis Pond, probably planted in the late 1970s, which is now more than 30 feet tall. And it should last a while. Metasequoia is one of the oldest living tree species. Like the Ginkgo tree, its lineage stretches back to the time of the dinosaurs. The ancestor of today’s trees, “rediscovered” in China in the 1940s, was believed to be 500 years old.

Metasequoia Paleontology ( via Wikipedia):

Metasequoia redwood fossils are known from many areas in the Northern Hemisphere; more than 20 fossil species have been named (some were even identified as the genus Sequoia), but are considered as just three species, M. foxii, M. milleri, and M. occidentalis.^[2] Fossils are known from the Cenomanian onwards. During the Paleocene and Eocene, extensive forests of Metasequoia occurred as far north as Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island and sites on Axel Heiberg Island (northern Canada) at around 80° N latitude.^[3] Metasequoia was likely deciduous by this time. Given that the high latitudes in this period were warm and tropical, it is hypothesized that the deciduous trait evolved in response to the unusual light availability patterns, not to major seasonal variations in temperature.^[4] During three months in the summer, the sun would shine continuously, while three months of the winter would be complete darkness. It is also hypothesized that the change from evergreen to deciduous trait occurred before colonizing the high latitudes and was the reason Metasequoia was dominant in the north.^[5]

Large petrified trunks and stumps of the extinct Metasequoia occidentalis (sometimes identified as Sequoia occidentalis) also make up the major portion of Tertiary fossil plant material in the badlands of western North Dakota.

The trees are well known from late Cretaceous to Miocene strata, but no fossils are known after that. Before its discovery, the taxon was believed to have become extinct during the Miocene; when it was discovered extant, it was heralded as a “living fossil“.

Posted in Naturalist | Tagged Brendan, Dayton Street, Ellis Pond, fossils, garden, trees | Comments Off

Morning Deer Report: A Serviceberry Survives

Posted on April 18, 2023 by Mark Willis

This little Serviceberry deserves a medal for valor in the struggle of trees versus deer. I planted it in 2018 when it was a bareroot twig. In the next two years deer hoovered up the fruit buds and gnawed it to the ground. In 2021 I put a deer cage around it. This spring it blooms resplendently for the first time. After the flower petals drop, green leaves will emerge at the beginning of May, followed by reddish-purple berries in June. The berries make excellent jam! [Photo by Brendan Willis]

Posted in Naturalist | Tagged Dayton Street, deer, garden, trees | Comments Off

Let The Rough Side Drag

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Mark Willis

My earliest work experience could be written off as “a job for a man and a boy.” All it required was a pair of hands available at a moment’s notice. I followed my father and grandfathers everywhere. I probably was a nuisance, but they made me feel like my help was invaluable, necessary even. And they didn’t have to pay me a dime.

I held the ends of countless tape measures and string levels. I clamped down on boards and caught the drops as they made their cuts. They taught to respect a shovel and the man who could use it. “Don’t call it an idiot stick until you’ve worked with one for a day.” When I was big enough to hoist a post-hole digger, they let me try it. It looked like fun, but I never had the persistence needed to sink a hole three feet deep.

The most frequent job for a man and a boy has been described aptly as “moving obscure objects from place to place”. We had no end of obscure objects: scrap lumber, nails removed; odd chunks of wood too hard to compost, too soft to burn; rusting pieces of iron and steel accumulating slowly into a truck load worth hauling to the salvage yard; crushed rock and concrete rubble saved for fill and French drains.

It all got carried to a remote place in the yard that my mother said was a weed-choked eyesore. Today we might call it a wildflower garden. Like God’s Little Acre in Erskine Caldwell’s story, the site shifted around. One year it was remote, and the next year it was in the way. Everything had to be moved all over again.

Sometimes the obscure object – a truck trans-axle, say, or half a busted shed roof – was too heavy to move by a man and a boy or even by four men and a mule. Then it was time to look for the log chain and borrow a tractor. If it’s too heavy to lift, whatever it is, then drag it away.

And this leads to one of the most enduring lessons I learned as my father’s helper. If there is a smooth side carried effortlessly through the world, there usually is a rough side that can withstand whatever it takes to get the job done. Let the rough side drag.

Like an apocryphal quote attributed to Mark Twain, my father didn’t say it in that exact way, but it’s what he meant. He respected the labor of others and the materials they used. He was careful, not cavalier, with things he had to dismantle, replace and remove. Sometimes, though, dragging was the best option.

Over the last 50 years, I quoted my father so many times, I turned the saying into our family ethos. When you can’t wait for perfect conditions to line up like stars on an astrologer’s chart, let the rough side drag. When a boss is never satisfied with your work, keep on doing the best you can and let the rough side drag. When you are harder on yourself than anyone else ever could be, ease up and let the rough side drag.

Everyone’s ass drags in the universe sometimes, as Allen Ginsberg might say. Mine has. If my epitaph is ever carved in stone, you know what it should be. Let the Rough Side Drag.

From “Thinking Like a Carpenter”

About the Image: My grandparents’ ramshackle farm in the Hocking Hills had plenty of obscure objects waiting to be moved from place to place. My brother David took this black-and-white phot0 of the farm lane in the 1960s. He added the blue tint while experimenting during the developing process. The original black & white print is sharper, but the blue image is what I see when I journey to The Farm in my dreams.