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Our Inktober special feature of Halloween-adjacent pen-and-ink drawings continues with this enigmatic golden orchid monastery piece which I drew with colored inks on yellow paper.
Lately I have been drawing a series of intricate altarpiece-style compositions after the style of Medieval illuminators (whose seminal contributions to art, culture, and media have been underappreciated because of the post-Vasari cult of celebrity). Hopefully writing about these illustrations in these posts will help contextualize the themes I am trying to highlight.
Here is a little monastic microcosm of the world. In one monastery, a white-haired abbot lords it over his little flower novices. In a sister monastery, the mother superior and her votaries carefully send out an intimate message to the monks by means of technology. Sundry lizard people, extinct animals, and cloaked figures roam about in the space between the two houses as a rain of yellow orchid blossoms falls down from the heavens.
To my mind, the most important part of this composition is the tiny strip of nature in the foreground–a little ecosystem of weeds, wildflowers, seeds, nemotodes, myriapods, and maggots (who are furiously breaking down a mouse skull). The human world of sly courtships, status posturing, and religious grandstanding grows up out of this substrate and pretends to be superior to it (while actually being entirely dependent on the microscopic cycles of life). All of the pompous & made-up things which humankind uses to dress up our savage primate drives do not change the fact that ecosystems are of paramount importance.
The religions of Abraham (among others) put animals and the natural world at the bottom of their moral hierarchy. I believe they are ultimately doomed because of this stupid outlook. Whether they will take us all to a garbage-strewn grave with them remains an open question.
Happy Saint Valentine’s Day! To my shame I realize that last week I got all caught up in the breathtaking (ly amoral) spectacle of international sport and I failed to put up any new content during these winter doldrums. Therefore, here is my latest ink drawing which features a magnificent European wisent carefully weighing the moral arguments behind various species of monotheism (represented, respectively, by a cardinal from the developing world, a dodgy Mithraic priest in a tree, and a little person blowing a shofar). Although these characters could conceivably offer the noble zubr spiritual solace of one sort or another, my personal opinion is that the wood bison is likely to be most drawn towards some sort of personal animism as championed by the sentient tree, the condor, or the omnipresent flatfish. Kindly note the nightjar hiding by the oil lantern in the left foreground!
Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, I have been working on drawing with ink using a steel nib. Of all the drawing media I have used, pen and ink provides the most expressive and beautiful lines–provided you can avoid blotting, smearing, or spilling the ink. Alas, it is exceedingly easy to destroy your drawings (and your wardrobe) through the least mishap with the INDELIBLE ink. In the spirit of the masters of medieval illumination (who also utilized pen and ink), I have been drawing a series of strange floral monastic people–well, perhaps it is a bit unclear if they are people or paphiopedilums. In the picture above, a loving deity of growth irrigates the sentient crops as a kindly sister looks on. Beneath the grass, a caecilian hunts for destructive grubs among the roots and mycelia. Speaking of mycelia, kindly note the little gnome collecting mushrooms. In the heavens, a pelican flies by with a fish struggling in its beak while a bat-winged putto plays religious music on a lyre. The odd-man out in the composition is the friendly ring-tailed lemur who seems perplexed by this harmonious tableau (surely this can’t be Madagascar), but takes in in stride with sanguine primate good cheer.
This second drawing is more complicated and harder to parse out. A little chapter of nuns have left their onion-domed convent to luxuriate in the heavenly effulgence. I feel like that aerobic-looking fairy may well be a lay-sister. Unfortunately, their repose is disturbed by a big, stiff, skinny mummy which is just lyin’ around on the lawn. Who on earth left it there and why? Also, why does the mummy have a mummified flatfish? The day is additionally marred by the presence two faceless apparitions to the extreme right. Drifting through the air everywhere are little zygote-spores of some sort (or are they little seeds of the flower people). It is good to see that life finds a way, even if the sisters are putatively uninterested in reproduction. Also there is an ermine (the very symbol of purity and moderation in Christian art) who is looking quite closely at a banana split.
I am pleased at the way that using black ink and white ink gives these peculiar allegories a feeling of dimensional form. Speaking of which, drawing with sumi ink this way also gives a literal 3 dimensional aspect to the work (albeit a slight one). If you run your fingers over these drawings, all of the lines are palpable and i had to photograph them multiple times because of little shadows and strange reflections cast by the raised ink.
