"If it wasn't for the nerve a little sip of liquor gives me (I never was able to do more than ever taste it), I never could go through with what I sometimes has to do....I says, "leave the bottle on the chimley-piece and don't ask me to take none, but let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged..."

This "fat old woman with a face for all occasions" is also "performer of nameless offices about the persons of the dead". 'Ah!' repeated Mrs. Gamp for it was always a safe sentiment in cases of mourning. 'Ah, dear! When Gamp was summoned to his long home, and I see him lying in Guy's Hospital with a penny-piece on each eye, and his wooden leg under his left arm, I thought I should have fainted away. But I bore up.'

This "fat old woman with a husky voice and a moist eye" has first floor lodging in a "bird- fancier's house, next door but one to...celebrated mutton pie shop, directly opposite...the original cat's- meat warehouse." She's a midwife who's been up all night.
"...in every pane of glass there was at least one tiny bird in a tiny bird cage, twittering and hopping his little ballet of despair, and knocking his head against the roof: while one unhappy goldfinch who lived outside in a red villa with his name on the door, drew the water for his own drinking and mutely appealed to some good man to drop a farthing's worth of poison in it."
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT (Charles Dickens)

We get Mr. Pecksniff to knock on the door.

"The wheels were done in Chinese red and lined-out with Venetian red, which was marvellously expensive...we mixed all the paints here. Paint for small jobs was ground on a little stone but if we had a lot to do we ground it in a paint-mill. Nothing whatever was wasted of anything. You had to grind paint very, very slowly so that the mill didn't warm up. If it did it would discolour the paint."

"When I had helped to make a wagon I had to learn to paint it. We did everything in this shop, you see. The farmers were most particular about the painting.... There was red lead and vegetable black, white lead, which was like thick distemper, and there was Chinese red and Venetian red, all of these were the old colours used by the wagon-makers. The body-work was all painted blue. Always blue. The blue rode well in the corn...

Scrap from an unnumbered page -- study of a village -- FAN SHEN -- pages treasured now lost.
"...a glazed china bowl counted as an important possession. Many peasants ate out of the same bowl from cradle to grave and passed it on to their offspring. If a bowl broke, the pieces were taken to one of the itinerant bowl menders who followed the market day fairs around the county. These craftsmen cleverly drilled pottery fragments and stapled them together with bits of brass
"...these oft-resurrected bowls through long-continued usage became closely identified with their possessors."
..."close personal relationship betw each peasant and his bowl" making possible an electoral procedure.

StoryOp Seeing second tobogg/sleigh in background of Toys1 this blogger suggests... adding the fairy (barely legible sign -- NO ADMITT EXCEPT FAIRIES) and having muff/leggings girl having tried previously to get in, now making nice.
Incidentally: In those days they were 'India Rubber' balls. Then we wanted lacrosse balls and god knows what we want now. Black Sambo was politically correct and carton was prob first 'CARE' pkge. Plus important correctn: To gnomes the (Pamela Prince) enhancer's 'Franny' wouldn't be a 'little lady' -- more like 'Hey dude -- big girl -- take more apples

if you must.'

One is amazed by Hoban's (adult works) experiments. And stunned by Matzu MTP (Matsuyama's former identity) separated from a street art past, turning to fine art to respond to "...a challenge to consciously find common threads betw bi-polar aesthetics/ objects such as western/ eastern, ornamental/ conceptual, traditional/ contemporary, and forcefully yet organically meld these into one to have a sort of natural chaos."
Birds/ creatures -- 'famous motifs that a lot of (Japanese) masters paint' = Oriental mythology, no?

The lead for a JUXTAPOZ Dec. spread on Tomokazu Matsuyama quotes 1931 ! ! Paul Valery suggesting:
"...the coming of an amazing change in our very notion of art."
and goes on to describe an installation this past summer at the Bunkamura Gall., Tokyo: "Look down the corridor of panels, opposing colors puzzled and stretching together, human figures bending yet not breaking, tumbling but in control, with a green- and white-checkered bg wall that soothes while simultaneously evoking a violent atmosphere...."

Margaret Dipple (...UNRESOLVABLE PLOT) (1988) placed Hoban last in her Section: Experiment and the Problems of Meaning. The Guardian speaks of Hoban in shamanistic terms. Dipple closes (having in mind pilgrims/ Crusades; Orpheus/ Eurydice [JUXTAPOZ Orpheus heavy metal?]; St. Eustace legend, etc.) claiming: ''The open sense of holiness that permeates his books is a reminder of what literature, especially poetry, used to take as its province.'
'...the present world may not be the cybernetic nightmare we make of it.'

Hoban was first published as an illustrator of children's books. His fav. artist was Daumier. In 1969 he went from the States (Philadelphia?) to London, Engl.
The Manchester Guardian, 2002, relates that Hoban switched from pictures to the stories themselves with the resulting: children's book THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD followed by four 'adult' works PILGERMANN (1983); KLEINZEIT (1974); RIDDLEY WALKER (1980); MEDUSA FREQUENCY (1987).

My blog Aug.24 Eros/ Psyche. Here is heralded another focus - 2008 - Orpheus/ Eurydice --
"Borges said in describing Don Quixote's peculiar role in the transformatn of human sensibility, 'For in the beginning of literature is the myth, and in the end as well.' "
THE UNRESOLVABLE PLOT Elizabeth Dipple (p.177)

Speedily working on text for HOTEL QUILT to be ready by Dec.25. Have placed action on 'the Stem' 6 spades and 6 diamonds. According to world-building Jingaro expectations, must shuffle an ordinary pl. card deck to determine which 5,4,3,2 * will accompany the 6s on this sickRoom visit.

It's decided. Now to add to randomly emerged 5 clubs, 4 spades, 3 clubs, 2 hearts, data bank details of their (POS) personalities with a peek at NEG quals.

* Ace is place, not person.

A replacement tale, working title HOTEL QUILT runs the same risk. In the same 'safe Hotel' (f2) on its sixth floor an alien (child) lies in a bed surrounded by Bandelore children: two 6s (clubs/spades, etc. cards) and randomly pulled 5,4,3 and 2, It is a NARRATIVE SCRAPBOOK 16pp signature, at the back formal notes on writing ad-ventures and quilting history and at the front story plus Game schematics.

Reviewing a June 19 blog when THE MISSING HOUR a.k.a. TOWER having Dec. 01 deadline for Christmas giving was abandoned I can now give my principled reason. Scene of a 93 year old man with a sick child on his shoulder was the first to be presented to me. I felt a deathShudder run simultaneously through old man and child. The analytic mind then kicked in -- 'maybe one but not the other.' For the sake of children's lit, I distorted the intention into mere rescue. It didn't work.

McGraw Hill's 75 Readings Plus includes the likes of (McGraw publicatn order) Susan Sontag, Plato and latterly Annie Dillard, Judy Brady, et al.

Judy Syfers Brady (b.1937 - ) is my focus and I wonder how earning a B.F.A. in painting from U of Iowa, 1962 affected her life. Those remembering "I Want a Wife" (still relevant 37 yrs later) will find it under Syfers.
Reminds me one day in a Chwck college lib., finding some long diatribe (book? essay?) on past/ present/ future women's labours additionally at Christmas.