TIME OUT

My computer is infected and I dread facing it. The building project on a  day to day basis still  takes up most of my time. I have to pick a microwave oven from a distance, so the cabinet guys can put the right size unit between it and the ceiling. Meshing systems…well I won’t go on and on about it.

I decided to blog something inane and silly that doesn’t require any thought, like these old laws that are still on the books:
In Michigan, it is illegal to chain an alligator to a fire hydrant.
Whaa? How many alligators are kept as pets in Michigan? They needed a law?

It is illegal in Louisiana to shoot a bank teller with a water pistol while committing a bank robbery.
Looks like some wiley dude was trying to evade the serious weapons charges associated with robbery.

It is against the law to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket in Lexington, Kentucky.
That one just boggles the mind. Someone entered a posh place, or store, or theater where no food was allowed and made a mess? A law was necessary? Anybody’s guess.

Eating ice cream in public with a fork is strictly forbidden in Rosemead, California.
Come on, how can that offend anyone to the point of taking the time to make it against the law? There should be a law against people who make absurd laws.

A woman can’t dance on a table in a saloon in Helena, Montana, unless she has on at least 3 pounds of clothing.
Doesn’t this tickle your funny bone? The guys still want her to dance, but not quite as skimpily clad as before. I suspect it causes too many fights.

Mark Twain made a comment about lack of clothing.
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.”

He obviously didn’t watch near naked  women dancing on tables in Helena.
Ciao

CHRISTMAS PARTY FOR ARTISTIC SOULS

In yesterday's blog,  I mentioned the Red Hats. Joellyn Gano, left,  is also a member of the Calaveras Arts Council and enjoyed both parties on the same evening at the Murphys Hotel.  Her husband Dave is a painter. Joellyn plays a mean accordion, just one of her many talents. Penny West, served as director  of the Calaveras County Arts Council and kept that organization growing and strong,  nurturing all of us since 1981.  She now shares that position with Mary Jane Genochio.

Judi Caine Papais, left, has a marvelous studio with wonderful north light and teaches as well as paints. She is a well known artists along with many others too numerous to name. Judi belongs to another arts group in the county. Murphys may have the most galleries of all the small towns in Calaveras, but there are many others if you wish to spend a day perusing the awesome talents of this community. If you are looking for culture,  music, dance, visual arts, sculpture, or pottery, you will find it here.

 Good friends, Dave Self and Pastor Meg Self attended. Dave, with talents previously hidden from view. He drew illustrations for Glen Wasson's book and will be coming out with a book of his own poetry soon. These talents I never knew about before in my friend, surprised and delighted me.

 Glen with his wife Joan, a talented photographer. Glen provided the entertainment for the night and kept us laughing with renditions from his current book, Tales Mark Twain Would Have Loved To Steal.
Glen is well known for his doggerel. He writes on the spot and read a poem he composed just for the evening. But, I mentioned the Red Hats. Glen wrote "A Gentleman's Response To The Red Hat Ladies" and kept us laughing at his indelicate response to the repression of men's natural tendencies.

When I am old I will not care
About the kind of clothes I wear
They may be tattered, old or ripped
And I won't care if my fly's not zipped.

In crowded elevators I may break wind
And look as though I'm quite chagrined
At some innocent person standing there
Whom I'll indict with a reproachful stare.

And I don't care if the ladies mind
That I pinch them hard on the behind
I've always longed to play such sports,
Especially those with bulging shorts.

I'll go to church in my overalls
Wear polyester plaid to formal balls
I'll watch TV in my under wear
And scatter beer cans everywhere.

I'll scratch myself in private places
Just to see the look on people's faces.
In mixed compay I'll tell lewd jokes
To scandalize those proper folks.

At dinner time I will pick my nose
And wipe the boogers on my clothes.
And to me it really doesn't matter
If I grab the last thing from the platter.

Until I'm old I'll still behave,
It isn't nice to be a knave.
But, I can't wait for that joyful day
When I'm old enough to act that way.

