L.J. Zinkand - Blog

Squirrels!

12/7/2020

Lumi, Star, Toby and Parker

Our woods are currently well-populated with western gray squirrels. They often come close to the window seat where I’m writing, so I finally went out and bought some unsalted peanuts for them to see if they would linger. It’s a family tradition. My dad used to get squirrels to come up the fire escape of his childhood apartment in Washington Heights, NYC.

I got inspired to make a whole line of them, so here are the first four! I’m making the feet really flat on the bottoms now, so they’re free-standing, (although I wouldn’t trust them in an earthquake or a strong wind). Hence their toe beans are painted on, although the bottom of one foot is signed by me. And I’ll admit, throughout the creative process I’ve had a persistent craving for nuts.

Meanwhile, the local blue jays have shown an active interest in said peanuts, so I’m thinking about a run of bird people next.
Check out the new gray squirrels on Etsy!

Summer and all...

10/27/2020

When we got word last June that our septic drain field had failed, a test hole was dug in the front yard. (See previous entry). We approved the estimate, which turned out to be thousands less than we originally thought, then we waited for six weeks while the septic company obtained permits from the county. I might mention that our company is named A-Affordable Royal Flush: A Royal Flush Beats A Full House Every Time. Their trucks, of course, have a graphic of playing cards depicting a royal flush on them. Their people are friendly and conscientious, especially in light of the work they do.

Meanwhile, during those six weeks our telephone landline began to fail. The line became so noisy with static it sounded like we were trying to communicate with someone from Jupiter. We contacted Century Link and the problem was corrected somewhere down the road. Several weeks later the same thing occurred and they allegedly fixed it. When the line began to buzz and crackle intolerably for the third time, I concluded that we must be one of the last houses on the street with a landline, hence under-appreciated as paying customers. I decided to look elsewhere for phone service. Since we’re out in the boonies where cell phone reception is sketchy, we each have a couple of Tracfone smartphones for when we’re off the property or want to take a quick picture. We can text from here, though. But most of the contractors who’ve been through here seem to get a signal on their phones, so I figured it was worth a try to switch to a bigger cell phone company. Our first choice, Consumer Cellular, offered something called a “Home Phone Base,” into which we could plug in our old cordless phones and keep our original number.
“What happens if we port our number over to you and find out we can’t get a signal?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll get you connected,” the customer service person chirped.
After hours of online chatting with Tech Support trying this and that, they concluded that their service didn’t actually cover our area, sending us several miles down the hill with our cell phones for the next bunch of days when we needed to make a call.

Meanwhile, our well water was running low due to a combination of drought and the ferocious uptick of hemp-growing in the area, so we had to have our storage tank filled. I sat at our porch “lunch counter”—a counter-top and three stools Wayne salvaged from the former Texacali Grill in Austin and refinished—drinking a beer and doing a crossword puzzle while the guy from the water delivery service attached a large hose to the top of our tank. He turned on the water and a few minutes later I heard him speaking to someone on his cell phone from inside the pump house!
“Who’s your carrier?” I asked when he emerged.
“US Cellular. They’re the most dependable in the valley.”
A few days later we were up and running with US Cellular and their version of a Home Base Unit, although I was forced to abandon our old landline number in the netherworld of Consumer Cellular. “Serves them right,” I thought. “They can have all those scam callers.”

Then we got the call from Royal Flush saying they were ready to start the job. The next day they delivered a porta-potty to our front yard., along with PVC pipe, giant rolls of packing peanuts wrapped in what looked like deer fencing, and a big load of gravel.
Monday morning, they showed up while I was at an appointment with my bone doctor. (I’ve had significant success in increasing bone density. Yay! I still have to do another round of Prolia shots, though.)
When I got back they were in full swing with an excavator and bulldozer. It was like a dance—I’ve not seen such precision in synchronized digging and pushing mass amounts of dirt around before, especially considering it’s August and our dirt is near cement. In one day they dug 6-foot-deep trenches from the septic tank bypassing the old drain field, sawed a 3-foot-wide gulley through the asphalt driveway, and looped a small canyon around the front yard. After they left, we explored the area. They’d removed two cedar trees I planted 16 years ago and left them in a pile, along with a woodland mahogany that’s been languishing. That part was heartbreaking. It felt like we’d lost three family members. These pictures don’t fully capture the level of destruction that took place. Part of it was the dry, dustiness under a cloudy, rainless sky, and the temperature that still lingered at 102°. We haven’t had rain for several months, so everything was beginning to look dead anyway.

