When was the last time you invited a complete stranger into your house? What about asking someone you don’t really know to live with you? Give yourself a point for each roommate and exchange student. Now the bonus round: think back and try to recall the last time you arranged for an inmate to be released from prison so they could live in your home with your wife and kids. Yeah, me either.
I wrote about ‘Ragtime Reverend’ Lynn Wright last column, and if you missed that episode, Lynn described what it was like to grow up in the south, hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak and then have the KKK call up and threaten his family after writing a letter to the editor saying Dr. King might be onto something. So. Lynn grows up to become a minister in Wyoming and along the way, he becomes reacquainted with the words of Martin Luther King and when he says they made a big impact on him, I think you will agree he was not exaggerating.
Lynn learned of a case in Alabama where James Frank, a black man, was sentenced to life in prison for his part in the armed robbery of a store. Robbery is bad news, for sure. Armed is even badder. But many people thought a life sentence to be excessive, including Lynn. So he wrote to Mr. Frank in prison and they began a correspondence that convinced Lynn this man did not deserve to be locked up the rest of his life. He paid a visit to the prison. Even took his wife and two sons with him. Wrote letters to the parole board and eventually flew down to attend a parole hearing, where he was met by twenty-some people from a local church who were there for support.
The hearing wasn’t going well. The parole board countered Lynn’s arguments for release by pointing to a stack of letters requesting that James Frank remain in prison. Lynn remembers becoming agitated by questions as to why an outsider like himself would want to come there and meddle in something that was none of his concern. He said it sounded awfully familiar to what he heard as a boy when Dr. Martin Luther King was advocating civil rights and being told it was none of his affair.
Lynn describes himself as even-tempered, to a point. And then not so even. And just as he was reaching that point, he felt a tug on his sleeve and an older black man, who was among the church members who showed up, asked to say a few words.
Lynn sat down and let someone else do the talking. The parole board began to relent, a little bit. But they said, no, they still would never release this man in the state of Alabama. And that was that. Except Lynn now had something to say again, and it was that James Frank was welcome to come live with him and his family on their ranch in Wyoming.
And that’s what happened. A release date was set for two months in the future, provided he leave the state and reside in Wyoming. After the hearing, Lynn thanked the man who had stepped in and turned things around and asked who he was. He said he was the pastor of a church just down the street. The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The same church, incidentally, where Martin Luther King had been a pastor. That would be the same Martin Luther King who inspired Lynn to try to get James Frank out of prison in the first place. I was on the phone with Lynn this morning, going over some details and he apologized at this point, saying he gets a little emotional when he thinks about that part. I said that was all right.
James Frank came to Wyoming, lived and worked on the Wright family ranch for several years, hired out to work on other ranches in the area and got along great in the community. Enrolled in a community college and majored in drama. Graduated. Made the most of his get-out-of-jail card.
But he did miss home and very much wanted to go back when mother became ill. That also happened. After more legal wrangling, James Frank was allowed to return to Alabama, took care of his mom and became a popular radio disc jockey.
Remarkable.
After we talked on the phone this morning and Lynn recounted the story of struggling to get an inmate released from prison and welcoming him into his family, Lynn paused and very graciously thanked me again for my hospitality months ago when I let him park his RV in my driveway for a night and poured him some coffee the next morning. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, as my definition of what constitutes hospitality has been somewhat stretched recently.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
MLK
‘Ragtime Reverend’ Lynn Wright is a retired Espicopal minister from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, who is now a professional musician, touring the country as the piano-playing half of the duo Pianafiddle. I met Lynn when he stopped in the Wallowas on his way to perform in Idaho. It was a month before the presidential election and we got to talking about Obama.
He told me stories about growing up in the south and being one of the few white folks in the crowd when he went to hear Martin Luther King speak. Young Mr. Wright was so impressed that he wrote a letter in support of Doctor King, which was published in the paper. The next day his father asked him to stop. This was a surprise, as Wright’s father was a Baptist minister and his son pointed out that his letter in the paper supported the same message his father urged in his sermons. His father agreed. Then why the request to stop?
His dad told Lynn of the phone call he had received from the local Ku Klux Klan. He was ordered to shut his kid up, and if he did not, the list of consequences threatened against the family was detailed, extensive and I will not repeat them here.
For the safety of the family, Lynn’s father asked him to stop. Lynn agreed.