A HUMOROUS LOOK AT THE AFTERLIFE

These were compiled by Jon Winokur for Funny Times. Peoples beliefs shape their lives and philosophers, comedians, scholars and just plain folks weigh in on the subject of an afterlife. At Christmas time, the religionists want us to keep Jesus in Christmas, and I expect they will be offended by afterlife humor. Others want to avoid the word Christmas and call this time of year a generic "the holidays." Many people, myself included, don't believe in an afterlife.  In short, there is enough here to offend or amuse just about anyone.

From Woody Allen:
I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of  underwear.

I don't believe in a big vacation village up in the sky. Bill Maher

The Baptists believe in The Right to Life before you're born. They also believe in Life After Death, but that is a privilege and you have to earn it by spending the interim in guilt ridden misery. At an early age I decided that living a life of pious misery in the hope of going to heaven when its over is a lot like keeping your eyes shut all through a movie in the hope of getting your money back at the end. Whitney Brown

From Samuel Beckett:
We'll sit around talking about the good old days, when we wished that we were dead.

Woody Allen, again:
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt. Joseph Heller

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse. Isaac Asimov

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  Susan Ertz

We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one, have we?
Noel Coward

It is a curious thing...that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.  Evelyn Waugh

When I think of the number of disagreeable people that I know who have gone to a better world, I am sure hell won't be so bad at all.  Mark Twain

It must require an inordinate share of vanity and presumption too, after enjoying so much that is good and beautiful on earth, to ask the Lord for immortality in addition to it all.   Heinrich Heine

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.  Aldous Huxley

Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an afterlife.  Arianna Huffington

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.   Douglas Adams

And as the wife says to her husband:
You realize if you go to Heaven, my relatives will all be there.  LasHowski

Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?  Tom Stoppard

INDEPENDENCE HALL QUILTERS OF ARNOLD, CALIFORNIA

This weekend past was the 33rd Annual Mountain Heirloom Quilt Faire put on by the Independence Hall Quilters of Arnold. In 1976, for the Bi-centennial Celebration, cities and counties across the nation were encouraged to choose projects representative of our colonial past to help celebrate the Bi-centennial. In Calaveras County, the most lasting tribute to that celebration is the Bicentennial Quilt made that year by about 12 women who quilted together at Independence Hall in Arnold.


 This amazing quilt was put together with thoughtful consideration for each community in the county, exemplifying the special attribute of that place in 18 blocks. Mark Twain is rendered writing his famous story of the Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County.

Old time firefighters from Mokelumne Hill.

 The famous bandit, Black Bart was jailed in San Andreas, the County Seat. The document is readable, it is so finely worked in thread.

 Because gold mining is part of our heritage, the blocks were sewn into a background of gold material. 

 The bald eagle of the United States flys above; the center of the quilt holds a Bear Republic Insignia and the Insignia of the County of Calaveras. All of this took permissions from the artist who designed the Insignia and from the county. What an undertaking; what a successful and beautiful endeavor. 

As I reminisced over the various blocks two people were attempting to find the five frogs on the quilt. Four of them are pretty easy, but the fifth one is difficult to find. Who thought to put a bit of mystery into the quilt?
The great part of this affair is that the Independence Hall Quilters formed their group and have become one of the top quilter's guilds in the nation. They have maintained, over those 33 years, a huge membership that hovers between 250 and 225. Like a family, they work together, socialize, learn new techniques, teach and revel in fabric art. 

Their Faire is as unique as they are. Quilts on display can never be repeated. Thus a conservative estimate of 3,300 quilts have been exhibited by countless numbers of quilters over the years. Also unique to this Faire is the antique "heritage" props the men and women of the group arrange to enhance the quilts displayed. There are male quilters, but these men are the husbands who have become involved in the undertaking along with their wives.

The couples enjoy a set-up party; with music and great food. They do the same in reverse as each year the quilts are taken down and their owners come to pick them up. Some come by UPS and are returned the same way.

 Besides the quilts and props and parties, the quilters sew a challenge quilt, a raffle quilt and provide multiple quilts for the Ronald McDonald House and Habitat for Humanity. They provide quilts for those in need locally as well. The money they earn from their Faire provides student scholarships. What a wonderful bunch of empowered women. And it all started with this quilt. 