The next morning the Royal Flushes were back here early. They finished laying the drain pipe, filled in the trenches, smoothed all the dirt and stones, loaded up their excavators and bang-zoom-Bob’s-yer-uncle, they were done. Two days! The front yard still looks like a depressing wasteland. I suspect it will until fall comes and we get rain, but we will most likely not have to worry about this drain field failing in our lifetimes.

Then there was The Fire.
The weather had been hot and unusually dry all summer. I mean, we don’t get much rain in the summers anyway, but we do get a shower here and there. This summer, nothing. On Labor Day, the wind began to blow in earnest. The thrashing kind, that sent the wind chimes on the front porch jangling furiously all night. The next afternoon I was on my way into Medford to buy some elastic for the dolls’ pants when I noticed a near traffic jam at our four corners. I quickly realized that it was some kind of detour. Rounding the corner I saw the smoke rising from Talent. When I got down to Pacific Highway, the police had closed the south direction and there was a steady line of cars coming north.

I scrapped my trip and headed home. Surely, I figured, whatever was going on would be resolved by tomorrow. Wayne came outside and I showed him the smoke billowing from Talent. A little while later the electricity blinked off.
We made sandwiches for dinner and watched a movie on Wayne’s laptop.
All night we could see a sinister reddish-orange glow in the sky, in the notch between the hills over Phoenix, while the wind continued to howl.

The next morning I made breakfast on the gas grill outside. I'm really glad I got the grill with the side burner unit! Since the sky looked clear from here, we drove down through the back end of Talent to see if we could charge our laptops and phones, and possibly get some spring water at the supermarket. Everything looked fine until we crossed the railroad tracks. Then we began to see small, hot-spot fires burning along the sides of the road. When we reached the supermarket, which was closed, of course, we discovered that much of the town on the east side of Talent Avenue had been destroyed, leaving a grotesque jumble of blackened washing machines, skeletal remains of bedsprings, bicycles, wood stoves, chimneys, and cars. Wayne wanted to see if our friend Frederick’s house was still there. We turned onto Gangnes Drive and the entire block was leveled. At some point I started to cry, and then the person in front of us abruptly stopped his Subaru in the middle of the street, got out and started taking pictures. Wiping tears from my eyes I realized we had no business in there, that we had to get out as soon as possible and I couldn’t turn around. So I pulled around the side of the photographer's car and headed out, before realizing that we were driving over a burned-up power line.
“Shit!” I yelled as I floored it, and went over another blackened line before reaching Talent Avenue again.
There was no wi-fi signal or power anywhere in town, so we headed north. We got on 99 and…it was the closest thing either of us has seen of Armageddon. Telephone poles broken in half with wire hanging freakishly off of them. Blackened fields and trees. We kept going until there was a police blockade at the I-5 exit in Phoenix. We headed west and found Sherm’s Thunderbird open, so we filled up with water, did some shopping, and got ice. I also noticed that The Laundry Center was open, so we drove back to the house, packed up the laundry and brought our computers and cell phones to charge while we were there.

Eventually the wind died down and dense smoke filled the valley for days, reaching all the way up to the house. On a good day the sun was merely a fierce, malevolent-looking orange ball. It was starting to get chilly, but we dared not light a fire in the wood stove, and had no electricity to run the wall heater. We began wearing our winter clothes... we watched movies on Wayne’s laptop… we ate a lot of sandwiches…

Six days later the electricity blinked back on. Six days of basically camping at our house. We flushed the toilet manually with water we got from town, and took sink baths. We kept the food cool by putting store-bought ice in metal mixing bowls in the refrigerator and freezer. I cooked on the outside grill. I was reduced to reading and writing in the new alcove we built up in the studio. If it weren't for the misery of so many people losing their homes, I’d think this was a blessing. I finished another revision of Meteor Falls while curious squirrels and deer stopped by the window to study me and Sofie, my writing muse, huddled under a blanket with my laptop until the daylight ran out.

