Tis the Season

Over this past weekend, my little sister paid a visit. Now I did warn her that summer in Oregon is a two week event in late July or early August and by the first of October the rains come and stay until May, but being my sister she came anyway.

Now as it often happens with siblings, my sister is my polar opposite, she is small and delicate and can eat with complete impunity her own body weight every three hours. I hate her for it cause I can watch a beer commercial and gain five pounds, ten if it has exotic beer in it.

She is also cold. Now since my run-in with the Croaker last summer my own thermostat has been on the blink and I now get much chillier than I ever have and can sleep with blankets and wear a sweat jacket in the house if the heat is off, but she gets really cold.

See as children I was the fat kid and she was the slim athletic one, enjoying the sun and summer while I huddled under the AC praying for winter. When she retired she moved to the Texas coast and I moved to the Oregon Coast, permanent summer and fall for the family.

But I never expected to see her come for a visit, much less come when the rains had set in and yet here she was so I’d best make the visit as pleasant as could be for a sun kid trapped in fall country.

Truth was she had a good time, froze her tiny ass off but that’s the price you pay for ignoring the warnings.

And any time family comes for a visit and leaves happy with no bloodshed it’s a good visit. You think all of those Norman Rockwell holiday dinners exist outside of his canvas? Not a chance, gather two or three family members in one spot and watch for the war to break out.

And what does all of this have to do with art?

I’m glad you asked. The sister mentioned she could now take New England off her bucket list cause she had seen the best fall colors and turning leaves and didn’t need the chill winter of the North East to enjoy the change of seasons.

See I told you Currier and Ives doesn’t have a patent on winter scenes.

Okay they do have sleigh rides and hay rides and snow and New York, I guess after Sandy that might delay the complete celebration of fall in the Big Apple but you never know those guys dug out pretty fast after 911 and I’m thinking a simple natural disaster can’t mean much to the folks who survived the towers falling!

And while I’m thinking about it does anyone believe that kids still do hay rides on those wagons with songs and school camaraderie? Sure they do have all of the Ivy League and some pretty good drinking songs but I’m thinking hay rides went extinct about the time Pat Boone hung up his white shoes and can you see college-aged couples risking being out of cell range to ride on a wagon of hay? The iPhone generation does it in the ether and not on a hay ride.

And I’m holding out a special bonus for New England cause they do still have the Rockettes. Come-on you can’t tell me you are so jaded that you wouldn’t give your old Spiderman Number 1 issue for tickets to the Rockettes Christmas show. You know the glory days of radio are gone but the Rockettes still rule Radio City!

So aside from the Rockettes and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade there is nothing that New England can offer that the wonders of Oregon can’t match and exceed.

We got sunsets, boats, art, like crazy and a thousand or so artists in Coos County alone and landscapes, birds and impressionist craziness and nekkid wimmen, on the art silly, people around her don’t go nekkid outside, it’s too chilly for streaking, and beadwork and jewelry and wood carvers and you can bet New England can’t match that.

Now the only thing that they have that we don’t is the aforementioned Currier and Ives. You just can’t beat good PR. The old guys at C & I have been banging the drum of the Yankee traders for a century and a half and that’s a big head start, but we can overcome it cause we have more colors in our rainbow and more artists to paint them so why don’t you have your art work on cards for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day and St. Paddy’s?

We have to make up with variety what they have with the PR of a hundred and fifty years.

Now about those leaves, they are just outside your door and you can paint’em cause they won’t run away and they don’t ask for a credit line and they won’t sue so what are you waiting for?

There, that’s a leaf of another color I found at Shore Acres this last weekend and there are a bunch more of them not to mention all of the light displays and the ponds and fountains.

You should be working on your cards for next year if you didn’t get them out this year and certainly there is Christmas coming up and you are going to send out Christmas cards cause you’ll be getting so many that your postal carrier will be filling a workman’s comp claim just after the first of the year for  new truss or a back brace from all of the cards he carried to your place and if you aren’t sending them back people will think you are anti-social and will whisper about you when they go to the next museum opening and wonder what is wrong with you that you are too mean-spirited to send out Christmas Cards, good grief!

And when you do send out those cards why don’t they have your art work on them? Give me one good reason and stop making excuses. Tis the season!