Short Notes: Will Brady's Ruminations

Essay: The End of Secrets

2024-03-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

Illuminated Text Culture of Violence

2024-03-29T12:21:00.000-07:00

This piece was created in 1991, amidst the invasion of Kuwait during the G W Bush administration. It was exhibited in the Connecticut Capitol Buildings complex that summer. The items expressed then still apply today.

East Haddam Bridge Repair Schedule week of March 23 to 29 2024

2024-03-23T16:43:00.000-07:00

3/23/24 -> INTO NEXT WEEK

Swing Span Testing:

Contractor will be performing test openings of the new mechanicals of the swing span throughout the week, these random tests will only occur between 9am-3pm. The contractor will work to limit traffic backups, but delays should be anticipated during these test runs.

Conversion Charts for Weights and Measures

2024-03-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

Coming into the 21st Century ~

At some point, [it's already happening] people living in the United States / North America will have to adopt metric system units of weight and measure. Here's a link that could be useful.

Conversion Charts for weights and meaures

Thoughts on sex appeal

2024-03-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

Trained as a "hot metal" typographer

2024-03-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

I was trained as a "hot type" typesetter. While this did not immediately lead to a vocation - it is now, years later, only part of what I do, and have done. nor does it indicate what I primarily do for work now - the experience forever affected how I look at graphic arts and at design in general.

UPCOMING ART SHOW ~ July 2024 / Gallery at the Wauregan / 200 Main St / Norwich CT

2024-03-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

Preserving old video and computer games ~ (from PC Gamer News)

2024-03-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

Nightdive's Stephen Kick and Larry Kuperman shared their thoughts on the importance of videogame history in an interview with PC Gamer at GDC.

The Nightdive Studios website makes its mission clear: "Bringing lost and forgotten gaming treasures back from the depths." And so it has, through outstanding updates of games including Quake and Quake 2, System Shock, Turok 3, and Dark Forces. But it's not just the games that Nightdive aims to bring back from the past: Maintaining the totality of their history is a major part of what the studio aims to do.

"I think the issue of games as art has been answered more than enough," Nightdive director of business development Larry Kuperman said in an interview with PC Gamer at GDC. "But taking it to the next level, if we all agree that games are art, then the people that make games are artists and deserve to be remembered that way and deserve to have their names incorporated into what we do going forward."

Please follow the link for more details: Preserving older games for the future's pleasures

digital painting: "Ballek's Garden Center

2023-07-03T15:00:00.002-07:00

About Indigenous people in Connecticut

2023-07-02T09:08:00.006-07:00

The question was raised: "What indigenous peoples had rights to the land in what is now called East Haddam? i imagine the land was ripped from them by Europeans like the rest of what is now North America."

A Brief Reply: Pequot, Mohegan, Paugussett, Schaghticoke, Quinnipiac, Niantics, Nipmunk, Massabesic, Narraganset.

The name "Connecticut" comes from a Native American word, "quinatucquet", roughly meaning "beside the long tidal river." It refers to the Connecticut River, which cuts through the middle of the state.

In 1786, the United States established its first Native American reservation and approached each tribe as an independent nation. This policy remained intact for more than one hundred years.

The Mohegan Tribe gained federal recognition as a sovereign nation on March 7, 1994. However, the Mohegan nation has existed in southeastern Connecticut for hundreds of years and as part of the indigenous North American population for 10,000 years. Native peoples have lived together, celebrated traditions together and struggled to survive together as a Tribe through many dark years.

Federal recognition has given the Mohegan Tribe the opportunity to conduct itself as a sovereign nation. To get there, the Tribe had to meet strict criteria, but was able to meet these high standards of proof and answer questions about why the Tribe would take the trouble.

Federal recognition for the Mohegan Tribe was the culmination of years of work.

Several tribal nations have lived on and maintained reservation lands since the Euro-colonial days, and are regarded as sovereign nations now.

