Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works (via Mowser)

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You can read my experiences trying to learn to fly, which is here.

Using retro technology.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

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After guitar lessons, Cathy had me sit down and explain Facebook to her.

I am, of course, a Facebook monster at this point. I invite just about everyone to be on it; if I have your email and you're not a stranger, I probably sent you an invite. I have old high school friends, church camp friends, church youth I worked with, blogging friends...

...with the idea of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.

I won't tell you much more about that categorization.

But Cathy* IS my friend and I invited her onto Facebook, and I said I'd help her. There we were, using a cell phone as the internet connection, me realizing the blessing that is the high-speed DSL I've become used to.

"Wow. This is slow," I said.

And we waited.

Some more.

And more.

Yet.

Finally, since it was getting late and I didn't think Facebook would ever load, I asked for a pen. There was a napkin sitting on the table next to the laptop, left from supper, and I told Cathy I'd sketch out the Facebook page for her and try to tell her how to use it that way.

I find that hilarious, sketching a website out on a napkin to explain how it works.

"Then you'd click here," I said, drawing with the pen, "to see all of your friends. Here is where you'd type in what you are doing, and it's called your 'status'."

Eventually, for a few minutes, Facebook did load and we had some actual live click time, but the napkin was much more stable than the cell phone connection.

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*No, you are not too old. Anyone who says that is too young to understand the concept of anything.

Labels: clippings, facebook, friends, technology

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Clippings: The DUI.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I don't fully remember the story behind this altered comic strip,though I have a pretty good idea of who did it and who it references (both involving 8th-grade male students from when I was an art teacher); regardless, it tells an additional true-tale along with the original cartoons, now that notations were added.

This cartoon has the possibility of offending people named Grant, Nic, and police who don't want to be referred to as "copper."

I sure wish I remember the full story behind this.

I do remember confiscating it. Oh, the power of being the teacher.

(Click on the cartoon to see it larger.)

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Labels: clippings

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I'm not a loser!

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 4 comments link this post

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I'm not a loser!
I'm a winner!
The proof is this photo.
Plus, I'm wearing Nikes.

Anytime I'm feelin' down
And my spirits droop
I just remember my 4-H Market Lamb Sheep Project
And my feelings recoup.

His name was Friendly
Because he was
And I won Grand Champion
Due to few flaws

He was later sold to a meat market.
That's probably not a happy ending.
But you can't keep a sheep project forever,
Even if they're friendly.

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Labels: clippings, my life, pets, poetry

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A mystery solved.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Remember the book and cartoons and Corky Normart?

Last night I received and email from a C. Normart, and I had the answers to a few questions at long last:

Dear Julie
You found me. I kind of recognize the book but can't recall the teacher. I think it was a Junior College class because the drawing of the football player being kicked has my number (50) and we did play Vallejo that year. But it's not my signature and some of the drawings are not my style, even back then. You're right, my family had a fur store that was established in 1895 and lasted over 100 years. But my interest has always been art as you can see from my web site at cnormart.com. I might even up date it one of these days.

[...]

I'm not certain that all of the drawings are mine. The car is my style, the outhouses might be, players maybe but the signature and the comments I just don't recognize. I'm sure I did the rubber stamping.

I mentioned to him that I had received more than a few emails from random readers who happened upon that post and were curious as to the seemingly missing ending. With his permission, I shared the above emails with you.

Ah, the feeling of a tied-up package, no loose ends.

Do visit Mr. Normart's web site; the art is fantastic.

And, maybe, start doodling and mystery-creating in a book of your own; then send it into the wild. You never know where it will end up.

UPDATE: The book will be making its way back to Mr. Normart and his family tomorrow. It's had an interesting life, this book.

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Labels: books, clippings

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Two stories, two images.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 5 comments link this post

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This is a favorite photo of mine.

It has two stories: the story of the day my dad, my grandpa and the hired man ate their lunch out in the field, and the story of the day I drew it.

It was after the Red River Flood of 1997 and the house was full; my sister and her family, displaced from Grand Forks, were there. My parents. Myself. I'd just graduated from college with an art degree and no idea what to do next. I was sleeping in the living room on the sofa since all the bedrooms were full. There were three households of furniture in one house and I was feeling completely closed in, in every possible way.

