ThEdblog, A Personal Blog about me and this site

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ThedBlog9 spelled & pronounced "Thed Blog" but without spaces

Stories + Photographs by J R Compton

Great Egret with Great Egret Back

After some emotional upheaval lately, I attempted to refriend my best friend from high school fifty years ago. I recognized almost immediately that his politics and religion and mine were polar opposites — and I told him that. But I get along very well with others of that ilk — including my parents, so I thought it might be worth some time and communication.

I tried relating person to person, but he insisted on sending me one Rad Right or Bible-beating religious rant after another, telling me only the barest personal information about himself. He used to be married and now he has some kids, and he was busy trying to start a business. He kept saying he was going to tell me more about himself, but he never got around to it.

Every day I got two or three rad right rants, some of which he later said he didn't even believe, and I never did learn what kind of business he was working on. It wasn't helpful that he kept sending me or sending me links to really cheesy or cute bunny rabbit and other animal pages, or miles of cute, uncredited photographs, although that may be the new business he was trying to start. I don't know.

I started writing him a letter telling about my life since 1982 — a wrapup of what I've done and been since high school, and that page is now on on this site. Though it is woefully incomplete, leaving giant gaps in my life and times, I've been adding to it and editing it often.

That — and the fact that though I have many "friends," I have darned few I can just go off with and talk, not necessarily about me. I'm really tired of me, right now — may be enough reason to have tried to connect, even if it failed.

Circling and Head-bobbing Male Northern Shovelers Engage in Ritual

I have withdrawn into Bird Photo mode. It's something I can do, that I want to do, that I'm good at, and that I am perceptibly getting better at. There's an arc toward my goal of becoming very good at it. Often I work at it every day. Lately I have. Sometimes it seem like nothing else really is worth doing.

Sometimes I need a break from it, and I break from it. Couple days later, I go back. Most of my Amateur Birder's Journal readers read it later, because they don't care which species are available in the area right now. They're in it for the color or nature or beauty or something like that. Some tune in just to see what's happening at the lake lately. Some of those live near, some live far.

For a long time after the story in The Dallas Morning News, I got about a thousand hits per monthly page. Now it's usually up to about four hundred and something when I start the next month, which I am about to do. Probably tomorrow. Through various links on the internet and emailed links from I never know whom, many past month's worths have got as many as several thousand hits. Some many thousands. The hit counters at the bottoms of each page only count some hits, but it's usually what I go on.

I'm not doing it for hits. I started doing it to help me change my writing style and to get better at writing. Then when I could see my bird photos getting better, I added that to the list. It also gets me out of my house, walking, sweating, etc..

But that suite of pages. People call it a website, but it's just a part of another one. I pay attention to readers who write or talk to me about it, but those pages are for me. To help me become a better bird photographer. I've been at it for about six years. I didn't know any of this when I started. I just started. And built upon what I learned.

I would never have guessed seven or more years ago that I would do this. I always want to be a better photographer, but birds?

Looking at the arc, I can tell it will take me at least ten years, maybe twenty. Maybe it will become my life's work. I'll probably die before anyone learns what my life's work really was. There is that other site, too. But at the moment, the week, maybe the month, that's as far away as it can get.

I photographed birds this afternoon, and I plan to photograph birds tomorrow morning. Probably the next day, too.

Past Present Future

So far, I have two followers on Twitter, and I know half of them. What's amazing about that number is that I have on ever twitted twice, and only twice have I been informed that I "have a new follower on Twitter." I did join the Twit Site with a notion of someday figuring out what that's all about, but I didn't get that far, because everything I can think of to tell anybody goes in one of my blogs or art stories in DallasArtsRevue or my bird journal. I thought it might help me to say more in fewer words, because that hardly ever obtains. I still should twit more. These were my first twits:

I'm not convinced knowing what's going on is really what's going on. I think all news junkies are being hoodwinked left, right and sideways. I think what we think is happening isn't. I'd like to believe in the truth, but I don't believe there is any truth out there being told.

