Sep 4 2012
Mama’s got a Squeeze Chute she wears around her chest, and when Daddy comes home never gets no rest…
…in and out and in and out and in and out again…
…”Cause she’s playin’ all night,
and the music’s alright….”
…Well the kids don’t eat
and the dog can’t sleep.
There’s no escape from the music
in the whole damn street…
She goes, squeeze me, come on and squeeze me
Come on and tease me like you do
I’m so in love with you…
-Pete Townshend.
May 3 2012
Drawing of Bob Burnquist. by Jack Adams, age 11.
I really shouldn’t talk about my family too much. But, I had the privilege of living with a man that would leave drawings like this on his bedroom floor. He was eleven. Look at the right hand…
Here are some things to know about Bob Burnquist.
But back to this man with whom I had the privilege of living.
We only had about 120′ of concrete on the ranch, a curving 3′ wide sidewalk from the freestanding garage to the house. You can see on this site plan underneath these words. Note that the larger curving drives between the buildings are NOT concrete but packed dirt. In fact, this sidewalk was about the only concrete within a 6-10 mile radius of our home depending on the direction. [concrete inside of stock tanks does not count, not big enough for skateboarding even in a small circle.] But the point is, it was enough for this man I lived with to master many moves on the board he bought for himself.
Determination knows no dirt boundaries.
This man is likely both dee-jaying and studying engineering stuff like formations and reservoirs this weekend. And I hope, dancing in-between all of the work and play…to keep it fluid…to keep it loose. He taught me all of my best moves.
Thanks for showing me how to rein it in and check both sides of the gray in life. Dance hard, dance on.
Dec 7 2011
Red Christmas Tree, Santa, Green Christmas Tree.
Jack Adams drawing of Santa Claus. age 4 1/2.
Drawn on a trip to GrandaGG’s at 5328 W. 67th St. in Prairie Village. July, 1995.
My mother Ginny Graves was the Art Lady from the Nelson Gallery. She was also the creator and director of all of the Art Programs in the Johnson County Library System.
I got to help her with these things, making stuff, being with other kids, on tv, setting up and cleaning up for classes, even teaching an art Class at Cedar Roe Library when I was 12 one summer.
But, most of all I am most thankful because I got to MAKE STUFF. And it was all organized ahead because she got all the supplies and paints and yarn and whatever for whatever general area of project that was proposed. In my mom’s case unlike grade school art, this was very loosely defined so that the creator could let their mind wander on just a few ideas thrown out.
Plus, my mother gets the best art out of EVERYONE.
Anyway, these are two things my mom will say. It don’t know if she is just magical, or if it is just someone who knows the value in taking the time and the interest to say it to a child or an adult, to ask this question.
“Draw me a picture.” -Ginny Graves.
“In creating, the only hard thing is to begin.” -James Russell Lowell.
How flattering that someone feels enough about your ideas to help you start. That is what my mother was called upon to do at this time and throughout her life.
Then later, she will always say this.
“Tell me about your picture.” -Ginny Graves.
This makes it an even more special picture because both people can then learn about the thoughts and processes of using our eyes and what is inside of our heads to form an idea, a plan, that progressively gets down onto the paper.
“Creation is only the projection into form of that which already exists.” -Shrimad Bhagavatam
When someone cares enough to be interested and feels that they can learn something by hearing what you were thinking when you did it, how you formulated an idea and made it come forth, it is a confidence builder. Feeling your creative is empowerment.
Creative expression in whatever means, sales, business, relationships, doodles, cooking, style, and even working our sometimes wacked out minds-emotions for both positive or not-always-so-positive means involves time and energy. I feel that figuring out how and when and why we are always creating in life, whether conscious or not, and how to harness it is one of life’s challenges. Then, to focus it, to rein it in and put it into positive directions that are better for ourselves and others. That is ultimately, maybe, what we all are striving to do?
I don’t want to get into too many quotes from my yogi book that told me about all the chakras but creativity is your second one (they go from bottom up).
Read below,
“good to know“, and
“wouldn’t you know?” in a nutshell.
(And then I do want to talk about Jack’s great drawing.)
SECOND CHAKRA
Jack’s Santa. A mother’s thoughts.
I don’t know if he said this to mom and she told me or if I am just looking at this drawing to try to figure it out. Probably the first as you know how it is with small kids, sometimes we don’t take the time and this is for what we have Grandmother’s. I like to draw, and did some art stuff with the kids, but I can be a real micro-manager which is counter-productive. I was a better manager-mother in general when I got busy having my own life.
