Tears of the Sun God

mixed-media painting

I'd forgotten all about this micro painting of a honey bee. I'd put it away in a dresser, and until a few days ago, when I discovered it in my studio tucked inside an envelope,thought it was lost. At least a decade ago I became interested in miniature portrait painting after seeing Elizabethean miniatures called limnings that were painted on a thin slice of ivory. I've always loved working on a small scale, which infuriated my art professors (and a couple art directors), who always admonished me to go bigger. I always thought their criticism was a little Freudian. Is bigger always better? Talk show hosts with bigger mouths, celebrities with bigger egos, politicians with bigger scandals? I think not. In any case, I listened to them, went big, but I didn't like a lot of the work I created. I like the intimacy of working on a small scale and once I saw the scale of Frida Kahlo's brilliant, (and relatively small) paintings, I gave myself permission to work on a more intimate scale again. I dabbled with miniatures for a very brief time and began painting modern madonnas with sunflower halos, women with birds for hair, hands with eyes in the palms. My subject material soon morphed and extended to anything that caught my interest. I painted tiny images that I wore as pins. I gave most of them away, but I still have the Eye of Fatima and Venus of Willendorf paintings. I wish I still had my Martin Luther King Jr. pin I wore in honor of his day.

Years ago, a bee farmer used to bring his hive and place it in the field behind my home. I loved sitting by the hive, listening to the insistent hum as the bees went about their quotidian duties. I don't know what happened to the beekeeper or his bees. He probably retired from the business.

Bees hold a revered spot in all mythologies and belief systems. They were thought to be tears of the sun god Ra, embodiments of divinity, muses, messengers, omens. Great thinkers, such as Plato and Sophocles associated themselves with bee symbolism, as did popes, kings, historical figures of every sort. Even countries and states claim the bee. Incidentally, the bee is the state insect of Utah, because industry is queen here, (there is only room for a queen, singular, in the hive, which reminds me of the great Queen Bee herself, Queen Elizabeth I's declaration, "I shall have here but one mistress and no master." Here are a few links that may prove interesting: thebeegoddess; beemythology;Did You Know?

In ancient times, bees and beekeepers were sacred. Beowulf, you know the macho Anglo-Saxon capable of tearing Grendel's arm from it's socket with his bare hands,from the epic everybody had to read, way back in high school? his name means beekeeper, and during this his period, the keeper of the bees and the honey, was a very big deal, probably because, all symbolism aside, mead is made from honey, and mead was a staple of the Anglo-Saxon's diet. Belly up to the bar Thanes, Beowulf is in the meadhall! Grab your favorite beverage and check out Beowulf, the film for an entertaining evening.

Mead is beer, just in case you didn't know. I never acquired a liking for beer, but I made a batch of mead, just because. It tasted a little sweet, but, it tasted like beer.

Here's a basic recipe:
Suggestion: if you want to get into the Anglo-Saxon spirit,I suggest you purchase your honey from a beekeeper at the local Farmer's Market. If you really want to get your Viking on, consider not shaving or bathing for a few days prior to making your mead, purchasing a yard of fake fur to wear as a makeshift cape, brandishing your wooden stirring spoon, and declaring pompous,self-referential oaths such as, I (insert name here), am the greatest mead maker (or whatever you'd like to declare: cupcake maker, lover, expectorator) of the 21st century!

Basic Mead:
3 lbs Grade-A Honey
1 gal filtered water
1 pkg ale or wine yeast (do not use Baker's yeast or you will be very, very sorry)

For fruity & spicy mead, add lemon or orange wedges, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger to the basic recipe.

Supplies:
Stainless steel five-gallon pot
Long stirring spoon
Candy thermometer (to let you know when the mead is cool enough to add the yeast)
Fine mesh strainer (to screen foam and dead yeast)
1-2 spotless clean apple cider or milk gallon jugs
Plastic strainer (to siphon mead into bottles)
1-2 hardy balloons (to keep air out as mead ferments)
2-4 wine bottles
2-4 wine corks

Directions:
Boil water.
Stir honey into boiling water.
Turn off heat and stir continuously.
Add fruit slices and spices.
Stir some more.
Remove from heat & cover with a fine clot.
Allow to cool.
Strain foam, fruit and spices.
Pour mixture into gallon jug and add yeast.
Stir mixture until yeast is absorbed.
Cover jug top with balloon and let ferment for 2-3 days (or more).
(Note: the balloon will fill with air, so crack the lip and let the air out, before the balloon bursts, or you will have a mess and an angry spouse or roommate).
Insert plastic sieve into wine bottle neck and pour mead (leaving room for cork).
Secure cork in bottle.
Allow to sit at room temperature for 2-3 days.
Refrigerate.
Drink at will!

