Wow! That is all I can say after spending 11 days in Kaibeto, Arizona. It was my first time to help out with a vacation bible school our Church has done for the past five years on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Over the next few days I'll post several photos I took while there. The kids were great but there was also many local characters I enjoyed as well.
Francis This Navajo gentleman visited every day and would hang out with us. Due to a car accident he is deft and is mute. Talking to him is like playing charades. He's a really friendly guy and apparently doesn't see any problem with the politically incorrect 'Indians' logo which some seem to think is insensitive. Francis loves the Indians logo and wears the cap all the time. I met another Navajo who is a diehard Chiefs fan and loves that logo too.
White Mesa The Navajo nation is a beautiful place. Filled with mesa's all around and cool smaller scale grand canyon type of landmarks. This view was from one of our VBS locations.
Happy Dude One of the Navajo kids attending VBS. I think his name was Rueben.
Piggy Back One our High School students 'Jacob' carrying around a little Navajo girl during games.
A few months back my wife left for the weekend to attend a womens retreat so I played Mr. Mom with my two daughters. Saturday is normally the only day I ever sleep in so when my youngest woke me up at 7:30 am it was a bit difficult.
I promised them the night before I'd take them to the pancake house so we got dressed and headed off. During breakfast my daughters asked me to tell them a story about myself growing up, my oldest said "You know those funny stories where something happens to you. They make us laugh."
Well I thought to myself "It's been a while since something funny happened to me." Ok, that was a big mistake. I guess that was God's cue to add another one into my hopper because when we got home, opened the garage door and proceeded to walk inside we couldn't. Walk inside that is, the door was locked. We keep the key in a small utility drawer in the garage so I went to retrieve it and it wasn't there? Then I remembered my wife saying last week "I lost the key to the garage."
At this point I said "Uh oh. No key." and my daughter started whining how she was going to miss the birthday party she was invited too later that day and how the presents were inside the house. I decided to use my cell phone and call a friend and realized I didn't have it. And like one of those bad dreams where no one is around to help you, all our neighbors were gone for the weekend. Great. I then noticed my second story window open and considered climbing up but the pitch of our roof is such that I knew it would quickly go from humorous to dangerous so I axed that out. I then asked my daughter if she wanted to try and she said "No way!"
My youngest daughter said "We could goto our friends down the street and call." I shook my head and said "Ok lets go." Well it's about this time that a particular aspect to this story kicks in which could not have come at a worse time. My bowels chime in and say "I need to take a crap. Now!"
I walked about four steps and said "I can't go, I think I have diarrhea?" and then proceeded to grimace and dance around like I was standing on a hot plate. I told my daughter "Hurry go tell your friend to call a locksmith." She took off on her scooter. My other daughter is now pointing at me and laughing "You dance funny." "I am not dancing!" I said a little too sharply.
About 2 minutes go by and my bowels speak up again "Sorry but we aren't waiting. Open flood gate 3!" Panic sets in instantly and I look towards a shelf in our garage that contains cleaning supplies and toilet paper and hop over rip open the pack and grab a roll. I then take off as fast as I can run without allowing my butt cheeks to seperate and yell back at my daughter "Stay in the garage I am going to the backyard. Do not follow me!"
I make it 3/4 of the way and then experience what I can only assume is the same feeling a Depends user has and realize I didn't make it. So now I am hunched over behind our porch in the backyard in shock thinking "I hope my wife is having fun at the coast." I am hunched because if I stand up all the way neighbors can see me. So I proceed to take care of business. (Who said camping doesn't come in handy)
I come back around to the front of the house successfully purged, undies and all buried in a shallow unmarked grave in our back yard flower bed and hoping my daughter was a success in calling for help. She was and about ten minutes later the locksmith showed up opened our door in about 20 seconds and I paid him $45.
So now my daughters have a fun story about their goofy dad they can laugh about from now and for the rest of their lives. Sometimes I wonder why crap like this happens? Pardon the pun.