Hey, remember long ago when Ferrebeekeeper was obsessed with the many-eyed Greek mythological monster Argus? We need to get back to some dark mythology this winter…but before we do that, lets take a look at the creature which reminded me of Hera’s loyal monster (one of many, actually, but this guy somehow escaped my first post about speckled animals named for the dead guardian). This is Mangina Argus aka “the crotalaria podborer” (blech! since when are common names even harder to say then scientific nomenclature?), a hungry moth which lives from the South China Sea all the way through the Himalayas and down into Southern India. The crotalaria podborer is known for, um, boring into crotalaria pods which make it a minor agricultural pest, since a few species of crotalaria (a sort of legume) are used as green manure to fix nitrogen into overextended croplands. We aren’t really here to talk about the moth though, but instead to admire its pinkish vermilion wings and beguiling spots! What a beautiful little lepidopteran!
There is one last daunting task for this miserable year. For Ferrebeekeeper’s annual 2021 obituaries, I promised to write an obituary for my grandfather, Robert Clarence Pierson Jr., who died on October 23rd, 2021…and the task has proved to be entirely daunting! When I was a child, Grandpa was my hero, since his far-flung James-Bond-style life seemed to so thoroughly epic and exotic–and characteristic of the triumphs and excesses of the 20th century. But now, in the squalor and waste of 2021, it seems equally impossible to write about him…for some of the same reasons. It is like writing about the career of some ancient Roman tribune or Chinese sage who accidentally crashed through into this debased era of social media and Kardassians and national disintegration…
Robert Clarence Pierson Jr. was born in 1924, at Blue Knob, a hamlet (if even that) in Clay County West Virginia. He was extremely premature, and his surprise arrival so discomfited all parties that the house ended up burning down! Great Grandma Virgie put the tiny baby in a drawer and he was almost stepped on by an anxious horse!
Thereafter Grandpa attended the one room school at Blue Knob and then the High School at Clay where he graduated as valedictorian in 1941. Since he grew up adjacent to West Virginia’s hunting, mining, drilling, and lumbering trades (with their sundry dangerous tools) his childhood adventures had an exciting frontier quality to them. Frankly, they sounded like a Fleischer cartoon (wherein a rocket powered sledge, cask of black powder, or steamer trunk filled with horseshoes is always on hand at exactly the right moment). Perhaps some of this was also thanks to Great Grandpa Clarence’s indulgence (Great Grandpa ran the local lumber mill and was becoming adept at the Democratic party politics) and also to Great Grandma, who was always willing to drop everything and bake a chocolate pie for him.
Grandpa attended West Virginia University until the war-effort called on him. He began his army career as a paratrooper but, thanks to his foreign language and memorization skills, he quickly moved to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. In the European theater of World War II, Grandpa served in the peninsular campaign in Italy. Because of his facility with languages, communications, and codework, Grandpa flew behind enemy lines and he was in Rome when Rome was liberated by the allies (I asked him about the granular details of this operation and he said his outfit painted their airplane to look like a German airplane and then just landed at the airport…and all of the relevant Italians winked at them and looked the other way). After liberating Rome, Grandpa headed into the Balkans to help the Serbs with their anti-German activities. Then, once victory was achieved in Europe, he switched theaters and went to Burma, where he was impressed by the um, fervor of the Kachin resistance fighters.
After World War II, Grandpa married his university sweetheart, Constance Faye Wellen (better known as Grandma Connie). The OSS was disbanded a month after the war was over, but Grandpa took up a foreign career with its successor agency. He also brushed up on language and social sciences at the University of Chicago and Stanford, before heading abroad again. Language was grandpa’s greatest gift, and, as far as I could tell, he knew English, Latin, French, Javanese, Dutch, Arabic, and maybe a bit of German & Vietnamese.
The way the Cold War ended seems inevitable to us now, however in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, this was anything but true, and those decades were characterized by worldwide proxy conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union which took place everywhere but burned brightest in portions of the world recovering from 19th and early 20th century European colonization.