In the House of Memory

In the House of Memory

mixed-media assemblage
Collection of the artist

I created this piece as an homage to William Clyde Layton, my uncle who died five days after he landed in France, during WWI. The piece is a combination of sculpture, collage,and painting. I've written copiously about William: flash fiction novella, blog posts, essays, etc. If you're interested in knowing more about him, or if you just want to see some sweet old photographs, you can read about him in my Day of the Dead posts: All of Your Lies, Give Them to Me & William's tree. In the House of Memory was featured in the Salt Lake Art Center's Not Just Another Pretty Face salon PowerPoint presentations.

I Dreamed God Was a Bird

I Dreamed God Was a Bird

mixed-media asssemblage
Collection of Helen Bero Van Wagoner

I created this piece last winter, and like the majority of my assemblages and sculptures, it's a combination of sculpture, collage, metalworking, and painting. It was exhibited at one of the many Not Just Another Pretty Face salons that were held along the Wasatch Front last January. The salons were sponsored by the Salt Lake Art Center for the express purpose of cultivating and broadening their base of local art patrons. The salons created a relaxed, intimate environment in which prospective patrons viewed the work of local artists and then commissioned specific pieces from the chosen artist. The artists and the commissioned pieces were featured at the NJAPF Exhibit last June. Although I did not have a piece commissioned for inclusion in this show, Helen Bero added I Dreamed God Was a Bird to her impressive art collection.

This Day in History

This is day four of nanowrimo and guess what I'm doing? If you're reading this, you know. I wish last year's winner of the Procrastinator of the Year award would shine up the trophy and send it my way. I'm really not worried about word count, my goal is to fill in the gaps, add another 10-30K, and I really don't want to get obsessed and crazy this month, like I have in the past. One good thing about writing this blog, even though I'm not spending every minute being a nano purist working on my novel, blogging is a good warm up.

I culled the dates from the website, This Day in History, rambled a bit about what I know, then googled.

1869 - The first issue of the scientific journal Nature is published.
One hundred and twenty-nine years later in November 1998, the British science journal Nature published the results of Dr. Eugene Foster’s DNA Study, which concluded that it is likely Thomas Jefferson was the father of his slave Sally Hemming's children. No kidding! Fawn Brody came to this same conclusion in her psychobiography, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait, way before DNA. She also gave up the goods on Joseph Smith.

1916 - Walter Cronkite, American news broadcaster born.
As a child, I loved watching Walter Cronkite report the news, so much so, that when my younger sister protested that we always watch the news, I lied and told her that he had saved an entire family, mostly children, from a terrible fire when he ran into their burning home, and carried all of them to safety. For whatever reason, this worked and shut her up, so I could watch the news without arguement. I liked Walter. I was curious about the world, and from my perspective Walter offered up gems of the dangerous and exciting known world outside of my experience. It's curious that now, with so many sources of 24/7 news stations, Internet sources, etc., that I detest the daily news, probably because it's so redundant to watch the same story unfold day in and day out, decade after decade. And really, is the +8 couple's divorce really breaking news? I like BBC and The Christian Science Monitor for world news, The New York Times for book reviews, and I watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Mosaic: World News from the Middle East on satellite channel 375, otherwise known as linktv. Generally, I listen to NPR and the local news on the way to and from work.

1899 - Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams is published.
This book was ground breaking and brought the unconscious mind out of the closet. An interesting bit of trivia: Dr. Freud wrote the first psychobiography on Leonardo di Vinci. I carried a chip on my shoulder named Sigmund for a very long time. Penis envy? Hysteria, and that machine/treatment? Oedipus Complex? Seriously? Once I read Freud's personal history, looked into his family genogram, well, I understood how Sigmund would look to the Oedipus myth to explain and project his own experience onto the experience of all humans, especially in light of when his father married a young hotty, he quickly sent his two young sons off to boarding school, and avoided a very prickly situation, but not a scathing psychoanalysis from afar. Just goes to show that the personal is the political, or in this case, the psychological.

