#SPORTALDISLEXICARTAPHOBIA- Part Two

   THE CARDIFF GIANT  remained buried in Bill Newell’s field for about a year. Then, on Hull’s instructions, Newell hired a couple of well diggers to look for water on his property. He had a specific spot in mind. On October 16, 1869 the well diggers struck something odd in the hole. Pretending to be flabbergasted by their mysterious find, Newell was well prepared to continue the charade. He set up a large tent and derrick over the hole and hoisted the giant to daylight. Word spread fast of the petrified giant “indian” found buried in Cardiff. Bill Newell charged 25 cents per head to view the unearthed curiosity. According to many accounts people came by the wagonload across three counties to get a peek at the new “wonder of the world.” George Hull was pleased. 

     It didn’t take long for the “experts” to weigh in. Established archeologists and paleontologists were not convinced or amused by the hoax. Academia decried the find as total “humbuggery.” But the theologians, preachers and townsfolk were not so sure it wasn’t the real deal. Remember The Book of Mormon? The populace was more than willing to suspend their disbelief and go along for the ride. Truth mattered little when there were so many people in town and in church that applauded the find. Drinks had to be served. Within two days Bill Newell doubled the price of admission to 50 cents and the crowds kept coming. George Hull sold his “interest” in the giant to a syndicate of local businessmen, who moved the giant to Syracuse for better viewing. P.T. Barnum caught wind of the phenomenon and obvious money making potential, offering the syndicate $50,000 for the sculpture. When the businessmen refused Barnum’s generous offer the great showman hired a man to replicate the giant in plaster and displayed his version in New York City as the REAL Cardiff Giant, calling the upstate giant a FAKE. Does the pattern sound familiar? 

Back to Mark Twain:

            

"This transcends everything! Everything that ever did occur — why, you poor blundering old 

fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing — you have been haunting a plaster cast of 

yourself — the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany !

"Well — I never felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold everything else and now the 

mean fraud has ended by selling his own ghost! My son, if there is any charity left in your heart 

for a poor friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. Think how you would feel if you had 

made such an ass of yourself." 

    Although the statement has many times been attributed to P.T. Barnum, it was the head of the Cardiff syndicate, David Hannum, who actually was quoted as saying “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Hannum sued Barnum for calling his giant a “fake” and after George Hull fessed up and went public with the hoax the case was thrown out of court. The judge declared that Barnum could not be sued for calling Hull’s hoax a fake or stopped from displaying a copy (fake) of said (original) fake giant. All the lies canceled each other out. What a piece!

Back in Cooperstown:

  In the summer of 1962 my grandfather knew he was dying. He wanted to retrace the path of his early family vacations with his eldest grandson—me. We packed up his 1950 Chevy and headed north. We stopped at the Catskill Game Farm, Ausable Chasm and a few places I can’t remember, ending up at Fort Ticonderoga. Then we turned around and weaved our way home via Cooperstown. At one point gramp was so sick he let me get behind the wheel and drive, while he crashed out in the back seat. I was ten years old and scared to death! 

    By the time we reached the Farmer’s Museum the old guy (five years younger than I am now) felt better and we took in the sights. I remember it like it was yesterday; entering that cool dark shed behind the tractor display, the quickening of my pulse in anticipation. “I got something to show you…” gramp said with a wink, pulling me by the sleeve, “You want to be an artist…..what do you think of that?” 

BOOK COVER- 2012-2013

#SPORTALDISLEXICARTAPHOBIA- Part One

“A pale glow stole over the Thing; gradually its cloudy folds took shape — an arm 

appeared, then legs, then a body, and last a great sad face looked out of the vapour. Stripped of 

its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed above me!”- Mark Twain A Ghost Story 1903

   I know most of you think I never made a dime off my art and am so obscure as to never get invited to speak on the subject of my work in polite society. For the most part you are correct. But once in a blue moon I do get a gig. One such occasion was an invite to lecture at my alma mater, The San Francisco Art Institute. I had spent a small fortune self-publishing a monograph on a couple of years worth of work and after sending it to everyone I knew in the art world and academia (with little or no response) Tony Labat and S.F.A.I. were kind enough to take pity on me and extend an invite to do a public lecture. Tony told me it needn’t be scholarly nor academic but the front office recommended I come up with something intellectually catchy for the lecture’s title. Hence Sportaldislexicartaphobia- the fear of visual art.

