Uh oh, look at Thomas Edison:
He forgot to take his medicine.

hellfire / heavenwater

One nice thing about chocolate is that the roach parts and rodent droppings blend so well with the color.

claptrap with a clicktrack

Don’t bolt your curry:
We’re in no hurry.

Books are usually considered more valuable when signed by the writer than by the reader.

Perhaps we should have based our infrastructure on fuel that was not poisonous.

Forget that film on Davy Crockett:
It just got shredded by the sprocket.

On one occasion, my parents were entertaining guests. My father was drunk, as usual; he was slathering chocolate cookies with butter and cramming them into his mouth. One guest, startled, said, “Hey, take it easy, Frank.” My father glared at him, and growled, mouth full, “You only live once.”

the autobiography of an autodidact

Let us tie a red balloon
To that gentleman’s bassoon.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

It’s another version of “Authors,” this time an undated deck from Whitman.  This one not only has dignified portraits of the selected writers, but a thumbnail sketch illustrating the book in question.  A charming extra touch, I think.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)

…that you can write things in a notebook?  Many stores offer packets of paper, held together with glue, thread, or wire spiral; and a selection of pens and pencils that you can use to make marks on the paper.  Simply open the notebook the way you would a laptop, and “make believe” that the bottom page is the keyboard, and the top page the screen.  Then, draw or write on the top page the message you would normally see on the screen.  This may seem strange to you at first; but notebooks use less electricity, still work if you spill drinks on them — and often cost less than even the cheapest laptop!

…that the ukulele is a valid musical instrument?  Some grumpy nay-sayers reject it as “culturally obsolete” or “guitar for dummies.”  But the “uke” has long been popular in Hawaii, Samoa, Japan, and many other places; and our South American neighbors play “cuatros” and “cavaquinhos” that are very similar.  Just because these people dress differently than you, or have skin that is darker than yours, doesn’t mean that their music is no good!

…that anti-intellectualism can make you stupider?  If you learn about a subject, or think things through before you act, you can actually make smarter choices and more effective decisions.  You may think that only a “brainiac” learns about his tools before using them; but screws hold better if you screw them in with a screwdriver, rather than pounding them with your shoe.  And reading street signs helps you from getting lost on the way to the store!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

This evocative image was taken in Shaver’s home in Wisconsin sometime in 1961 or 1962.  From left to right, it shows Richard Shaver, his mother Grace, Dorothy Shaver, and a friend, Richard Horton.  Dorothy is holding Horton’s daughter, and the photo was taken by Horton’s wife (sorry, I don’t know their names!).  As Horton says, “I don’t know if Dick ever commented on all the white stuff, but I can imagine to what he would ascribe it .”

I’m sure we’ll return to Shaver again; but that’s it for now.  And by the way, I neither ridicule nor romanticize him for his schizophrenia.  It’s a disease; like everyone, he did what he could with what life gave him.

(Posted by Doug Skinner; thanks to Richard Horton for the photo.)

In addition to his stories and his paintings, Shaver also regularly wrote poetry.  It was often published in a wonderfully unpredictable little magazine called Ray Palmer’s Forum, published by Shaver’s long-time editor, friend, and occasional adversary.

I believe this one, though, was unpublished.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Here’s another item from the Shaver household: a pretty little ashtray by Dot Shaver.  She signed it on the base, and identified it as “slab work” — a piece worked up from a slab of clay, rather than shaped on a wheel.

(Posted by Doug Skinner; thanks to Angela Alverson for the photo.)

Despite his mental problems, Richard Shaver seems to have had a relatively happy marriage with his wife Dorothy, or Dot. And he always praised her cooking in his letters.

Among my Shaver mementos is Dot’s hand-written cookbook. I’m intrigued by these recipes for fig wine and rhubarb wine. They sound like intriguing down-home concoctions. I haven’t tried them; if anyone wants to test them, let me know how they turn out.

For a drawing (probably by Shaver) from this notebook, see the post of 5/27/08. For more Shaver material, do visit Richard Toronto’s website, over here.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

This rock came from Richard Shaver’s studio, down in rural Arkansas.  It’s not one of the large rounded stones that he usually identified as rock books; it’s a small flat one.  I’m sure he gazed at it anyway; I invite you to do the same.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Ullage Group is particularly fond of the work of Richard Shaver, and likes to return to it from time to time.  This is one of those times; we’ll be posting a few items on Shaver this week.

For those unfamiliar with him, I’ll say (briefly) that he was quite active as a pulp writer in the late ’40s and  early ’50s.  Influenced by the fantasy writer Abraham Merritt, and by his own unusual beliefs (which were, in turn, probably largely due to schizophrenia), he published a stream of extraordinary stories about stunted beings living in giant underground caverns, ancient technology, and eccentric physics.  Later, he became fascinated with rocks; he became convinced that they were the books of an early race of giant sea people, and painted the images he saw in them.

There aren’t too many Shaver paintings around; but I have one of them, and never got around to posting a picture of it before.  Here it is.  It’s painted on wood; he usually used paint mixed with wax, soap, and other materials to mimic the texture of rock, but I don’t know what he used for this one.

(Posted by Doug Skinner; thanks to Angela Alverson for photographing it.)

We have here another Japanese deck: a regular deck of 52, with two jokers, all illustrated with cartoony animals.  The copy on the box is in Japanese, so I can’t tell you much about it.  Mixed in there, though, are the indications “Poplar” and “2008,” which I assume are the publisher and date.  You seem to have drawn one of the Jokers.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)