UPDATE TO STORY Since posted this side order of my life, we have moved to a new house. So the obvious question is "Did you dig up the shorts?" Well, no I left them buried in the backyard for the new home owner to discover some day when he's doing yard work. I figure by that time it'll just resemble a very large dirty rubber band. The undies part will be long gone by then. Why are you making a funny looking face?
My Uncle Pat scored some drawing supplies for Christmas.
A few posts back I introduced you to my Uncle Pat. He shared a drawing he had done and many of you asked Pat to draw some more pictures over Christmas.
He seemed to really enjoy drawing so our family got him some art supplies for Christmas. The last few days I sat with Pat as he drew pictures and have posted them below along with a couple videos. I hope you enjoy.
Uncle Pat Talks about his artwork.
A scary Bear, a Spear, and a Crow.
When Pat draws he gets really into it. His face is just inches away from the paper and he doesn't come up until he's done. I loved how he did the feathers in the crow art.
Pats friend the Cat.
The only thing we suggested Pat draw was the Moose and me shown below. Everything else he just decided to do himself. I find it interesting that all of them with exception of the Snowman were an animal. He likes animals apparently?
A Chick.
I thought he did a great job on this baby Chicken. The color and detail came out awesome!
An Alien Moose.
Pats art reminds me of something Stefan Bucher might have animated.
The playful Snowman.
In the midst of drawing all his animals, Pat quickly drew out this snowman too.
The green Grouper.
I liked the simplicity of this art and the shape of it's mouth.
Uncle Pat Draws Me.
Pats drawing of me.
My youngest sister Amy told Pat to draw me and this was the end result.
I just wanted to thank everyone for commenting on the previous post I did about my uncle Pat. We were able to show Pat the blog post and read through all the comments for him and he enjoyed it a lot. We had fun drawing together and I thank God for him, he has a very gentle spirit and I think his art rocks!
My uncle Pat is a gentle soul. He's always smiling and will laugh in a heart beat if you say something funny. I love him dearly.
Pat is the younger brother of my mom and he was born mentally handicapped. Pat is 58 years old now and even though his mental capacity is some where in the range of a 7-9 year old, he possesses more common sense than a lot of people I know.
So when I got to hang out with Pat this Thanks giving I handed him a sketch book and a pen and said "Pat, draw a dog." He smiled and started drawing.
Uncle Pats dog drawing.
I had no idea how this was going to turn out? As I watched him draw I found it curious that he seemed to be keeping the drawing symmetrical.
As he was drawing I heard him say softly "I'm not very good am I?" to which I responded "There is no wrong way to draw Pat. You're doing fine."
When he was done he handed the sketchbook back to me and I said "Is this a Martian dog Pat?" We all laughed. My wife said "It kind of looks like a cow." We all laughed again.
Separated at Birth: Ron Perlman and Uncle Pat
That same day I mentioned to Pat that he resembled the actor Ron Perlman. I googled a picture on my iPhone and showed him. I than asked him to pose the same way and told him I'd put it on my blog. He thought that was pretty cool and smiled.
The Cheshire Pat.
Pat's smile is infectious. And we always have fun joking around with him and laughing together. Pat also has a habit of saying "I'm Sorry." for absolutely no reason at all, which has also made us all laugh at times too as you'll see in the below video.
I'll be sharing this post with him at Christmas so take a few minutes and leave my uncle a comment, I know he'll get a kick when I share them with him. Thanks!
The first time I did a "Facial Soap" doodle carving was way back in 1989. At the time I had taken a sabbatical from my career and was traveling across the country putting on drug prevention shows for Jr. High and High School students nationwide.
As I traveled I collected the soap you get at hotels and started creating doodle carvings with them. Nothing too complex just a bunch of goofy faces hence the term "Facial Soap." I never did manage to save any of them, I usually gave them all away to people I met and once I plugged back into my career in 1990 I kind of set the creative habit aside.
My preferred canvas: Ivory soap.
Over the past several years I've been traveling around the country speaking and I've started to collect free soap again which made me think of my previous creative habit. So I decided to do a doodle carving tonight.
