SKI in a day!

Another ski book? says you. Well, it's supposed to be triple digits again today, and I've got cool weather on the brain. It may not be children's book related, but maybe the blog should be Maxwell Eaton III: Sketches and Influences. I rarely look at other contemporary picture books, and usually find more ideas and inspiration in these oldies that I spend time thumbing through. Books like SKI in a day! by Clif Taylor and published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1964. The whole book was photographed at old Hogback Mountain in Vermont.

SKI in a day! was the introduction of the "Graduated Length Method" of ski instruction. Even fifteen years ago most skis didn't have any arc (sounds like an email from my editor... it's all about the arc), and wrangling a pair of 200cm fiberglass and steel boards was something that took years of experience. So Mr. Taylor here thought the best way to learn to ski (in a day!) would be to strap some mini-skis on the student and have them work their way up. Pretty basic idea, I guess, although I'm not sure if they still use this technique. People's skis are short as it is these days with nobody pulling out anything much past 188cm. Makes me miss the old days of 198cm and longer. Anyway, here are some great pages from SKI in a day! including the autographed endpaper with the unfortunate handwriting. We'll just assume it's "Long time - no see."

This is a great one about instructing students. Notice the text, "No shouting, no scolding -- please." It really changed how I ran my school visits. Thanks, Clif!

"I can't believe she's wearing that..."

"...and I forgot my poles."

"Headband? Check."

"Happy hour at the lodge! I'm late!"

SKI in a day! is all about the celebrity endorsements. Here we have Commander Whitehead. Everyone knows Commander Whitehead. You know, the former president of Schweppes. Oh, that Commander Whitehead.

"Honey, are those people still staring at us?"

Birthday Card!

Max and Pinky fan, Jenny, sent along this great birthday card adaptation of an old blog sketch for her own best bud, Justin. Thanks sharing! And Happy Birthday, Justin!

Fun with Translators

By the way, if you've never messed with an internet translator, I suggest you start. A friend of mine, Charlie, once showed me this using song lyrics, but it works for everything.

Go to a site like Babel Fish, type in some text from a favorite book, translate into something like Japanese. Then copy the Japanese characters back into the translation box and translate back into English.

Here's half of The Adventures of Max and Pinky: Best Buds translated into Korean and then back into English:

They are Max and Pinky first buds. Always is. Always be. The maximum and Pinky love ventures. They go from here. They go that place. They ascend. They descend. Pinky does the maximum 1st work from time to time and also does different one. But each Saturday is venturous work. Today Saturday, but is in the place which is Pinky. The maximum Pinky' Decides the fact that seeks; s, the favorite place. He sees in surroundings of the sticky brown muddy place. He is big and asks in surroundings of the barn which is deep-red. He inspects the deep troubles pond even. The possibility which there will be Pinky to where is? Come no! In if he' Is what; Did s lose from the tree? Or in compliance with the rabbit is fascinated?

So good.

Lost in Translation

My dad spent some time in South Korea in 1979. This is the phrase book that he used. Full of all sorts of simple, everyday, easy to memorize phrases like:

and...

There's also a selection of things you might say to cut a date short:


Of course, if you don't know the answer to this one, maybe a second language isn't for you:

There are also phrases to impress your host:

And, finally, the book turns morbidly philosophical:

This one is my favorite:

Rough Weather

Record high temperatures here in the desert this past weekend, but we filled up the rain barrels last night and enjoyed a great light show Friday evening. Here's a nice one taken from our back porch.

Erosion of the Brain

Here's an old painting I did in my younger years. The date on the back says March 1988, which would have made me 6 years old. There must be some sort of psychological term for a gradual loss of spatial acuity. Some how I went from that at 6 to these at 26:

It's Fitzgerald's Benjamin Button as an artist.

Monster Amphibs

"One time in de dark er de moon you slipped down ter de branch en kotch de ole King Frog, en ever sence dat time w'enev' youer passin' by, you kin year um sing out, fus' one en den nudder, Yer he come! Dar he goes! Hit 'im; mash 'im en smash 'im! Yasser, dat w'at dey say. I year um constant, Brer Coon, en dat des w'at dey say."

Brer Coon and the Frogs
Joel Chandler Harris

We've been swimming every couple of days in a neighbor's pool, keeping an eye on things while they're out of town for the summer. But when it's night the pool is dark, because the lights are operated from inside the house. So we were wading around in the dark last night when Kristin noticed something a few feet away in the water that looked like a newborn baby taking laps. It bobbed over to the edge of the pool and turned out to be a giant toad. The biggest one I've ever seen. It was, no joke, the size of a cantaloupe. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera or even a cell phone with me, so I didn't get a picture. But I looked it up today and found that it was a Sonoran Desert Toad, one of the biggest in North America. Anyway, I'll be bringing my camera with me from now on in hopes of catching one of these boogers, digital style. You'll be the first to know.

