★ THE BLUE POCKETKNIFE (A TRUE STORY)
DIARY p.1, Spain, July 4th 1994. "That first step was SEVEN stories long. I leaned backwards 'til I was airborne with a seasoned chief pilot in control.
"Seven bungee jumps sealed the deal. I looked outward to my life changing goals at the far corner of the cushion below. Retreat with my tail between my legs and go back down the tower? No. I jumped off the bungee tower - 7 stories, 7x's.
"At the DFW Airport I was advised to cash a traveler's check for pesetas before departure - As I stood in the queue, I realized my checks and passport were in my zippered travel pouch beneath my belt and tucked-in shirt, above my butt. A lovely young Highland Park sales lady (A divorcee) saw me in seat 22A as she came down the aisle looking for her 22B seat. Halting she blurted, 'Oh no, it's you.' In the airport exchange queue, she'd giggled her fingers under my belt to grab my large (I gasped) --- my travel pouch! One airline bottle of Scotch neat helped me enjoy the mile high ride even more. I thought I was in a Nora Roberts bestseller in blue jeans not princely sartorial splendor. She flew on to vacation in Paris.
"Anyway, I'd marveled at our star spangled send off with fireworks shooting toward us from diamonds on a necklace from Dallas to Philly. I had a spectacular relaxed view at 33,000 feet.
July 5th 1994
"We touched down in Madrid at sunrise. I deplaned with my backpack, day pack, paints, brushes, and 10 quartered sheets of watercolor paper and was greeted with my teacher's pair of welcoming cheek kisses and an 'abrazo.' So, off to the bus terminal we scurried, led by 'Paco' (Don Francisco Alcaraz), as I knew him, and his aristocratic Brazilian lady friend. All of our stops were unplanned along a few hours of highway lined with armed, military green clad, Guardias Civiles.
"The red hillsides reminded me of my bicycle racing days in Georgia. The high of 7 bungee jumps a few days before waxed and waned as my adventure really took off. I did not view art as a career choice at any previous time, nor did I in Spain. It was a thrill. You know, just drop everything and go. Art?
"Boy Howdy. At 9:30 AM the bus snorted to a stop, burped once or twice, and my feet scuffed down shiny metal steps onto the hard red clay in my 6-ounce racing flats. Oh boy! Or, 'Boy howdy' as I had learned to say in Texas (We'd said, 'Sheesh' in Pennsylvanian).
"Saldaña de Ayllón is a small, ancient village of 30-33 permanent residents in the foothills of a ski resort. They're craftsmen, gardeners, and sheepherders - I grew up on the outskirts of a country town of less than 200 people, 28 miles from Philly - But, we had a stop sign 'downtown' by the mineral springs, AND, we had a post office! The folks in small town Blue Ridge, Texas are like that. They looked out for me when I was hung up in some hard times. That's community. Keep your noisy, crime-ridden megalopolises and metropolitan areas! I'm a small town guy.
"Why make it easy to learn something new? Paco didn't speak English. I'd taken beginner Art in 7th grade, Art Appreciation in 11th grade, and I didn't know diddly about my teacher. My last Spanish class was 22 years before. I was prepared!?!
"His Brazilian friend said Paco was an orphan at seven and at nine was the youngest in hundreds of years to be admitted to a prestigious art school. I was half listening. She added that he had labored diligently on his first assignment for two weeks to win the applause of his esteemed teacher. When Paco presented his 'gem' to the great man it exploded into the air and crashed into the hungry flames of the atelier fireplace. His teacher knew the genius of his student and flung his work into the dancing fire, demanding his best --- not effort. His very best. That was his glad to have ya here story? What? No bezos y abrazos?
"We walked into Saldaña de Ayllón on a dirt road past Medieval mud adobes and skirted a cathedral on Calle Alcaraz. At 10:00 AM my first painting lesson began. 'He wants you to watch him and do what he does,' his aristocratic lady friend (England-schooled and fluent in 5 languages) told me. My first painting (#1, I intentionally mislabeled #3 on the back) was of Paco's favorite landscape, the very reason why he bought that Medieval shepherd's adobe in the foothills of a ski resort ... However, it was 105° F and I was hung over by a bad case of jet lag.