I don't use the soap they give away at hotels because frankly it's too cheap and fractures too easily. I prefer Ivory soap myself and a 3-pak of these carvible canvases was a grand total of $1.07.
Carving begins.
These go pretty fast. I spent about an hour while watching a movie creating one of these. An X-acto is the only tool I need to carve with and I keep a can of air around to blow out small pieces as I work.
Carving box.
Needless to say this can make a mess pretty quick so the best method I've found to minimize the shaved pieces of soap from scattering across your floor is to carve over a small box. One nice side effect is the scent given off by the soap, and one negative side effect is the soap dust you get on your hands and then rub it into your eyes by mistake. #$%@! burns.
Soap + X-acto = Facial Soap.
I'm going to try and make this a regular creative habit from now on. It's relaxing and fun.
Creating this facial soap made me realize my carving skills are kind of rusty. What I've done before was a lot more complicated so hopefully over time I'll improve.
After posting about the Graphic Eye BookI started looking through some of my other photos from the past few months and pulled a handful to share on my blog. Some are creative, some are pedestrian, but they all combine to form a side order of my life.
Tropical plant detail.
Even though I live in the Pacific Northwest, land of Bigfoot, UFO's, and the Green Mermaid, our specific zone allows us to have lush tropical plants as well so my backyard is turning into a tropical eco-system with a pond, koi fish, frogs, dragon flies and an assortment of tropical flora.
As you can see I shot all these pictures with my Nikon CoolPix P5100. It's easy to use and gives me a whopping 12.1 mega pixels to work with
Vanilla cappuccino artwork.
I love it when baristas get artsy with their coffee.
Ornamental Grass.
I love cool organic shots like this. I'm now using this image in my desktop organizer.
Reflecting on Impressionism.
I took my daughters to a feed some ducks one night and thought the reflections on the pond looked very Claude Monet in appearance.
Ornate gate.
The one thing I admire the most about old school architecture is the attention to artistic detail they put into seemingly mundane things like an elevator gate. You just don't see this type of craftsmanship or art in new buildings being constructed now.
The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art has a whole exhibit of rescued pieces like this from building that were demolished in order to construct new ones.
American Gothic.
To stand mere inches away from an American classic like this is a bit surreal. I had no idea it was in the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art until I walked around the corner and there it was. I was a little surprised by the condition of the frame, it looks like old barn wood.
This book isn't your everyday coffee table photo gallery of landscapes or boudoir photography, it's uniquely creative images captured by graphic designers and they are anything but mainstream.
I was honored to be asked to participate in this new book and each designer was asked to submit "10" images and Stefan picked which one would appear in the book.
The below photo was the image of mine he chose to appear in the book. And this post contains all "10" I had submitted and the story behind each. I've always enjoyed photography, so I hope you enjoy the read.
"Zimbabwe Elder" photograph
I captured the above image when I traveled to Israel. I met this guy one afternoon in Nazereth. He was from Zimbabwe Africa and was a really nice man. I thought he would make for a good picture too!
"Bug Out" photograph
I caught this caterpillar doing chin-ups near a water fall in the Oregon woods.
"Flammable" photograph
While exploring a local junk yard I discovered this distressed chemical barrel.
"Kaibeto Canyon" photograph
A couple years ago I spent two weeks on the Navajo Nation reservation in Arizona helping with a children's ministry and this image was from a local canyon we hiked into.
"Knock Knock" photograph
Curb appeal is strictly an American fascination. This ancient door located in Old Jerusalem has wonderfully decrepit character.
"Mr. Pinchy" photograph
This Oregon local hangs out at the local tide pool. If you blow in his face he'll get really mad and start foaming at the mouth.
"Narrow Road" photograph
This first century walk way in Old Jerusalem might have been walked on by Jesus? The second law of thermal dynamics really creates some heavenly textures!
"Temple Mount" photograph
An Arab man reads early in the morning. You don't need Starbucks to hang out and read a good book.