The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them know one half as much
As intelligent Mr. Toad.

The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame

Cable Talk

I just finished a good one called, A Thread Across the Ocean, written by John Steele Gordon and published by Walker & Company (2002). It's a history of the laying of the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable in the mid-nineteenth century. At the time, the only way to get a message from America to Europe or back was by ship, which took at least ten days depending on which way you were going. Yet the notion of laying a cable from Newfoundland to Ireland (the closest settled points on each continent) was thought to be ridiculous. Even the idea of sending a signal through a few thousand miles of copper was questionable. Let alone, at the bottom of the ocean.

Anyway, while reading this book I remembered that I actually have a small section of the first cable that succeeded (although it took about ten minutes to send one word in Morse Code, and the line finally went dead after what I believe was only a few weeks). My Grandpa Frick gave this to me years ago, but I'm not quite sure where he got it. It dates back to 1858.

At the center of the slice of cable you can see the seven strands of copper wire which conducted the signal. Surrounding the copper is an insulating material called gutta-percha. Like natural rubber it comes from a tree, but gutta-percha isn't quite as flexible and won't deteriorate underwater. A natural advantage for a submarine cable. Of course, the trees from which gutta-percha was harvested were basically wiped out in their natural habitat due to demand during the Industrial Revolution. Yippy-skippy.

The gutta-percha in the cable is wrapped in tar-soaked hemp and then protected by woven iron wires, which are then coated in one final layer of tar. Messy business. This particular slice has been bound together by a ring for presentation. It's all about presentation. Of course, at this dinky little size, it's no wonder the thing failed after such a short amount of time. Their next fully successful cable ended up being much more substantial. Anyway, here's the man who made it all happen, Cyrus Field.

"I have to blink so badly."

Somehow I've inadvertently written a book report. Either way, good book, well written.

Okay,
Maxwell

Medic!

Here's another nice find. It's the 1957 edition of First Aid, published by The American National Red Cross.

This happens to be the 23rd printing from 1965, which was used by my dad in the mid '70s while taking a first-aid course in college. Let's just hope that they aren't still certifying people with 20 year old text books. Either way this booger has got some great photos and illustrations. First of all, it would appear that in the 1950s only men were allowed to carry men and women to carry women. Something I wasn't aware of.

"Now what?"

"Dan, you're going to have to get up. We're trying to roll up this blanket."

And how many times has this happened to you? Reminds me of my childhood. (Notice the ashtray on the coffee table. Completely unnecessary.)

"Billy! Your father fell asleep on the frayed cord again. Get the broom!"

And I like this calm and collected accountant in the bow tie who seems to have poked himself in the eye with his pencil.

"Thanks again for helping me, Carl. It really means a lot."
"Oh, don't mention it, Sam. You covered for me that time I cut my cheek with a protractor."

And finally, some nice water rescue techniques.

"Pete, let go of me! I'm serious!"

Skiing Illustrations

I've been on a bit of a book binge lately (alliteration!), sitting on the floor and tearing through all of my bottom shelfers, the big clunkers picked up at library book sales. A lot of these revolve around my favorite outdoor activity, skiing. (By the way, I'll have to do a post on my old ski collection at some point, although half of it is in a shed back east right now. Lots of 200+cm boards. Very nice.) Anyway, I'm always on the look out for some good ski books, especially anything illustrated.

Skiing was really picking up steam in the 1940s and 1950s with ski areas popping up anywhere anyone had a chain saw for clearing trails and an old diesel engine to power a rope tow. So you start to see a lot of fiction popping up at this time that centers around the sport. Especially children's novels. Here are a couple of great examples. The first one, The Ski Patrol, by Roy J. Snell was published in 1940 by Goldsmith Publishing and is about a bunch of American kids on a ski trip in Finland where they end up hunting bears and Nazis. "Gee-wiz, what did we get ourselves into?" Here's the cover.

Another good one from a decade later is Avalanche Patrol, written by Montgomery M. Atwater and published by The Junior Literary Guild and Random House. The opening page says it all:

"Well, hotshot, how does this sound to you? A paid ski vacation at Snowhole?"
The question fired at Brad Davis casually and without warning made the young forester blink. He had been yanked out of his class, whisked from college to Forest Service headquarters, and now this from his uncle.
"Ski vacation... Snowhole."

The name of the area doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, but the title page is classic.

Another great one sitting on my shelf is a little coffee table book, Learn to Ski, illustrated by R. Osborn in 1942. Couldn't find the publisher. It's mostly sketches of life in the lodge and on the train into the mountains. There's also a nice series of a skier praying and then wiping out. Good stuff.