The Pequots and the Mohegans now own and run two of the world's biggest casinos, both located close to where I work. Other tribal nations in Connecticut (Paugussett, Schaghticoke) have made valiant efforts gain recognition but have not been as successful at having their sovereign rights recognized or respected.

Digital Collage: "Chromolith"

2020-11-28T08:44:00.002-08:00

Origins of the USA Day of giving Thanks

2020-11-28T08:33:00.003-08:00

Digital Collage: Obsidian

2020-11-21T10:29:00.007-08:00

Amston Lake CT "Postcard"

2020-11-21T10:28:00.002-08:00

Saturday whimsey - digital collage

2020-11-14T14:23:00.003-08:00

Saturday Whimsey
digital collage
8" x 10" / 20 x 25 cm

Metromatic - combine

2020-11-14T14:21:00.005-08:00

Metromatic

Short Haul Gibbon - prelude to something more

2020-11-14T10:25:00.007-08:00

Short Haul Gibbon. That was his name. He worked June to October hiring out to local farmers who needed workers and flatbeds to bring newly cut silage from the fields to their barns for winter storage. Seasonal people from the city would employ him to move things from Millard’s Auction House in Arcade – furnishings by the house load to fill up their summer places right quick.

His birth name had been Eustace Gibbon - a name he hated growing up. His Pa said he gave him that name because and on account of his belief that a boy with an odd name had to quickly learn how to stand up for himself on the school grounds. Which worked well for him and by teh time he'd got to second grade, he could manage himself quite fine. At the same time, he was no rabble rouser.

By third grade, even the tough kids from the Hollow called him “Eustace” in a certain tone that signified an air of muted respect. Older folks were deferential as well, only their approach to him led to asking him to do chores, and they paid him handsomely. Some said that with a name such as his it must mean the family had some civility that other families lacked.

When he was 17, he already knew what he wanted to do. He didn’t plan on returning to high school the following year. He’d saved up $500 (a tidy sum for a lad in those days) and went and bought old Putt Smith’s beat-up 10 gear standard shift Brockway Semi-trailer. He got himself his own phone number - the only person under 30 to have his own personal phone number in the entire county.

That, summer after doing these two things he spent his spare time fixing the Brockway up. Come autumn he wangled some deal with the Ag-Tech school to give the cab a new crisp paint job; then had one of the Thompson Brothers carefully detail lettering on both side doors that read “Short Haul Gibbon” with that phone number below it, and he was in business! Just – like – that.

T’was the summer people who began to call him Short Haul directly; first because they didn’t really know his name. And he found this so much to his liking that by age 20, he filed papers in Probate to make the change legit and for the record.

When folks asked his Pa iffen this warn’t some sign of disrespect he told them that his boy made his own living, and that he was old enough to do as he pleased, that Pa was fine with this and whyn’t they just go and mind their own danged business.

Shortly after this, he began getting tattooed. Never said why, and we didn’t know from where since there were no places what did that kind of artwork around these parts. He was private about it, sort of. Except for a five pointed star right center on his neck, in that hollow between the Adam’s Apple and the collar bones, all his body pictures could be discreetly hid beneath his clothes .. except in the summertime, which is when I first saw then and took notice.

I first made acquaintance with Short Haul the summer I had just turned 17. He was 28. I‘d been working on one of the Mennonite family’s farms helping thrash the hay. Short Haul took their custom made furniture that they made and drove it all up to Oberlin for them where they sold it to some fancy-dance appliance and household goods store. One day I working on their farmstead and doing heavy lifting, I was big for my age, muscular and full of spunk and vinegar and all sweated up, but it was clean, working sweat.

Short Haul took note and said I was just the sort that he needed working in his business – what with all the many tasks he was getting hired on to do. After all, he was getting older and he could no longer do all the work by himself.

My folks thought working for Short Haul would do me good. It was a step up and away from weekends drinking up on Cream Ridge Road with the Ag-Tech boys. You know – one of those secrets that nobody says much of by everybody knows. So I said yes right away. Besides, I was enthralled with those tattoos.