Thus, while everyone else came back from the war to bobbysoxers, beach boys, and suburban ranches, Grandpa was first in India, and then in Egypt, Somalia (which he doubted could ever be welded together effectively), and Kenya. He was in the Belgian Congo during the independence crisis when it violently transformed into Zaire. Grandpa was a master of the cocktail niceties of the 60s and he told me that he would mix drinks for Patrice Lumumba and Lumumba’s cronies. In his cups, Lumumba would enthuse about glorious plans of pan-African unity and talk about how the movement would kill all Europeans, “but not you, Bob, since you make the drinks!” Grandpa would laugh, but, in reality, his closest Congolese friends were among the Baluba (a rival Congolese ethnicity which Lumumba had antagonized with violent crackdowns and pogroms). Later when the Congo blew apart in full-blown crisis, my grandmother, mother, and uncle all fled as refugees, but Grandpa stayed in the nation to ensure that it did not become a client state of the Soviet Union no matter what the cost.
From the Congo, Grandpa moved on to Indonesia which was also vacillating between the great cold war powers. One of my favorite stories involves how the United States built an elaborate new Washington embassy for the Indonesians which was filled with listening devices. As the only team man who could speak Javan fluently, Grandpa got to translate, but all they learned was Sukarno’s enthusiasm for the distaff charms of American actresses…particularly how much the Indonesian strongman wanted to sleep with Zsa Zsa Gabor. Sigh…
Grandpa left the foreign service for a time to work on local projects back in West Virginia, but he returned to the field to work in Vietnam during the sixties and seventies. Some of my favorite tales from Grandpa involve his stories of drinking out of great earthenware vessels with bronze straws and plotting with Hmong warlords (he was enormously impressed by the Hmong, and the North Vietnamese, but had some reservations about the South Vietnamese leadership). Although he tried as hard as he could to solve everyone’s problems in Vietnam, I believe his proudest contribution was as a gardener. He said that in Saigon he was astonished by the markets filled with fruits and vegetables which he didn’t recognize, but that there were also things which were missing, so he took the State Department’s credit card and ordered a giant box of seeds. Thereafter he was always peddling squashes, pumpkins, gourds, maize, melons, and suchlike North American seeds to add to Vietnamese agriculture (and indeed they are now part of the culture and cuisine).
Speaking of culture, one of Grandpa’s early mentors, Arturo, was an intelligence officer in Southeast Asia who lived a flamboyant expat lifestyle and suggested to Grandpa that shrewd intelligence personnel in the foreign service should collect art. Not only did this pursuit require one to learn the culture, language, and perspective of new nations, but it also provided an automatic reason for being overseas, and a pretext for traveling to all sorts of strange locations to meet peculiar characters. Plus, as a sort of bonus, one would wind up with a collection of beautiful and interesting artworks. Grandpa collected Congolese and Indonesian oil paintings and, particularly, Chinese porcelain (so, if you have ever wandered why I am always trying to understand the glorious arts of China in this blog, I guess it is a cultural legacy from Arturo, some 1950s spy whom I never met).
I wanted to properly write about Grandpa’s foreign service career which was extensive and illustrious, but all of this makes him sound like some dark puppetmaster (his Indonesian sobriquet was “Wayang” since he had the same handsome sharp features as the Indonesian version of the hero Arjuna). However Grandpa retired from statecraft and the affairs of nations in 1974, the same year I was born.
He and grandma lived in suburban Maryland by the Chesapeake Bay and their cat Pharaoh (AKA Faro), a magnificent predator of the Chesapeake Bay swamp (who was, hilariously as white as an arctic fox). Grandpa was always trying to feed or heal various strays and mongrels and plant his own paradisiacal garden to rival the beauties of South East Asia (although hurricanes of ever growing frequency would always blow down his beautiful trees). Some of my happiest memories of childhood involve exploring the Bay with Grandpa in his rowboat and catching blue crabs, or having plum battles with the tiny Italian prune plums from his little orchard.
It was fun to look at his art collection (and his collection of exotic weaponry from Africa and Asia) but it was even more fun to spend summer vacation puttering around the Chesapeake or driving around Washington and Baltimore in his preposterous vehicle, an enormous Chevrolet Impala station wagon of the late seventies which was about 45 feet long and which looked like a hearse the color of a raincloud. Sadly, in that era, GM lavished minimal attention on frivolous details like engines, and so his new car’s motor exploded not long after purchase. Undeterred, Grandpa took the hulk over to a chopshop in Glen Burnie and told them to put “something powerful” in it, which is how he had a powder blue bulldozer in the unlikely form of a station wagon.