Legs
I would think that the long legs are because Santa has to go down that long chimney. We are a rather small family in stature, so that’s a pretty long jump from the top of our roof down into the living room at the XIT Headquarters. So, these long legs at least get Santa down through that circuitous shaft that runs from the top of the later second-story roof of the house, through the attic, and to about the ceiling of the living room. He can jump that last flight, that’s nothing with those legs.
Head
I don’t know about all the editing on Santa’s head with just the eyes, the long, thick bare neck, or that shriner’s thing on top of Santa’s head and won’t conjecture. He has Santa’s black belt. But you can see, the legs to get down were the most important consideration.
Trees
I think the trees are wonderful. Instead of thinking about the trunk, it seems like it is just getting the essence of the shape of the tree, very stylized. The tufts of green are both representing, to me, the tufts of needles on the trees but arranged almost like ornaments or lights so it is all in green. And the one tree is red.
Jack and Color. And conformity.
Jack, in another project, never seemed to be bothered that his wine bottle tissue paper reindeer body was red, not brown. When my mom asked him how he chose his color for the reindeer, Jack responded something to the effect of liking red, “of course, GG.” Rudolf did have a red nose, though.
This was also the case in Meade Grade School when the children would color in the line drawing of the Jack o’ Lantern which would then decorate the window of the Stockgrower’s State Bank. All of his classmates would color in perfect orange pumpkins with green stems, with the goal to “stay within the lines.” There would be 22, all lined up where they were displayed. I drove by one day to get money and saw that there was a purple one with some patchwork, color extending all over the paper and I knew that was my son’s. He did make the stem green, so it’s not as if he didn’t have some semblance of respect for context of fellow pumpkin artists.
So, mainly I was thinking about Christmas this year, about my parents, and had this drawing stuck away in a folder to share with everyone this season. So here’s the main point!
Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!
Nov 28 2011
Just a word of clarification…
I have to qualify the use of the term “Cowgirl.” I use it as a state of mind, not as any profession which could claim me as an associate. I do ride a horse, can herd cattle without causing a rampage, and I have a hill on the XIT to where I would ride on a regular basis and look back at the river and the XIT Headquarters.
But cowgirls are really born. They are born to fathers who are cowboys and cattleman who work in the trenches. Not all daughters of these men are cowgirls. Just the ones who worked alongside the other men. Some rope and tie, others vaccinate and herd and brand. The three real cowgirls I know in the Adams family are Wanda Adams, Chelsea Adams, and Lacy Adams. But that’s another post.
So. Today is 29 years to the day of our wedding day. And I am celebrating another person who in so many ways made me who I am today, John Adams, just as I feel about my parents. I definitely pulled my weight and worked this gift of parents and husband as I have done with other God given gifts. I need to do a bit more of this for myself and cut them some slack from all the burdens that come along with this responsibility, but I am eternally grateful.
So I will try not to talk (too much), but here are some pictures of stuff leading up to the wedding, the big day, and of our honeymoon in Chicago for three days before heading west in a u-haul to begin the adventure.
Dean Graves is laughing at one of his own jokes in the lower left photo. Probably something witty sensing my fear of this new burden of “stuff.” I inherited this tendency to do big belly laughs at my own jokes.
I just mainly remember that John Adams would look at it all and say, “you are really getting great stuff.” This is translated as, “these things we both will cook and serve off of are yours so you will write the thank you notes” and extended on into wedding gifts. We had some perfectly nice “Paula & John” cards custom designed by the calligrapher for Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, Mary Lou Cook, but I don’t really remember John using these :). But, he had to pack it and haul it and unpack in a u-haul over bumpy roads, not breaking a dish. As he did two more times to Lawrence and Wichita over the course of our marriage, which is more moving of stuff and wife than most husbands would tolerate. So this really counts for much, much more.
Here is a brief concept and history page for my Paula Varsalona wedding dress. Sandra Kenney, former KU cheerleader, the most beautiful Pi Phi at KU in the 50s, former wife of Bob Kenney, was the buyer for The Jones Store at that time.
Beautiful Kenney women: Sandy, Karen, Kirsten.
She was a good friend of my mother, Kirsten my good friend, and the reason why The Jones Store got all the best designers at that time. And, the models to wear them…Terri Sue Walters and Kitty Bliss. Terry’s picture is underneath my head on the Independent Cover and Kitty’s beautiful picture was on the cover when our engagement picture appeared. So, I am honored to be pictured in a magazine with photos of such beautiful and photographed Kansas City women!
A cover, concept, lace mitts and shoes, and two Paulas at a dress fitting. Professional and hobby designing women.