It would be more than a week before non-residents were permitted to drive the section of 99 through Phoenix. When I finally took the “scenic” drive, my jaw remained dropped the entire way. All I could say as I shook my head was, "Oh my god…oh my god…” over and over again. It was nearly a 2-mile, steady swath of destruction.

I'm not much for posting pictures of peoples' properties laid to waste, but there's a 30-minute flyover someone posted the day after:

Those Wacky Socialists

8/1/2020

I was getting really tired of letters-to-the-editor about the "evils of socialism," hence I struck back today. Granted, I'm a true socialist at heart...

Tempest in a Test Hole

6/9/2020

We recently had a test hole dug for a new septic drain field in our front yard. "Shouldn't be any problem," the contractor told us, "your dirt looks good."
Several hours later, though, there was an unexpected commotion, heralded by a murder of loud crows.

Then a specter began to emerge from the hole in broad daylight!
Was there an old burial ground the real estate agent failed to mention all those years ago? "How many more are down there?" we wondered.

Wayne began shoveling dirt back into the hole in a frantic attempt to keep the revenant from escaping...

...in the end, he was forced to drop his shovel and flee the scene as the creature climbed out of the hole.

We're seriously on lockdown now, with the doors and windows bolted.

Lumber-Janein’ with Hayleyanne

5/13/2020

Stay-at-home orders being what they are, I’ve made my very first tree-felling video! I’ve been cutting firewood on our property since 2006, when I changed out the old propane heater for a wood stove. Sure, I had back-up electric heat, but what fun is that? A wood stove is like having a warm companion during the winters, and it doesn’t ditch you when the electricity goes out. Besides, getting rid of as much combustible fallen wood in our forest makes us a little less vulnerable during wildfire season.
Ever the tomboy, I bought a chain saw. Early on, I’d had a few trees removed by professional arborists and observed their cutting techniques. I viewed how-to chain sawing videos on YouTube, plus I watched the guy in the mall who made those wooden bears.
By the time Wayne moved up here I was fairly well-versed in operating a chain saw. He’s shown little interest in learning this art which is perfectly fine with me. His many skills lie elsewhere, plus he's much safer this way.
Hence, I’ve zip-tied my smartphone to a hiking pole so as not to involve him in photographing me while a tree is falling. Made the logos come out backwards, but I'm still working on that.

So here’s my two cents’ worth of stay-at-home activities!

Happy Easter!

4/12/2020

The bunnies at Dreamland Party Pals recommend that you stay home and eat plenty of chocolate!

Pandemic Check-In

4/4/2020

I’m at it again!My recent Letter to the Editor:

A difficult task
As a recovering New Yorker, I found a recent letter writer’s suggestion to have a “positive thought about Trump” difficult at best. The man was practicing unscrupulous business dealings as far back as the 1970s, with the simple objective to line his own pockets. Listing them all here would quickly exceed the 200-word limit, although I would like to point out that among other failed ventures, he lost his long-struggling Atlantic City casino in 2014. A casino! Who bankrupts their own casino? But let’s fast forward.
In 2018, the Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team to cut costs.
Throughout February 2020 he continued to insist that COVID-19 was a “Democratic hoax,” leaving us ill-prepared for the crisis we now face.
He’s spread false rumors regarding vaccine availability, lashed out at reporters who ask for encouraging words for a frightened country, and claimed that he “knew about the virus a long time ago.”
Still in denial? These statements occurred live, in recent press briefings.
Enabling this kind of behavior is irresponsible and dangerous.
And yet, albeit somewhat indirect, there is one “positive thought” that comes to mind, reminiscent of a TV clown from my childhood: Bozo.

