The Building in the Library Mural

Good sunlit photo but before it was quite finished.

When I was designing the Ivanhoe Library mural, I dug around for photos of a building that is cemented in my memory as a beautiful old structure. (Apparently, I’ve loved old buildings all my life.) I found a photo of the Ivanhoe School auditorium in Laura Spalding’s book Ivanhoe—the Town with Three Names: Klink, Venice Hill, Ivanhoe. I was confused that her book identified it as “Ivanhoe Community Hall”, but I recognized it instantly as the building where I learned to play the clarinet*, gave my campaign speech to be the school president**, checked out books, and played the piano for the jazz band.

When I finished painting it, I added “Ivanhoe School Auditorium” and then thought it would be nice to provide the year it was built along with the year it went away.

Like most things in life, that was easier said than done. The librarian called the History Room at the main library branch, and was told it was built in 1932 and demolished in 1948.

Nope and nope. Architecturally speaking, it is clearly older than 1932, and since I graduated from Ivanhoe in 1973, I KNEW it was standing past 1948.

So, I went to Visalia (had to go anyway to retrieve Momscar with its new starter) and visited the History Room. Library Historian Hunter and I pulled three thick folders from a filing cabinet and started flipping through all sorts of old papers.

Like much in life, the building’s dates are complicated, far too complicated to simply put as “19XX – 19??” on the mural.

Here’s what we learned in two different places, along with Spalding’s book:

It was built around 1926 as a community hall. Then, maybe in 1932, or maybe 1937, “the community, who being unable to meet the indebtedness gladly disposed of it to the school.” One source says it was moved in 1932, another says it was moved in 1937; a third source says it was moved in spring of 1939.

Nowhere have I found the year that the building was demolished. Maybe demolition records aren’t kept, because the demolishers are embarrassed to be part of destroying history, or maybe because it is viewed as a hazard or junk to be gotten rid of, rather than something old and beautiful that has reached the end of its functional life.

So, the painting of the old school auditorium will not have dates, only its title as I recall it: Ivanhoe School Auditorium.

When I was a regular patron of the Ivanhoe library, sometimes we had to go to the main library in Visalia in order to find enough good material to write a term paper or do a report. What is now the children’s library used to be the entire Visalia library, which I found to be stunning and overwhelming. I also thought the building was beautiful, because it is. The architectural style is like the house my dad grew up in, built in 1932. (The house—the library was completed in 1936, so it was clearly the same era.)

P.S. I drew the library in 1989 before the new one got built.

P.P.S. I also stopped by a retail store in Visalia to see a childhood friend from Ivanhoe who told me the school library wasn’t in the bay window but was in a door off the porch. That’s why I added a hint of a door on the otherwise dark and bland front porch. I sure would like to find more photos of the building, both in and out, but those were the days before everyone carried a camera.

* Nope, can’t play clarinet anymore

** Yeppers, I won.

Exploding Head

Not literally. Figuratively. There is a difference in these two terms despite the language butchering (figurative, not literal) that is commonplace.

Using a template to convert a book from Word to InDesign is supposed to be easy. Sure, if everything works. When does that happen??

Converting the InDesign file to a PDF for proofreading is supposed to be easy. Sure, if everything works. When does that happen?

Getting a 1099 form used to mean waiting for the mail. Now you “just log in and download and print”. Supposed to be easy. Sure, if everything works. When does that happen?

“Go digital” to get your Social Security statements—“It’s Fast, Easy, and Secure”. Easy?? Who are you kidding?

“Get 85 Free Prints A Month” from Photo Affections! It’s fast and easy! Sure, except for all the hidden prompts, tiny clever little tools to guess at, and oh, by the way, only one print per image is allowed for free.

My head is about to explode.

Let’s just look at a few photos and try to regain our balance.

The beginning of spring in my yard: flowering quince, daffodils, germander
Morning light on Comb Rocks
Presbyterian Church: you can bet they never put kraft paper over their windows because they have stained glass with local wildflowers.

Now maybe I’ll go try to balance my checkbook with all those Paypal entanglements, debit cards, and oh, oops, I used the wrong account to pay for business expenses, and what was that automatic deduction for? That’s right, the printing 10-key machine makes illegible numbers, so I’ll clean it. Well, oops, now it won’t print. (Felt great to shove it in the trash, so there.)

Never mind. Today I am painting the mural in Ivanhoe, listening to roosters crow, dogs bark, cats yowl, and cars go past. Nothing on the computer, very very peaceful. I’ll show you all about it on Monday.

Red-Neck Ramblings

I could be oil painting but seem to want to pull weeds, write blog posts, text with a friend about a difficult situation, make yogurt, and write a few letters.

We have a bit of a situation, but as a wise friend has said, “When you have a problem and you have money to fix it, you don’t have a problem; you have an inconvenience.