1922 - In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to King Tutankhamen's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
My imaginary friend called herself Senya, and related her sad tale that she was an abducted African princess made to serve and live in Imonhotep III's household. She missed the boa-boa flowers,(can't find evidence of this flower), her homeland, which I understand was geographically close to Ghana or Kenya. Of course she was the pharoah's lover. Of course his wife plotted both of their ends. The fact that her story is almost an exact parallel to Verdi's Aida is a little wierd, especially since I was far too young to have been to the opera, and my parents are not the type to have a libretto of the opera laying around the house. Senya came unbidden, and fully-imagined. I believe she was real, for a time anyway, much the same as my daughter's imaginary friend, Sissy, whom she carried around in a shot glass, tossed into the air and caught her while jumping on the trampoline, was real. I can still see Senya's charcoal black feet, her beautiful shoulders, and her hands embroidering her life's tale in red thread on flaxen cloth. I still see her running through the pyramid which had become her tomb, frantic for an escape. I have always been fascinated with Egypt and so have spent countless evenings reading books about ancient and present-day Egypt. I've also googled Senya, and all of the grammar school details I recorded on notecards. Nothing. I'm holding out that Dr. Zahi Hawass will unearth a detail which proves African woman named or renamed Senya lived. I like to think that her restless soul returned to befriend and inspire by telling her story to a little white farm girl from Utah.

1924 - Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming elected as the first woman governor in the United States.
I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we've been voting for boobs long enough. ~Clarie Sargent, Arizona senatorial candidate. First, I'd like to offer sincere thanks and gratitude to all the women who made my way of life possible: I can speak in public, I can vote, own property in my own name, divorce a husband, retain custody of my child, remarry, take whatever name I chose, keep the money I earn, have access to birth control and decide how many children I will have, earn advanced degrees, work in a profession of my chosing, be a full partner with a man of my choosing. On the way to work yesterday, the reporter said something like, "if elected, Annise Parker will be the first openly gay mayor of Houston; Mary Norwood urged Atlanta's residents to look beyond race, and that if elected, she will be the first white mayor in nearly three decades." Honestly. What will really be a first, is the day when "first woman", "first African American", "first Latina", "first gay", "first whatever" is no longer relevant or even recognized, and we just recognize the whole person, not the race or gender, or other differentiating factors.

1946 Robert Mapplethorpe - photographer born.
Before the economy went completely off the grid, my husband and I used to head to Las Vegas every year to be wined and dined. Those days are over. My husband would spend his days at a conference, and I'd spend mine in one of the many fabulous art museums the city has to offer, and then later we'd meet at the sushi restaurant dujour for fantastic sushi and my yearly sake duel with fabulously eccentric Alex. I always lost. Never duel with a man who drinks vodka like water. Sadly, the annual work trip and Alex are both casualties of the corporate mayhem meltdown that still has the country by the throat.

In 2007 I attended the Venetian's Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition presented by The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum. Spend some time with Mapplethorpe's photographs here, here, and here.