L.J. Zinkand
Medford
(April 3, 2020)

These, the weirdest times yet in my life, remind me of being swallowed by a giant breaker at Jones Beach as a child, tumbled for what seemed like an eternity, then spat out onto the shore, only to look up through scraggly strands of sand-laced hair and see people standing ankle-deep in the water, staring out at the sea, hardly noticing me because their attention is directed elsewhere.

I can’t seem to reconcile the image of a president who wears make-up with the leader of the free world. We find his wild lies and daily self-contradictions mind-blowing, and he looks like a pathetic clown. His supporters remain fully dug-in, as if under some kind of spell, unreachable by any apparent sense of logic or dignity. Staring out to sea.

“Oh well, civilizations come and go,” I tell myself. Maybe it’s time to hit the reset button on ours.

Need further proof?

Only $79 at finer stores!

Possum

12/21/2019

Theodore O. Possum ~ March 28, 2008 - December 8, 2019

Our beloved Possum, Ranch Boss, went over the Rainbow Bridge on Sunday, December 8. He was 11¾ years old. Of all the cats I’ve had, he was the sweetest. I can’t remember ever hearing him hiss, although in retrospect, I think he hissed at me once when I tried to give him a pill.

I adopted him and his brother Sparky from SoHumane in 2008. I'd always wanted to adopt a pair of siblings, and I could hold one of them in each hand. When I brought them home and opened the cardboard box they both leapt out like circus performers, playing, attacking and chasing each other around the house. During that first summer, I often felt as if I were in the middle of a bar fight.

Possum had a fascination with licking things. Many a morning I would wake to find that my hair had been licked into bizarre shapes, as if the little guy had spent the entire night on my head, creating the perfect “Possum-do.”

Once our older cat Sofie trained the little brothers in the ways of the outdoors and they outgrew her, Possum, due to his large, bulldog-like stance, was elevated to the position of Ranch Boss. He took his job very seriously, and directed the effort of keeping the gophers at bay. Each evening he made his rounds, checking the property, before settling in for the night.

I’d often find him on the bed in a deep trance, kneading on the bedspread. We tried to discourage this habit, which he practiced on us quite liberally, but to no avail. When it developed into accompanying drooling, licking and kneading-with-claws, I’d have to nudge him away.
“But I love you!” he seemed to say, with an air of disappointment. He’d usually come back in less than a minute, hoping to "love on me" again.
“Not everyone wants to be licked,” I’d remind him. I knew there would come a time when I’d regret pushing him to the end of the bed so I could get some sleep on dry sheets.

A few months before his passing he began cuddling next to me on the couch, placing a paw on my arm and gazing at me tenderly, almost as if he knew his time was coming.
Yes, he was a bit cross-eyed and loved to lick us, but he was our groovy, laid-back, mellow, loving Possum. I miss him every day.

Possum and Danoota, who doesn't mind being licked.

Dreamland Party Pals!

11/29/2019

I’ve always been a huge fan of anthropomorphism. Ever since I was a child I fantasized about animals doing people things. I was fascinated by the works of Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, Max and Dave Fleischer, and Harmon and Ising. And, of course, the Walt Disney studio. I spent many classes at school daydreaming about animals performing musical numbers and tiny operettas. When my family would go out to dinner I would often imagine our dog and cat seated in a booth around the corner dressed as humans, quietly snickering at their great fortune in convincing the wait staff they were humans enjoying a meal out…so I’m ever grateful that I managed to finish school, despite my clandestine fantasies.

Fast forward to college in the Northeast, where my professors often complained that my work was “too cartoony.” After graduating, I tacitly excused myself from the east coast and left for San Francisco. I spent hours at animation festivals, sometimes sitting through two showings. I studied animation at San Francisco State and created several short films on my own. But I was also getting spirited away by electronic music and playing in new wave bands. Yet, I continued to imagine animals dancing in a corner of whatever nightclub I happened to be playing in, dressed in contemporary fashion.