My mother spotted another $1,000.00 shorter lace dress that was also very beautiful and classic with a plunging neckline. It would have been lovely, but I opted for this $325.00 more Victorian number which I styled with the lace mitts, shoes, and dropping the veil for a crown of baby’s breath with some tiny ribbon streamers. Both dresses seemed like a lot of money at that time, but nothing compared to the rest of the party. What our fathers do…
Here are some of the friends who were at the University Club on Nov. 27, 1982.
George Waugh, Mike Tutera, back of David Kerr's head.
Christie Reed Reniger, Ed Bolen, Kate Nettels Faerber
Julie Connally, Karen Majors Bogle, Alison DeGoler.
Dr. Dick Dreher, head of Children's Mercy Hospital, Marthe's date?, Marthe Dreher Tamblyn.
David Stubbs and my cousin, Wendy Ward.
Alison Weideman Ward, Eleanor Stolzer?
Molly Miller, Lynn Kindred, Susan Grier, Kathy Kindred.
Bridget O'Brien and Elaine Beeson.
Scott Ward and Liz Waugh.
Jamie and John Kane, Carney Nulton.
Mary Beth Simpson, John Simpson, Bradley Grover Simpson.
Mary Stauffer and Sam Brownback.Two Jack's and a Jane: Savings and Home, Dicus and Frost.
? Beta?, Elaine Scarborough, Greg Duvall, John's Patient Pledge Dad.
And here are some family pictures…
Raymond Adams and Sandra Dublin Frizzell Adams with her parents. So I am kind of related by (ex) marriage(s) to both McKinley Winter Feedyard, Cindy Brown, and Tripp Frizzell and Alison Miller Frizzell in a way.
David Adams, 12-step Guru across the High Plains. Judy Robert Adams, great-niece of Sally Chisum, a wife on the XI Ranch who never lived there and niece of John Chisum. William Robert, Judy's Grandfather was the former co-owner of the XI Ranch Landholdings before H.G. Adams partnered with him to fence and water, subsequently buying the holdings from Robert.
Ginny Graves, my mother and co-party planner who handled all the details. In a great mother-of-the-bride frock with Allison Ball in the background in a smash pink and black party dress.
And look! Heavy Hitter Jessie Adams and a dashingly handsome man (Bud Helm?) and heavy hitter and my bro Randy Knotts at left.
I’m assuming they all attended the nuptials at 4:00 at Second Presbyterian Church, but I didn’t look around. It was another stage performance where I was gripped with both fear and emotion.
In part, I hold Gina responsible (my maid of honor) as she was beside me crying when I said my vows at the altar at Second Presbyterian Church. This of course precipitated my crying while I said “I do.” John later expressed concern that others would think I was crying because we were getting married. We were both wearing our parents shoes. I actually was sad at the idea of my father giving me away. But as they say, “a son is a son until he takes a wife, but a daughter is a daughter for the rest of her life.”
At the University Club, someone took these candids in the room where all the food was. It was freezing rain that Thanksgiving Day. So, many of the older guests wanted to get in, wish me well, and get safely back home.
Where did the saying, “Rain is good luck on your wedding day” come from?
YAHOO! Answers.
It pops up through Shakespeare’s works and I imagine it would have to do with a pastoral society, where rain would symbolize fertility-hence it is good luck on a wedding day!
So after having a thoroughly wonderful beautiful month of Paris with rain every day and living on a very dry ranch in western Kansas and a wedding day of heavy rain, Paula the Pisces Water Child is always happy to see raindrops, curly hair and all.
But back to University Club, the point is that I’m putting in this picture at the lower right of this “media page” because it is in the library of the University Club. This was pretty much all I saw of my wedding reception until about 8:00 after which John and I did the bouquet (Beth Van Winkle Ewing, Theta now in Dallas) and and garter toss (Ed Bolen). Then we bolted, socially exhausted. One reason I now adore other people’s weddings!
The length of the writeup in the Beaver is only shadowed by the coverage in the Meade-Globe Press which is not included. They noted every detail of my outfit that I had so lovingly chosen. I was both embarrassed and tickled pink.
We spent the night at the Kansas City Club, arranged by John’s step-mom-at-that-time- Sandra (the Wichita Falls most beautiful party planner and gift wife). She had medium-rare filets with three sauces (a bernaise, hollandaise, and a horseradish cream) delivered to our room. The next morning we lay around in bed all morning and watched Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman. Then, John had to go back to Lawrence to prepare for his finals and a project with some Brian guy from business school who had transferred from engineering school.