Truth be known, they was a whole lot more that the ink what got me curious ~ though I wan’t ‘zactly sure how to express myself about that then – not having learnt of greater mysteries beyond the Baby Jesus being born from a Virgin, and the odd noise that could be heard in the caves on Covenant Mountain.

Now, Short Haul was a right personable man. He could also be a real charmer. The ladies would just swoon over him, but he just kep his space from them, remaining real polite and keeping things to business. Given he was always hiring himself out for work I figured this to be pretty smart.

But I was working for him for just over a year when one day I asked him if he ever planned to take a wife. At first he looked at me plain flustered. Then, “Well, what brings that personalness up?” He asked in such a tone that I believe my first reaction was to blush.

And I thought about it. My sister, Emily, had goaded me into asking. Turns out she is friends with this shy deaf-and-dumb girl, Wisteria; her people lives just shy a mile down the road from us. They are our closest neighbors on the way to town. Anyway, Wisteria was sweet on Short Haul, it was no secret. It was almost painful to watch her when he came in proximity to her at the Agway.

And while my question was on that occasion, awkward, it also brought open a whole passel of subjects that we, neither he nor I – ever talked about until then.

The question altered everything – not right away, mind you – but from that point on. The question was a beginning.

On that occasion, there was a long and uncomfortable silence as we drove a truck full of merchandise to Oberlin. Until we were just on the outskirts of town, when he took my inquiry one step further, and asked of me the same thing back. And it was the second time that day I blushed.

Digital Collage : Bees harvest brown arrows

2020-11-14T10:15:00.005-08:00

Digital Collage

digital collage
printed out as 8"x10" / 20/25 cm image on paper

Absorption

2020-11-02T05:35:00.006-08:00

Absorption - inspired by photography of Julia Grey
acrylic on Canvas

Digital Collages

2020-11-01T19:50:00.004-08:00

"Unrepealableness Jussanjuan"

digital collage 8 x 11 / 24 x 27 cm

"Rough Sanctuary"

digital collage 8 x 11 / 24 x 27 cm

The man who wielded power - a poem

2020-10-28T15:42:00.003-07:00

Old New Departure

2020-10-28T15:34:00.003-07:00

Old New Departure, Bristol CT
watercolor in travel journal - 7"x10" / 18 x 25 cm

Rick's Smoke Shop, in Amsterdam

2020-10-24T15:11:00.008-07:00

As I sketched, a woman attempted to argue with the shop keeper because none of the food items on his menu board available, and that she came into this establishment specifically to eat.

One of the other customers (an American) indicated that this shop was not an eatery, but she would not be contained.

The rest of us chuckled. Eventually she left.

Attempting portrait sketching - Ashley

2020-10-14T10:16:00.011-07:00

I was at lunch, having a steak and cheese sub at the Grand-Atwater deli/bodega [121 Grand Avenue, New Haven] and had begun sketching.

This young lady, Ashley, came and sat at the table. We talked a bit, she was curious about what I was drawing. She asked if I could draw her. Now, typically, when someone asks this I would quickly decline - I'm not as comfortable sketching people as I am buildings or ridgelines.

But that day I thought, why not - only way I'll get better at portraits is to actually start doing them so agreed to. I took a couple of photos, did a very rudimentary sketch and told here when I finished a proper sketch I'd drop it off with Cody, who works and cooks at the place.

That was a week and a half ago. I'm guessing she's presumed she'll never see this.

The bodega (once again, at 121 Grand Avenue in the Fair Haven section of New Haven) reminded me a lot of a steak place in Philly - where I spent my teen aged years. Grand-Atwater makes a very tasty cheese steak. I always as for tomato sauce. Quite tasty.

Anyway - today I have to turn in my Census materials and after I've done that, I'm dropping this sketch off for her.

Maple Tree sketch

2020-10-14T06:52:00.002-07:00

pencil on canvas 16x20