If the new pope doesn't make it honorable to love everybody including gay people, he won't be any better than the other popes and sons of popes gone before.

My Monitor in Early Morning Sunlight

I have a facebook page I never go to. My presence there seems superfluous. I would love to talk with some of those people in a real stand-around-talking situation in an art opening kind of openness, but writing in public to people I barely know just seems absurd, I don't even want to think about it.

Yet, every day, facebook sends me a list of people I do not know, asking me if I know them. I've heard of some of them, and I've even had brief encounters with a few, but I never know these people, and I wonder what I could possibly have in common with them, except the most obvious traits. We're both more or less human and live in the same city. Maybe we've all abandoned our facebook pages. That's an envious place to be…

This guy writes a column I was once, many years ago, publicized and promoted in. Should I thank him for thinking I was an interesting-enough person that long ago that he wrote a column about me? I thanked him then, and we saw no spark to set off a friendship. I clicked his link last week and never heard back. He's probably put facebook in his junk folder, too. I'm like 1/365th of a year for him five years back. 1/1825th of a something. We both write words for publication. Is there any other connection? Am I being nervy just to answer one of idiot facebook's notions of self-promotion?

That person makes art I never understood or appreciated. If I know they're having a show, I don't go.

It's so rude of facebook to assume friendships where none exists for probably good, decent, intelligent reasons. They keep sending their lists. I could, I suppose, put their invasive, self-important, rude emails in my Junk folder where they belong. At first I thought then I'd never hear about … and I realized that's what I want. I want to not ever hear from them. So now it's rescued from the trash to be placed ever so carefully in my Junk Mail folder, I've heard this other person's name in a conversation about artists. Not great artists or innovative unusual amazing artists, just artists. This person exists.

And some stupid corporate entity led by a autist thinks we should be friends, because if we happened to communicate, we might bring up some salient fact facebook could make money on. Eh?

I want to cancel my facebook page, because I never go there. It all just seems embarrassingly stupid, yet I avoid closing my account again. I closed it once a couple years ago, and I suffered no consequences whatsoever.

Nobody noticed or cared.

Tree of Life from my Home Still Lifes Series

I tried to rejoin Angie's List this afternoon, but they wouldn't let me, because last time I was a member, I quit after I learned they did not have listings for any house-levelers in Dallas — even though they advertised in Dallas saying they had lots of them. And that's what I needed, and since then I'd deleted my User Name and password. They gave me a reference number today and said they'd get back to me. A couple hours later, before they got back to me, I got a email from PayPal suggesting I use them to "Save 40% at Angie's List just for PayPal Shoppers, one of which I am not.

So Angie hasn't got back to me to let me join, but they've already sold my email address to another company. Fascinating, considering I'm looking for a safe and personal source of information about contractors I have no idea whether they list here.

What I'm seeking is an honest fence-builder and an honest garage-door installer. The three potential contractors I've so-far contacted have both not shown up when they told me they would and they have not shown up at all. The fence guy I thought I was going to do business with wants half the money up front, just so I can get into their busy schedule.

When I got my new roof after last summer's "Hundred-Year Hailstorm," I was counseled — over and over — not to pay upfront for services not-yet rendered. Because then the contractors had no incentive to finish — or even start — the work. Neither of the two roofers I talked with the longest asked for money ahead of time. I liked one contractor better than the other, but the other guy had the services and especially the materials (special type of roofing)

I thought, with any luck, I'd learn something about fencers and termite-killers from Angie's list. Now I'm not at all sure I should trust them.

Sun Sign Sunshine from my Home Still Lifes Series

Sometimes I have to repeat myself: When I look at art so I can review it, I only choose work that I really like or that makes me angry. Work that doesn't do either of those, I mostly ignore. When I ignored somebody's work, I'm not saying it's not good or that it is bad. I'm just saying it didn't thrill me or piss me off, and I felt no need to write about it or express any opinions.

When I choose to write about work, I'm not claiming that it is good art. Just that it is worth me exploring in words. I like to also show my readers the art, so they can make up their own minds. The website's name is revue, not review. I'd rather show lots of different sorts of art than only write about the best of it — as if I'd know which art is the best.

