THE ZEN OF PAINTING

 

40+ Years Later and the House Demolished, Did It Matter if We Used Glossy or Flat?

 

[www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com]

It was the summer of 1973 when my brother and I lived on my grandfather’s farm in Chardon, Ohio.  One day, we decided to paint the kitchen a beautiful shade of light turquoise. 

We turned on the radio, and began our task.  We opened the windows, and I did the trim while my brother rolled.  We listened to the radio as we busied ourselves with our individual tasks.  We worked the corners, the edges, the front surfaces.

There’s something about painting -- perhaps it’s the fumes, perhaps it is the long quiet times of many little tasks.  Painting requires no moral decisions, no great choices, no necessary pontifications about the meaning and purpose of life.  And yet...

And yet, there you are, with your self, and the task before you.  For me, painting time has often been a time to re-enter the inner I, to think, to remember.  In many ways, it is the ideal task for self-enlightenment.

When we were done, we felt we’d accomplished something, and felt we’d given something back to the old farmhouse. 

When the weekend came, another uncle came to visit us .  He strode into the kitchen, looked around at the paint, and simply said “you didn’t use glossy!” 

Glossy?  We were teenagers from California, visiting the home where our mother grew up.  Though it may be second-nature to us today, back then we had no sense that a kitchen should be painted glossy.  Glossy vs. flat were not issues that we thought much about.  We didn’t think it mattered all that much?

But Uncle Joe seemed to think it was a big deal, and just one more bit of evidence that teenagers from “the big city” were a bunch of  dimwits who wouldn’t know a cow from a goat.  Uncle Joe shared it around to family and friends that we’d painted the kitchen in “wrong” paint, so we heard about in the weeks that followed.  Some relatives didn’t care, but others would comment as they came in, “Oh, so there’s the flat paint job,” instead of, “Hey, hello, long time no see!”  

Dumb city boys who don’t know the difference between flat and glossy paint, who actually had the stupidity to paint a kitchen in flat paint.

Of course, our intent was to make the family happy that we’d improved the old farmhouse.  We wanted the relatives to comment that we were industrious nephews who proved that all city boys were not idiots.

 

Today, while I was painting my own bathroom -- glossy paint, white -- memories of the summer of 1973 in Chardon began to play again in my mind.  Perhaps it was the paint. Perhaps it was the cool breeze blowing fresh oxygen through the room. I heard the chickens out back and it reminded me of my brief period of farm-living.

I began to think about how Uncle Joe responded, and how he could have responded.  I realized then the great truth in the phrase that WHAT we do is of  little or no importance, but HOW we do it is everything. 

Uncle Joe died over 10 years ago, and when I visited the old farm site in 1999, the entire farm house and barn had been torn down and were now just a field.  None of it mattered anymore in the world of physical reality.  Joe was gone, and the entire farmhouse was simply a memory, glossy or flat.

Joe could have congratulated us on taking the initiative to paint, and could have explained why kitchens are always painted glossy.  He could have told us that it was a great  primer coat, and enthusiastically offered to drive us right then to the hardware store to get glossy paint, and we’d all do the final coat together.  That would have been something.  Our memory would have been profoundly different had Uncle Joe taken that route of inclusiveness, familyness, and helpfulness. 

 I do not fault him for what he did do -- he probably knew no other way.  In fact, from what I knew about his father (my grandfather), his father probably would have beaten him had Joe painted the kitchen with flat paint.   So to Joe, that was just one of millions of automatic reactions to things in his world.  He probably forgot about in a few years, after the novelty of talking about Marie’s silly nephews wore off.

I realized then how important such “little things” can be, and I wondered how well I would do when my next opportunity arose.  It is especially important with impressionable youth to do the very best we can to be a good example.

It seemed like an important insight, that the “how” is more important than the “what,” and that flat or glossy really doesn’t matter.  Perhaps it was the paint.  Perhaps it was the cool breeze blowing fresh oxygen through the room....

 

 

EDDIE VAN HALEN: TEEN MEMORIES

 TEEN MEMORIES OF EDDIE VAN HALEN

Christopher Nyerges

[Nyerges can be reached at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com.]

 

It was late Sunday night, and Eddie Van Halen had died 4 days earlier.  My wife and I were on our way home and we were talking about my memories of Eddie. We felt inspired to go see the Van Halen landmark, the curb where Eddie carved his family name in wet cement many decades ago. 

It was past 10 p.m. when we arrived at the curbside candle-lit landmark.  “There it is,” I said.  Fans had written messages on the sidewalk and left candles and paraphernalia all around the Van Halen inscription.  Large letters spelling out VANHALEN decorated the lower walls of the line of stores. 