It would be hard for someone who wasn’t there at the time to understand the extreme tension, Lynn explained. I don’t doubt it.
Lynn later became the minister of an Episcopal congregation in Wyoming. He traveled to a church conference in Alabama, where the discussion shifted to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’ Lynn admitted he had never read King’s letter and was told he should get to the library at the first chance and do so.
Once Lynn got to the library and requested a copy of King’s letter, it came with another document attached. ‘A Call for Unity,’ was a statement signed by Alabama clergymen, which recognized that social injustices did exist, but suggested the court system was the proper avenue for them to be handled and that public protest by outsiders (Martin Luther King, Jr.) should be avoided.
Lynn wasn’t ready to read the statement by Alabama clergymen. His father had been an Alabama clergyman at the time and it would stand to reason his name would be one of the signatures.
He read first King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, which advocated direct action, a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, and the conviction that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Wyoming is a long way from Alabama, and this was a long time since the KKK had threatened Lynn’s family should they contribute to King’s activities. Still, Lynn did not want to see his father’s signature on the statement by Alabama clergymen.
He read the statement. Then he read the signatures.
I had a strong grip on my coffee cup by this point in his story. He explained that his father was a good man. He repeated that the social climate at that time, in that place, could only be understood if you were there. So he sat at the library table, preparing himself to see his father’s name on the statement by Alabama clergymen calling for Martin Luther King to stop. And when he got to the bottom of the list, he saw what he was looking for. His dad’s name was not one of the signatures.
I thought I was going to shatter my coffee cup from squeezing so hard while listening to Lynn’s illustration of how Martin Luther King effected people who must choose between what they know they’re supposed to do and what they know they’re supposed to do. That’s not a typo.
I realize the official day of recognition for Martin Luther King, Jr. was last week. I wasn’t scheduled to have a column run last week, and considered waiting to write this until next year. Calendars are useful devices, sure. But I suspect we sometimes follow them more closely than we should. Why not do something nice in the Christmas spirit when it’s August? Send somebody a gift when it’s not their birthday. See what happens. I’ll wager they don’t appreciate it less.
I’ve seen, heard and read portions of what Martin Luther King, Jr. had to say. I know he made an impact. I learned that back in school. I didn’t quite understand, though, until a piano player and former preacher sat at my kitchen table and told me how. Since then, I’ve thought of Martin Luther King on a lot of days, not just his official one.
I’m looking forward to Ragtime Reverend Lynn Wright coming back this way next year on his Pianafiddle tour. I hope he has time for coffee.
He told me stories about growing up in the south and being one of the few white folks in the crowd when he went to hear Martin Luther King speak. Young Mr. Wright was so impressed that he wrote a letter in support of Doctor King, which was published in the paper. The next day his father asked him to stop. This was a surprise, as Wright’s father was a Baptist minister and his son pointed out that his letter in the paper supported the same message his father urged in his sermons. His father agreed. Then why the request to stop?
His dad told Lynn of the phone call he had received from the local Ku Klux Klan. He was ordered to shut his kid up, and if he did not, the list of consequences threatened against the family was detailed, extensive and I will not repeat them here.
For the safety of the family, Lynn’s father asked him to stop. Lynn agreed.
It would be hard for someone who wasn’t there at the time to understand the extreme tension, Lynn explained. I don’t doubt it.
Lynn later became the minister of an Episcopal congregation in Wyoming. He traveled to a church conference in Alabama, where the discussion shifted to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’ Lynn admitted he had never read King’s letter and was told he should get to the library at the first chance and do so.
Once Lynn got to the library and requested a copy of King’s letter, it came with another document attached. ‘A Call for Unity,’ was a statement signed by Alabama clergymen, which recognized that social injustices did exist, but suggested the court system was the proper avenue for them to be handled and that public protest by outsiders (Martin Luther King, Jr.) should be avoided.
Lynn wasn’t ready to read the statement by Alabama clergymen. His father had been an Alabama clergyman at the time and it would stand to reason his name would be one of the signatures.
He read first King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, which advocated direct action, a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, and the conviction that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Wyoming is a long way from Alabama, and this was a long time since the KKK had threatened Lynn’s family should they contribute to King’s activities. Still, Lynn did not want to see his father’s signature on the statement by Alabama clergymen.
He read the statement. Then he read the signatures.
