RMW Ramblings

  Wilmington's Trackless Trolleys 1. My Junkyard Finds In the 1940s and 1950s we had trackless trolleys, or trolley buses, in Wilmington.  Powered from twin  overhead electric wires with two trolley pole connections, these rubber tired trolleys could pull over to the curb and swerve around stopped vehicles.  In the 1970s I photographed some junkyard remains of a few of these in south Wilmington.  Here are some of the pictures.     Here's a ceiling light fixture, rather art deco... Here's the driver's dashboard... We'll have some more on our trolleys in another posting.

  A Christmastime Saint King Wenceslas Today, December 26, is the Feast Of Steven, when, as we all know, "Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Steven," according to the carol written by Anglican cleric John Mason Neale in 1853. I described my painting of St. Wenceslas with this a few years ago for a gallery display Saint Wenceslas   September 2, But associated with the Feast of St Steven December 26   St Wenceslas, Svätý Vaclav, Duke of Bohemia (posthumously titled King) has in tradition been celebrated for his generosity and kindnesses to the poor.   The patron of the Czech Republic, Wenceslas has long been venerated in Central and Eastern Europe.   His tradition in the English-speaking world has been informed by the carol Good King Wenceslas published in 1853 by the Anglican cleric John Mason Neale, who overlooks our scene from his framed photograph.   The seven-foot tall saint carries a jug of wine and a basket food for the poor...

  A Nativity Set Three Christmas Miniatures This little set of paintings was done to fit a group of small thrift store found frames which I bought four for a dollar.  (The fourth frame found another purpose.)  From left to right, the Shepherds, the Holy Family, and the Magi.  They are currently on holiday display in our home.

  Handel The Messiah  For Unto Us An important part of the Christmas season for me is The Messiah , the oratorio by  George Fredrick Handel [ Georg Friederich Händel].   In the 1950s I was part of the chorus in performances of The Messiah for several years with the Wilmington's Capella Club at Grace Methodist Church in front of their magnificent stained glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany.    My painting above, For Unto Us, shows Handel, with an organ pipe rank halo, conducting a small chorus and instrumental ensemble,  on a gallery wrapped canvas with a baroque crest  (see this blog August 03, 2021.) I retained my worn and annotated  Schirmer score and paid for a new replacement for the Club.  A few years later I hand rebound my copy with scrounged materials.  The black cloth was scrap from blackout fabric in our Berkeley lab where we were doing research requiring darkroom conditions.  The framed title was assembled from t...

  This Year's Card 2021 Christmas Eve by the Fire Our card this year looks back to the 1970s...   Our card in 2012 also showed Mary by the fire, that year at our cottage...    

  Cards of Christmas Past Our First Christmas In 2011 Mary and I looked back at our first Christmas together, in 1961. I was a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley.    

  Cards of Christmas Past 2010 19th Century Carolers in New Castle Our 2010 card shows the advantage of computer editing and printing to produce a card with more detail and color than our earlier card crafting approaches.  In the fall, at Oak Knoll Books on the top floor of the New Castle Opera House, I noticed the view of the old New Castle Courthouse, and it suggested the theme for this card. I wanted to have a high angle view.  I made this very preliminary sketch... I couldn't fly over the Courthouse, so I took photographs from ground level to work out the building's proportions.  Then I built a maquette, a little model, and photographed it from several viewpoints with a variety of lighting arrangements. I chose this view for the card... ...made a very pale print of the cleaned up photo, carefully preserving the shadows.   Then I constructed the drawing over it... And began adding color in Photoshop...   I drew the carolers, wagon, trees, the other build...