Fast forward again: I had a fairly okay run making and showing (cartoony!) animal clocks at higher-end craft fairs. Then I began making dolls with papier-mâché heads. I was living about 30 miles north of Novato, California, the site of the Black Point Renaissance Pleasure Faire. “Wouldn’t it be cool,” I thought, “if I could make dolls dressed in Tudor fashions and sell them there?” I borrowed books from the library on Elizabethan costumes, and sent away for an application to the Renaissance Faire. Remember, back then the internet was still in its infancy, so you had to do everything by mail! I created a menagerie of characters such as The Squirrel of Leicester, Kitty Wenchkin, Friar Duck, and St. George, the Dragon. My mom, who was well aware and supportive of my anthropomorphic tendencies, pitched in and bought me a new sewing machine. The deadline for applying to the Faire was fast approaching, so I photographed my characters, had them developed at a one-hour place and sent in my application, along with a few sample dolls.

A few weeks later I received an invitation to join the Renaissance Faire! Even though a claw had fallen off St. George the Dragon revealing a 20th century plastic straw, they were willing to give me a chance. I had a good time working the Faire every weekend, dressed as a French merchant, although I also had a job at a small software company and was captivated by computer graphics. By the end of the Faire I could barely look at burlap anymore, but I made enough money to buy lots of cool Elizabethan merch, and my very first laser printer.

I eventually moved to Mount Shasta, where tragedy prompted me to inherit a small graphic design studio. Still, I couldn’t help imagining our studio cat, Buster, an intrepid street rescue, operating a small lunch cart business in town, later becoming a successful baker due to his excellent kneading skills. Meanwhile, I drew the little cartoon bears on the menus of the then-fledgling Black Bear Diners.

I eventually moved up to Oregon and brought my graphic design studio with me, along with Buster and my other cat, Joey. After Joey went over the Rainbow Bridge, Buster suggested that we change his name to Beasey. He wanted a more “country gentleman” sounding name. Eventually, I got a part time job doing graphics for the Southern Oregon Humane Society aka SoHumane, where I remain to this very day. One Christmas I revived the animal dolls – just cats and dogs with raincoats – for SoHumane’s entry in the Providence Festival of Trees, “It’s Raining Cats and Dogs” Christmas tree. A while later I donated two cats and two dogs, dressed in fancy evening attire, for the silent auction at SoHumane’s “A Toast For Tails” fundraiser. This new incarnation, which I refer to as “Gen 3,” had wire skeletons to make them posable, and glass cabochon eyes. As an incognito guest at the affair, I maybe sipped a little too much champagne, quietly terrified that no one would be interested in them. But then, a tiny bidding war erupted! I was thrilled, and it gave me the vote of confidence I felt I needed to go into full production. “Gen-4” was a lengthy R&D period in which I explored more intricate facial features, the fine points of hand and foot construction, and skeletal issues.

Now, without further ado, may I present the “Gen-5” animal dolls in their latest manifestation, Dreamland Party Pals, available on Etsy.com!

You can also see me in a video describing my process, and the materials involved.

The Spin Art Lady!

10/8/2019

Friday evenings from 5:30 pm until dusk this summer, Wayne and I were a fixture at the Talent Evening Market, where I spun the paints and Wayne hung them up to dry.
I built my rig using a plastic tub I bought at Lowe’s, and a modified table fan. I used sparkly metallic paints and offered a choice of black or white cardstock paper. The paint, you see, which I kept in ketchup-type bottles, gets dribbled over the spinning paper creating, well, spun art. My favorite part was watching the focus and concentration of the kids (and adults!) with paint bottles suspended over the tub, and their reactions when the spinner stopped.
People we knew stopped by, and we had a lot of repeat customers. There was only one smoky night, but most of us vendors showed up anyway, and some of us wore masks. There was live music each week (except the smoky one).
Another interesting part was that the artwork wasn't about me – it was about having a good time helping other people make cool-looking pictures.

It was the deal of the ages, as I charged only $1. We didn’t make a whole lot of money, but it was a fun activity on warm Friday nights. We brought a picnic dinner, set up the booth and there was a steady stream of customers. (How to attract customers: attempt to take a break and eat a snack. For best results, may I suggest the delicious Hawaiian Shaved Ice.)

Here are a few that some kids forgot to pick up on their way out. I’ll be holding onto them, should the young artists return next summer to spin again!