I found myself, one afternoon, sitting in a back room of the house, surrounded by unpacked boxes, a tiny counter space to work on. A few art supplies were all I had access to: some watercolors and colored pencils. I had a sheet of paper.

I was miserable. I felt like I had to draw something or I would somehow "lose" whatever meaning the meaningless art degree provided me. I felt like I needed some kind of small success.

Flipping through a box of old photos, I found this one. I didn't know where to start, or if I wanted to. But I did, and in some small gift from God, the image literally fell from the photo onto my paper. The brush and the pencil seemed to work on their own.

It's one of my favorite drawings today, that even though I mark as "sold" never plan on selling it.

It has two stories.

(See the drawing here)

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Labels: art, clippings, family

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Friendly place settings.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 6 comments link this post

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A friendly napkin.

My co-worker came back from her lunch break and handed me this napkin.

"I thought you'd like it."

How nice, I thought, that this restaurant has even employed their napkins to do a little extra work.

Either that, or the clientele are a little on the slow side and need the extra labeling and instructions.

Napkin, in other countries, is a serviette. Calling this brown paper napkin from Pizza Ranch a serviette seems wrong. This is a restaurant with posters hollering "howdy!" and "giddyap!" with napkins that have (what seems to be) a wasted comma.

I have yet to determine how this napkin is "new" and "improved" but if I discover it, I'll let you know.

I'd like to see what kind of greeting their flatware can offer.

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Labels: clippings, work

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Mixed payment not appreciated.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 4 comments link this post

This Sunday I'm going to a concert. The tickets arrived in the mail today, so I emailed my friend to tell her the news.

I wrote: Got the tickets in the mail today! Ticketmaster has quite an operation...talk about little fees here and there. (I then totaled up the amount, and divided it by two so she would know her half of the cost.) Two goes into seven three times, leaving one, carry over...16...8... ha ha -- that's what I just did in my head.

Her reply made me smile: Sooo, I have 30 in cords...that would leave how much in US?

She was referencing a funny moment from this year's Nicaragua trip, which I attempted to illustrate in this cartoon.

The entire group ate at a nice restaurant in Managua our last night in Nicaragua. We also had some of our Nicaraguan friends as guests, so this meant that when the bill arrived, it was confusing. It's not like heading down to the Green Mill and asking for separate tabs for each person. You get a bill, it's all together, you pay once, and you figure out a way to have each person pay on their own before handing the total payment over the restaurant.

It is here in the story that I wish to interject an important piece of information: I am an art major.

Now, this doesn't mean I'm stupid, but the kind of math I liked was abstract or stuff like geometry. Tallying up and dividing out a meal ticket is not my cup of tea. I have a hard time making change when the pressure is on, and you already know that I can't punch a basic time card correctly.

Yet, I found myself trying to decipher the Spanish and split the included tax, water cost, and tip, plus extract and assign the correct food and beverage to the right party. The messy little scribbled paper you see at the beginning of this post (click to see the back, for whatever reason you'd want to do that) is the slip of paper the waiters left at each plate denoting what we ordered so that when the food arrived, it would be easy to track down. It was tiny, and it was the only paper I had handy.

I finally figured out who owed what, using an 18.9 exchange rate for cordobas to dollars. I figured some would pay in cords, and some in dollars, and so I tallied up a total for each option. It was a "minor" irritation to discover the restaurant was using an 18.7 rate, but there was enough room on the tiny paper for scribbling and arrows and probably the Declaration of Independence had it been necessary.

It was all going well -- just a few mild breakdowns, mutterings, and pounding of the calculator -- until it was Michael's turn.

"You need to give me $17. Or I can give you the total in cords..."

"Here's some dollars," he said, handing me about $10 cash. "And here's some cords to cover the rest of it, however much it will be. How much will it be?"

I snap easily.

Like beans. China. Brittle bones. Spinster ladies with walking sticks and 500 cats.

