The Living Chess Set

I finally completed the Living Chess Set, all the pieces were made from living or once living objects. All pieces are made of solid lead free pewter, the board is etched glass that sits on a painted wood base.

King - Turkey leg bone
Queen - Milk Weed Pod
Bishops - Lobster Claw
Knights - Chicken Feet
Castles - Giant Garlic Stems
Pawns - My daughters finger (life cast in 2006)

The chess board is 14" x 14" square.  Purchaser has the option of either taking (rendered unusable) the rubber molds or having me destroy them ensuring the set will always be a one of a kind.  $2,800

Another piece in process...

I have been enjoying making these 3D pieces.  This was started about a years ago when I noticed the pattern you see painted here on my front door in the winter when it would frost over.  I thought it looked like something out of a horror movie so I thought, lets see where it goes...

What if...

What if the universe is nothing more then the rapid expansion of a supernova, the galaxies we see are nothing more then clumps of atomic matter, the planets molecules, life the result of atoms being blasted out from the inside of a star?  Just as a supernova collapses the universe must also collapse at some point. 

The fact is that we now have dark matter, dark energy to contend with, the expansion is not only real but increasing.  Seemingly with out explanation.  I contend that black holes are like the drain on your laundry tube.  That they (like your drain) will take in as much material as they can and every once and a while we will see the drain get over come with material, thus producing eminence jets of energy, in your drain you see it as a burp of water backing up. 

While the energy emitted from a burping black hole is on a grand scale the amount of energy that is never seen again is so much more grand.  I think this energy, material is providing the seeds for other universes on the other side of that black hole. The dark energy that is causing our universe to expand at in creasing rates is the vacuum of space increasing because the black hole is like a giant drain, the suction of material passing through it is doing so at an increasing rate thus expanding the universe in an ever increasing rate. 

There will come a time when this energy will dissipate and our universe will cease to expand, there will be no more dark energy, there will be no more food for the black holes to use.  Our universe will then collapse back onto itself or should I say into itself.  It will collapse just as a star does, our entire universe crushed to the size of our own sun. 

Food for thought!

For Linda

I grew up in what they called the “projects” in Detroit, MI during the race riots of the 1960’s  We had little money, mom had rheumatic fever just after birth and dad was in mental institutions for most of his life.  We did not know any better then what we had.

We saved our pennies, us kids, for the one day that was special… the day we would all walk to the “penny candy” store, named that way because when you walked inside… there it was every kids dream, a wall of candy as far as you could reach up and in each bin was a mountain of individually wrapped pieces of candy.  Each piece costing only a penny.

We were never afraid in and around where we live, tanks would roll by and we would sit on the curb watching… it was all normal to us.  We would walk every the four oldest kids.  My older brother 11, me at 10, my younger sister at 9 and the youngest sister at around 7 or 8…

It was a hot June day… we each had 12 cents we had saved for this particular day… 12 pennies for 12 pieces of candy each.  We walked to the store taking care to watch the road for cars as we crossed.  Inside the store we took our time picking and choosing the right set of candy each would get.  The owner of the store would always toss in an extra piece for each of us… give us our separate little brown bags.

We walked out of the store pausing just outside of the entrance to peer into our goodie bags and creep up to the edge of the sidewalk.   I looked both ways to my right then my left and I started running across the street.  I turned around after hearing the sound of a car slamming on its brakes to see this tiny little body flipping through the air like a discarded rag doll.  My youngest sister Linda had run into the street chasing after me.  A car traveling 50 or so miles an hour crushed every bone in her body, in an instant she was gone… the moment I had seen her flipping in the air she had already died, second before.

For years, many years I had nightmares about a helpless girl standing on a dock as I watched over the railing of a large passenger boat crushing the dock she was on, me leaning over stretching my arm out as far as I could to help, but every night it was the same, her face looking up at me in horror as she was crushed and sucked under the side of this large boat.  If I had taken her hand, if I had just waited for all of us to cross at the same time… if…

I had that nightmare every night until my early twenties.  It took playing in a band at bars every night for 7 years while holding down a full time job to erase the nightmare from my head.  Last year I drew out 3 panels to paint depicting this and after a neighbor saw the drawings and started to cry I removed the canvas and put them in storage.  I could not go back there again.