"Each day the temperature swung from 3.9°C ( 39° F ) at night to a hellish Death Valley 45°C (113+° F) by day. I slept on a rickety, swaybacked ol' sofa with tired springs in the old sub-abode sheep barn with an ancient Dutch door entry at its head and a screened open window at its feet. Supper was at midnight. Painting began at 6 AM, seven days/week.
"I struggled with sketching perspective, then cautiously, carefully, meticulously painted using ochre, cerulean blue, sap and viridian green - Hey, that's what I had on my paint tray ... And she said, 'He wants me to tell you that there are more than two colors of green, and to stand at the balcony looking down at that sapling until you tell him how many colors of green you see.' Twenty minutes later, to end the miasma, I blurted 'at least 1,000.' Paco was satisfied and I dodged another minute of blurry pain. FYI. Just 10 years before I was walking down Ben Franklin Parkway in Philly right after someone pointed out that I hadn't killed my older sister, which I blamed myself for, but hadn't anything to do with it. On that Philly day I felt the warmth of the sun, realized trees are green and the sky was blue for the first time. Wow!!! And, here I was in Spain with no idea what a color wheel is.
THE BLUE POCKETKNIFE:
"Paco beckoned with short, rugged, swollen carver's hands, clutching my pretty landscape. The lady's thick Brazilian accent intoned, 'He wants you to follow him.' I did. In his workshop (an 'atelier') I felt the crisp slap of a cold, aged, metal ruler on the face of my first masterpiece. His unfolded blue pocketknife surgically bisected my painting in one short, quick stroke. He pivoted in the doorway and returned to finish an oleo on the balcony. And, his lady friend said, 'He wants you to know you have two paintings. Go fix them.' I didn't know the summer sun could be so hot. I buried the smaller piece in a waste basket, thinking he wouldn't ask about it. He asked the next morning. I didn't retrieve it but kept the larger part and re-signed it a second time, as you might imagine.
"One night after dinner, so at about midnight, Paco opened a book of his friend Picasso's stains and traced the brushwork with his fingers as he demonstrated how the icon made them. Alcaraz hadn't read about it in a book. He'd actually been there, with Picasso. It was an experience had by a very small cadre of artists. My teacher lived an important part of art history. Teary-eyed I thought perhaps 2 or 3 artists in the last 600 years had such an opportunity. Wow!!!
"I FLEW BACK TO DALLAS August 23rd, 1994, ... "Let's jump to the end. Paco, his aristocrat lady friend, and I stood together as the oily, black exhaust of a creaking bus swept past the highway sign. As I climbed the shiny balding steps, the lady said, 'An artist is born,' and like a proud papa Paco handed me his blue pocketknife. From my starboard window I saw he was crying.
"I scaled the bungee tower at Walnut Hill thrice more, blindfolded at the bottom, as a victory dance after I got back to Dallas, Texas.
CURRENT STATE: (04.2025)
"THERE IS A LOT TO WRITE ABOUT, ENTERTAINING LESSONS - THUS, I PAINT. THUS, I WRITE, THUS, I ENJOY ELDERBERRY-ECHINACEA and EARL GREY TEA, 49th State Golden Dall Tripel, 1940 Macallans, Wagyu ribeye, a slender, fit lady, the bestselling book of all time, and picking blueberries!
"I'm settled and haven't burned all my matches before the end of the race. I'm ready for endless 'spring' rain, morning dew, rain on my metal roof, mor humus, red squirrels, mountains of books, rolling waves, sweeping tides, the susurrus of tidal bulrushes, howling gray wolves, snuffling black bears, huckleberry pancakes, pulchritudinous trails, a small remote shoreline cottage, cool, starry nights redolent with pine, eagles, sea gulls, and grazing in a research library ------- OK. Free weights, flexibility, and staying fit and slim matter. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, "Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction." I'm a one-gal guy.
"I felt a spark leap to my hand when her fingers grazed my hand. That never happened before or since. We'd met over dinner at mutual friends. My Purple Thistle Artist Proof AP#1 of 1 was on our friend's wall ... I gifted her a 1st Edition of my Ode to Joy. Wordsmithery, loyalty, being together, graciousness, deep conversations, shared dreams, photogenicity, and mutual friends are high on my 'she's the one' list. She keeps Him 1st."
