Mother Jenny

Mother Jenny is the first riddle I ever made.  It was back in about 1983 or 1984.  I was working in the Meis Department Store art department in what was called, "the Sign Shop"  It didn't pay a whole lot, but it was one of the most fun jobs I ever had.  I got to actually create a lot of the signs and silk screened posters for the entire chain of the Meis stores through out the midwest.  It was such a fun creative place to work.  The rest of the department involved about 4-5 artists (the ones that draw the sketches in ads for the clothing sales) who were really fun and creative people that I loved working with.  I started pinning my riddles to the bulletin board every week and challenged people to guess them for a candy bar.  I made an illustration for each riddle and when I was finished them, I sent them or gave them to my best friend at the time, David--now Father David who pastors the Romanian Orthodox Church in Indianapolis.  He and his wife Janene (Orthodox Priests can be married) have been good friends of mine forever and I think he still has those riddles somewhere around his house after all these years.

Just as I've always done with my illustrations for the riddles, I make sure that my illustrations have nothing to do with the answers to the riddle, so it won't help you to try to guess based on the pictures.  This video is shorter than the others, but it is my first attempt at a fully animated cartoon.  I think I've got about seven or eight hundred frames--a lot of drawing!  And a lot of mistakes that I had to correct and then timing it to the music--Whoa, do I have a new appreciation for the old-time animators!

Here are the words:

Mother Jenny has four,
to help her through the door.
Mother Jenny has nine--
that's why she feels so fine!
Mother Jenny has three--
what could they be?
Those three with their twelve in a basket
Must lose twenty-seven to see a casket.

Musical Chairs

 I don't really exactly think of myself as a liberal.  I like to think that I just think.  I do acknowledge that my views most often agree with those people who are categorized (by themselves or others) as liberal.  Being somewhat self-reflective (also a characteristic of liberals) I have started to ask myself, "How did I get to get to be this way?"  Is being liberal genetic?  Is being liberal the result of early influences? (my mentor was cool and liberal so I want to be cool and liberal)  Is being liberal just going along with the crowd where liberals hang with and liberals are just plain old conformist--thinking liberal to fit in with liberals?  Or is being liberal the result some deep underlying set of values that makes someone a liberal?

I don't know the answer to that for sure, but I know when I first realized I was a liberal.  Oh, I don't know that I could have put it into solid words since I was only three years old at the time--and just barely three at that.  It was at my birthday party.  My Mom and some other adult lady set up games to play.  One of those games was called Musical Chairs.

You remember Musical Chairs don't you?  It was a lot like a reality show--slowly eliminating people until you have only one winner left.  I didn't fully understand the rules when we started playing.  It seemed really fun at first marching around the chairs to the music like a dance, and then the music stopped.  Everyone started sitting down.  I was lucky because chair was right in front of me and I plopped down because everyone else did.  But two little girls had to go for the same seat and were pretty aggressive about it, but one did beat the other out.

I freaked.  What an awful game!  I felt so bad for the little girl who didn't have a seat.  Hey!  somebody set the game up that way--that's not right!  I didn't like this game as it was, but then--oh my gosh--the adults took yet another chair away!  Even though one little girl had to go without a chair, you'd think, well, at least there are enough chairs now--but NO!  THE GAME WAS RIGGED!  There would NEVER be enough chairs for everyone.  More and more children would be eliminated until one clever fat cat was the only one left with a chair.

What makes me a liberal is that I have this crazy idea that everyone should have a chair!  I don't care if it is the nicest chair in the room, or the wobbly folding chair.  I don't expect absolute equality.  There will always be rich and poor in this world, but by golly, everyone needs to have a job, a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, the ability to go to a doctor when they are sick and something to live on when they get old or become disabled--that's the chair--that's what it is.