    Unlike fruit, I actually have no fear of art, but the first “real” work of art I spied was a little traumatic. So I used this experience of shock and fear to anchor my trajectory into obscurity and inspire subsequent lecture. 

    

    Let me go back again into a little Catskill history. The “giant” that Mark Twain refers to in the quote from A Ghost Story is actually a sculpture or more accurately, the ghost of one; the first piece of original art I ever saw. It is also “one of the most famous hoaxes in American history”— The Cardiff Giant. My earliest experience at a museum was as a ten year old, in The Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, viewing the Cardiff Giant. This also included a recitation of the story by my grandfather. A docent couldn’t have done it better. 

     Cardiff, New York is a little hamlet off Rt. 11A  just south of Syracuse, around where Cassandra Warner grew up— maybe not Catskills proper—but close enough. It’s farm county and in 1869, just after the Civil War, there wasn’t much going on in Cardiff. But, what was present was an intense religiosity left over from the revivalism of the the Burned Over District in the 1830’s. Google it. I don’t have time to go into that just yet. Suffice it to say many spirited discussions took place at church socials and town meetings regarding religion. Most residents were of the evangelical Christian variety, but a few members of the town took an opposing view. One such contrarian was a tobacconist named George Hull. Hull was an atheist. One evening at a Methodist “meeting” Hull got into a heated argument with a congregant over a particular Biblical passage, Genesis 6:4:          

“Then the Lord said, "My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.”

    Why an atheist was at a Methodist meeting is anyone’s guess. Probably it was out of boredom. Like Carlo McCormick says in the upcoming documentary by Roderick Angle, MIKE OSTERHOUT AND THE CHURCH OF THE LITTLE GREEN MAN, premiering at the Woodstock Film Festival sometime in October, “Boredom is the reason why most things get started…” Too much solipsism? Naw. The CLGM wants to stay small and resist boredom. Don’t tell anybody about it. Shush. But staying small and un-boring is not the goal of most other religions. 

    One of the world’s fastest growing “major” religions is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The big, old, established Christian franchises like Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism are all on the down slide. Methodist churches can be picked up for a song. I got one! Judaism is a not looking for members  (synagogues are also going cheap) and Islam maintains steady (if not a bit fanatical) membership. Mormonism or the L.D.S. church, on the other hand, was started in America, the petri dish of capitalism. In 1830, just down the road in Palmyra, NY, Mormonism was birthed by a sketchy treasure hunter named Joseph Smith. Smith’s outlandish Book of Mormon has as much (or more) entertaining lunacy in it as does the Bible. They’ve made Broadway shows out of both. I don’t know why but Mormonism was, and still is, a big hit. The Methodists were not immune to the Mormon tentacle in the late 1860’s. Anyhow, George Hull wanted to teach the churchy types a lesson or two in blind faith and Seeds of Anak fundamentalism. He’d expose their crazy gullibility with art. The first step was to get some supplies and make a plan—conceptual art at its core.

     George Hull had a massive block of gypsum shipped from Iowa to Chicago, telling the quarry it was for a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Then, in Chicago he hired a German stone cutter by the name of Edward Burghardt to fabricate a ten foot long, anatomically correct man with his left hand behind his back and his right hand just above the penis…no Abraham Lincoln. The torso a bit twisted and the stone difficult to work with, the giant ended up in quiet repose, calm and ready for his fifteen minutes of fame. He looked like he’d been waiting all along. Hull either instructed that the beard and hair have curls and classical Roman features or Burghardt took it upon himself. In either case, if “giants” walked the earth in antiquity they were definitely white men. It was no David but still not bad for an out of work immigrant mason. 

     After sufficiently “distressing” the sculpture to look like the ancient man had “petrified,” Hull paid to have the final product crated up, put on a rail car and sent to his cousin Bill Newell who lived on an isolated farm in Cardiff, NY. There cousin Bill buried it behind his farmhouse and awaited further instructions…….to be continued.  