But I have to pay special attention to art that angers me. The anger is a tip-off to me that something's going on that I don't yet understand. I often learn to greatly appreciate art that initially just pisses me off. So I pay special attention to that.

Sometimes it takes me awhile to learn to appreciate some artists' work or some types of art. Sometimes I never do appreciate some art, even art that other people really like.

If I'm writing about art, on a web page or in an email, I am expressing a personal opinion. There is no difference between a critique and me giving my personal opinion, just as there is no such thing as objectivity. We are all subjective in our opinions. They come from us. I am usually careful about what I say. There is no right or wrong with art. It just is.

I see a great deal more art than I ever write about.

I am who I am, because — unlike most people, I am very often willing to express my opinions. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother with writing about art, and I wouldn't publish websites, and I would not have published all the publications I've been involved with over the last couple centuries.

There's a lot of art that I am happy to mostly ignore. It's difficult for me to say bad things about art, so unless it's egregious, I just ignore it.

To paraphrase my friend Marty Ray, I'm just this guy who expresses opinions, not some great objective arbiter of art quality.

Front Porch Rug V from my Home Still Lifes Series

Some of the things I say are other peoples' words. I hear my father in me when I find myself in one of those three-hand situations with only two available, and something is slipping beyond reach or control. "Nip-nip-nip-nip," rapidly and nasally.

Joanie always used to say "Horse Pucky," I still do.

Jim D'Avignon, my best friend in college, and the Best Man at Joanie's and my wedding, used to chime in with her to remind me that "It's all your fault, J R." I believed that far too many years, and I still catch me whispering it in unguarded moments, and worst of all, saying it to other innocent people.

About twice a year I wonder what happened to Bobby Sengali. We were roommates in college, and I've heard he died in Vietnam and that he did not. Once, when we were marching back from the girls' dorm — then on the opposite end of campus from the boys' (and when they were still called boys' and girls'), we timed our steps all the way back chiming "fuck, shit; fuck, shit; fuck shit." Something I sometimes still hear myself saying when slogging through rain or mud.

Another roommate, Jim Fougerousse, once commented that "There's nuthin' so disgusting as a used pissour." That anthem still sings in my mind, usually in long lines after movies.

"Boy Howdy" was Monki's favorite unsubtly understated exclamation. His real name was Robert P Bays, Jr., and I still hear me saying 'Boy Howdy' in many awed circumstances.

The late Stoney Burns had a way about saying "Phew!" that rings in my ears when I repeat that sibilant exhalation.

Ghostly Ver - by Anna & J R

Wilbert Verhelst — image scanned without permission from The White Rock Lake Weekly.
This image was submitted to them by Bill's Widow and our close friend, Susan Lecky.
Photographer unknown. There's a nicer version on the Calendar page, link below.

An Open Letter to The Editor of The White Rock Lake Weekly

Nancy Black

I always have to take a deep breath when I deal with commercial journalists. Giving one permission to, and I quote from my letter to your reporter, "use quotes from my copyrighted Wilbert Verhels obituary in quote marks, if and only if you state that those words were written by J R Compton and are from "the www.DallasArtsRevue.com arts calendar."

She mentions our calendar in her un-bylined obituary, but used many more of my words and ideas than she bothered to attribute. Which is to say, she represented my words and concepts as her own and those of The White Rock Lake Weekly. Which is to say, she — by writing it — and you — by publishing it — committed plagiarism.

Not that it was any big surprise. That's why I need oxygen to deal with word, phrase and idea thieves.

So she used some of my quotes without attribution. Of course. As if she knew Wilbert Verhelst was often called "Ver," even though she'd never heard of him till last week — and that he authored the textbook, Sculpture Tools, Materials and Techniques. Doesn't everybody know those things?

And your reporter called me a "close friend and colleague."

I was a friend of Wilbert Verhelst, not a colleague as in the dictionary definition.