Prolly a starter. Maybe a fuse. Not the ignition switch or the battery. Thank goodness for the good pick-em-up truck (2003) AND the Botmobile (1986). Thank goodness for AAA, for upping the towing package 2 years ago, for Valero Bros. in Woodlake, and for Foreign Autoworks’ new owner, Frank.

We have a new pastor at church, someone with lots of energy and ideas. He joined the 50% of the congregation who wanted to remove the kraft paper from the front windows and asked a pair of fearless monkey-dudes to help. See if this doesn’t cause your guts to squeeze a bit. . .

Okay, done rambling. Gonna paint now.

Maybe I’ll Work Tomorrow

While the east side of the country is getting hammered, the west side is having beautiful springlike weather. Let’s look at another walk, which probably could be classified as a hike if I had had the foresight to bring lunch. I did bring water and my walking stick, which was a good decision.

Poppies in January!

Not much water in that waterfall*.

Or this one. (It is a tiny light line in the shade.)

How in the world was this picnic table transported to this spot with no road??

Pippin was waiting for me to get home. Little sunshine kitty. Well, not actually little.

Jackson was also waiting, but he doesn’t want to look eager and make me think that he actually likes me.

Maybe I’ll get some work done tomorrow. Maybe I’ve done work already this week but haven’t shown you yet. Maybe I will work on the mural on Friday.

More will be revealed in the fullness of time.

*The waterfalls had good water when I photographed them in Spring 2023 for this painting (It shows as $700 on the website because the website is supposed to add sales tax, which I estimated to be $50.)

Salt Creek Falls, oil on wrapped canvas, 16×20″, $750

Eleven New Learnings in January

  1. Ammonia is the main active ingredient in anti-itch medicine. If you put it on a cotton ball and rub it on bites or rashes, it helps better than those tubes of overpriced placebos. I have no idea what happened to my right foot, but it swelled up like a burrito and I scratched like a crazed animal for days. Ammonia was the only thing that provided some relief. (Nope, not gonna show you a photo.)
A heart rock, because we love to learn here.

Learned from Intern:

2. The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web where people can search through old websites; he found my first website from around 2003 or so.

3. People in Asian countries make vertical emoticons (°-°) instead of sideways :-). I’ve been having fun with this! (*U*)

4. Youth view using a period at the end of a sentence in a text as a method to makes things look really serious. Good grief, I must really scare them when I text.

I don’t care about sportsball, but some of my tens of readers might enjoy this personalized license plate.

5. “Frunk” is a real word, which in itself is a new piece of learning; do you know what it is? I laughed aloud when I heard it and when I saw it. It is the FRont trUNK on a Tesla, a storage place where an engine normally sits under the hood.

Yeppers, a real frunk on a real friend’s real car.

6. Seems as if everywhere I read, the name G. K. Chesterton appears. I finally looked him up and learned a little bit about this great thinker and prolific writer, using this site Who is G.K. Chesterton? I realized that learning about him could involve a great deal of reading. Information overload, so many books, so many sites, so little time; I simply read a few paragraphs, composed this entry, and moved on. Sigh.

Reading Rabbit, AKA Salt & Light, oil painting

7. “Nalbinding” is a needle art I have never heard of before. Here’s a definition: “Nalbinding stitches are created with a single needle, using a series short lengths of yarn (18-36″ pieces) at a time. Each newly formed loop is created when the tail end of the yarn is pulled completely through the added loop, making it unravel-proof. “ It is also called “knotless netting” or “single needle knitting” or “looped-needle netting”. There is a thorough explanation with examples and even video instruction here: nalbinding. (I don’t need any more hobbies that use up my exhausted wrists so I didn’t look too closely.)

Tucker
Hose holder

8. “Dongle” is a little gizmo that goes into a computer to enable a mouse to work with a laptop instead of the trackpad. A friend misplaced hers, and used the word, which made me ask if it was a real word. Yeppers. We looked and looked, and it turned out that it had magnetically adhered to the bottom of her laptop as we were scrambling around with a flashdrive. So the word is new and the fact that it is magnetic is new. These tools and their words. . .!

My tools are much less complex, although it is very easy to misplace an erasing shield.

9. DMSO, or dimethyl sulfoxide was featured on 60 Minutes several decades ago as a potential remedy (or at least a relief provider) for arthritis. It was controversial, but now it can be purchased without a prescription. A friend gave me some, and sure enough, it provides almost instant relief for my wrist (De Quervain’s Tennosynovitis is my diagnosis, not arthritis or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.) So far it hasn’t done squat for the peripheral neuropathy, and WebMD is rather dismissive of it. However, I am finding it to be helpful. Never mind. It messed up my stomach after 5 days. Go figure—it is applied to skin! But messed up digestion is one of the possible side effects.