Grandpa loved religion and was drawn to it, and when I was growing up, he would beguile me by telling me the stories of what was happening in the paintings on his wall–epic tales from the Mahabharata or from ancient China. Yet it was clear he could see through the dogmatic aspects of faith and was most attracted to spirituality as a furtherance of human concerns through sophisticated allegorical confabulation. To be more plain, I think he was astonished that while nation-states were always desperately struggling to coerce people to do things, holy men could come along with a beautiful story which would cause people to eagerly participate in ridiculous ventures which ran contrary to their own self-interest. I would like to write about how he understood animals and people and was always surprising the Amish by speaking to them in their own tongue (it is basically a weird German, he confided), or befriending salty myna birds or rescuing addled baby animals or what-have-you, but I will instead end with his bees. Although he liked honey, it was obvious that he kept bees because they combined all of his true interests–communication, nation-building, animals, farming, warfare, family, and making things. All of this came in a little white box which he said was like having your own miniature city-state of 50,000 flying Spartans in yellow and black striped tunics. Of course sometimes West Virginia bears would come out of the forest and eat your civilization, or varroa mites would cause everyone to sicken and die, or the young queen would murder the old one (or vice versa) but it was all part of an even larger picture and just meant you had to rebuild better.
Now that Grandpa is dead, the world which he and his contemporaries made is swiftly coming apart. Beekeeping, arm-twisting, and politics have never much interested me, but if we want any honey (or simply not to be a sad addled province in Putin’s new Russia or a client state to Xi’s imperial China), perhaps we need to think about some of the lessons of his life of service to the Republic. Goodbye Grandpa, you were my hero. You were America’s hero too, but by the very nature of your secret profession, they never knew or appreciated that fact.
I was recently back at the family farm (which is in the Ohio Valley). Since I almost never go there in late autumn it gave me a precious opportunity to see some of my favorite trees wearing their brilliant fall raiment. Unfortunately I am no photographer–and I never found the time to paint a watercolor painting of autumn’s beauty–however I wanted to share the two most magnificent trees.
Here is the bald cypress which we planted to emulate grandpa’s bald cypress in Weston (which was apparently chopped down the moment he left his house). This tree is a young bald cypress, and it would still be in middle school if it was a human (which fortunately it is not, since it would be a dull child standing beside a goose pond all day), however it is already beginning to develop the knobby swamp knees and flying buttresses characteristic of the great cathedral cypresses of the southern swamp. It is maybe 6 meters (20 feet tall) and it is growing fast. I wish I could have captured the beauty of its warm orange fronds, because in the setting sun they glowed like it was a little ember from the November sun. I wish I could explain to you how winsome the tree is. There is something about all of the Cupressaceae which makes one want to hug them like a robe wearing lunatic from Northern California.
The second tree was my parents’ first choice of trees to plant and it is beginning to reach stunning maturity. It is a pecan tree and it is starting to produce nuts. You can’t see how large it is, but it probably about 13 or 14 meters (45 plus feet) and it is also growing fast. Sadly I could not capture its size with pictures (I need a giraffe or a basketball player to go stand beside it), but when you are near it, you now get a feeling of awe–in addition to whatever appreciation you have for its graceful lines and lovely proportions. There are larger trees back in the forest, but they are forest oaks, walnuts, and hickory which grow tall and straight and do not spread like the glorious pecan. Pecan trees are capable of growing to 40 meters (130 feet) in height with a spread of 22 meters (75 feet) so we will keep hoping that none of the freakish storms which have been growing in number and strength bedevil either of these beloved trees before they reach that kind of height. I wish you could actually see these trees–they are so beautiful!
It is Thanksgiving week and Ferrebeekeeper has a couple of little appetizer articles planned to post here before the great feast, however, before we get to those, I would like to talk about something which I have only become truly thankful for of late in life. Devout readers know that I love colors and I sometimes rue America’s puritan distrust of brilliant scintillating colors (I was recently at an airport in Richmond and everyone there was wearing black, blue, white or oatmeal!). Wouldn’t life be better if it was like a tropical coral reef or a city in Tamil Nadu?