As my wife and I took a few photos, fans continued to stop and take pictures, and talk about how they wish they had met Eddie. As I was telling stories to my wife of my high school youth, some people overheard and asked if I really knew Eddie.

“Yes, I knew Eddie,” I told them. “We hung out together in high school.” 

People were impressed that someone who actually hob-knobbed with the Great Eddie could be there on that dark night.  One man, a true devoted fan, drove over from Long Beach to honor the man’s shrine.  A group of young people showed up, most dressed in hard rock-black – one with a guitar, and two with long hair just like Eddie -- to pay homage to The Man.  These young men and women, were  too young to know Eddie in the day, but old enough to have listened to and admired his music.   During our short visit, maybe two dozen people came by and drove by to see the shrine.

I knew Eddie well enough.  It began when I went to John Muir High School with David Roth, taking Spanish with Roth, and circulating in the same social circles.   It was through David that I got to know Eddie Van Halen and the band.   David Roth dated the sister of my best friend, and through Joe and Debbie Sierra, and John Linthurst, and the John Muir Conservation Club, I got to know David, and through David, I often went to the parties as the unpaid group photographer. 

Eddie attended Pasadena High School on the other side of town, so we saw Eddie and the band on the weekends, or when the band was practicing in the sound-proofed back room of Homer Dollar’s home on Maiden Lane. My close friend John Linthurst rented the Dollar place, and so John would call me when the band was out back practicing, and I bicycled the short few blocks from my parents’ house to listen, and take pictures.

I liked Eddie.  He was friendly, open, never conceited or preoccupied with himself as a star.  I liked his smile and his enthusiasm.  He very much reminded me of the humble nature of Jimi Hendrix.  No, I never met Jimi, but I recall his quote saying that he never thought he was that good on guitar, and that he had so much more work to do.  The true and deep artists are often that way, deep into the art, always looking for ways to improve and conquer the next challenge.  So Eddie was like that – much more than an entertainer. He was the consummate artist.

I  met Eddie, David, and the band in 1971 or ’72,  during the time that they were evolving from “Mammoth” to “Van Halen.”  We could not miss Eddie’s excellence.  Of course, the fans  focused on David too  – he was the lead singer.  In our little social group of friends and schoolmates, I don’t recall that anyone ever believed the group would hit the big time. Still, when we sat around talking about the things that high school people talked about, the talk would get around to Van Halen, and to Eddie. 

I recall once when a friend was describing how Eddie was so good on guitar that he could exactly replicate Jimmy Page’s Led Zepplin songs, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton of Cream, and others. Eddie could replicate these masters so well that you could close your eyes and believe you were listening to them.  Eddie was good, and everyone knew it.

I often felt a kinship with Eddie because our birthdays were so close.  We were born in the same year, 1955, and he was born on January 26, about 2 weeks after my birth in Pasadena.  Eddie was born in Amsterdam, and in 1967, his family settled into Pasadena.  Born of musically talented parents, both Eddie and Alex were playing music from their early years.  Eddie once shared that he’d never learned to read music, and that he just practiced all the time and learned to improvise.

My personal interactions with Eddie – mostly during the pre-fame days -- were brief and spotty, though he left a special mark on me.    

I was their periodic photographer.  When Van Halen was getting started, I was getting started with  journalism at John Muir High School, and David always saw me with a camera – either super 8 video or 35 mm.  He invited me to take their pictures, so I would drive with the band in their packed van to take photos at their gigs at the Cucamonga Connection.  I also went to the Pasadena Civic, and various Pasadena backyards.  One such backyard was within walking distance of my parents’ home on Los Robles Avenue. 

David Roth always seemed to take the center stage and was the idol of all the teenage girls, which continued to bring in the crowds at their rented halls or backyards.  Still, there would have been no Van Halen band without Eddie.  And certainly, Alex the drummer kept the musical composition tightly woven with his technical mastery. 

Though David seemed to do most of the talking and singing, Eddie did most of the smiling. Gregarious, positive, always friendly.   I know that lots happened once they signed record deals and began touring, and I rarely saw any of them anymore.  I would read about Eddie in the newspaper, or hear something on the radio, and always wondered how much was truth, and how much just part of the developing myth.  I prefer to remember Eddie as the young and innocent teen who was my friend, and who never seemed puffed up with pride, and could genuinely smile at anyone in his circle, including me.  I feel that Eddie played for the pure love of it, for the manifest expression of excellence, with no rival in recent memory except possibly Jimi Hendrix.