MATRIX- red pill

FRUCTOPHOBIA

“Fructophobia (from fructus, Latin for “fruit”) is the fear of fruit.” According to experts people fear fruit because they are afraid of ingesting seeds that may “germinate inside one’s body or getting infested with insects or worms.” I’ve been afraid/disgusted by fruit my entire life—some fruits more than others. What the hell does this have to do with the Catskills you ask? Well, just the other day Samm and I were invited to go over to Sullivan County’s FIRST U-pick orchard to participate in a community pick, cocktails and pot-luck at Majestic Farms. Samm was more than down to go but I put the brakes on. No way I was gonna participate. I not only have no memory of ever eating an apple, I don’t even like to touch one. The prospect of trudging through an orchard, possibly stepping on a rotten piece of fruit, fills me with dread and anxiety. The community at large finds my phobia ridiculously entertaining and doesn’t miss a chance to bust my balls or attach other reasons (like homophobia) for my intense gag-reflex and absolute terror of bananas. I love plenty of homos but will run from a peeled banana. 

     You may find this odd, but I’ve never googled “fear of fruit” until about twenty minutes ago. Once again (like the Orgy Dome) The New York Post has the scoop. We live in a society that constantly tells us to “face your fear.” “People think there must be some childhood onset,” phobia expert Corrie Ackland reports, “some single event that ‘caused’ the phobia. In fact phobias can emerge any time in a person’s life, without obvious reason.” I’ve lived with my fruit phobia for almost seven decades. I do this by having many rules that govern my intake of fruit. I won’t eat an apple, but love “well cooked” apple pie. I won’t eat an orange, but orange juice is fine. Some fruits like peaches, pears, cantaloupes, pineapple, grapes, bananas and any kind of fruit salad are avoided at all costs. Berries (except strawberries) are okay. That’s the basics.

   Plenty of people are terrified of spiders, snakes, cockroaches, dogs, germs, closed spaces, blood or flying in an airplane. The Post reports that Trump has “bathmophobia,” or the fear of stairs or ramps. The WH has no comment. Look at him clutch the rail on that descent down the gold escalator, as he warns of Mexican “rapists and murderers.” Xenophobia? That diagnosis is an easy one. Maybe his distress increases as he feels himself losing control during the descent.

    Back in the Catskills I’ve had to navigate many a dinner party, cider get together and orchardist’s garden party over the years, not exactly “facing” my fears, but maneuvering around them. I even have a sculpture with an apple tree growing out of the roof. You may find it comical (or pitiful) but I was not at all sure that I could pick the apples when they grew to beautiful ripeness. Contextualizing my fruit as social sculpture helped me with my deep seated fear. I gently cradled the apple in my hand, steadied the thin trunk of the tree (of the rose family), twisted the fruit and…… 

$ORRY- Mountaindale Social Sculpture Park

SMALL ENOUGH TO FIX

     Like I said, my earliest memories are of riding out a hurricane with my grandfather at Wolf Lake in the eastern Catskills, on August 31, 1954, the day my brother Bird was born. On that day Hurricane Carol whipped Long Island and some bands drifted north into the mountains. This would explain why I was with my grandfather at the cabin. My parents were obviously busy. I was two years old. Could I possibly have that early of a memory or had I just been told the story so many times I think I remember? In either case, Bird, the cabin and I are still here…a little worse for the wear.

    In those sixty-five years since Carol hit, the Catskills have changed much and not changed at all. Geologically speaking it is the same place Stephen Crane described as a “county….formed by a very reckless and distracted giant who, observing the tract of tipped up and impossible ground, stood off and pelted trees and boulders at it. Not admiring the results of his labors he set off several earthquakes under it and tried to wreck it. He succeeded beyond his utmost expectations, undoubtedly.”  Cole and Cropsey may have been the propagandists of the northern Catskills, but Stephen Crane was our guy here on the southern tier. Born in 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, Crane’s family moved to Port Jervis when he was very young and his earliest published work reflects all that was gritty Sullivan County in that post-Civil War era. His writing is filled with those feeder pond tangles, grizzled deer hunters and their interaction with the city visitor. As my buddy Carlo McCormick put it, “Sullivan County, our home, famously lives and dies  on the exchange between these worlds, by joining city based travelers with an escape to fantasies of private retreats, the great outdoors, life on the farm…..”simpler times.” 

