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I don’t have close-ups of all the other paintings yet, but I should later on. I’m glad I have this outlet to vent some of my “Old guy” Steam. I go to my little dish washing job, I go paint on my mural for an hour everyday and then I go to the coffee shop for a cup of tea before going home to hear all the news of the world. It gets in the crack beneth the door, through the phone, off the television (Weather included) and I get all upset. I get upset, not because I’m powerless to make it all go away, I’m getting upset, because I end up hearing all about it and I really don’t want to know. I want to put my hands over my ears and run off shouting like Schultz used to do on “Hogan’s Hero’s” “I know nothing! I know nothing!” Anyway here are two of the paintings and the artists that belong with them.

Thanks Hannah Johnson and Karen Kline-Martin for your encouragments. Thank you for reading my blog. I guess I better do a better job of keeping it up to date. By the way… I hope it comes off, but I am going to have a show at the Baton Rouge city art Gallery in Sept. 2010 according to the efforts of Jay Ariaz. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Here is the latest picture of my Mural.

Here’s the hallway at the college and two other artists at work.

Cheryl Lippert pointing out the finer points and explaining the meaning.

The secret life of a man without arms

It’s not finished yet.

2/21/2009
Robert Joy

Today I read in a friends’ blog about starvation. She had just taken a trip to Africa and witnessed some of it first hand. She also mentions the starvation going on in America. How the soup kitchens are being overwhelmed with people who need a meal each day, but just can’t afford one. Thank God of private organizations who do this service in this country. Thank God it isn’t the business of our government to do it. I remember once a quote I read about the Soviet government in Russia. “If the government was in charge of growing mushrooms, there wouldn’t be any!” And if that doesn’t ring true everywhere government is in charge of something.

Still there are abuses by the people who use those services. People, who have food at home go to those places because it’s just something else they can get for “Free!” Free to them, but not to the people who run and support those services. Just recently I head of a family that got together and went to the local Soup kitchen as a family gathering. It was some members of a family that I am now related too, and it really upsets me to hear they resort to that sort of thing.

Robert Joy

Three Dead Cats

Ten, maybe, who knows how many years ago? TS (The grand daughter) said. Quote: “I can’t wait for grand dad to die, then we can have a dog in the house.” Wow! Grand dad has been dead now for six years and the house is completely full of dogs. Nine dogs now, in fact. Six dogs up until a couple of weeks ago when one of the six dogs had six puppies of her own. The dogs stay in the house. The outside world is simply to dangerous for the dogs to wander around out there. After all, the neighbor’s big black dog just waits outside the property to attack any dog or cat that may stray outside.

Of course, it could be coyotes or any number of other creatures that dispatch the dogs and cats around that farm. The Grand mother MB, insists on putting cat and dog food in every out building on the farm to feed the free range cats that inhabit the terrible outdoors (no guess as to how many there are! There could be hundreds) They simply could die or dispatched by all the other wild creatures that come for the free cat and dog food strung all over the place. But the neighbor dog is the one who gets all the blame.

It couldn’t possibly be the two outside dogs that lunge at the fence when ever I pass. Snarling teeth, foam around the mouth and a nasty growling barking as I knock on the back door. CW comes to the door and yells at the lunging dogs (I have named them Killer and Cujo) “Shut up!” They ignore his command and keep lunging at me. “Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you!” CW always says. Well, I’m not all that sure of his assurances, so I keep my distance. I’ve seen these two tame puppies corner and chase the cats and I’m sure they have dispatched their share. Still it’s the neighbors dog that gets the blame.

The cats and dogs inside are safe. They stay inside. The crap inside and since no one bothers to change the little sand box, the cats go where they may. The dogs follow suit and the whole place smells like a giant pet toilet. The people smell like they live in a giant pet toilet. No one in that house can get back far enough to see what my wife and I see everytime we step into that hole and hold our breath until we can leave.

