THE SUN has wandered south to its winter turnaround on Riverside Avenue. Starting today it’ll squat there for a while, to rise and rise again in the crook of a locust tree. Then off it goes, moseying north again, up to its summer turnaround on Hemlock Avenue.
I’ve let the Nickels go to seed lately. We’ve been crazy busy getting the house in shape. Jonny’s guys were here for a month, carpenters, siders, roofers, at least two a day, more often as many as six. The exterior construction is behind us but I’ll be wielding plaster knives and paint rollers for some time yet. Nearly every room on three floors is undergoing a makeover.
The light was fading fast when I snapped these pics about 90 minutes ago.
Some weeks ago, the bride inspects the work in progress.
I’ll sheetrock the ceiling of this upper porch in the spring. Will leave the lower porch ceiling open.
The view from the upper porch to the south. Good deer stand!
To the north.
Morning light after a recent dusting, the only one so far this season.
I took down the front porch screens, threw them in the dump trailer. We’re going back to the original style, a farmer’s porch. It seems a more welcoming look for the front of the house.
I’ll screen one or both of the new porches around back.
I could live on this stuff. It really ought to be a controlled substance.
The bride brought it home a few weeks ago. Ordinarily I’d make the bag disappear in two sittings but I’ve been eating one piece a day as a mental discipline. Got about three weeks to go.
Back to Vermont! Albeit briefly.
Jonny, his business partner, Adam, and I took a ride up to the house site to eyeball progress on the driveway.
I wanted to camp for the night, finish putting the roof on the lean-to, but Adam and Jonny have a business to run, they had to get back.
They had 26 guys working that day, theirs and various subcontractors. They were both on the phone troubleshooting issues on the 6-hour ride up and back.
That’s a big bucket, a cubic yard or more.
This machine’s so heavy it kept sinking into the earth. The site engineer was making unnecessary work for himself so he took the beast home and brought in a smaller one.
I had our neighbor’s gixxer here again recently. It didn’t sell over the summer so I wanted to do a coolant flush before it sits all winter.
What a machine! Seductive. Exhilarating. For experienced riders only. In particular, the subset with a high degree of self control.
I’m a little worried about Matt, one of the carpenters who worked on our house. Young man, father of four, just bought his first bike and it’s, yeah it’s… one of these.
Matt hasn’t ridden his liter bike yet. It was sold to him as-is, where-is, needs work. His mechanic still has it.
I may offer to save his life. Say, take his bike out for a test ride, call in from the side of the road somewhere with a whoops, hey Matt, we seem to have encountered misfortune. Someone accidentally knocked a hole in your gas tank with a claw hammer and, uh, accidentally dropped a match.
A birthday card from our old friends Larry and Niki. They were surprised I knew the story, but every rider does.
There goes Rollie Free on his Vincent Black Shadow, setting a land speed record at Bonneville, 1948. Dig his novel approach to timing his bike with minimum weight, minimum drag.
A gift from the family, spiffy new pancake compressor. Now I’m all geared up to compress pancakes whenever I feel like it.
I really need to get back into reading fiction. Got a few Ian McEwan novels sitting here in the pile, Black Dogs and Amsterdam. Read his Atonement recently. But nonfiction keeps drawing me back.
I’ve been reading this of late. Cerebral, but accessible. Complex ideas in clear, simple language. None of the usual academic obscurantism.
Fish is a quadruple threat: philosopher, logician, linguist, legal scholar. Not everybody’s cup of tea, but if you’ve read Isaiah Berlin and were engaged, The Crooked Timber of Humanity or whatever, Fish might speak to you as well.
Lee Falk’s Phantom is still a hoot to write, despite that the era of syndicated comics is ending. Or maybe because it’s ending. Especially the adventure strips. Who’s left other than the Phantom and Prince Valiant?
What a pleasure it is to work with artists like Mike Manley and Jeff Weigel for as long as this pony still rides.
Jeff and I had fun in recent months with a Sunday story about the Phantom’s doppelgänger, a shape-shifting entity that’s appeared in the Deep Woods now and again over the centuries. No one knows what it is, exactly, though a Bandar girl made a case for it being some kind of primordial animal spirit that chooses to mimic the Phantom. She seems to have something there when the thing starts to shape-shift into the Phantom’s mountain wolf, Devil, as Devil springs to the attack.
I thought it was just brilliant how Jeff had the entity look off in another direction as the Phantom and Diana were talking about its nature. Clearly it doesn’t understand what they’re saying. Such a subtle artistic choice that helps tell the story.
Note how Jeff has the Phantom lean in as Diana leans out. That’s art saying something about how the characters experience the world.