MARK TWAIN REMEMBERED IN ANGELS CAMP

"All you need is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure," quipped Mark Twain, AKA Samuel Langhorne Clemons. In truth, success didn't come easily for Twain. He had ups and many downs; he suffered hunger, poverty, despondency and had at one time decided to take his own life over his failures. Lucky for us, news of his story's success, "Jim Smiley And His Jumping Frog,"  reached him in time and brought him back from his depression so he failed at suicide, as well.
 
He was in Calaveras County at the time, where the jumping frog story was generated by a conversation in an Angels Camp bar. Gold mining was one of his failures and he tried journalism as a more profitable job. But it was a hungry, cold time for him. He wrote in his diary: "January 23, 1865. Rainy, stormy. Beans and dishwater for breakfast...dishwater & beans for dinner, & both articles warmed over for supper. January 24th. Rained all day-meals as before. Jan 25th. Same as above."
 
 Before moving West, he loved being a Mississippi river pilot, it was lucrative too. He once bragged he made more money than the Vice President of the United States.  But Missouri was a Confederate State, and he and his brother headed west when war was imminent.
  Before he got his Mississippi River pilot's license, he found work at a Newspaper and worked in printing as an assistant. He'd occasionally insert humorous things in the paper anonymously when the editor was absent.  He inherited his red hair from his mother and probably her sense of humor as well. He was pulled at least nine times out of the river in a "substantially drowned condition" at which she scoffed, "People who are born to be hanged are safe in the water." She never expected the runt to live. He was always in trouble.

This bust of Twain is borrowed from the Bancroft Library along with many other artifacts in a very well done exhibit at the 3 acre Angels Camp Museum. While Mark Twain lived in Angels Camp, he met Bret Harte and other famous writers from San Francisco, where he eventually moved. He was a humorist to be sure, and he is famous for his wry quips, such as: "A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read."   And "The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice." But, of course, for this community, he is of paramount importance which is why they are celebrating his many accomplishments over this weekend. Its certainly worth the drive. Especially since the Museum Committee has published all five of his various Jumping Frog story variations in one volume for sale at this event.  

 This community had no paved roads in 1928. Someone suggested they have a frog jumping contest, as in the famous Mark Twain story, to raise enough money to pave Main St. Angels Camp.  And, so it was done and has evolved into the largest such frog jumping festival in the world. In fact, the Little Flower, New York's Mayor La Guardia came to see the frogs jump along with other famous people over the years. 

The contest held the 3rd weekend in May attracts an average of 10,000 people to come see "the jumps." Its old home week. kids who once jumped frogs, return in May with their children and grandchildren to try their hand at the $1,000 prize, but mostly for the camaraderie. 

 Gold may have been a big industry all those years ago, and established Angels Camp, but Mark Twain put Angels Camp on the map.

MURPHYS HOTEL, HISTORIC ICON

I once gave British friends the downtown tour explaining that the Historic Murhys Hotel was 145 years old! The kids, quite unimpressed, kind of sniffed and told me they had buildings in their town 840 years old. Kind of put my history in perspective. No matter, the locals are proud of their historic icon. The old 1800's bar is still in place. The original lobby intact. The presidential rooms are on display and for rent. President Grant, Mark Twain, and other notables stayed in the old hotel.
The current owner, Dorian Faught, who bought it when he had more money than sense, still gets behind the bar once in awhile. He hires cuties in short skirts and a good band now and then and the place still rocks.
People I run into often have a favorite story of a good time in the Murphys Hotel. (Some are unprintable.) I like it too. I'm glad the bathrooms are now flushable. I love the balcony over Main St. And I even like the new neon sign Dorian put up over protests from historic purists.
This may sound trite, but what I like most about the Murphys Hotel is the hooks under the bar to hang your purse. A woman's purse is an important item and it doesn't get dirty and kicked about on the floor, nor wet and boozy on the bar. My kind of bar!