We had a few people to dinner at this apartment in Lawrence during finals. Pat Boppart I do remember, but I cannot remember the others who were still finishing up their college careers. I had chicken breasts stuffed with boursin because it was John’s turn to cook that week. John and Pat argued about how one person of these two felt it was not an even trade for one person to have t-bones and the other to serve spam, though Pat defended this staunchly. I tasted spam later in life, as I have also tasted dogfood, and it is really not all that bad.
Our first Christmas was in Lawrence at Hillcrest Apartments, but I will also do this in a later post in the advent countdown to Christ’s birth. I am more exhausted from this wedding post than I was from the actual wedding.
I will include pictures of our honeymoon in Chicago, a gift from Kevin Pistilli. He and Tina met us there for dinner at the Pump Room. This didn’t happen until later, but honeymoons are a part of the wedding picture so they are included here.
The Raphael, the Cape Cod Room at the Drake, Frank Lloyd Wright's first big residential project in Oak Park and tour of his home.
I am looking forward to the holidays and remembering some very early times with my husband and friends from pictures that I am sure my mother took.
Before a house,
before children,
before a place that would be my life for 29 years and always in my mind.
I hope the others that were married that day in Kansas City (there were four of us, Gibson Rymar and Sara Jury and….??) are also celebrating.
Of course, it is now the 28th as I didn’t get it done by day’s end. This is the day I always I incorrectly remembered as my wedding date. It was always just “the Saturday after Thanksgiving” in my mind…it didn’t matter much as we were usually always having fun with friends and family in the city and would forget to celebrate.
So now I will take the time to say, “Happy Anniversary John!” But this time it is a joke because I remembered yesterday to celebrate this day, the start of my big life adventures that still continue.
love, Paula.
Sep 16 2011
This is just some prize bull, but the guy at the right looks like Kyle Griffin who told me this story.
“You’ve heard of a Gomer Bull haven’t you?” said Kyle to Paula. hmmm…<thinking>
Kyle is a land man from Oklahoma. We were finding some common ground in a Sat. morning chat in Wichita, so of course, facials at Healing Waters and A.I.’ing cattle. That is, artificially inseminating female cows. Kyle put himself through college performing this act, and I remember one year when John Adams did this in a specially designed chute.
He was talking about the straws (they are just this, and hold the precious more costly bull juice) which I vaguely remembered. And, the window of opportunity, which I had not. He explained that this was only 36 hours. I had thought since gestation time is approximately the same as for humans, that this would be a little longer.
I guess this explains why bulls get top seat for virility when it comes to money, though stallions up. But that’s another story. Just read Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, no one could write it any better.
Be! (clap) Aggressive! (clap)
Be! Be! Aggressive! (clap)
Then, the discussion moved onto the percentage of implantation question and answers. This was his job both in his family’s cattle operation and as a contractor for others. This paid for Kyle’s schooling, so as with many agricultural skills, it is that (a skill).
Next, came Paula’s questions about technique. It doesn’t seem to matter much (trying to draw on something in a famous novel about a women wanting a child ..Willa Cather…maybe something about a position for producing female children from a magazine…but alludes me now…).
And last, identification of proper timing which does factor in. Here are Kyle’s tips for tracking the pen of females.
One simple technique for identifying the fertile is watching the ladies. That is, les girls, when in their element, will actually do saddle mounts on each other.
Not The Broken-d!ck XIT Bull and definitely not a Gomer Bull.
Kyle knew a few more tricks to tell me about, starting with the Gomer Bull.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JAA2Unb0B4[/youtube]Well, my father was in the U.S. Marine Corps, my sister born at Quantico, I, at Camp LeJeune, (the $6 babies). My father went off to boot camp in the summer to the barracks where Gomer lived in Gomer Pyle, USMC. I love that song, and I really liked Gomer best here, better than Mayberry RFD and much better than when he sang gospel and opera. He looks great in the uniform, and I thought he was well-intended (though incorrect) to encourage iron pants to be more feminine. And, he’s got one on me by accomplishing the rope course on his 3rd try, that another personal failure at SME gym class, though I excel’d at fine motor skills. Who wouldn’t love to have Gomer in their platoon?
And my father, a very soft-spoken man at times, was Vince Carter when he had to do things like teach me how to ride a bike or drive a stickshift or hit a softball or shoot a basket. Still mechanically challenged as his adult second daughter, I understand now how stressful this had to have been for him, just as it was for Seargeant Carter with Gomer.