I had a strong grip on my coffee cup by this point in his story. He explained that his father was a good man. He repeated that the social climate at that time, in that place, could only be understood if you were there. So he sat at the library table, preparing himself to see his father’s name on the statement by Alabama clergymen calling for Martin Luther King to stop. And when he got to the bottom of the list, he saw what he was looking for. His dad’s name was not one of the signatures.
I thought I was going to shatter my coffee cup from squeezing so hard while listening to Lynn’s illustration of how Martin Luther King effected people who must choose between what they know they’re supposed to do and what they know they’re supposed to do. That’s not a typo.
I realize the official day of recognition for Martin Luther King, Jr. was last week. I wasn’t scheduled to have a column run last week, and considered waiting to write this until next year. Calendars are useful devices, sure. But I suspect we sometimes follow them more closely than we should. Why not do something nice in the Christmas spirit when it’s August? Send somebody a gift when it’s not their birthday. See what happens. I’ll wager they don’t appreciate it less.
I’ve seen, heard and read portions of what Martin Luther King, Jr. had to say. I know he made an impact. I learned that back in school. I didn’t quite understand, though, until a piano player and former preacher sat at my kitchen table and told me how. Since then, I’ve thought of Martin Luther King on a lot of days, not just his official one.
I’m looking forward to Ragtime Reverend Lynn Wright coming back this way next year on his Pianafiddle tour. I hope he has time for coffee.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Vader With an Eyepatch
(Latest Chieftain column)
I recently saw extremely rare footage of a scene from a movie I wish all of you could see. I really, really, wish you could. It was gold. Pure movie magic. And you’re going to have to trust me on this because I was running the camera at the time and it turns out the ‘record’ and ‘pause’ buttons are close enough together that things can get confusing.
A little red light came on, I think. Shouldn’t ‘pause’ be a yellow light? I don’t know. It was a heartbreaker, sitting down to edit the tape, wondering what I was going to say when I won my Emmy, or Grammy, or Oscar, or whatever. There I am waiting for cinematic history to unfold and, instead, there’s a blurry shot of a coffee table, couch, and somebody’s knee while I was moving the camera around, thinking I’d just turned it off instead of on. What? Who’s knee is that? Run it back . . . where’s the pirate Darth Vader scene? What is a knee and a coffee table doing on here?
Apparently there’s a reason movie people do more than one take. But if you’d seen this one through the viewfinder like I did, you would have agreed there was no point in doing it over. Assuming the camera was on.
The little movie we were filming, ‘Path of a Gearboatman,’ is set in the picturesque mountain town of Joseph. You may have heard of it. ‘Gearboatman’ is the story of young Patrick Baird, who triumphs over incredible odds to realize his destiny of rowing the cargo raft for Winding Waters River Expeditions. Along the way he performs an angry interpretive dance in the snow, exercises with propane tanks and gains wisdom from a stuffed animal. All this in under five minutes. We weren’t messing around.
The movie guest stars Paul and Penny Arentsen as themselves and Morgan Jenkins in a complicated role that combines Yoda the Jedi master with Micky, the trainer from the Rocky movies, and also Mister Miyagi from The Karate Kid. I make a brief appearance as a guy wearing a life jacket and it was supposed to co-star Mike Baird, Patrick’s dad. But . . . ahem . . . that’s the part I was supposed to be filming.
The special effects in this thing are amazing, though. I will say that. Except for the scene where the garage door is supposed to be opening by magic. Don’t look in the lefthand corner or you’ll see Mike Baird hauling on the chain. That kind of takes away from the illusion of magic a little bit. And in the scene where Patrick appears to be lifting a huge pile of life jackets all by himself, I think you can see my hand on the rope. Whoops. But considering our budget was zero and we knocked this thing out in a couple hours, I think it’s right up there with any other masterpiece on YouTube.
Check it out at windingwatersrafting.com. Click on ‘Gearboat Chronicles’ in the upper left-hand corner and the movie will be at the bottom of the page. The Chronicles are short essays, with a new one every week, offering a glimpse of what it’s like to work for a whitewater rafting company in Hells Canyon. I don’t quite understand the sense of humor of the guy who writes them, but he seems to know what he’s talking about.
The lost footage can never be recreated. Unless we did it again, but that seems like a hassle. So for the sake of history, here is the script from the missing scene:
(note: Mike Baird had an operation on his eyeball recently and is wearing a black eye patch while it heals. He claims to be growing weary of pirate jokes, but I can’t believe that’s true. My favorite one is to pretend to brush something off his shoulder on the side where his eye patch is and say, “What have you been feeding that parrot?”)