- Carroll FORWARD-THINKER, and "sort of an artist." 1967-1968.
Carroll's Mom (1919-2008) & Dad (1916-2007)
"My doctor dad was an incredible diagnostician, as methodical and accurate as Warren Buffett. He was sought by the best and brightest MDs and PhDs who wanted to work for him, the top medical students, and patients, who came from around the world. Friends knew him by his nickname, Scotty. My mom was a pioneering woman who dominated in a male-ruled world - She was Doc Nelson's first editor and gate keeper of Nelson's North American Pediatrics, still studied by all doctors today. She typed and corrected all my high school term papers, including one on topology, and I got As on each of them. (Mom was a straight-A student, ΦΒΚ) She worked her own way thru college and medical school after her doctor dad died, the Stock Market crashed, and she lost her Buckskin horse. Grandma lost almost everything - She was 10 y/o. Women's causes were important. My mom was a pediatrician. They had nine children, including triplets ---
I'm their second born."
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
"Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure."
- Jane Austen, novelist, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, ...
Reading Abbey Girls' School
"There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart."
- Ibid.
"Writing is [as is watercolor] such a 'pretend' profession. Nobody is counting on you at all. You can't 'pretend' to be a lawyer or a teacher. It takes a lot of grit to continue."
- Mackenzie Scott (née Tuttle, formerly Bezos), novelist, The Testing of Luther Albright
and Traps. Princeton University.
"I am a person who believes in asking questions, in not conforming for the sake of conforming. I am deeply dissatisfied - about so many things, about injustice, about the way the world works - and in some ways, my dissatisfaction drives my storytelling."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian author, Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun,
Americanah, ... Master's at both Johns Hopkins and Yale.
"We have scrimped and saved for that money, and every time we get a little bit ahead, you have to go blow it on some hair-brained scheme!"
- Wilma Flintstone (The Flintstones, 1994)
The Wizard of Oz (1939):
Dorothy (Judy Garland): "Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!"
"... there's no place like home!"
In today's world self-centeredness runs wild over sincere gratitude. Common courtesy, true honesty, and mentorship are usually treated with an irritated, unappreciative backside, at best. AND authenticity is frequently subverted by garrulous analidiosity and fool's gold (iron pyrite - a flintstone) while squelching the merit and contributions of women.
Dr. Vivien Thomas, surgeon and trainer at Johns Hopkins said, "If you are going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don’t even start." (Something the Lord Made, a 2004 film). LEFT: "YES Sir, I'm the guy with the beard and long hair --- But, you could bounce a quarter on my bunk at sunrise! I cleaned up pretty well. Well, pretty well. My attitude is clean shaven and my mop of hair trimmed."
"Don't ask if you want an elevator speech. Won't happen. I invested in drawing dissected insect anatomy, where highly-detailed accuracy was essential. DYK, 4X0 pens fit naturally in one hand with a beer in an introverted science graduate student's other on a Friday night. They're in the slideshow ART GALLERY on page one of this Website.
Richard L. Proenneke wrote, "To look around at what you have accomplished in a day gives a man a good feeling. Too many men work on parts of things. Doing a job to completeness satisfies a man." and "Eight and a half miles can be covered in minutes in a car on an expressway, but what does a man see? What he gains in time he loses in benefit to his body and mInd." and "There is always a sadness about packing. I guess you wonder if where you're going is as good as where you've been." and "When the time comes for a man to look his Maker in the eye, where better could the meeting be held than in the wilderness?" One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey.
SEE: www.nps.gov/lacl/learn/historyculture/richard-l-proenneke.htm
✅ "CALL IT FOWARD-THINKING.
SPORTS WERE A BIG INVESTMENT IN MY FUTURE SUCCESS with a super nice ROI.
NATURAL SCIENCE IN MY 20s WAS A HUGE INVESTMENT IN MY FUTURE ABILITY.
TIME AS A FIELD REPRESENTATIVE WITH NORTWESTERN MUTUAL WAS ANOTHER.
TEN YEARS AS FOUNDER OF THE BROCHURE HOUSE WAS ANOTHER KEY MOVE.
WATERCOLOR PAINTING WITH Sr. ALCARAZ PROVED TO BE ICING ON THE CAKE.