Well, a Gomer Bull is one who’s little soldier is “re-routed” (I think Kyle used) to turn at 90 degrees.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6_1Pw1xm9U&feature=related[/youtube]Thus, if you have a Gomer Bull, you can watch for him trying to ride the cow and her acceptance. Voilà! Work is done, shepherd the cow into pen, AI and you’re done.
I was concerned for the bull’s blue balls, for want of a better word. And, as I feared, he does not get the job done.
Okay, back to another identification technique: K-Mars.
K-mars are a strip of white tape put on just above the tail of the cow. Kyle said they work kind of like those necklaces you break open at rock concerts and they light up. I was thinking more like scratch and sniff since it’s a tape. Anyway, some kind of chemical thing. Google it if you care, but you get the picture. With this taped firmly on the cow’s derrière, when bully bob is on top, the friction turns the tape orange. Bull dismounts, check tape, got’her done again.
And the third technique: the roller ball muzzle. I can only envision this, and Kyle even tried to google for some pictures for me on a AI website but I have no visual. I’m thinking it’s kind of a “demi” size silence of the lambs contraption that fits over the bull’s chin. Below the chin on the mask (muzzle), is a paintball that operates just like a pen and marks everything it touches. I forgot to ask all the questions here, but in general there is lots of inhaling (these noises I’m well aware of, kind of some hawing and begging). As soon as bouche à fond (mouth to bottom), the bull leaves his mark. Once again, alerting the A-I-er that the gal open for business.
Okay, that’s it. Any questions?
By the way, Kyle’s friend from OSU just did the design of the bull that earned Grand Champion earlier this month at the Denver Stock Show. When I say design, he looks at all the muscling, aesthetics, confirmation, etc. of bull and pairs up with the appropriate cow, engineering the match of spermatozoa to ovum. The Grand Champion of the 2011 National Western Stock Show Super Point Roll of Victory (ROV) Angus Show was DAJS Shockwave 612, May 2009 son of Gambles Hotrod. And, it is kind of like corvettes and hotrods, it’s all show.
Big time bulls like this never get to see a cow, they live in a lab somewhere owned by New York businessmen.
“How sad!” I said to John Adams, “to be the big stud on the block and then to never get to be with a real woman.” John said they are way too valuable and they might, “break a leg or something.”
Sep 15 2011
My children have had absolutely no sex education whatsoever.
And in 1997, they were 6 and 9. So I’d say it was pretty much unnecessary in any home with a TV and grade school-age children to have to get into it. Most kids were probably relieved. They knew it already, and it’s always so embarrassing and gross when parents talk about sex.
But my point is, our children in 1997 were not only introduced to sexual relations by Mr. President himself, they learned some new techniques with all the surrounding dialogue. In fact, the class was entirely eliminated from the Meade Grade School curriculum.
But mainly, they were raised on a ranch. And there’s a good lesson from this story.
It has been said that, “when a man dies, he can only hope to come back as a bull on the X I T.”
Not The Broken-d!ck XIT Bull.
But then, there was The Broken-d!ck Bull. So here’s the story…
One day I was riding with the boss past the pipe pens and noticed a bull with a particularly misshapen member.
“John! What is wrong with his hangin’ johnny?” I exclaimed. (this expression is actually George Carlin’s, I think I used the proper anatomical term.)
So this was his ‘splanation in my words, my best shot as I don’t really listen to all the details.
As I’ve overheard some male friends say, “men are pigs.”
So, the same goes for bulls when it comes to sex, “bulls are pigs.”
Whereas female bovines, unlike other mammals, only desire the “pig bull doggy style” during a particular time period.
If the bull chooses to mount when he is unwelcome, the female has her own internal weapon of defense. I didn’t get into specifics, but I envision it as something like a very, very strong o-clamp.
And, I’m sure this must cause ‘some kinda pain’ for the unlucky Taurus. Little does he know as he tries to escape, hell has only just begun. He probably would have been better to gnaw it off himself like those animals with their leg caught in a bear trap.
So, that’s the story of The Broken-d!ck Bull. And, I apologize for having no photograph. It just seemed like a triple insult to document his plight.
And, a word from the mama-money makin’ machines on the XIT. I would re-phrase the expression to say “when a man dies, he can only hope to come back as a SMART bull on the X I T.”
And if some dumb bull slipped through the cut, and didn’t hear it the first time, he’ll find out just what part of “NO” that he didn’t understand. And, there he goes.. to town…completely jobless…good for nuthin’ but burgers, cowboy caviar and swingin’ beef.
To my memory, I’ve only seen one Broken-d!ck Bull on the X I T.
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