1960 - Filming wraps on The Misfits, starring Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable -- the last film for both.
I fell right on my face in love with Clark Gable when I was in the seventh grade, after my teacher called Scarlet a "bitch" and pressed Gone with the Wind on me. I read it in one stretch, then ran right out and saw the 1939 film at the local dollar theatre. This was way before DVD's, so it says something that roughly thirty-six years after the film's debut, it was still playing at a Saturday matinee. I went with my cousin and she hated it. I'm certain I shushed her. A lot. This was before I acquired all my bad manners,and still cared about being a good girl. I never wanted to be Scarlet, I just wanted bad boy Rhett to fancy me. I immersed myself in the history of the period, and even though it would be some time before I realized just how incorrect much of the history presented in the novel was, I became intensely interested in the Civil War, Reconstruction, carpetbaggers, etc. I should note here Alice Randall's fabulous parallel novel, The Wind Done Gone, told from Cynara, Scarlet/Other's half white sister's point of view. Also, that I absolutely hated Scarlett. Hated it. And hated the made-for-tv movie. Scarlett kicks ass. She isn't some mealy-mouthed victim, that's Ashley's job. Back to my GWTH obsession: I wanted a corset, and if I'd been able to find one, I'm certain I would have worn it. Too bad Victoria's Secret wasn't in every mall back then. I spent hours creating parts for myself in the film, the novel. I painted a cheesy portrait of Gable as Rhett Butler, wrote poetry, a very cheesy "Bonnie Blue" song, learned to play "No Other Love" on the piano. I imagined I'd marry Gable, even though he had died before I was born. Brother! I got over the book, but it took much, much longer to get over Gable. It Happend One Night cemented my fixation with all things Gable, but it was The Misfits that broke the spell, and my heart. Gable's ravaged face, his bravado and charms nearly all gone, and the sadness, the gravitas that permeated the film still makes me squirm. Despite the damage the decades of partying, the wreck of his love life, the state of his health, Gable still had "it", and gave the performance of his life in this film. A relative has a framed snapshot of Gable that her uncle took of Gable right after Carole Lombard was killed in that fateful plane crash, (see how I'm falling into cliche). It's a nice black and white phot of Gable in his car waiting at a stoplight for the light to turn. He looked disheveled, like he'd stayed up drinking all night into the next day. A newspaper with the headline of his wife's death is barely visible on the seat beside him.

1979 - Iran hostage crisis begins: Iranian radicals, mostly students, invade the United States embassy in Tehran and take 90 hostages (63 of whom are American).
I was in high school when the hostage crisis began, and in college when it ended. When it began, I didn't know one Iranian and all I knew about the crisis was what was reported on television. I wrote a very earnest and clueless political poem, The Dance, in which Khomeini, Carter, and the hostages perform a ballet. I was awarded Second Place and $50. First Place was awarded to the poem, The Kiss, and I was livid that some stereotypical first love poem about stolen kisses and furtive glances had beaten my OH-SO-VERY important poem. I accepted the award at an assembly in which I performed later, in my drill team sequin micro-mini dance costume and white go-go boots. Ironic, eh? When the crisis ended, my bubble had expanded. A lot. At the college I was attending, I was witness to for mock executions by Shah or Khomeini proxies enacted on the campus square, and to pro and anti-Khomeini demonstrations. In one instance, police from the surrounding cities were called in and I remember them lining the sidewalks, dressed in riot gear. My algebra tutor, and numerous friends schooled me on the real politics of the region.

1994 - San Francisco: First conference that focused exclusively on the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.
That there was even a conference held to discuss this seems laughable with 20/20 hindsight, and reminds me of the Frances Hodges Burnett quote, At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done-then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. It's impossible to imagine a time when the Internet wasn't a force, commercial or otherwise.

2008 - The 56th quadrennial United States presidential election was held. Barack Obama is elected 44th President of the United States.
For the last four years, 2008 in particular, the last year of the Bush Presidency, first thing in the morning I clicked on political cartoons.com, found a favorite to set the tone for the day, then headed over to poets.org to find a poem that matched the theme or spirit of the cartoon. Humor, not the mean-spirited, derisive or divisive kind, but the nudge you in the ribs, ohmigod is this for real, kind, got me through some very rough Orwellian times. I'm an Independent with strong Democrat tendencies, although I have and do vote for Republicans. I live in Utah. I've tried my very best to stay as far away from anything that has organized and religion as a descriptor, so many times I've felt like I was in a lifeboat with the other fifteen democrats, holding on to the sides for our lives, bobbing in the salty waters of the Great Salt Lake. I know the president is hardly the saint he was made out to be and that he's just a man doing a very hard job, trying the best he can with the his particular skill set and moral compass, just like the majority of our former presidents were. It doesn't really matter where you weigh in on the Obama scale, Novemeber 4, 2008 was a momentous day. Good on us, America!