    Another very early memory I have is of a sign on the Quickway (Future 86)— WELCOME CASINOS! This was the 1950’s. I didn’t even know what a casino was. It would take a lifetime to actually get a casino in the county. After two years in operation, it has gone bankrupt. The dream came a little late. In the 50’s and 60’s giant, colorful billboards lined the highway hyping Borsht Belt comedians like Jerry Lewis and “high end” hotels like Grossingers, Browns, The Concord, The Pines, and a slew of others. Bungalows were everywhere and we couldn’t wait to get to Canal Road and spend the summer without a phone, TV or potable water. We only lived twenty miles away in Montgomery, but we too were tourists. The hotels are all gone, the bungalows are now Hasidic enclaves and the lakes are high end, year round communities. Yet, the “exchange between worlds” continues at an accelerated pace.   

Here’s a recent email I sent on a chain of my friends, trying to give the shopkeepers in Mountaindale a little local history:         

     

   For some perspective I have an article from June 28, 1998 Times Herald Record on the efforts to revitalize Mountaindale by the Resnicks and Schmitts. One old time resident talked of the heyday- "In the 60’s there were two stop lights. All shops were open. There were three butcher shops, two bakeries and a drug store.” By 1979 it “was a ghost town.” When I moved up in 1995 it was a scary mess with drug slinging in the open market. Since 1998 the efforts to bring this town back to viable community have been met with fits and starts of money and enthusiasm. This latest effort has been the most successful and I think will have long lasting effects. As Raymond calls us, I am a “concerned” community member. I pay no rent, but I do participate, display my work and support the efforts of all. The best quote from that article is from Erna Hutchinson: “This town has always been small enough to fix.” Time, community and concerted effort will win out without finger pointing or defensiveness. Ba and Me was packed Monday night. The Fall will rock! 

“Small enough to fix” should be printed on a banner across the highway at the border of Sullivan County. The renovations continue. 

BURNER RULES AND REGS. 2019

WELCOME TO THE ORGY DOME

    Leave it to my old friend Ted Rosenthal to make the connection between East Coast pastoralism and the West Coast phenomenon of Burning Man. I’d forgotten all about the “burner” scene, but Ted’s note led me to google, which informed me that today is the last day of that annual week long suspension of the grind for rock stars, celebs, lost souls and corporate types in the Nevada desert. I see the connection. Instagram influencers wield their iphones the same way 19th century painters captured the light of Overlook Mountain with the tiny shepherd or woodcutter in the foreground. Only now it’s the toothy grin of some supermodel or celeb’s daughter (getting ready for an Ivy League education due to mommy and daddy’s pay offs) who commands our attention. The landscape looming above the ingenue is compelling and inviting. Yearning Man  makes for great backdrop.

    I’ve never been, nor do I want to go. Woodstock and the first Lollapalooza were enough for me. I don’t even like to go to the movies. Sitting in crowds, with a bunch of creepy strangers freaks me out. But, I can’t deny the fact that loads of people (thousands attend) see this as their personal foray into legit sub-culture. These are tourists to the fringe. I live on it year round. One of the best reports I’ve read of this year’s fest was by Stephanie Gutmann of The New York Post, titled “#MeToo’s bad news for Burning Man’s Orgy Dome.” Like going to the movies, I also avoid orgies. But I know a few who either go as participants or voyeurs. Gutmann quoted somebody on Reddit, who visited this year’s Orgy Dome who said after being “issued a ticket, a wrist band and briefing about obtained consent, visiting the Orgy Dome “felt more like I was waiting to pick a lawn mower up at Sears.” Welcome to the Orgy Dome 2019.

   It seems that the sexual underground is disappearing as rapidly as the rainforest. Societal “rebooting” of correctness has put the deviant in as precarious a position as that suction-toed tree frog. How can one break the rules by adhering to so many? Counterculture gatherings are now strictly regimented, reflecting society’s expectations, creating “safe” spaces, denying the real purpose of communal subversion. Sex was one of the last bastions of the rule breaker. No more. “Number 69…..number 69 please pick up your condoms, lube and consent form at the courtesy booth.”        

    

    Nymphs, satyrs and fairies abound in 19th century European painting, but are somehow absent in The Hudson River School. The Catskills seem to be a sexless place. The most we can hope for is a bee on a flower’s pestle—the metaphor of sex. Of course this changed over the years. The 20th century brought bootlegging, casinos, strip clubs and brothels to the mountains. And even in Cole’s time I’m sure there was a sexual underground. It just didn’t make it into the paintings. Today that tradition continues.   

