GARGOZO MANUSCRIPT

Eagle Rock 1905  In the wee hours at the age of five, I would lay in my bed and listen to the distant shrill sound of steel scraping against steel coming from the railroad yard on San Fernando Road.   The house we lived in was three miles from the yard but with the Los Angles population at less than a third of today, there was little to dampen the eerie music.   The railroad was the southern boundary of what I was aware of at the time as the physical world.   Our house was on a hill and from the second story I could see the hills that formed the other three sides of the shallow valley where sat our suburb of Eagle Rock.   It wasn’t until years later that I realized how comforting it had been as a child to have my known world so nicely framed.   The first time I drove through the San Fernando Valley I remember thinking what a nightmare it would have been to grow up in such an infinite flat and featureless wasteland. My grand kids now live in a hous...

In 1949, my parents and I moved into a house they bought in Eagle Rock.  It had 2 stories, a red-tile roof, a big fire place in the living room and at that time was described as "Spanish style."  At 5 years of age, what captivated me the most were the second story balconies on both the front and back of the house.  The house was above the level of the street with a climb of 35 steps from the sidewalk to reach the front door.  This put the street-side balcony completely above the field of vision of drivers passing by.  They never could figure out the source of the water-filed Xmas ornaments that hit their car.   The ornaments I refer to are the delicate glass ball-shaped ones coated with shiny metallic  colors on the outside and a silver coating inside.  They can be hung from the branches of a Xmas tree if you have the patience and dexterity to deal with the little wire thingamajig that fits into the stem at the top of the ornament.  ...

I was on my way to a small village in the rural highlands of Guatemala to make chicken coops for Mayan families.  While the bus was making its way to Quetzaltenango, I was glancing through some documents sent to me several months earlier.  Included was a list of items that was described as  "essential" and additional words to the effect that should you neglect to bring any of these things with you, a living hell awaited.  The list was full of the sorts of things that as a kid, my family viewed as concocted by Madison Avenue, and completely unnecessary.  We never once bought insect repellent, chap stick, sunscreen, sun glasses, rain gear, security whistle, water bottle or a fanny pack.  My father viewed as frivolous anything the neanderthals had gone without. There was one item on the list that caught my eye because of the wording - "sandals (for showers)."  When I first saw this I had the distinct impression that this was less than forthco...

Looking out the window I was fascinated by the endless variety of landscapes that rolled by.  Every time the bus came to the top of a hill, or ended a long sweeping curve, a completely new and different panorama would appear.  There seemed to be no sense to any of it.  Huge bulbous mounds sprouted from flat slopes, gradual inclines unaccountably became sheer drops, and there was no consistent alignment of the hills and valleys - they ran in every possible direction. We were in the highlands of  Guatemala where seismic  and volcanic activity is ongoing.  There are 4 different mountain ranges running more or less parallel from west to east, each of which curls slightly southward in the middle  of the country.   If that weren't enough to  scramble the topography, each year up to  180 inches of rain has its way with the land.   A renown French geographer, Jacques Elisee Recluse (1830-1905) was awarded a gold meda...

Having done my first ever drawings with colored pencils, it seemed like a good idea to check out youtube for some helpful tips.  The instructional videos I sat through pretty much all said the same thing - everything I’m doing is outright sinful. Not only am I using the wrong paper and the wrong pencils, my whole approach violates every aspect of what is considered proper technique.  Frankly, I wasn’t paying that much attention to it and evidently my natural instincts have betrayed me. I do not hold the pencil correctly which is compounded by the fact that I apply an inappropriate amount of pressure.  In addition to failing to keep my pencils sharpened (zacapunta es necessario), I use too few layers, my strokes are all wrong and I am in too much of a hurry. In an instructional video narrated by Cassandra Hanley, she indicates that one should expect to spend one-to-two weeks on a drawing depending on the size.  Up to now, my approach has been two or thre...

Where the hell did they go?  Since the beginning of summer they've visited our kitchen sink every morning and now, a solid week with not a single ant.  Some mornings it was just a couple of scouts checking to see what scraps awaited them in the bottom of the sink.  Other times there'd be a full battalion streaking back and forth between the bottom of the kitchen window and something tasty left on a plate. I am surprised I didn't catch on sooner as finding the ants in the sink was built into the morning regimen: 1.  Make coffee with the Italian creamer that we managed to do with out for the first 47 years  of marriage but is now mandatory. 2.  Do I have the energy to make eggs? 3.  We are out of eggs, so toast it is. 4.  Are we out of bread? 5.  Or how about those little dutch rolls with the raisins that cost an arm and a leg?  6.  Go to sink to wash cups for coffee. 7.  What is that? 8.  Go to bedroom, put ...

Part I On arrival, our small bus was immediately mobbed by a hundred smiling, waving, shouting, laughing kids.  They were aged 5 to 9 and formed small groups to greet, surround, hug and escort each of us coming off the bus into the building, all the while continuing to laugh, smile and shout.  It was eerily similar to the scene in  Close Encounters of the Third Kind , where Richard Dreyfuss is ushered up the ramp and into the spaceship by a covey of waist-high aliens. I had made my way to a little village called San Martin Chiquito via a 5 hour drive from Guatemala City.  There are countless similar remote villages throughout Guatemala, all lacking infrastructure, decent housing, healthcare, employment, education and water that is safe to drink.  Many of the rural poor are descendants of ancient civilizations such as the Mayans, and communicate exclusively in one of the 23 dialects spoken in the country.   Once you move outside the capital or tou...