The scene opens with Mike and Patrick Baird hunched over a pile of maps. Mike is playing the part of Grey Baird, the grizzled buccaneer.
Grey Baird (pointing at map and talking in a pirate voice): “Patrick, This be Hells Canyon.”
Patrick: “I know, Dad.”
Grey Baird: “This be Wild Sheep Rapids, and here be Granite Rapids . . . a good captain is wise to use caution when passing these waters.”
Patrick: “Dad, I know.”
Grey Baird (shifting to Darth Vader voice): “Patrick, I am your father.”
Patrick: “I know, Dad.”
Yeah, well, it would probably make more sense if you saw it in context. But there’s only one person to blame for that, and that’s whoever designed the buttons on that video camera.
I recently saw extremely rare footage of a scene from a movie I wish all of you could see. I really, really, wish you could. It was gold. Pure movie magic. And you’re going to have to trust me on this because I was running the camera at the time and it turns out the ‘record’ and ‘pause’ buttons are close enough together that things can get confusing.
A little red light came on, I think. Shouldn’t ‘pause’ be a yellow light? I don’t know. It was a heartbreaker, sitting down to edit the tape, wondering what I was going to say when I won my Emmy, or Grammy, or Oscar, or whatever. There I am waiting for cinematic history to unfold and, instead, there’s a blurry shot of a coffee table, couch, and somebody’s knee while I was moving the camera around, thinking I’d just turned it off instead of on. What? Who’s knee is that? Run it back . . . where’s the pirate Darth Vader scene? What is a knee and a coffee table doing on here?
Apparently there’s a reason movie people do more than one take. But if you’d seen this one through the viewfinder like I did, you would have agreed there was no point in doing it over. Assuming the camera was on.
The little movie we were filming, ‘Path of a Gearboatman,’ is set in the picturesque mountain town of Joseph. You may have heard of it. ‘Gearboatman’ is the story of young Patrick Baird, who triumphs over incredible odds to realize his destiny of rowing the cargo raft for Winding Waters River Expeditions. Along the way he performs an angry interpretive dance in the snow, exercises with propane tanks and gains wisdom from a stuffed animal. All this in under five minutes. We weren’t messing around.
The movie guest stars Paul and Penny Arentsen as themselves and Morgan Jenkins in a complicated role that combines Yoda the Jedi master with Micky, the trainer from the Rocky movies, and also Mister Miyagi from The Karate Kid. I make a brief appearance as a guy wearing a life jacket and it was supposed to co-star Mike Baird, Patrick’s dad. But . . . ahem . . . that’s the part I was supposed to be filming.
The special effects in this thing are amazing, though. I will say that. Except for the scene where the garage door is supposed to be opening by magic. Don’t look in the lefthand corner or you’ll see Mike Baird hauling on the chain. That kind of takes away from the illusion of magic a little bit. And in the scene where Patrick appears to be lifting a huge pile of life jackets all by himself, I think you can see my hand on the rope. Whoops. But considering our budget was zero and we knocked this thing out in a couple hours, I think it’s right up there with any other masterpiece on YouTube.
Check it out at windingwatersrafting.com. Click on ‘Gearboat Chronicles’ in the upper left-hand corner and the movie will be at the bottom of the page. The Chronicles are short essays, with a new one every week, offering a glimpse of what it’s like to work for a whitewater rafting company in Hells Canyon. I don’t quite understand the sense of humor of the guy who writes them, but he seems to know what he’s talking about.
The lost footage can never be recreated. Unless we did it again, but that seems like a hassle. So for the sake of history, here is the script from the missing scene:
(note: Mike Baird had an operation on his eyeball recently and is wearing a black eye patch while it heals. He claims to be growing weary of pirate jokes, but I can’t believe that’s true. My favorite one is to pretend to brush something off his shoulder on the side where his eye patch is and say, “What have you been feeding that parrot?”)
The scene opens with Mike and Patrick Baird hunched over a pile of maps. Mike is playing the part of Grey Baird, the grizzled buccaneer.
Grey Baird (pointing at map and talking in a pirate voice): “Patrick, This be Hells Canyon.”
Patrick: “I know, Dad.”
Grey Baird: “This be Wild Sheep Rapids, and here be Granite Rapids . . . a good captain is wise to use caution when passing these waters.”