In the daily narrative, Mike and I are telling a story about the Phantom getting shot up while freeing the homicidal Savarna Devi from her prison cell in Rhodia. Once free, the much-wronged Savarna terrorizes a veterinarian into doing surgery on the Phantom to save his life.
And she vows to turn over a new leaf.
Now and again we do daily strips that are pure sequential art, no dialogue. Those days really work if you set them up right.
Look at that third panel! A couple of lines, a little ink… that’s all an artist like Mike needs to make sex out of it.
Coming up soon we’ve got a time-compression thing in store for the reader, 12 consecutive days of pure sequential art, no dialogue. All 12 days happen in the time it takes for a gunshot to sound. It’ll be a first in the 85-year history of the strip.
In closing, you may have noticed I finally got around to updating my thumbnail. The one from a decade ago is so out of date it ought to be on eharmony.
Look at all that sun I’d had in the old one! I was just in from three months on the road. Bliss!
The plan is to get back out there in 2022.
Tony DePaul, December 21, 2021, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Thanks for the long and varied post, Tony! Great reading during Omicron.
House photos look great, and by the look of things, there is a great deal of work done and ahead of you.
I come here by the way of the Ghost Who Walks (but stay for the travel stories and the rest.). The Sunday story about the wraith was entirely satisfying as the Phantom has a long history of encountering the supernatural, the alien, and the mysterious. This story added to that tradition. It also accounts for why so many over the ages have believed the legend of a Ghost Who Walks….I spent a lot of time while reading wondering how the story was going to end and I was not disappointed. Great work by you and Jeff Weigel. Thanks for pointing out how the two of you work together, and how the art supports the story.
Glad to have you back, will not expect to see you as often for some time, but today’s blog was a great payoff for the waiting.
Thanks, Robert. Jeff and I are working on another story along those lines, the one coming up after The Ingenues. The Sunday strip seems more suited to the fantasy end of the spectrum, maybe just because we’ve got a little bit of space to spread out in. The daily strip seems to naturally trend more toward realism.
I really do enjoy writing about the Phantom now & again, but at the same time I don’t want to draw the Comics Kingdom mob over here. This is something I scribble for a few hundred friends, like having people over to the house, that work-in-progress house in the photos!
Speaking of which… coffee’s on, the electricians are due here in 15 minutes, I’m on plaster & paint duty…
Thanks for reading and being in touch, Robert.
Hi Tony and Pam,
The house is so beautiful, is a good place to retire, you don’t have to go anywhere for more sceneries, you have it all. Thuy and I hope to pay you a visit in the near future.
Have a wonderful holidays.
Thuy and Dominic.
Please do, Dominic. I was thinking about you just the other day, wondered if you might be passing through Little Rhody to visit Thuy’s family over the holidays. If & when you do, we’re here! The house is a work in progress but we don’t care if you don’t.
..So good to see the blog Tony…..I love marking the solstices and the way you describe the light. The porches are gorgeous….Let’s see….one for sleeping at night, one for napping and one for dozing out front while waiting for company…..That’s a lot of sleeping but you know that’s where I’m at right now….!
Babs
Ha! Understandably, as I recall. You’re a trouper, Babs. You’ve got this.
I was just outside for five or ten minutes… took note that this is the first truly cold morning of the season. Ask me how I know!
I love your house with all its porches. Summer and winter living all in one beautiful home. No need for a Maine or Florida retreat.
Happy holidays to you, Pam and your family.
Thank you, Ellie. Today was a complete goof-off day. Not only didn’t get anything done, didn’t even attempt it! Any minute now I hope to catch my second wind on this mess. So much to do still ahead.
Tony, happy solstice to Pam and you. The house is looking MUCH better w/o the screens, great decision. Love the high back porches. The Rollie Free card reminds me that during Speedweek 2012, Jeff & I saw Alain de Cadenet ride Free’s restored bike down course to open the event. I was right next to it when they fired it off the rollers. A special sound to those things. Stay safe brother.
Very cool! I would have loved to have seen that.
Any change of heart about Bonneville, Brad? I need to get on the road to somewhere, might as well be there.
Jeff would want us to go!
Could not find that book by Fish on Kindle, but found others; may take a look at one or two of them. The house looks great. Looking forward to what happens with Savarna and Mr. Walker.
Happy Holidays to you and your family.
Thanks, Stephen. Yeah, I kinda hesitate to recommend The Trouble With Principle. I’ve got plenty of smart friends who would set it aside after 50 pages. But the Isaiah Berlin connection may be a guideline for some. The two writers were interested in the same ideas. Concepts of liberty, a theory of liberal government…
Fish has made enemies across the spectrum because he’s ruthless about taking arguments apart even if he happens to agree with what the argument is aimed at achieving. He’s known for challenging friend and foe alike on their bullshit.