"Xerox Poop" photograph
My printer eats glorified crayons. Expensive crayons. So when my printer goes to the bathroom this is what it looks like. It's good to be creatively curious, that's why I still have this wax toner on my desk, it's too cool looking to throw away.
"Box Car Neuvo" photograph
Colorful and abandoned. Mundane and beautiful. Only a color blind hobo would not appreciate this box car.
One memory from the Mathare Valley Slums I'll never forget is the day I took about 60 kids and did a drawing exercise with them.
I had packed a bunch of small blank sketch pads and a box of pens in my suitcase. We headed to a small grass field in the slums so we'd have room for everyone.
David Theuri drawing a taxi van.
To help them get into it I started to draw a few pictures as they swarmed around me. (A friendly dogpile if you will) They laughed as I drew out funny faces and characters.
Ndanu Musill drawing of a church.
Once I was done drawing I began handing the sketch pads to kids along with a pen and they'd take it and go off and sit down and draw a picture. It was fun to watch them draw and even better when they got excited to show me what they had created.
If there is a universal creative attribute it's drawing. All kids love to do it. It's only as they get old and fear sets in that they give it up. It's the fear of what others may think of their work that causes many to stop drawing as they get older. No one was timid in this group, they had a lot of fun and no fear.
A little girl draws a person.
Watching some of them draw reminded me how much my own daughters love to draw, and how much I love to look at their artwork. It struck me that none of these kids have a refrigerator to hang a drawing on, or paper or a pen for that matter.
Cliff's airplane drawing and Elizabeth Njeri's girl drawing.
These kids may live in a slum but they have the same childlike fascinations that any other kid would have. That much was evident in the drawings I collected.
Cliff has probably never flown in a plane, but he could sure draw one pretty well. He's obviously seen them fly high above in the sky and remembered what they looked like.
Denis and his sports car drawing.
It doesn't matter where in the world you live, or what community or culture you're part of, there is always someone with an artistic bent. A raw talent if you will. And I had hoped to discover one such kid within the Mathare Valley Slums and along came Denis.
He was eager to get a pad and pen and quickly started drawing. When he brought the drawing back I looked at his sports car drawing and just smiled saying "Wow!" bumped fists with him and said "Good job Denis! This is awesome!"
Drawing by Denis. Sports car and a dragon.
Denis didn't stop with a sports car he also drew a dragon, a caricature of Kelsey Timmerman, a cartoon man, and myself.
I wanted to encourage him to keep drawing so I gave Denis a few pads of paper and a couple pens and told him to keep drawing cool pictures. I hope he does.
Young boy observing other kids.
While shooting in another slum location for the documentary I spotted this young boy watching something through the hole in the fence. He sat there for a good ten minutes before he noticed me watching and moved along.
Kids in a slum school.
I walked over and looked through the same hole and spotted what had captivated his attention. It was a slum school and he was watching the kids in the school yard playing.
Not all kids in the slums can afford these private slum schools, many don't have any schooling. Not because they wouldn't want to learn, but rather their parents either can't afford it or don't enroll them or teach them any schooling.
This of course compounds the problem they'll face in the future.
Slum kids playing in an abandoned van.
After I finished the drawing exercise with the kids, they made their way over to a gutted out old van sitting in the field and it instantly became a playground. Fun is fun no matter if you're in the slums or not.
Wire Bike sculpture created by a slum artist. (Click picture for larger image)
While driving out of downtown Nairobi one afternoon there was a slum artist selling wire sculptures he created on the street. I bought this cool motorcycle for five dollars, and others in our crew bought the rest of his work. I'm amazed at the level of detail and ingenuity that obviously went into creating this art. Amazing!
I enjoyed my time in Kenya, but you don't have to go to Africa in order to help others out. Look for things you can do locally to improve the lives of others and share your time by investing in their well being. It's fun and you'll never be the same again.
Thanks for taking the time to read my posts over the last several days. The experience in the Nairobi slums has forever changed me and when the final version of the documentary is released I'll be posting about the premiere locations.
I'm sure the documentary will be a powerful film and it was a privilege to be part of it's production.