"Aargh! Not in both! Pick one!" I have a low flash point. I need to work on that.

I don't know how it ended. Probably with some group members counseling me that included suggestions of "settling down", which seemed to be the norm by the end of the trip.

Remember, low flash point.

All that to say that I appreciated my friend's email response.

And I responded back: Well, "Michael", if you throw in four South Beach muffins, $20 in Canadian, five lug nuts, and two gift certificates to Target, we might have something.

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Labels: cartoons, clippings, friends, nicaragua 2008

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Love notes.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 4 comments link this post

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From my grandma to my grandpa.

::Valentine's Day is, as I stated last year, a holiday in which we celebrate the memory of a decapitated Catholic saint as well as romantic love. I generally hate Valentine's Day. This year, here's something new: a little letter between my grandmother and grandfather, which you can read using the two links below. Enjoy::

Valentine's Day

Accept that date With a written note Call him Your Royal Highness And end with a joke.

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Labels: clippings, relationships

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Coz every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

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My dad, livin' out ZZ Top.

Labels: clippings, family

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Muskrat season opens.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

Grandma saved everything.

January 10th.

A big day for some.

Click on the postcard to see why.

Labels: clippings

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You and what army?

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 6 comments link this post

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My dad. Oh yeah.

Labels: clippings, family

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Where is Corky Normart?

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 6 comments link this post

Old books have more stories than the ones that are printed inside.

My grandparent's basement is a treasure trove of old books. School books, cook books, old college text books, books that still refer to World War 1 as the "great and final war of wars." It's a fabulous slightly dank place of musty books with cloth covers.

This book has an inscription written inside, in my grandmother's handwriting: Bought at a Flea Market at Fresno, Calif. in Dec. 1972 by Mrs. Glenn Neidlinger

Above her writing is the writing of the student who originally owned the book:

Corky Normart
9:00 - 10:00 A.M.
N-14
All Days

The book is the usual late 1940's type of text book that I've seen in my grandparents basement, a text book that kids today would absolutely drown in (no pictures, just chock full of lessons and reading).

What's particularly curious about this 1947-era book, though, is that Corky Normart's parents must have owned a fur store. The book is full of the purple-ink stamp from this store, on pages and covers, perhaps evidence of Corky having gone wild with the stamp:

Normart's Furs
1230 Fulton St. - Fresno, California

Tucked inside was a little slip of paper, a summons for Corky to go visit a teacher named Don Beauman. I wonder if it was a friendly visit, or if Corky had stamped "Normart's Furs" all over his desk and the walls of the school.

I'll never know.

The real treat (and I'm guessing one of the reasons my grandma might have singled this book out) is what Corky did to the back inside cover. And that's the real reason I'm sharing this find with you: Corky was quite an artist. There are no less than five caricatures of Hitler (remember, this was the late 1940's), and some other funny doodles.

Do you want to see it? Click on the picture of the book and have a look.

Corky Normart, I don't know who you are/were, but I love your work. Thanks for sharing it forward, from school to home to flea market to basement to scanner to blog to the world. Not bad, for 40 years.

UPDATE: Corky has been "found"!

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Labels: clippings

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Clippings: Deficient.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

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A friend from high school came up to the hallway, next to my locker, and handed me about ten of these deficiency reports.

"Here," she said, "take these."

These were, of course, the reports the school sent out to the parents when grades were bad. Deficiency report day was always dreaded.

Well, except for nerds like me. I'd never seen on before, which might explain why I was so fascinated by them.

My friend assured me a teacher had given them to her to have. I thought it strange; why would a teacher give a pile of blank reports out? In addition to being a book nerd, I was also incredibly naive.

"Thanks," I said.

And then we proceeded to fill them out and tape them on people's lockers.

This "prank" was only second to when I filled out an army information request card for my friend so that she would be pestered by military recruiters. That prank was paid back in full in a way I'm probably not going to include here.

Anyway, the deficiency report gag was a hit. We did it during study hall so when the next hour got out, everyone flooded the halls at once and found our special greeting front and center.

"Who put this on my locker?!"

"I do not have a D in geometry!"