Lavender has many uses, but it doesn’t fix wrist pain, in case you were wondering.

10. Remember when I said that intermittent fasting didn’t work to lower my A1C? According to sources (isn’t this how the media gives authenticity to its reports?), I was doing it wrong. Doing it right (as my source says, who is not a medical professional but is a very smart person) is really a hassle, and I don’t feel desperate enough to mess with this method of deprivation and inconvenience.

Always more steps to learning new things. . .

11. WAIT stands for Why Am I Talking? so I will stop now. Thank you, Blog Readers!

Still Field-tripping

I recently read a useful acronym in Dusk Night Dawn by Anne Lamott: WAIT. It means Why Am I Talking. So today I will not talk, because I can’t think of a reason to talk that anyone would actually care about. Please enjoy these photos of what has masqueraded as winter in Three Rivers, California in January, 2026.

A Day in Sequoia National Park

We live in the foothills at the entrance to Sequoia National Park, which we simply call “The Park”. It’s right here in Tulare County! Because we can go anytime, sometimes we don’t go for several years. Yesterday I had the opportunity to go, so I went. Let’s have some photos.

Moro Rock has steps up the other side. I didn’t go there yesterday.
Eleven Range Overlook has never photographed with my little camera. For some reason it can’t see the blues in the distance. Apparently my inferior phone camera is superior in that aspect.
Why have I never noticed this at the base of the General Sherman Tree?
Sequoia Gigantea, redwood, Big Tree
The bases of these trees resemble elephant feet.
This is all the snow there is in Crescent Meadow in JANUARY!!

The Squatter’s Cabin has this old sign explaining that it “was built in the eighties”. That’s the 1880s!

This is a baby redwood, something I’ve rarely seen. Maybe it is because of the fires in 2020, 2021, 2024. (They all run together in my memory.)
That is one weird burl.

On the way home I took this quick photo of Castle Rocks to show Intern because I spent so much time painting it carefully on the library mural.

Yeah, yeah, I’ll start working again. Eventually. Just taking a little time off.

Goofing Off in Three Rivers

Yeah, yeah, I could be painting sequoia trees. Instead, I’m just lollygagging around. No deadlines, no pressure, just enjoying the season masquerading as winter in Three Rivers. Here are some photos from a recent walk. Yes, I am so boring that a walk passes for fun and goofing off in my life.

The elephant is quite visible: full body, facing right.

The day had high clouds, so the poppies aren’t open. But they are poppies, in JANUARY!!

The bush lupine* are out too, if you know where to look (and I’m not telling, because this is the world wide web, we were trespassing, and if too many people trespass, then even more gates will appear.

A house we passed has bricks painted as books!!

*Is “lupine” the plural of “lupine”, as “deer” is the plural of “deer”? It is in my vocabulary, but should you trust someone who says “tryna” instead of “trying to”, “remorial” for “memorial”, and “prolly” for “probably”?

Quick Glimpse into Sunny Three Rivers

First, in case you were wondering, there are actually 5 rivers here, all part of the Kaweah drainage. Marble Fork, East Fork, Middle Fork, North Fork, South Fork, all part of the Kaweah river. “Kuh-WEE-uh”, in case you were wondering further.

Second, we don’t have a river view; we opted for mountain views, since they are less expensive.

Third, why am I not working and showing you progress? Because it is really pretty out right now, and I thought you might enjoy it.

Moro Rock and Alta Peak, with its signature elephant.

I’ll stop bragging about our sunshine now. Here’s Jackson, the least friendly and most fat of our three felines.

Jackson and Pippin, put away for the night, watching me leave the studio. Tucker is safely inside too, just not staring at me.

Tomorrow I’ll return to work.

A Light* Workday in Three Rivers

*“Light” meaning the sun was shining and also meaning I didn’t do much work.

Let’s get the work part over with, and then we can enjoy some photos that might shock anyone who lives where there is real winter.

Three new sequoia gigantea 6×18” paintings are now on the easel.

Next, I battled with Adobe InDesign for awhile. I bought a couple of book design templates, and they aren’t working correctly. Rather than keep tinkering, I emailed the company where I bought them to ask if they still sell such items. They are probably all lying on the floor laughing at the idjit who thinks that something 10 years old SHOULD STILL BE WORKING!

Then I got the bright idea of going to Lulu, a book printing company that Louise Jackson and I used for her novel, Only the Living, last fall. We are about to publish her second novel, and I don’t want to waste any more time fighting with the wonky book templates.

In order to mitigate the irritation and frustration of all the tech hassles, Trail Guy and I took a walk. While it is pea-soup fog down the hill, we have had brilliant sunshine.

Today I expect to be painting in Ivanhoe on the west-facing wall of the library. If my website is functional, I’ll post about it for you to read on Monday.

Thank you for sticking with me through this techno-chaos.