Finally, I came across some books illustrated by an artist named Giovannetti who specialized in sequences involving a rodent named Max who spends most of his time riding bikes, smoking cigars and sleepwalking into his wine cellar. Hardly children's illustration, yet they were my dad's books when he was a kid. The first sequence is from the book, MAX, published in 1954 by Macmillan, and the second is from the 1956 edition of Max Presents: Portraits, Sketches, Vignettes and Pictoral Memoranda of Men, Women, and Other Animals, Conceived by MAX, Supervised by MAX, Selected by MAX, Arranged and edited by MAX, Commentary by MAX, minor assistance, such as drawings, etc., from Giovannetti. Head on down to your local independently owned bookshop and ask for it by name.

Finally, here's a shot of a chubby-faced children's writer and illustrator who has lost all circulation to his head. Very nice CB coat. The standard at the time.

"You can strap me to these skis, but you can't force me to play football when I get older. Got it?"

Okay,
Maxwell

Chico Marx

I grew up watching Marx Brothers films that my mom would get from the Ilsley Public Library in Middlebury, Vermont. Aside from the some of the greatest humor ever caught on film, I was always drawn in by Chico Marx on the piano. Here's one of his best performances from The Marx Brothers Go West. All Chico. No camera tricks. Pretty amazing.

Dog Wash!

Just dug up this old sketch.

Which reminds me. We're taking care of my parents' mildly sociopathic dogs right now, and if you ask the little one, Rosa, "Want to take a bath?" she immediately pees on the floor. I spend the day walking around with a roll of paper towels. This morning, for instance, she was looking at me in the kitchen, burped, and threw up a cockroach.

Monsoon

July and August are two of my favorite months here in Tucson. It's when the Monsoon arrives. In the evening, ominous black clouds start moving in and wandering around the area dumping massive amounts of rain and producing some of the fiercest thunder and lightning I've ever seen.

Right before a storm hits there will often be a powerful blast of wind, followed by a rush of cool air. Then you can smell the creosote bushes out in the desert. The odor is pungent to say the least, like a burning telephone pole. The first time I experienced it, I thought my truck was overheating.

After the gust of wind, rain drops (and sometimes hail) start dropping until the gutters on the house overflow. Of course, right before all of this the jackrabbits, bunnies, quail, deer and coyotes start making a run for it to find shelter. A few days ago I got caught in the rain while out for a run in the desert and was almost mowed over by a doe while tripping over a pair of quail with their chicks.

Finally, when the storm is all over, the desert turns completely green. The whole event is one of my favorite. Right up there with an infrastructure crippling snow storm. Anyway, here's a measly shot of a storm wandering around Tucson Mountain Park.

By the way, the two mountains on the left are fairly well-known, appearing in any western that was every shot at Old Tucson Studios (on the opposite side of the ridge), including Stage Coach and the intro song in The Three Amigos (a personal favorite).

The Paper

Got this one from my good bud, Edsie, over at ejforbes.com.

Handsome Hounds

Here's a grainy shot of a portrait I did a while ago of my parents' dogs, Rosa and Spiff. Ages 4 and 14. Here's an old photo of Spiff in his younger days:

The Dangerous Book for Frogs

One of my favorite places to look for books is at library book sales. A lot of what they're getting rid of are books that just shouldn't be on the shelf and accessible to the general public. Of course, these are often the most entertaining books. One such gem is a book that I picked up a few years ago at the Saranac Lake Free Library's summer sale (one of the best I've ever been to).

The book is called PETS FOR PENNIES and was published in 1964. It's about how to capture and raise wild animals. Over half of this book must be completely illegal if not entirely dangerous. A lot of quotes like, "Young skunks are easy to capture in the wild, and are soon tamed." It's just that easy! Actually, that reminds me. My grandpa used to have a skunk that he'd carry in parades while riding a donkey. True story. Here are a few more pages from PFP including a nice shot of Col. Frank Fitts from American Beauty as a child.

"Is the first sign of rabies a seized-up hand?"

"He goes everywhere I go. Except my parole hearings."

Looking through this book reminded me of another classic on my shelf, currently on loan from my bud, John, called WILD ORPHAN BABIES.

This one is for those people who might be more in touch with their nagging consciences while baby-raiding groundhog burrows and who decide instead to patch the little boogers up. The copyright is 1975. Would that make it before or after federal laws protecting songbirds and owls? Either way, it doesn't stop William Weber DVM from saving lives! Weber Style!

"Boy, Mom and Dad are going to love you."

This one seems to have a more humane bent, however misguided, right up until the picture demonstrating how to force feed a cattle egret dog food. I decided to leave that one out. Yikes.