What we need to ask ourselves is, who is taking those chairs away?  And, yeah, who is hoarding up those all those chairs anyway?  Man, if you've only got one ass to sit on, what are you doing with all those chairs you don't need?  Okay, so, you don't like taxes, I get it.  But what are you going to do about the chairless, then?  What?  What do you mean that's not your problem?  That the Chairless just need to work harder?   OOOOOOOHHHH that makes me mad.  You took their chair in the first place!  YOU FATCATS with all the chairs set this game up!  It is the nature of the YOUR game to ensure there are NOT enough chairs!

So off I go on my liberal ranting and people start whispering to each other "Don't bring up politics when he's around."

An elder in our old church once asked my dad, "How can you vote democrat and be a Christian?"  My dad is too nice of a guy to ever express his feelings directly to that elder, but I heard him mutter afterward, "How can you be a Christian and a Mason?"  Not that there is anything wrong with people being in the Masons necessarily--it is a form of Rosicrutianism with private secret beliefs.  Mostly it was, at that time, kind of a good old boy's network.  Sorry about the rabbit trail there, but the point is that, in a great twist of irony, and in spite of conservative fundamentalists, I am a liberal in part because of the Bible.  That whole business about human beings being created in the image and likeness of God, means you see God in every human face.  Would you seriously not find a chair for God if he walked into the room? 

God is on the street corner holding a sign and we call him a bum, and we shout, "hey, get a job" and accuse him of fraud.

God is in a Palestinian child.

God is a Central American Child crossing the Mexican Boarder into America.

God is stuck on a mountain in Iraq and running out of food and water.

God has cancer and he has no health insurance.

People say they believe in God as they take his chair away from him and blame him for his own situation.  "Should have been quicker"  "Should have worked harder."  "Should have made better decisions."

But the God, I know and love is just the opposite.  "You have no chair;" he says, "here, take mine."  He doesn't seem to like Musical Chairs either.

Jonathon Edward McGuire McGuin

Where has the time gone?  It has been a while since I published anything new.  In fact, I'm still not publishing anything new.  This is a riddle I did a while back but must not have put on my blog.  This is before I tried my hand at animating.  These illustrations I did a long time ago, but not as long ago as I wrote them which, was the 80's when I was working in the sign shop for Meis Department Stores in Terre Haute Indiana.  Here's this riddle:

Jonathon Edward McGuire McGuin
Has a most extraordinary chin,
So he can get his singing sung
While playing outfield with his tongue.

The Lake on a Cold Winter's Day

         It has been the most amazing Winter this year. Stunning really.  (Don't forget, I capitalize the seasons, seeing personality in them) I have a video of the lake posted above, but not of the blizzard we had here in Michigan last night which left us buried in drifts.  I believe I heard my son swearing this morning at about 4:30 when he got up to go to work and had to dig out.  He drives a jeep and is proud of the fact that he can just drive over it.  I take it that today that he actually had to dig through the drifts and was none too happy about it.  Folks here are tired of "the white stuff" as they tend to say, but I am not.
     I have never been a fan of Winter.  When I lived in Abu Dhabi for three years, I never missed it one bit, but what I have hated is the cold, the dark and the grayness of it, not necessarily "the white stuff."  Most winters in recent decades have been just that--grey, dark and cold, but this winter there has been so VERY MUCH SNOW and it has been SO VERY, VERY WILD that I have been mesmerized by all the power and beauty he has sent our way.  Snow makes a difference in my mood.  I can be a little inclined toward seasonal affective disorder, but all the brightness of the snow and that it seems to be constantly coming down, either in large, gentle serene flakes that sparkle and make me sit with a hot drink and just stare out the window for what seems like hours on end; or that comes in great, powerful blasts of white dust devils--a thousand snow queens spinning and dancing whipping up pure white dunes that cover houses and streets and bury shoveled walks in a matter of minutes.  Between the gentle brightness of it and the awesome power of its storms, January has lived up to its name: Janus, the god of two faces: peace and war.  He rages and roars and then he turns and lays out a landscape that is calm and pristine, bright and beautiful. I don't think I've ever known a happier or more satisfying Winter than this one.