     One particular local aficionado of the small town group grope is someone I’ll call “Dirty Dan.” He periodically shows up (late) to CLGM church services, scantily clad young ladies in tow, complains that “church isn’t what it used to be,” trolls the crowd for new meat and eventually leaves in the “rapey bus,” to do God knows what in the privacy of his own home. This is the Catskill Mountain orgy scene in the 21st Century, and even Dirty Dan is uber-conscious of the rules and regs. when it comes to consensual group sex. I hear he makes sure to lecture newbies that “no” means “no” and that even by watching a little too intently one can be required to sign a consent form. Voyeurs be forewarned. It’s a new world. As the Post reported regarding the burners, “Just because you hugged someone yesterday doesn’t mean you can surprise them with a hug today….Ask every time.” I’m assuming “hug” is a euphemism. Happy Labor Day! Always ask first.

THE COURSE OF EMPIRE- Desolation by Thomas Cole 1836

ECOCRITICISM IN THE AGE OF DESOLATION

    To most the blog as art form is as about as far from literature as a cold hotdog is from haute-cuisine. It’s a chauvinistic attitude that misses the point of stringing words together and self-publishing without the burden of economics, editing, support, or critique. I come from the school of the opinionated columnist and have always loved the freedom of writing without editors…..or many times readership. I’m used to creating without audience. Drawings go in the flat file. Paintings are completed, wrapped and stashed in storage. Songs are recorded at Outlier Studios, lost in Josh Druckman’s soon to be obsolete computer formats, never to be heard again. And multiple blogs are tossed into the vast ether of the internet cloud. When I’m gone the blogs will be the most easily accessible, possibly my only legacy on this plane.

    Deforestation, climate change, global warming, suburban sprawl, and the false narrative of the pastoral have been reflected in the written word in America since Moravian brother George Henry Loskiel wryly  observed that "The severity of climate in America will abate in proportion to its culture and population.”  This was 1794. Loskiel was soaking up the weather in America and referencing the writings of Roman historian Tacitus, who had made similar observations in Europe in his day. Tacitus died in 120 AD. Concern over human influence on climate and the landscape has been going on for a very long time. The straight line and the campfire destroys much. But we are still here, so why worry?

    We are now in the time of critical mass— of doom and desolation. The metaphor of that cancer on my shoulder is a good one. It’s only now that it’s been spooned out and the pain in my back reminds me not to lift my arm or jerk off with my left hand, that I’m truly conscious of the danger. A little pain is a good thing. To be an ecocritic in this time of doom (Trump) is literally to be a voice in the wilderness, the faint mutterings of Cassandra drowned out by denial and the  thumping oil rig. Like trying to stem the flow of Dollar General stores, the first word that comes to mind is helpless.

    Our micro-climate here in the Catskills, one of the most benign weather systems in the U.S., rich with water, devoid of disastrous tornados, floods and hurricanes, breeds complacency. Sure the winters can be too long and aggravating, but on the whole we are safe on the high ground. There is no pain. But, all we have to do is look a little closer to see the changes in the skin. Something mysterious is growing on my (and many other’s) roof shingles. Long winters and extremely wet springs are peeling paint and taking their toll on the deer and turkey populations; boosting the plight of the predator. Half drowned fawns and molding turkey eggs make for easy meals for bear, coyotes, fishers, raccoons and crows. The weedy species are thriving. Change is in the air.

    To be an ecocritic is to be ignored, lampooned and satirized as a free range tree-hugger one step removed from the geek. All you have to do is look at the attack ads of right wing media aimed at Alexandra Octavio-Cortez, “the Squad,” or a 16 year old Swedish teenager to witness the mean-spirited hypocrisy. I am not on the front lines like climate warrior Greta Thunberg or her minions. But there is a place for all. The great forces of capitalism, global real estate development and fossil fuel extraction cannot be opposed without a concerted effort across the board. It may look hopeless and maybe it is, but for at least a couple of weeks I can’t do much more than sit on the couch, write and criticize as the hurricane approaches, the Dollar General stores spread and the Amazon burns. Maybe it will have a small effect. That cancer removed from my shoulder reminds me how fragile the illusion is.