A dozen years after The Trouble with Principle, Jonathan Haidt got at some of the same ideas in The Righteous Mind. Haidt has a more sociological, psychological take on what makes people cling to arguments that crumble away the more you examine them. Haidt wants to understand the why. Fish couldn’t care less about why, he’s interested in the what; the foundation of the thing itself.
Hey T, glad to see a licorice lover among all the other talents and qualities. For fun and motivation for sticking to your per diem limit, look up licorice poisoning … it’s a thing, especially in Egypt where people love licorice and only eat the real deal.
House look great!
Thanks, Tammer. Thanks so much for reading.
I think I knew about the don’t-overdo-the-licorice thing. Is it arsenic? I’m going to have to google it and refresh my memory.
The $64,000 question: Who do you know in Egypt who can send me real licorice!?
Do newspaper editor types ever give comments to you or Jeff or King Features? I thought sex in a comic strip might raise eyebrows in a few Bible Belt states.
Hi, Tom. Mike has been known to skate a little close to the edge. Now and again the syndicate will get a little alarmed at his gift for drawing the human form. If his women look as if the boudoir’s a little chilly, the caution flag comes out 🙂
The only newspaper editor he ever got grief from (to my knowledge) is someone at the WaPo. And it wasn’t over the human form, it was over guns. That was in the Judge Parker strip he draws for King.
When the late Paul Ryan was drawing the Phantom daily strip, he had a reader go nuts on him about an image of the Phantom carrying Diana out of the sea. They’d been skinny dipping but the image was chaste enough. All you saw was the Phantom’s torso from behind, Diana was mostly obscured by him. But it was the mere idea of their nakedness that had gotten this particular reader on a tirade.
We often show the Phantom and Diana in their bed together. I haven’t heard objections to it.
Then again, I know only a handful of readers. I wouldn’t know how to judge what readers overall think about how we depict intimacy. The official Phantom site is useless in that regard. It’s troll heaven! No gatekeeper. A free-for-all with everyone trying to be the biggest class clown. They tend to drive away readers who might have something to say that’s worth knowing; who love the strip and know the lore back to its beginnings in 1936.
Many thanks for following the scribble, Tom. Hi to Jay.
Beautiful pics. And really digging the narrative about the Phantom. The Phantom lives forever!
Mr. Walker*
*for the Ghost Who Walks
Hi Tony
Merry Christmas to you and your family. Just helped my youngest son move into his first home. His older brother and I just finished the big move and are now in the put stuff away stage. He moved to Revelstoke so all 3 of us are in a 4 hour triangle. So dad is happy. Your major over haul of your house looks good. We are in ski mode here in the great white north. I am in Kimberley. One son in Castlegar and in Revelstoke.
Take care
Craig
Hey! So good to hear from you, Craig. I’ve been wondering if you’re still working up at the Diavik diamond mine and riding around on the Wing.
Those are all familiar names, been through all those communities in my Canadian travels. Would love to get back to the Canadian west one of these years soon.
Savarna is still one of my favorite characters if not my absolute favorite.
She could certainly headline her own strip. She’s got some big weeks coming up, too. Stay tuned!
Dig it all T. Happy, Merry to all and to all a good solstice
Thanks, Jan. Hey, before long I think the van the kids left in Arizona will end up parked outside your place. Not sure who might drive it there, Jonny and Jenna or me and Pam, but I’m told the Pacific Coast Highway is likely next.
Be careful about that. They sometimes close the Big Sur area preemptively when big storms come by. They did that last week, and sure enough, there was a rockslide on the (empty) road.
Last winter or spring I read about a section of the road collapsing near Big Sur. Not a slide coming down on the road but the road itself sliding into the sea. I’ll google the news on this latest event, Ed. Thanks for reading.
Your home is looking good.
Nice there is still leaves on the trees,only snow here now.
I’m on the sled now,the bikes are in the shop waiting for attention.
Nice shop days to be had, I’ll bet, with the wood stove going. Ride safe out there in wild British Columbia, Bob.
Hi to Janie and happy holidays to all.
The house looks amazing. Y’all do love porches.
Have a great holiday.
Thanks, Jon. We’ll live mainly on the porches in nice weather, I’m sure. Also a good opportunity for winter camping without leaving town.
Happy holidays to you and Anita.
Tony,
Always a pleasure to read the latest from your side of the world. Reminds me of home.
Merry Christmas,
Michael
Aha, well, going by our most recent conversation, if you’re not local I think (and hope) I know why, Michael. Fingers crossed for all due success!