Patrick: “Dad, I know.”
Grey Baird (shifting to Darth Vader voice): “Patrick, I am your father.”
Patrick: “I know, Dad.”
Yeah, well, it would probably make more sense if you saw it in context. But there’s only one person to blame for that, and that’s whoever designed the buttons on that video camera.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Curse of the Three-Humped Camel
* This here is a short version of the holiday classic 'Curse of the Three-Humped Camel,' wittled down to fit inside a newspaper column. For the original, longwinded version, see: http://www.ragingface.com/threehumpedcamel.html
Curse of the Three-Humped Camel
Jon Rombach
My mom kept us occupied growing up with a big roll of paper and an old coffee can full of crayons. You weren’t in trouble when she asked you to draw her a picture, but you were getting close. My sisters and I decided coloring was more enjoyable than the alternatives, so we took an interest in art at an early age.
I was getting to be a nuisance around the holidays one year so Mom tore off a healthy chunk of paper and suggested I draw her something. I asked what she had in mind and she said, “something big.” I asked how big. She tore off another chunk of paper and suggested I fill both. “Draw me a nativity scene,” she said. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the donkey . . . you know, the wise men and some animals.”
I started with Jesus in the manger. Put some straw sticking out from the edges. Little legs and arms waving around. Mary kneeling beside. I couldn’t remember if Joseph had a beard or not, so I compromised with a mustache. Drew a polebarn around all this, put in some sheep and threw some straw around for effect. The wise men came next on their camels with frankincense, myrrh and . . . I couldn’t remember what the third guy brought so I just drew him holding a sack. Put some hills in the background, drew the donkey, big ol’ star with some little ones around it and there you go, Mom.
She was pleased. So pleased, she suggested I bring it to school for show-and-tell.
My teacher liked it even more. She said it was a wonderful change from the usual show-and-tell Barbie dolls and model airplanes. She encouraged my classmates to follow my example and exercise their creative sides. I thought perhaps I might get beaten up for this, but then she took it to another level and suggested I finish the piece to display at the upcoming Christmas pageant. She offered to give me space in back of the classroom, place all art supplies at my disposal and then show the finished product at the annual Rainier Elementary School winter gala.
I felt exposed in the back of the room with my drawing taped to a rollaway chalkboard. For one thing, I didn’t see how the drawing needed more finishing. Baby Jesus was there. Mary. Joseph. Donkey. Wisemen. Star. What more did she want? Was I supposed to make Mary shed real tears? But my art commission carried an exemption from regular classroom duty so I was free to play with Crayolas while other kids fiddled with penmanship and arithmetic. If it meant skipping math class, I would improve the Mona Lisa with a box of crayons.
I started with a few more sheep. Then other livestock to fill empty space. Oxen seemed good. Pigs. Not sure if horses were around Bethlehem during the turn of the A.D but I threw some in there just in case. Jesus got a glowing radiance thing with a delicate dusting of yellow crayon around the manger and I served halos all around. Can't believe I forgot the halos. The teacher was right.
I made the halos bigger. Extended the robes on the wise men and dropped their beards a foot or two for that flowing ZZ Top look. Also mustache extensions. These are wise men after all. Put more sheep in there because sheep are good for that sort of thing and the sky picked up new constellations. These seemed to take away from the main star, so I made that bigger too.
It was here I met the limitations of wax crayon as an art medium and discovered you can only layer or blend so much until you hit what we artists like to call The Crayola Wall. Once you're at the Wall, you can scrape away or add layers all you want but the crayon carrying capacity for any given paper tooth is quite finite and will not be stretched. Once breached, there's no going back and what once was simple is now a smear.
With the Christmas pageant fast approaching and now too late to start over, my teacher began to insist I join the rest of the class in mundane exercises. There was no other option but to sign my name to a composition I no longer recognized or wished to call my own.
My teacher honored her commitment to hang my picture for the Christmas program, but the sight that greeted pageant-goers was now a grotesque wax-relief suggestive more of a livestock auction gone wrong than a holy scene.
Several older ladies crossed themselves when they walked by, but it wasn't out of reverence.
A fourth wise man had shown up by then and brought a bag of chips. The sheep population was a problem and the star of Bethlehem now stretched half the length of the entire picture, requiring even the angels to wear sunglasses. By the time our twinkle-twinkle-tinfoil-star Christmas pageant was over, the masterpiece I had lost control of was already taken down.
