No Apocalypse: Off to Work

John W. Pinkerton

oldjwpinkerton@gmail.com

Each morning I check the television to see if the world came to an end overnight.  Some times the
latest news isn't good, but at least it isn't apocryyphal.  I absorb the latest news then check my emails.  One of my email addresses is basically for junk mail and the other one is for folks I actually want to hear from.  I check both.  Recently I decided to get a Facebook page.  I swore I'd never do this, but it seemed like a good way to publicize my website, oldartguy.com.  We'll see.


The rest of the day I spend painting or writing essays.

I usually check in with The Five on Fox News at 4:00 and then check my email again.


These electronic moments comprise most of my contact with the outside world.


The outside world…the world beyond the walls of my home.  I don't have much contact with this world, but that's okay.  I like my home, my wife, and the cats.


Occasionally, Linda and I take a little drive around town.  Somerville is pretty small, about 1300 folks.  It's just big enough to make for about a 15 minute slow drive and small enough to have about 20 cats willing to show themselves to us as we drive around counting them.    It also gives us a chance to see if anything has changed.  I particularly like to check on the progress a few folks are making on their remodels of their homes.  Most seem to be on a low budget and involve a lot of sweat equity because they seem to move in slow motion.  This is not a criticism; it took me about ten years to finish my remodel of our house.  Sometimes a new home is going up.  These seem to happen almost overnight and they always look so new and fresh, and I'm sure they have that new car smell.  We enjoy waving at folks who are either working in their yards or sitting on their porches in the evenings.  Nine times out of ten, I have no idea who these folks are.   We ride around pretty slowly.  It's irritating to have someone drive up behind me fast, at least as compared to me.  Because I'm old and think I'm funny, I usually comment to Linda that it's another damned traffic jam.  Sometimes kids are playing in the streets.  My attitude is that the street is a playground, and they have as much
right to it as I do.  We have deer, particularly in the evenings.  We don't try to count these; there's just too many of them.  Ask anyone who's trying to grow roses in
their yards.  We also have a pretty large flock of wild turkeys which wander around town; nobody bothers them and they don't bother anyone.  Thank the Lord we haven't gotten citified yet because I'm pretty sure city folks wouldn't allow homeowners to have donkeys and horses in their yards, but we haven’t and and we do.


One other contact I make with the outside world is at a couple of our local restaurants which we frequent on most Friday evenings.  Although both places are immensely popular and therefore crowded, we seldom see folks we know.  I honestly don't know if these folks live in Somerville, around the Lake, or places unknown.    Of course, we do see locals occasionally; that's kinda reassuring.

Once a month I make a run to Bryan and to Round Top to deliver paintings to my galleries.  These are pleasant visits, but once they're over, it's back to Somerville and our home.


In the evenings, I watch television and finally go off to sleep to rise and start the routine over again.  Of course, as I drink my morning coffee, I check to see if the zombie apocalypse has started yet.  If not, it's out to my studio to paint another goat or cow or dog or cat or, if I'm feeling particularly adventurous, a panda or gnu.

enough

MM













 
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