Except, for some reason this year the Thanksgiving color palette is calling to me with a greater allure than it has ever possessed. Among the holiday color palettes Thanksgiving is the odd one out. New Years is gold, silver, and jewel-tones. Valentine’s day is bright red and hot pink. Saint Patrick’s Day is Kelly green and gold. Easter is a rainbow of cheerful pastels. Summer colors are superhero colors of red, blue, white, yellow, and green. Halloween is orange, black, purple and green. Christmas is red, green, and gold. However, Thanksgiving is russet, burgundy, harvest gold, and drab. It’s like a sheet set from 1975! Except now I see that within that rainbow of brown is the stubble in the autumn fields, and the feathers of buff turkeys, and the g;owing leaves of the bald cypress before they fall away.
Throughout my life I have chafed at the earth toned hues of autumn, but suddenly they seem more beautiful than I can ever remember. It is like they are not trying to sell some god-forsaken novelty or social pretense but are are simply the colors of Mother Earth herself.
Anyway, I don’t have a bigger point–although my other posts this week are related to this and come to think of it, lately my artwork has changed to reflect the somber beauty of the autumn woodlands too. Maybe I am finally coming to except that I will never be a triggerfish or a macaw and must be content to be an olive flounder or a tawny owl…or maybe the next season will reveal a new set of colors which delight me and my tastes will keep changing like the seasons and the years.
Where did the time go? It is impossible to believe that it will be Thanksgiving next week. Speaking of Thanksgiving, I was back at the family farm during the beginning of this month (it is unusual for me to get to go home in November) and I therefore got to see how the little cream-colored turkey poults have turned into adult turkeys. For those who have forgotten my original post from back in August, my parents, who raise lovely Pilgrim geese, obtained these turkeys in a “One Kitten for Kim” type situation when a neighboring poultry farmer exchanged some poults for some goslings. Back in summer I was surprised at how tiny, slender, and delicate the turkeys were. It turns out that this was because they were young. During the intervening months they have put on some real heft (although they are still much smaller that the doughty bronze turkeys of my childhood). It is hard to take pictures of these birds, but I think I captured a bit of their personality. Look at the casual insouciance with which they strut on top of the chickenhouse and prance along the barnyard fence!
I also now believe that the turkeys–which I fancifully though looked like creamsicle or butterscotch in the summer sunsets–are actually a classic variety known as “Buff”. I suspect what is really on your mind, though, is anxiety about their fate. Does the oven call for them with Baalshamen’s hunger for the children of Phoenicia? (or perhaps I should say “with an Olmec priest’s desire to scoop out some succulent human hearts?)” Fortunately however, the answer is that these turkeys are pet turkeys rather than livestock. Provided their behavior remains righteous, they will remain free to run around prancing on the outbuildings and chasing the rooster (whose rubose head troubles them) for as long as they like. They had better not start kicking and pecking at my folks though. Biff the turkey did that back in November 1983 and he dressed out at nearly 50 pounds!
Obviously we will have some more turkey posts next week, but, in the meantime maybe also check out this Aztec turkey/plague god from the Ferrebeekeeper/Central American archives.
When I am back in the big city telling tales of farm life, one barnyard character is the most popular of all. His exploits are the most renowned. His stories garner endless comments. His (or her?) mysterious pan-sexual nature elicits the most speculation. I am referring to the ever-beloved LG, a Canada goose who flew out of the sky ten years ago with an injured foot and a duck concubine. When his duck flew away, LG was left forlorn and alone–a complete outcast. But his story was not over: LG ingratiated himself to both people and geese. He taught the store-bought geese to fly and eventually he worked his way up to being a goose of high status. Ultimately he became the foremost figure in the poultry lot, romantically connected to Princess (the prettiest pilgrim goose) and able to command the most corn and the best nesting spots. Here I am hand-feeding him cracked corn.