After we finished talking with the young fans at the street memorial, we went to the old Van Halen family home where a similar shrine had been set up.  However, this felt different.  It was quiet and dark.  A couple quietly moved along as we walked up to the house.  A few candles were lit on the sidewalk, barely making the shrine visible.  There was a spiritual quality here, a solemn silence, and it felt as if Eddie was back at his old home, looking at friends and fans who came, pondering now whatever is next.  I was there as a friend, not a “fan,” and I quietly let thoughts of Eddie fill my mind, in this place where the spirit of Eddie would be if it was anywhere. 

After some moments of quiet reflection, we drove home.  

Eddie, we’ll miss your smile and your musical genius.  May your journey be filled with peace.

THE BIOSCARF -- especially now

The Bioscarf: A big scarf with a built-in N95 filter

PRODUCT REVIEW

By Christopher Nyerges

[Nyerges is the author of “How to Survive Anywhere,” “Foraging California,” “Extreme Simplicity,” and other books. He has been leading survival classes since 1974.  More information at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com]

BIOSCARF SPECS

Weight:  19.4 oz

Width:  84 inches

Length: 9 inches

Material:  100% polyester that is made from recycled PET water bottles and recycled PVC

Source:  https://www.g95.com/?rfsn=3861014.66a45d

I recently had the opportunity to test something called the “bioscarf.”  Yes, it’s a scarf, and everyone knows I like scarfs.  I’ve worn them all my life.  I used to love alpaca wool scarves, and find their comfort impeccable.  But then I was given a Polartech scarf, which is a polyester product that strives to duplicate wool without any itching or scratching.  I have come to prefer my Polartech scarves, which are also easy to clean and dry. 

I like long scarves too, but not the very long scarves that really get in the way.  I cannot get the story of the famous dancer Isadora Duncan out of my mind, who loved very very long silk scarves, and she enjoyed wearing them in her convertible.  She was 50 years old at the time, she was driving one day in September, 1927 in Nice, France, and her enormously-long scarf got caught in the rear hubcabs of her car!  It was a ghastly accident and she was strangled to death.  When you read about Duncan, you’d think her great legacy is that she had a famous dancing career, but the first think you read about is that she was strangled to death by her scarf.   Well, I don’t drive a convertible and I cannot imagine wearing a scarf that must have been 10 or 12 feet long, or longer!

Anyway, the bioscarf that I had the opportunity to use and test actually measures in at seven feet long, and 9 inches wide. That’s big, but not too big to get caught in your car’s or motorcycle’s wheels.  Bicyclists should be careful though.

I like its size.  It’s long, but not quite too long.  You have enough scarf to know you’re wearing a scarf and not forget it.  It comes in white, olive, black, and camo, and since I had the choice of color, I couldn’t resist the camo.  But its main selling point is not the size – it’s what’s hidden inside the fabric.

Bioscarf is actually a stylish air mask that keeps your neck and head cozy while filtering out unwanted air contaminants, germs, second hand smoke, pollen and other allergens. This can protect you from colds, flus, pneumonia, tuberculosis and allergens.  Bioscarf is the first scarf with an N95 air filter layer built right into the inner layer  of the scarf.

When tested by Nelson Labs against normal masks and respirators,  the bioscarf outperformed some of the most popular masks available today with a 99.75% average filtration efficiency. In addition to doing its job effectively,  the bioscarf is made from sustainable materials. Post-consumer recycled PET water bottles go into the fabric, while the signature labels are made from recycled PVC. It is also built to be long lasting and reusable, meaning less disposable air filters in the landfill.   And this filter is reusable – just wash the scarf by hand from time to time after use.

So, if you’re in a situation where you might otherwise put on a face mask, you can just wrap the scarf over your mouth and nose, and breathe through it.  Maybe you’re an allergy sufferer, visiting somewhere with poor air quality, on you’re on a bus or plane where everyone is sneezing and coughing.   Maybe you’re on a campout and the smoke from the campfire is excessive.  Bioscarf will give you some protection.

I like the multi-use aspect of the bioscarf, and when I’m wearing mine, it gives me the feeling of being protected, as if I’m living in a Mad Max, Book of Eli, or Bladerunner, world.  Of course,  that’s a crazy idea, since everyone in those futuristic dystopian societies would probably be wearing rags.  Still, the bioscarf is one of those multi-purpose garments that you’ll be glad  you purchased. It’s functional, and provides a layer of protection that other scarves just don’t provide. 

They run about $45, and are available at eartheasy.com, or Amazon.

COMFORT

I’ve had the opportunity to wear this scarf in cold weather, and found it to be a bit warmer than a comparable scarf.  This is probably because it’s not just a single layer of fabric, but actually 3 layers.  The scarf is not thick however, and it has the comfortable feel of a “normal” scarf.   The length is a bit longer than most scarves, and so you have just a bit more fabric that you can wrap around your neck, or your face.