May is Linda’s birthday month and as with all of my family members (there are only two left now, myself and a younger brother) I wanted to write something.

Happy birthday Linda and I am sorry for not taking that tiny little hand of yours in mine as I ran across the street.

Irony at its best

Late 2007 was the 20th anniversary of the crash of Flight 255 at Detroit Metro airport and it struck me…

I was head of security at 3 of the hotels that are near the airport back then and at the time the current name of the hotel I was finishing up a report on was the Hilton.  Sergeant Painter from the Romulus Police Department and I had just finished some sort of disturbance call and were outside comparing notes standing next to his squad car in front of the glass-wall front of the hotel.  We heard an explosion and saw the reflection of the crash in the glass.  In an instant he said “I’ll go south you go north”, I did not have a squad car and wore a suit (no uniform) so I was not sure how things would go or what I would find.

I had my radio in hand and headed toward the north side of the freeway where thick black smoke was flowing into a rainy, humid sky.  It took about, two maybe three minutes to get to my destination and what I found is imprinted in my thoughts to this day.  Other then my original reports and a segment on the Flight 255 memorial website this is the only time I have written about it.  It is graphic and disturbing…

When I pulled up to the stop light at the street just before the freeway over pass it was a surreal scene.  Fire everywhere, people running screaming!  The cockpit of the aircraft sitting just 50 feet in front of my car on fire.  A second auto to my left was engulfed inflames the occupants did not have time to escape and this car had been driving on the freeway, when the aircraft hit the overpass this car had been blown off, landing some 150ft away.  I put my car in park and turned off the ignition and left my emergency flasher on so other rescue vehicles could see and not drive any further.  When I got out of the car a woman sobbing came over and said the driver of “that car” as she pointed to one just next to the vehicle on fire, "is running down the street… that car just missed her!"  Un-fortunately I could not do much for the woman, as my concern was to first see about rescue but second protect the scene for investigators that would come later.

This is the part where I loose all faith in the human race… the embankment was covered in luggage from top to bottom and beyond and just to the west of this horrific scene was a subdivision.  Had the plane landed there it would have been much worse but instead I found people going through this luggage taking what they could.  Then getting angry when moved out of the area, complete loss of faith… About a half an hour into efforts to find survivors I was approached by a man wearing hospital scrubs he said “ I am a doctor is there any thing I can do?”, my reply was "there is not much left but maybe under the bridge."  I did not find out until many hours later that he found the soul survivor.  A 3-year baby girl who had been covered under her mothers body.  A whole bunch of faith returned!

I am not posting the names of these folks if you want to find them out they are on the memorial "website.": http://www.flight255memorial.com/

I spent about two and half hours at the scene and had to return to the Hilton as things started to get a bit crazy.  I got home that night about 4:00am and my wife thought I had been sunburned.  My skin had been turned a deep red from the intense heat of the fire from the time I was there.  The smell of jet fuel deep in my clothes I could even taste it.  The next morning and for the weeks that followed I had to put in some serious time as families for those that perished and investigators occupied the hotels under my watch.  All during that time the State Police kept calling asking if I needed to talk need to unload… Could not figure out why… The reports that I had read afterward stunned me; the divorce rate for those that were part of the rescue efforts was 70 or 80 percent!  We aren't meant to experience those things I was told.  Though at the time I thought I was just doing my job it had and still does have an impact on my life…

If you’re still reading now is the time for the ironic part…

Eventually I could not stand the stress of that job, maybe the area I don’t know but I had to move on and got hired as an engineer at Ford Motor Company, Got really board with that and moved to a supplier for a year but that was just as bad.  One of my coworkers at the supplier left and found a job that was looking for an engineer specific to my field, I thought what the heck!  And got the job!  That was 12 years ago the company you ask?  No names but they make jet engines and at the facility I work at and they have 8 test cells (a place here they run engines 24 hours a day) so every morning I pull into my parking spot get out of my car with my coffee in hand and smell that God awful smell of jet fuel burning.  Every morning I revisit the night when flight 255 went down.  Some are asking “then why continue to work there?” about a month after starting is when I was diagnosed with MS.  Makes you crazy with self-doubt.  I am just now regaining the confidence in myself to ask is this worth it?

The overwhelming good that came of that night was the soul survivor, she is now married and has her own children, an education in child psychology…

But I have to say this whole thing is irony at its best!