BEING A STRATEGIC, SUCCESSFUL, EFFECTIVE ARTIST WAS ALWAYS MY PLAN."
Carroll matriculated in the Junior Curator's Club at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia as a 5-year-old, when he was collecting insects and making Riker mounts; He had a compound microscope and chemistry set and a passion for nature walks, bike riding, and a no nonsense yet, lavish, nattily kept lifestyle.
"My dad paid me $0.20 cents an hour straw bossing 3 college kids on our farm in 1968. While in college in Minnesota, Jay shipped me his aquatic insect specimens to do the identifications. ANSP paid me $8/hr. more than 50 years ago (More than $250/hr. in 2023 money). It's time for another quantum pay raise!"
He received a Swiss Wild Heerbrugg M5 Stereo Microscope as an early graduation present at Stroud Water Research Center where he worked, Stroud is the preeminent think tank studying river ecosystems, founded in 1967. He chose his college based on the portraits of Nobel Laureates lining the corridors of Nobel Hall at Gustavus Adolphus College. Carroll was a microbio lab tech on C-14 studies of leaf decomposition in a 2nd order Piedmont stream and an aquatic insect taxonomist with Jay Richardson on EPA environmental surveys of insect species, because of their high sensitivity to water pollution. Stroud was Carroll's first job as a college junior and afterward.
He loved entering the old mecca of science walking past the full-body statue of Joe Leidy, a University of Pennsylvania MD, examining a fossilized jawbone. Before The Burgoons moved to a horse farm 10 miles beyond Valley Forge NP. Carroll's best friend was the son of a former Navy CPO and small animal (dogs and cats) veterinarian., who matriculated at MIT as a 10y/o (Acc. to Carroll's mom). The long commute ended the boys' friendship.
DuPont offered to pay for my doctoral studies at UGA if I accepted a job at their Savannah River National Laboratory; I declined. I was recommended by Jay. I did Master's studies and left to work at ANSP --- Hey, I grew up on Rebel Hill straddling the Schuylkill River and West Conshohocken Catholic Calvary Cemetery.
"My second 1040 job was principal investigator for BP, P&G, Scott Paper, Washington, D.C.'s water and utilities companies, in Limnology and Ecology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP). Founded in 1812 by businessmen, clergy, scientists, and high society, it's the Western Hemisphere's oldest natural history museum --- Today, ANSP is ANSD (Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexell University in Philadelphia). "It was a Harvard PhD, the Invertebrate Section Leader, Limnology and Ecology, Samuel LH Fuller, at the Academy of Natural Sciences who hired me over a few brews in the backyard of a hole-in-the-wall Philly restaurant. I told him I didn't like and wouldn't continue any of his current methodologies his former PIs employed. I replaced two gentlemen on their way to U Penn grad school. Sam gave me his unassailable support. Don't ask me how to interview 'cause I don't know. I speak the truth. Oops. I wore jeans and a yellow Kliban T-shirt ("I loves to eat them mousies, mousies whats I love to eat ..." I was paid to work 35 hrs/wk but actually worked 90 to 140 hrs to make the project deadlines.
Carroll studies trees in winter to paint them in spring, summer, autumn, and winter - All species have distinctive branching and bark. The leaves (Patterns, arrangement, margins and venation) come later. Trees are not a stick with a ball on top. All trees are individually recognizable with common characteristics. Listen to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Light, lines, depth, and perspective are compositional aspects. You can hear the flitting butterflies and the blooming of flowers. THE FINEST MODERN ART COMPLIES WITH THIS OBSERVATION. Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night. masterful balances, harmonizes, and has depth to the nth degree. Colorful storytelling will always be in vogue.
"Chopping wood & carrying water. Wax on & wax off."
The distinctive tiger's stripes are its unique fingerprint. (Panthera tigris)
ကျား, タイガース, 老虎隊, टाइगर्स, Harimau, 타이거스, കടുവകൾ, hổ.
Carroll had many birthday parties at Philadelphia Zoo, established in 1859.
(Above) A Bengal tiger at Dallas Zoo.
ダラス動物園のベンガルトラ。彼が付き合っていたとても美しいアーティストのために描いたもの。
The TIGER is the mascot of: Princeton, Clemson, Detroit Tigers, Missouri, LSU, Auburn, ...