I knew him; I liked him; I talked about art and sculpture with him. I've been to his house and even eaten dinner there, but I don't think I qualify as "close," except when compared with the reporter, who did not bother to report that www.DallasArtsRevue.com researched, found, got permission to use and published Ver's poem he called "Death," but you called instead "Reflections, Poems by Wilbert Verhelst," the title of the book from whence the poem came, and which you badly mangled by printing it in all bold letters with dreadful, run-on lines, not at all as Bill wrote it.

Then you claimed there'd be a memorial service "in late January," intimating that it would be public — why else publish anything about it? Again your publication didn't bother to check the information or talk to his widow.

Very irresponsible journalism.

J R Compton

I sent a longer version to the editor of The White Rock Lake Weekly via Facebook and to her direct email. I seriously doubt anyone but the editor and maybe some staff will ever see that letter, so I'm publishing it here.

Christine Bisetto The Ties wire 2012

500X Gallery likes my photographs of work by their members so much, some of their members steal them from this site and use them without credit. The photograph of Christine Bisetto's The Ties, above that I used on Art Here Lately #15 fully credits the artist and her gallery and even the price on her piece,(I only ever rarely throw away published stories, since I think it's history) but she do not return the favor by crediting the photographer, nor the publication it was stolen from to use on the email version of their first announcement of that gallery's latest show.

Like all images on all websites where original art or photographs appear, this carefully-made photograph that the artist acknowledged was much better than any of her own images of the piece was fully copyrighted to the photographer and publisher of this website just by being there, but also by published notice on the page and on the index page of this site. And it's not the first time 500X Gallery artists have used my images to further their careers without giving me fair credit or payment.

I try to avoid putting my name and copyright notice on photographs of original artists' work, but when they go out of their way to screw me, I return the favor.

I wrote the text above, yes in anger, then Christine Bisetto apologized, and I gave her permission to use it if, and only if, I got credit for the photograph immediately adjacent to the image. But she probably didn't know that 500X is one of those idiot galleries that's never happy with just one iteration of an informative email. No they gotta spam us with several as the actual opening day/night approaches.

So whoever's running 500X' PR used it again six days later, and she probably had not told them she'd stolen it, nor that I'd complained, so they just ran it with the second dose of spam. Of course, no credit was given. Of course.

I couldn't see how I could be fair to the collective idiots, so I decided not to write anything about their shows for awhile. Maybe never, even though I was looking forward to reviewing their latest juried show. Some of my best critical writing ever has been about X shows, including A Heavy Graphic Arts Sensibility and Of Wallpaper and Other Repeating Patterns. There's at least one more, but I can't find it using this site's Google Site Search that Goo updates so often even i use it to find stuff on this always growing site.

The next day, they sent one (to me) copy of that same PR statement with several photographs by other people, but crediting my photo on the top, "Photo credit J R Compton." No DallasArtsRevue. Like they just could not bring themselves to cite this website/publication from which the image they used previously without permission. Which credit is distinctly not what any photo they use of mine should say, so I should probably find art anywhere else for awhile.

I know other people who put together public calendars and lists, and they did not receive the corrected / attributed photograph caption. Those AHs only sent it to me. That was truly rude.

I didn't even look through the big steel opening to 500X last night during all those openings, most of which we skipped, so skipping 500 didn't seem much of a miss. Last time I trekked into the X, my two friends stayed in the car, so it's probably only me who misses the place and its wild variety of usually local art. I miss it today enough to change these words around again to make me not look like AH I have been about this, and Anna and I plan to check it out in broad daylight without having to dodge multitudinous opening attenders.

I really do like Bisetto's work.

My Last Portrait of Yo — Wednesday Evening December 19 2012. He died the next day.

Tomorrow's the end of the world, and today my cat died. Was slowly but painlessly killed by a veterinarian, though I thought Yo was in the confused state from the numbing shot waaay too long. We had each other for 13 years, which was almost enough. Humans don't own cats, and though there's something to be said about them owning us, really we just rent each other for awhile. Yo's and my time together was up at just short of three o'clock this afternoon.