Washing Instructions: Hand wash only

Meet Victor Migenes

Some of the old-timers in L.A. might remember Victor and his father’s traditional landmark cigar factory in downtown L.A., La Plata Cigars established in 1947, where the finest cigars were made by Cubans.  We first met Victor when we read about La Plata in the L.A. Times, and a group of us took a field trip into downtown L.A. to visit.  What a place! The walk-in humidor was amazing, and it was quite educational to watch his workers roll cigars.

Victor is also known around town as a drummer in several bands. notably Dance Hall Pimps, but these days he pays his bills as a realtor.

Victor Migenes is an old-school hard-working realtor in Northeast Los Angeles.  We meet at the Old L.A. Farmers Market on Marmion Way one Tuesday, and over some excellent non-GMO tamales, we discussed the local real estate market, mostly for my edification.

Migenes, who works for Keller-Williams Realty and Property Concierges Brokerage, points out that the Northeast L.A. market has changed considerably over the past several years, a point which has also been an issue of controversy. 

He points out that buying into Highland Park was a bit cheaper than buying, for example, in Los Feliz or Silver Lake, and younger executives moved in over the past several years, purchased Craftsmen homes and bungalows, and renovated them.  Some were just flippers, but many came to stay.  The trend, which has occurred in many U.S. cities, is called  Gentrification.

The word “gentrification” means different things to different people, depending on whether you are a renter, a buyer, a seller, or someone who has lived in the neighborhood for generations.

“Remember,” says Migenes, “that many of the younger executives from the entertainment industry saw Highland Park and the overall Northeast as an affordable  beginning of home ownership.  They felt priced-out of Silverlake and the more popular areas, and they moved to Highland Park and began fixing things up.”

He’s empathetic towards those who have been displaced by the changes that have occurred.  Still, Migenes, as a realtor, works to help people sell their homes, or to buy the best possible home. His job is to help buyers and sellers avoid the many pitfalls that can occur during the buy and sell process.

He points out that you can buy a house in Texas for about $240,000, and a similar house here will cost you about $800,000!  “Why?” I ask.  “Because everyone wants to live here. It’s all about demand that drives up the price,” he tells me.

“The entertainment industry has changed, and continues to grow in our area.  Fewer young executives are buying into Hollywood unless they have some attachment to that area, and the entertainment industry is today more focused in Glendale and Burbank,” he says.  And the Northeast is regarded as a more affordable segue to home ownership.

His advice to buyers is to consult with a good realtor, and to get to know the individual character of the neighborhoods.  Even if the prices seem to be on the higher end, Migenes believes that most of the neighborhoods have improved for the better in the Northeast.

“Still, even though it’s a sellers market today and the prices seem to be on the high end, the buyer should be very picky about where to buy.  You have to consider how long you want to be there.  For those who intend to stay, and be a part of the neighborhood, your home values are going to rise over the long run of say the next 10 years.”

Areas that seem to be over-priced, where there is a lot of renovation both in residential and commerce growth, are the very areas that will maintain or increase in value over time, advised Migenes.

“There are still pockets here and there that I would avoid,” adds Migenes, and that’s the sort of thing that you can find out by asking around.

I told Migenes about real estate predictions that I’d read about on line, mostly from people who were selling a financial newsletter.  “Subscribe to our newsletter and you’ll survive the financial collapse of western civilizatioin” seemed to be their selling point.

Migenes smiled, and said, “We do not have a crystal ball. Some actually thought that there would be a minor crash two years ago in the housing market, but that didn’t happen, largely because of the maintaining of low interest rates by the Federal Reserve.  But at some point, there is an adjustment. It always happens.  When it becomes a buyers’ market, in the wave of time, the prices may dip or level off.  That always happens in a changing market. So if you need to buy, you need to  buy smart. And over the long term, you will earn some good equity.”

As for advice for those who need to sell, Migenes says that if you have a well-maintained, but older house in good condition, paint goes a long way.  “By that, I mean professional painting. But don’t make it personal.  Do neutral tones so the next buyer can visualize more readily how they may want to personalize it later.

He does not recommend renovations of bathrooms or kitchens, since it may be more money than you’ll get back from that work, and you don’t really know what the buyer may  want.  Instead, Migenes advises sellers to make sure the plumbing and electrical systems are sound.

Landscaping can also add a good appeal to the house you are trying to sell, but keep it simple.

 [Victor Migenes can be reached at  (213) 718-3558.]

[Nyerges is the director of the School of Self-Reliance, and author of books on self-reliance. He can be reached at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com]