It took time to adjust back to regular school life after my brief art career. Even recess was empty, the playground now a barkchip wasteland where I wandered, bumping into the monkey bars, haunted by the grip of excess and the image of that fourth wise man riding a camel with three humps.
Curse of the Three-Humped Camel
Jon Rombach
My mom kept us occupied growing up with a big roll of paper and an old coffee can full of crayons. You weren’t in trouble when she asked you to draw her a picture, but you were getting close. My sisters and I decided coloring was more enjoyable than the alternatives, so we took an interest in art at an early age.
I was getting to be a nuisance around the holidays one year so Mom tore off a healthy chunk of paper and suggested I draw her something. I asked what she had in mind and she said, “something big.” I asked how big. She tore off another chunk of paper and suggested I fill both. “Draw me a nativity scene,” she said. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the donkey . . . you know, the wise men and some animals.”
I started with Jesus in the manger. Put some straw sticking out from the edges. Little legs and arms waving around. Mary kneeling beside. I couldn’t remember if Joseph had a beard or not, so I compromised with a mustache. Drew a polebarn around all this, put in some sheep and threw some straw around for effect. The wise men came next on their camels with frankincense, myrrh and . . . I couldn’t remember what the third guy brought so I just drew him holding a sack. Put some hills in the background, drew the donkey, big ol’ star with some little ones around it and there you go, Mom.
She was pleased. So pleased, she suggested I bring it to school for show-and-tell.
My teacher liked it even more. She said it was a wonderful change from the usual show-and-tell Barbie dolls and model airplanes. She encouraged my classmates to follow my example and exercise their creative sides. I thought perhaps I might get beaten up for this, but then she took it to another level and suggested I finish the piece to display at the upcoming Christmas pageant. She offered to give me space in back of the classroom, place all art supplies at my disposal and then show the finished product at the annual Rainier Elementary School winter gala.
I felt exposed in the back of the room with my drawing taped to a rollaway chalkboard. For one thing, I didn’t see how the drawing needed more finishing. Baby Jesus was there. Mary. Joseph. Donkey. Wisemen. Star. What more did she want? Was I supposed to make Mary shed real tears? But my art commission carried an exemption from regular classroom duty so I was free to play with Crayolas while other kids fiddled with penmanship and arithmetic. If it meant skipping math class, I would improve the Mona Lisa with a box of crayons.
I started with a few more sheep. Then other livestock to fill empty space. Oxen seemed good. Pigs. Not sure if horses were around Bethlehem during the turn of the A.D but I threw some in there just in case. Jesus got a glowing radiance thing with a delicate dusting of yellow crayon around the manger and I served halos all around. Can't believe I forgot the halos. The teacher was right.
I made the halos bigger. Extended the robes on the wise men and dropped their beards a foot or two for that flowing ZZ Top look. Also mustache extensions. These are wise men after all. Put more sheep in there because sheep are good for that sort of thing and the sky picked up new constellations. These seemed to take away from the main star, so I made that bigger too.
It was here I met the limitations of wax crayon as an art medium and discovered you can only layer or blend so much until you hit what we artists like to call The Crayola Wall. Once you're at the Wall, you can scrape away or add layers all you want but the crayon carrying capacity for any given paper tooth is quite finite and will not be stretched. Once breached, there's no going back and what once was simple is now a smear.
With the Christmas pageant fast approaching and now too late to start over, my teacher began to insist I join the rest of the class in mundane exercises. There was no other option but to sign my name to a composition I no longer recognized or wished to call my own.
My teacher honored her commitment to hang my picture for the Christmas program, but the sight that greeted pageant-goers was now a grotesque wax-relief suggestive more of a livestock auction gone wrong than a holy scene.
Several older ladies crossed themselves when they walked by, but it wasn't out of reverence.
A fourth wise man had shown up by then and brought a bag of chips. The sheep population was a problem and the star of Bethlehem now stretched half the length of the entire picture, requiring even the angels to wear sunglasses. By the time our twinkle-twinkle-tinfoil-star Christmas pageant was over, the masterpiece I had lost control of was already taken down.
It took time to adjust back to regular school life after my brief art career. Even recess was empty, the playground now a barkchip wasteland where I wandered, bumping into the monkey bars, haunted by the grip of excess and the image of that fourth wise man riding a camel with three humps.
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