I took him to the vet this morning to find out what was wrong. Very wrong. Seemed to be in excruciating pain whenever I picked him up just like I've always picked him up. He was lethargic and wasn't eating. Not his cardboard crunchies, not peanut butter or spinach, both of which he loved, raw eggs or even my home-made chicken soup, which he came to investigate soon as I cooked it. And he did not want to sit on my lap like he's sat several times every day of every year we were together.

The vet said he had two major metastasized tumors, and maybe a couple others that were more difficult to track down. Not sure there was anything I could have done about that, but he may have been the perfect cat for me. Not altogether pleasant all of the time. Or even most of it. One of the last things Yo did was to lacerate my left thumb for touching his tail, which was not usually a point of contention. It bled profusely and still hurts, reminding me of that rapscallion.

His Mom never had a chance to teach him to cover it up, and he was deathly afraid of brooms, so I often imagine the banshee who brought him and his two orange kitten brothers to the vet where my niece Joyce worked in San Antonio, "to get them euthanised," chasing them around with one. That vet was not in the euthanising business. And I've ever since wondered what it would have been like having three orange cats who could practice biting each other instead of me.

He cried pitifully on our long ride back to Dallas from his San Antonio home town, him quiet only when I played my Jimmy Rogers, "the singing brakeman" tapes, so I named him Yodel, since shortened to Yo. Perfect cat for me, probably. I used to put him in a coat pocket when I visited the lake, but he didn't trust being in cars.

When he was still very young and small, I got down on my hands and knees, and held his paws to gently scatter litter in the right direction in an attempt to teach him to cover it up after he'd done his business each time. He got the general idea, scattered it in some direction every time he scat, but never on what he'd deposited.

Pix of the Yo at four years of age.

It took years to calm him down — probably a great life lesson for us both. I figured if I could love that little scamp, I could love anybody.

Five Apricots

I've seriously watched several painters work. It has taught me much about painting. Like that it's not so much a challenge to get what they want onto the surface, but rather to know when what they are doing is good, or good enough, and when to stop, at least for awhile. All the painters I've watched were not famous or particularly successful, except in movies. Watching Gerhard Richter paint partially inspired me to make a series of photographs that followed this one.

When I watch painters, they keep painting and changing long after I would have stopped, and they keep changing what we both see, but we see it differently. I don't know what they want, even if they explain, and I never try to tell them what I think, because that's not important. Even later, when I do say or write an opinion about a finished piece, I want it to, but it shouldn't matter, although I've had painters tell me my words helped.

I always wonder what that could possibly mean.

Warning Pylons with Headlight Light

Most art shows and tours bore me. I've grown indifferent to most gallery shows, except when they show interest artists or friends. I prefer to explore places I've either never or rarely been. I'm trying to expand what I write about, including beyond art and birds, and I may be clumsy about choosing for awhile, but it's definitely an interesting direction. I caught myself going through motions at an art open house and an annual charity extravaganza recently. Even though I'm pretty good by now at those notions, I could almost do them in my sleep. I might yet make of them something interesting. I do want to see shows that involve a lot of people on the on chance that I'll find someone new's art worth telling.

I'll always have favorites, but I tire of proclaiming those.

I wouldn't mind being remembered as the guy who … if that appellation includes promoted Dallas artists or wrote eloquently sometimes. But at this stage it'd be a thrill if could garner high hit counts for something besides birds and How Tos, although I have more of both of those topics in me, and it's got to get out. I'm seeing these changes as expansions rather than redirections.

I think.

The Elder Sisters Clare - at the 2012 Clare Family Reunion in Tennessee

I recently had someone dear to me take me to task for daring to photograph them and someone else I appreciate dearly, not facing the camera, but facing each other as if they were talking. They were talking. And, this person pointedly pointed out to me that they were not smiling. Gasp! How dare I photograph people not smiling and staring at the camera. Instead, my photo, which is one of my favorites, shows the two of them speaking seriously, which happens sometimes, including this moment

I was having trouble believing someone I know and like and am related to, actually believed that all subjects in a photograph should always look happy, even if they weren't, and they should always always always face the camera directly. No obtuse angles.