But things have changed for LG. Early this summer, a new Canada goose appeared. This new bird has a mangled wing and can not fly at all. My parents are flummoxed at how he (or she?) made it to the farm. They are equally perplexed at why the wounded goose even knew to come there for sanctuary to begin with. Because the new Canada goose has crossed tail feathers (and a mysterious unknown provenance) my parents call him (or her) “X”. I imagine him as a sort of World War I aviator figure who suffered a wound while battling with some super predator (a goshawk? A golfer?) and then clattered down from the heavens to crash land by the pond (while making sad single stroke sputtering noises, probably).
LG has taken a liking to X and they sometimes wander around the orchard, garden, and barnyard together (I hope Princess does not get forgotten now that LG finally has a chance to hang out with a friend of his own species). But LG has not given up his high status and he gets to take first choice of farmyard prerogatives and privileges.
It was hot August weather when I was home, with temperatures over ninety and one of my favorite things was watching the geese drink out of an old drywall bucket filled with water. They would stick their heads down into the bucket and go “slurrrrrrrp” then they would point their heads straight up at the sky and go “glug glug glug” and all the water would run down from the head part into the deeper goose (this sound cartoonishly ridiculous, of course, but it was strangely compelling to watch). Above is a picture of X drinking. You will notice that LG already had his fill and was regarding me beadily, no doubt calculating whether there were further advantages to be had. I will keep you updated on their status (hopefully X will heal and regain his flying abilities, but I doubt it). Who knows what they will get up to next. It is hard to believe that our skies (and, uh, golf courses) are filled up with these delightful, charismatic, lunatics!
Hello everyone! I am back from the family farm and ready to get to work blogging. I am sorry that Ferrebeekeeper has lain fallow for the last week (and seen scarce cultivation in the weeks before that) but maybe I can channel vacation energy into some thrilling new posts (and answer some long-neglected comments) before the daily grind reduces me back into an empty husk. Also, although I did not find anyone to take over writing while I was gone, I found some authors who expressed excitement over the idea of some iconoclastic and thought-provoking guest posts…so prepare yourself for that treat!
Speaking of treats, today features a topic which I haven’t written about for a long time: turkeys! When I was a child, I had a special fondness for the great birds, and the noble fowl still delight me (even if I have said almost everything that I can think to say about them). Fortunately when I stepped out of the study and out into the farmyard, I encountered the material for a new turkey post–in the form of new turkeys!
My parents keep a lovely flock of pilgrim geese (along with the remarkable tame wild goose named LG, who just showed up one day). Despite some run-ins with predators and the multitudinous snares of the world, the geese have been flourishing to such a great extent that my mother has been selling goslings to other hobby farmers and poultry enthusiasts. One such enthusiast had his own flock of hand-raised birds, and rather than paying for goslings with the coin of the realm, he obtained his geese through the most ancient custom of barter. Here is what he traded for his goslings: three adorable turkey poults–already grown to graceful near adulthood by the time I made it to the farm.
These turkeys are much smaller than any I have seen so far and are currently about the same size as a large chicken–an extreme contrast with the huge double breasted bronze turkeys which my parents raised five years ago which puffed up to seem like mastiffs or cassowaries (although maybe the surly disposition if the bronzes called such comparisons to mind). I could not ascertain a breed for these little turkeys per se, though my mother thought the farmer mentioned a heritage of red bourbon turkeys in their lineage. Whatever the case they were sweet and affectionate and evinced a particular fondness for my dad, whom they followed around like puppies when he was near.
To my eyes they seemed too pale and too small to be red bourbon turkeys. It is hard to tell in my pictures but they are pale orange buff on top of a French vanilla color. I think of them as the orange creamsicle turkeys, although perhaps they would not appreciate being affiliated with such tasty imagery (it is also possible that they are “buff turkeys” a reconstituted breed meant to approximate a vanished lineage). I am sorry that I obtained limited photos of the three birds, but I promise to follow up with adulthood photos of them later in the year (maybe for November when the internet and society reward turkey-themed content). In the meantime I wish the little birds well and I hope that they survive the foxes and great-horned owls so that we can see what a little creamsicle tom looks like when he puffs up and fans out his feathers. Speaking of which, hopefully one of the turkeys is a tom! it is hard to tell turkey gender until they reach full maturity. It would be sad if they are all hens (although turkeys do have an elegant but shocking cell bio solution for such a contingency).
ferrebeekeeper 