"No way I'm having a conference with a teacher!"

There was a general chorus of dismay over our liberal use of negatives and descriptions of bad attitudes and need for better work.

It was a good day. Wrong, but good. Mess with the nerds and you get passive aggressive right back at you. Lame passive aggressive, maybe, but enough to make the nerds laugh.

See a larger version of the deficiency report here.

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Labels: clippings

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Clippings: 1961 was a fine year.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post

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I save things that don't always need saving.

I might find a use for this, I think, and my collection of odd junk grows by leaps and bounds. Soon there won't be enough Rubbermaid containers in the world to contain my collection.

Some artists call it "ephemera" whereas I've come to realize it's really just a lot, lot, lot of paper to push around.

In this particular case, should I ever need a 1961 Witholding Tax Statement, I'm in good shape.

See the larger version here.

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Labels: clippings

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Clippings: Passing notes.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post

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During the midst of a highly spiritual Christmas service during chapel back in my North Central Bible College days (now North Central University), I was concerned.

I was concerned as to when my friend Karrie was going to lunch.

As this note attests to, I was a classic example of excellent college writing skills. It showed that I had an opportunity to make a very important decision...lunch plans. You will note my effort to be less farm-girl and more urbane in my decision to describe the noon meal with the word "lunch" instead of "dinner."

I had this note in my Bible for over a decade, the same Bible I had with me that day when we were done hurriedly scribbling, the note tucked away so my R.A. wouldn't see us writing notes. I'd failed a Sunday bed check that week, I remember, my alarm failing to go off and me missing morning church. I figured note-writing would really send me packing.

It's funny to me. It just is.

You can see the larger version here.

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Labels: clippings, my life

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Clippings: The perfect hate?

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

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These two cartoons are the only thing I ever clipped out of my college newspaper. I can't even remember the name of the paper; it always seemed filled with nothing.

These cartoons made me laugh (and still make me laugh) because, being in the art department where, after five years of all things seeming over-drawn, these cartoons are laughably drawn. They're reminiscent of Dilbert, except instead of a cubicle culture, there's a kind of frat boy culture.

I always imagined that the artist, Joe Davidson, just scribbled these out with a pen on some 20 lb. copy paper and shoved them into the hands of the newspaper staff with kind of a "take it or leave it!" attitude.

I also appreciated the fact that these cartoons were unusually uncouth in their handling of subject matter. My Alma mater was a typical college with an atmosphere of treading lightly on the sensitivities of others.

I could be wrong.

Davidson may have worked days on these drawings. It could all have been a fluke. I don't remember any others that struck me as like these did.

In any case, they're funny. You can see the larger version here.

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Labels: clippings, humor

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Clippings: I save too much stuff.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 5 comments link this post

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I've already established that I save too much stuff -- albeit, categorized -- when I divulged that I have nearly every email ever sent to me.

Tonight, as I was looking through my files for other information, I realized I had lots of crazy stuff.

Folders alphabetized and filled with bizarro-land. Clippings and bits of paper I've saved over the years that make me laugh at myself, because who saves such things?

I have, for example, a file filled with detailed maps, notes and drawings from when I was involved in...Myst. That, by the way, is the first "clipping" I'm sharing with you. My Myst folder, laid bare on the scanner. (Click here to see the larger version.)

The clippings category will have bits and pieces of what I've saved over the years that will no doubt horrify and amaze simultaneously.

I have nothing better to do than dump this junk on the internet. After all, what does the internet need more but virtual clutter?

Be ready to see a few of these posts over the next days. Brace yourself.

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Labels: clippings

SECTIONS

TODAYS HEADLINES

BLOGROLL

Using retro technology.

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Clippings: The DUI.

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I'm not a loser!

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A mystery solved.

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Two stories, two images.

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Friendly place settings.

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Mixed payment not appreciated.

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Love notes.

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Coz every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

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Muskrat season opens.

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You and what army?

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Where is Corky Normart?

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Clippings: Deficient.

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Clippings: 1961 was a fine year.

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Clippings: Passing notes.

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Clippings: The perfect hate?

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Clippings: I save too much stuff.

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