Prelude to Eau Claire Chalkfest

So the thing to understand here is that I work nights, and I don't get done until 12:30 am.  Typically I go to bed at 4 am; this is wired into me so I have a hard time getting to sleep before 4 am.  So the deal last Chalkfest was get done with work at 12:30 am, go home get to sleep around 4am, then get up around 5:30am to make sure I am in Eau Claire for the 8 am start time.  This year was going to be different I took the day before off, and the plan was to go up Friday and camp out that night.  The logic being even if I couldn't get to sleep until late at least I wouldn't have to get up quite so early.                                                           Another thing to understand is that last weekend it had been discovered theives in CA and KS had been using my debit card number, so I didn't have my new card yet.                                                            So I call the campgrounds where I am hoping to stay before I leave, and they say they have some spots available, but it is first come first serve.  So I get up there, and I am told they just gave the last campsite to the older couple, who were in front of me and that I was out of luck unless I had reserved.  So I decide to try to find a hotel.  I have 95 cash and my checkbook.  First hotel refuses to take a check, so I go to a second and they are fully booked.  As I am leaving that hotel I hear a screeching noise and smoke is coming out from under the hood of my car.  So I pull over to the side and turn off my car.  I pop the hood to see if it is on fire and to try to see if I can tell where the smoke is coming from.  Then I call Dad because I haven't the foggiest what I'm doing.  Dad has me check for water and condensation thinking maybe I bust like a water hose, and that the smoke was actually steam.  I don't see anything like that, and I am getting pretty freaked out.  So Dad volunteers to make the three hour drive up to see if he can figure it out.                                                    So I am waiting.  I did walk around a bit.  Finally I get my camp chair out and am sitting by the car (it was really hot in the car).  The guy who's house I am parked by gets curious why I am sitting out there and comes out to talk to me.  I tell him what had happened with the car, so he offers to take a look.  He looks it over and says the water stuff all looked fine and that he isn't sure what is wrong, but he doesn't think it will be an easy fix.  The guy is super nice and tells me it is good I couldn't get a room at that hotel because they have bed bugs there, and that it is a pretty nasty place.  He tells me if I want to sit in his yard in his yard in the shade while I wait for my Dad that is okay.  He even offers me pop.  So Dad gets there and I tell him what that guy had said.  Dad looks those things over too and concurs and he says well it could be the timing chain, which would be incredibly bad.  Dad had told me before this that it is important to know in older vehicles when the manufacturers recommend changing it (based on the odometer) because if it goes bad it will basically destroy the engine.  Anyways so Dad decides to check out the timing belt (something different) first.  He notices a number written on the case and he says he thinks that is when it was changed, so he takes it off just to see and says it looks fine.  It is getting kind of late so we decide to track down a hotel.  Dad says it could also be something with the air conditioner, but he is also talking about maybe getting a U haul thing and towing it back to his place to work on.      So next day I have him drop me off at Chalkfest and I give him my phone (my Dad doesn't have a cell phone)  My logic being that if he needed to look up info on the car or track down a part store my phone could be a resource for him.  So about noon Dad shows up at Chalkfest all smiles, and he says it was an easy fix.  A belt that powered the air conditioner was malfunctioning, so since the air conditioner doesn't work anyways he just cut it off.  No more screeching no more smoking, and he said I should get better gas mileage now.  Dad really saved my bacon.

Tidal whirlpool on the Mississippi

I went out and drew for fu

n today, although it was kind of a frustrating day as an artist, it seemed like no one was figuring out what it was.  Some of the weirdest guesses were a face, and a fern.  One lady had a little boy with her after I said it was a tidal whirlpool the boy said that makes sense with the river right there.  The lady then told him he didn't understand that it wasn't about the water it was a soul portal.  I guess I didn't understand either.  Oh and my Mom went with infected dog bite for what it looked like to her.

Artspire- La Crosse Chalkfest

Well I think I am guilty of biting off more than I could chew.  This is the Creation of Michelangelo; I took third place for it.  The judge did say it was the most original idea.  The kids liked it, and a story teller who was performing, kind of incorporated it into her routine.  I think my favorite though were the people who stopped to look at it then started talking about evolution.  I had had some half baked evolution thoughts when I was forming the idea.  If I got some people talking about evolution I view that as a good thing.

Turtles

Getting ready for the La Crosse Chalkfest in June.  Going with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thing, which a friend requested last year.  I have got to resolve the hand.

A study in hot air and ego

The image came to me first.  Then I wasn't sure if this represented Trump's over inflated ego, or the fact that hot air is abundant in him.  Then I realized the ego is direct result of the abundant hot air.  Middle finger to Trump for his plan to cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts.

Tidal Whirlpool Study I

This next summer I really want to draw a tidal whirlpool ripping apart the La Crosse Pier at Riverside Park.  This is a preliminary study for it.

Bye Bye Paris Agreement

This is still the subject of speculation.  Given the fact that Trump is extremely mercurial.  At any rate in the past Trump has described climate change as a hoax.  I learned on Science Friday yesterday that he is appointing Myron Ebell to lead the EPA.  Ebell believes human activity does not cause climate change, and also believes the Paris Agreement was unconstitutional.  I don't understand the knee jerk reaction Republicans seem to have to green energy.  They seem to like to tout Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.  In which Rand portrays a world that has exhausted most of it's natural resources.  Rand doesn't go to renewable energy as solution, although I do not think solar and wind power were around then.  It only makes sense, even if you don't believe in climate change.  Fossil fuels are not infinite, it only makes sense to develop renewable energy so we do not find ourselves in Rand's nightmare world.

While I am on the topic of Atlas Shrugged I do not think Donald Trump is Dagny Taggart in this story.  He strikes me as closer to her brother.  The brother who inherited most of the family money and the family business.  He is a destroyer, and it is Dagny who must continually fix his blunders behind the scenes.  People often mistake Atlas Shrugged as just being about a bunch of millionares who retreat from the world depriving the world of their grandeur.  They often over look that they were the innovators.  After all the greatest of them John Galt was not a wealthy man in the real world.  What was the primary question driving this book "Who is John Galt?"  John Galt was an ingenious man, who in real time worked as a low level railroad worker, not a wealthy man.  America's working class needs to stop looking to the indolent rich to save them and start looking towards themselves.