We cleaned what we could clean out of that hole, a couple of months ago. We simply have to give up, because the job was simply too overwhelming. We simply couldn’t shovel fast enough and the complaints were getting louder that we’d tossed out some favorite turds in our zeal to sanitize the structure. Then a month ago we went back to take MB to the doctor in Hutchinson, KS and in a small cart along the driveway was three dead cats. Of course, on enquiry, we were told that those cats were killed by the neighbors dog. We then left the farm and transported MB to the doctor. When we returned the cats were still in that cart and MB asked CW (her adult son who lives with here on the Animal Farm, “Why are those cats still there?” She got no definitive answer, atleast none that I could hear.

Then on subsequent trips to the farm, we could see the cats hadn’t been removed. It was now going on for a good month. It’s been two months now and thank god it’s winter and it’s been cold. Two day ago, Marcella went to the farm to transport VWA (the adult daughter living at the farm with CW, MB and HA (the husband of VWA) into town for some task that involved a little conflict as to who can drive the only runnable vehicle on the farm. HA thinks he is the only one who can drive that vehicle and thus stranding his wife VWA and expecting her to get to town by calling us for help. We are really growing tired of being the transportation and the service is about to be terminated.

Anyway… Marcella see’s the dead cats till in the cart beside the drive way.

The next day, Marcella is asked by CW to please come and transport him into Ellinwood, because HA wouldn’t take him in the pickup. CW and MB needed more cat and dog food to spread around the farm buildings to feed all the cats and dogs that might be taking shelter in them. Marcella arrives and the dead cats are still unburied and still on display in the little cart. This time Marcella asks CW, why the cats aren’t being taken away and disposed of? Here is the answer from CW: “The ride-on lawn mower won’t start and it needs to be fixed before they (CW and HA) can hitch up the little cart and pull it around to the garden where they can then bury the cats.”

What else can I write, that would explain the logic going on out at that farm?

2/16/2008
Robert Joy

I had a Zen moment yesterday. One of those moments when something happens and you become enlightened. A stone hits the water and the seeker is awakened. Yesterday morning I was sitting here at the computer reading blogs when at neighbor started their pickup. For some odd reason I suddenly realized how short life was. That we are born and suddenly here we are at this moment and time has passed so rapidly. So suddenly, I don’t have to worry about being in favor with god. So suddenly, I don’t have to be in favor of people around me. So suddenly, that I have no time for anything, but creating art and sending it away to who ever wants or needs it. I just realized that I don’t have time for all the human foolishness that goes on around me. I only have time for my own foolishness… And there is so little of it.
I realize every moment is a Zen moment. Every motor that starts, every knock at the door, every sound in a quiet house, every morning that the sun pings up over the horizon, every tick of a clock is a Zen moment. Every moment, down to the sound of the newspaper “plopping” down in the grass on Sunday morning is a reminder of our time we have left and we’d better be doing something with it. I guess that also go for all the little crap I complain about.

2/13/2009
Robert Joy

Our insulation isn’t good enough

I’ve been going crazy lately. My house isn’t tight enough to keep all the crap out. It’s good enough to keep out the cold and hold in the heat. It’s good enough to keep my stuff out of the rain, but it isn’t good enough to keep out the crap. The television brings in way too much, (way too much) but I’m addicted to it and that is most of my problem. I’ve just got to break that habit. Maybe I should do the same thing I did about my weight. When ever I got hungry, I went for a long walk. I guess I could do that for a TV addiction. What the hell do I need to know what the weather is tomorrow?

Then the family out at the farm. Four adults (there were six). A dozen cars in the driveway that don’t run. The one vehicle that does run is being kept from the others, because of selfishness and stupidity. MA sits at home on her divan and everyone else sits on their ass living off her social security. No one has a job and the one person with a job is always sitting at home, because the job is not working out and he isn’t getting any hours. He doesn’t share his money for any expenses, doesn’t pay rent, uses MA gas card for free gas and on and on. The whole house is full of smelly animals doing their thing on the floor, on the wall, on the beds, on the table and on everything else that they can go on. Now they have six new puppies to add to the six dogs and dozens of cats running around the house and no one in that house knows what to do to stop it from happening. Now none of this is really any of my business, because I could care less how they want to conduct their lives… So why am I so upset right now?

