Tuesdays thoughts.........

Chen Khee Chee is the artist of this print. He lives in Duluth, Minnesota and teaches at the University there. He is a watercolor artist. We have had the print for two years and soon it will be framed and added to our dining room.


One other of my straggling frame jobs since the shop has been closed is this t-shirt. Above is the close up graphic that shows the ten different versions that a man has painted on this large rock. He has done one every year for the past ten years. His name is Ray Bubba Sorenson II. This rock sits on an intersection on some gravel roads in central Iowa and he started young painting on the rock to honor the American soldiers.


I call it sandwich framing as you get the front of the shirt to be flat and then you squeeze in the rest of it in the back of the frame. I place a piece at the back and it all gets put together looking neat and clean. Never go in and look between the front mat and the back piece to see how it looks inside the sandwich.
Bubba was nominated by his wife to the Ladies Home Journal to be the sexiest husband and he did win. I think he was on the cover of the magazine. Look up The Freedom Rock to see the paintings that he has done. I don't know exactly where the rock is but I know it is south of I35 not that far from here. He makes the news every year on tv.


A guy that I knew from teaching school stopped in today to see me. Doug had three kids in school and I had them all in class one time or another. The past ten years he would stop in at the frame shop and have work framed and we became good friends. It is a different kind of friendship as we don't go do things together, we just like to talk to each other.

He came bearing gifts today as we sat on the side porch and talked. He and his wife have a cabin on Lake Washburn in Minnesota and they had been there all summer. He first brought me a stick that he had dug out of a stream. It had been submerged for years and the beavers had chewed on both ends of it. I will photograph it later, but he thought I would like to put it into my garden some way.

He had stories of the summer on the lake that I enjoyed. He helped a mother fox keep herself fed while nursing three kits. He had fishing stories and stories of getting the dock out for the winter. Then he went back to the truck, since I didn't laugh at his stick, he brought me the three pieces of amethyst from his collection. He had broken it up and wanted me to have it for display in the garden. It is wonderful in color and has quartz pieces, flecks, throughout them.

We talked about our cats and the loss of his dog. He and I just chatted along. I don't see him often, just a couple of times a year, but when we do, we just talk like a couple of elderly men who have know each other for years. One other thing he brought me was a larger rock that has split, a clean break, and it is mostly iron ore. On one end, the formations looks like a horse's head. He thought I was quirky enough to like it and I do.

It is a busy life and just sitting down and talking to friends and cousins on Sunday was fun for us also. It was a get together as a cousin and his wife were home for a few days. A close school buddy and his wife were there also. All three of us attended school most of our years together. It was good to just sit around the table and remember, or try not to forget. We had a great visit and will not see each other again for a year. I could go visit the one who lives in Arizona, but not this year.
Thanks for stopping by........