I realize that most of the photographs taken by most of the people who have cameras are most often posed. And that most of those persons with cameras insist that everybody "smile." But surely my aunt has seen historic photographs where, say, a Vietnamese girl running down a road away from a Napalm attack, who had her clothes burned off her body, did not stop, stand still for the photographer and paste a big, goofy smile on her face.

I wonder how many other people have got it into their heads that the stand-and-smile mode of photography is the real one? Guess there's another reason for me to go on living.

Drooping Red Yellow Flower

I've been following this flower since the day I bought it. Uh-oh, another one of those. It's already lost several of its petals due to me not paying enough attention to what I was doing in those few, brief seconds. Oops. They are in a round-ended triangular box. Kinda along in there, Bigger than usual box. But the flower, though droopish is still gorgeous.

I've been very busy lately. Up around noon, always feel like I need more sleep, work all day cleaning my house. Usually till 3 or 4 ayem. I've been putting off cleaning it for awhile. Already it's not an entirely perfect house. Gonna get a new roof thanks to all those Texas grapefruit-sized hailstones that fell on it a few months back. Inside it's been shambling downhill years. Cracks visible in walls and ceilings like it's on a long slow crawling journey twisting and writhing along.

There's scut in the corners I can't reach with the vac, paint worn thin all around, mean stains on some floors. I've always joked it was a redo. It still in It ain't perfect, and like everybody else it will never be. But I've got a lot of paintings up now. Walls with themes most mortals will never ken. Not hardly no careful museum exhibition, my favorite art, mostly other people's, some mine, nearly thrown onto the walls.

I did most of that myself. In the wee hours this week. Seemed so slow. I didn't really place or plan it. Just did it. Space over balance. It is unbalanced, but it is up. And it has taken years, but I did all the work these last few days. I've vacuumed and swept and scrubbed, but mostly I've hung art. That goes slower when I do it alone. I've got used to others helping, and I keep thinking it woulda been prettier and faster if I'd got help, but I've got myself into it, and we're all over up on those walls.

I've also been writing a story and photographing a flower. When I sneak time from cleaning to photo birds, it's usually the same 7, then 8, 9, now 10 pelicans in Sunset Bay. Never know if they're scouts or dawdlers. They came down on the blue norther last week. We hope they stay. But my cleaning continues.

I'm happy about a bunch of things.

The ThedBlog Index of all Theds Blog

ThEdBlog #7 - Henderson Art Project winners strung down Henderson Avenue in East Dallas from Ross Avenue to Central Expressway | Hecho en Dallas at the Latino Culture Center | Sarah Williams - Outskirts and others at 500X | Corazon at the Bath House, Dallas' only Community Art Center where budding and pro artists alike can show their work — until the City in its infinite stupidity closes them down, because all they have money for is more concrete, not the arts or anything that might serve the community | Modern Ruin at an new bank building that was never a bank building but for three and a half days was a very interesting exhibition of rather strange art by some of Dallas' best artists | The Dallas Art Fair downtown with art from everywhere and here, too | And the grand opening of The Dallas Contemporary with art by an LA artist who put airplane wrecks in their hangar-like space

ThEdblog #5 - Starts with a disorienting blank (gray) image, which stands for the half terabyte of data, images, letters and everything else I lost that week, and other stories, including: Not the DO's art critic (I blogged while they blithered) and my unDO stories — as un Dallas Observer

ThEdblog #4 - It's almost not fair | plagiarizing art | se finis | Kim Cadmus Owens | Pix2 at UTD,

The Second ThEd - the Fort Worth Art Dealers Association's tour just before the DADA art tour. If I'd had an Art Here Lately page then, this page would have been there, but it's here instead.

I used to illustrate these abstruse and personal issues with images by anybody I had art by. Now I restrict the imagery to my own photographs with some of Anna's whose usually there. Seems more personal that way.

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since Sept 12 2012