They keep coming to our house. They keep calling with need of help. “I need to go to town, but Harold didn’t wake me up and went to work so I can’t use the pickup.” “Would you please loan Tanya and Chris two hundred dollars for something stupid? They will pay you back fifty dollars a month for Four months.” “Would you please loan me twenty-five dollars so I can buy the baby some diapers?” “Help! Help! These people live off the rest of the world. They are Unemployable, incapable of holding a job. They have everything on earth that drains their money they don’t need. Fast food, Those damned useless cell phones, I pods, video games and dog food, cat food, rat food, cockroach food, snake food, Opossum food, badger food, skunk food, rat food, mouse food, Raccoon food, U-haul trailer to move to Pratt one week and back to Great Bend on the next and on and on and on and they call us. They get through the cracks and they come for us and I’m about to go crazy with these inept people. I love and I care about them, but I’m really getting tired of the beating they give us every week.

2/12/2009
Robert Joy

The best laid plans and poorly laid plans

Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men just don’t work out. Sometimes the crazy thoughtless things we do for a chuckle backfire on us. Sometimes when things are just so simple nothing can go wrong, they go wrong anyway.

One day, years ago, when I was still working for the printing company, I was sitting in the rest room doing some business and thinking. While I was there, I noticed a container sitting on the floor. It was the pan part of a hot water distilling apparatus that one of my fellow workers was using to distill water for the presses and for drinking. Every now and then, Dan (the man in charge of distilling the water) would take the distilling device into the toilet area for a cleaning and a refill of water. Well… It was just sitting there on the floor unattended and I just, (for fun) put the toilet brush inside the pot. That was all… I just put the toilet brush from it’s little container over and into the distiller pot. It really made me chuckle as I imagined the look on Dan’s face when he finds it there.

I was laughing to myself when I let the room. I laughed to myself when I was at my desk. I couldn’t wait to see the look on Dan’s face. Well… Things never work out the way we envision. Things happen in between the concept, the idea and the reality. The boss’s son, (Tim) who happened to be helping out with odd jobs around the place, happened to go into the bathroom before Dan could return and see that toilet brush in the distiller pot.

Tim went to his dad’s office (my boss), leaned around the door into his office and said with some alarm, that Dan was using the toilet brush to clean out the distiller. I stopped laughing at that point. Now I had created this crisis and poor old Dan was in the middle of something that was of none of his doing. As quickly as I could and so as no one could see me… I went into the lavatory and took that brush out of the distiller. Nothing come of it and I don’t think Dan ever heard a thing about it.

This was not my best laid plan or even a plan. I just did it and did I learn a lesson… But secretly, just between me and you… I still get a chuckle from remembering how it all went down and took on a life of its own.

2/11/2009
Robert Joy

Here’s the Mural, but it’s not finished yet.

First things first… Today is Marcella’s birthday… She is 65 and for the next few months we will be the same age, then I’ll get older again. I said “Happy Birthday,” gave her a kiss and went off to work. Marcella wanted to go out to Pizza Hut for her gift and I was all for that.

I got to work and both carts were full of dishes just the way I like it. Some how I stayed busy all day long. I had one spell of about an hour that I used some good ole elbow grease on the floors. There was this troublesome bad spot and I got rid of it for the time being. The noon time was small like it’s been lately, but at least it was steady dribble, so I kept busy with keeping up with the dishes.

There was one moment of note today at work. While we were out eating our meal at around 1:30. Two old guy’s and I mean old. They had to be in their late seventies and I know one of them was eighty-four got into this argument about something. I can’t hear anything and I really don’t want to know anyway, so I was unaware of the trouble. The waitresses knew what was going on and they were talking about it. One of the guys went out of the Diner and was waiting on the other to pay and come outside. I was ready to see what it looked like for two over the hill men going at one another. Well, it didn’t turn into a slug match and I really happy about that, but it was real. I guess one of them came back inside and apologized to Diane for having the argument in her place. I guess some people never really grow up. Even at eighty they have to have it out like a couple of Knuckle-heads.

I got finished at around 3:00 and drove over to the college to work on my mural. I made it safely and didn’t have any more near misses. I then went over to Dillions, bought a birthday card and took it home to my sweetheart. Oh…. Yes we went out for a great Pizza.