RMW Ramblings

  My Library Globe 2 Bookplates This is the same corner of our library as in the last posting, now settled in.  That chair, over a half-century later, is still in that corner. I used this view to design a bookplate for our library's contents...   Since, I did a little painting of the bookplate image tthat now hangs by the passage into the library...    There's a little spot color here, and I have indulged my love of black ground paintings.

  My Library Globe 1 When we bought and renovated our home in Wilmington in 1965-66 , we re-did a long unused room facing Mount Salem Lane as our library. Here is the room while repairs were underway...       there was an out-of-scale tiny ceiling light fixture, but the "Queen Anne" stained glass transom windows and doors, and the paneled walls and ceilings reminded me of a capiz shell globe I had seen at a discount import shop in San Francisco.  We had just moved from  the San Francisco Bay Area a few months earlier.  The globes resembled the street lamps along Powell St. in San Francisco by the St. Francis Hotel.     My brother Vic was then stationed with the Navy in San Francisco, and I had him buy and ship the capiz globe to Wilmington.  It was only a globe, so I needed to build and wire the internal electrical assembly, still with us after 57 years.   Here is the globe as it is now...   The  globe has influenced my ar...

  Armando the Armadillo Will He See His Shadow? Armando may or may not see his shadow on Groundhog Day from his home on a Florida golf course.  We won't know, because he lives in a gated community.  The little balls along the bottom show Armando rolling up to shield from the paparazzi.  My dasypus novemcitus (he has nine plates)  was inspired loosely by Albrecht Dürer's Rhinoceros.  

  "Bibliotoons" Occasionally when I edit the Delaware Bibliophiles Endpapers publication, I add a cartoon-like illustration to accompany an article. Appended to a short article by one of the DB members about the fun and camaraderie of road trips to book and paper ephemera fairs and events,  was this "bibliotoon" that I drew...     The original was an ink line sketch and I added the color digitally. To a DB member's report on a visit to several book fairs in London, I added my book version of London's Tower Bridge...    

  The Chickens Are Home to Roost 2 Caligula Caligula is another chicken now roosting in our dining room.  This is a smaller painting than Chanticleer, less stylized, and without an ornate frame.  Acrylic on canvas board. Here they are side-by-side...  

  The Chickens Are Home to Roost Chanticleer   Mary is fond of decorative chickens, so I painted this very stylized rooster, Chanticleer, for her.  Chantacleer lives in this ornate found frame. I usually sign my paintings with a monogram, frequently designed to fit the subject.  Here Chantacleer is signed with an RMW chicken monogram  

  The Cabbage Soup Diet An American Samizdat In the Soviet era dissident publication of banned and underground material was circulated as hand-made documents that came to be known as samizdat ( самиздат).  In America a fad diet of long standing circulates the same way.  Xerox copies of copies, carbon copies, hand copied, and now, of course, via the Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp and other social media.     The diet has been variously attributed to the Mayo Clinic, Sacred Heart Hospital, the US military, the Miami Heart Institute, and even Dolly Parton; none are true.  I have been unable to find its true origin, but it will circulate long after I'm gone. Don't take this posting as an endorsement, but the diet is an effective diuretic.