Bread Pudding

This Halloween weekend was a flurry of parties:
Friday - Halloween Eve Party. Guests began arriving around 7:00 p.m. and stayed until 3 a.m. Great costumes! The Samuri and Ninja, Catholic school girl and nun, Marilyn Monroe crossdresser, and pirates were my favorite. Lots of men dressed as women, and one guy in particular really should consider entering a drag queen contest. There were far too many sexy maids, sexy bugs, sexy barmaids, sexy devil costumes, but what else can twenty-somethings be, especially when gravity and metabolism is still on their side? Even the fortysomethings (well, only the ones that had graduated from the killer BootCamp workout program),showed up in short-shorts and ti-yi-yight dresses. Our policeman friend came dressed in purple velvet as a pimp, his wife, came as a prostitute dressed in little more than thigh high white boots. I don't really need to mention that she's a bootcamp graduate, do I? My husband and I were hippies, and no, it was not my era, and no, we are not bootcamp graduates, (but, I am starting back on my lifting tiny weights program that has proved effective in the past).
I will post a few party photos later.

Appetizer - Chicken wings
Place chicken wings on cookie sheet.
Drizzle with honey and barbecue sauce.
Salt and pepper.
Serve hot.

Saturday - DeAnn's Halloween Night Annual Chili Party. We arrived about ten minutes late because I had procrastinated getting ready or starting the chili until the last minute, mainly because I was still seriously tired from the party and couldn't get myself up to the task of cooking, until I had a pressing deadline, (the recurring theme of my life). No one cared one bit, especially our hostess who took us on a tour of her sans ex-husband newly-remodeled house, (the bedroom is decorated around a Parisian and designer shoe theme, and the color scheme is pink and brown). Many more guests showed up much later, and we didn't start chili tasting until close to 6 p.m. My favorite chili was a hot chile verde, and a meat lover's pork and steak chili. She had a white sweet wine left over from her Wine & Chocolate party. I suppose sweet white wine and chili don't mix. Does it really matter? Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies rounded off the evening.

Entree - White Bean Chili
Warm a dollop of butter and splash of oil.
Add as much garlic as you prefer.
Add 2 to 4 cans of stewed tomatoes.
Add 2-4 cans white beans, juices drained.
If you prefer your chili "hot", slice a hot pepper in half, remove seeds, then add halves to the mixture.
Shred rotisserie chicken into small pieces and stir in .
Simmer for twenty minutes.
Serve with Crema de la Casa sour creme and a dash of Tapitia.

Sunday - Mom's 74th Birthday Party. Every time I travel to my sister's home, I have to mentally prepare myself for the preciptious climb up her switchback driveway. I should add that I usually have my parents with me and they're giving me advice, expressing their concern, or are arguing the entire time it takes to drive up the driveway and turn around in front of the garage without going off the side of the mountain. This is just not helpful in the least.

This Sunday, on the drive to my sister's (and her scary driveway),about five minutes away, I had my second case of road rage. The first was eighteen years when I was two months pregnant and a psychotic, hormonal mess, and all I really did was speed up to about eighty-five, pass the guy, and then calmly switch lanes, get in front of him, and slow down, rather dramatically. Lame. This incident, some guy in a huge truck pulling a horse trailer drifted sharply into my lane. Luckily, there was a center lane and no one was in it, so I made a hard left, otherwise it would have been very ugly. I thought the guy would correct himself, but no. He was on his cellphone, and pulled his entire outfit into the lane. I did the mature thing: laid on the horn, flipped him off, (directly under my father's nose), and called the driver a very bad name, which rhymes with trucker. Did I mention my mother was in the back seat? Very, very bad behavior, so yet another black mark on my score sheet. I have to admit that the last time I flipped anyone off, actually flipped a thing off, it was a Hummer, and my daughter was scandalized, so I stopped "flipping off" Hummers of all kinds a couple years back,(there's a very funny website devoted to flipping off Hummers). Anyway, I got myself together, switched to calling the driver an ass hat, apologized to my parents for acting like an ass hat myself, and tried to behave for the remaining four minute drive.

Dessert - Bread Pudding
I used Paula Dean's Krispy Creme bread pudding recipe for the party, and you can follow the link if you'd like to try it. It was just a little too donuty for my tastes, so I've switched it up a little.

1 loaf sourdough bread, cubed.
2 cans chunky cocktail fruit, juices included.
1 can sweetened condensed milk.
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.
2 eggs, beaten.
Dash salt.
1 16 ounce tub Litehouse Caramel Dip.
1 bottle spiced dark rum.
FYI: the recipe for the Rum sauce is included after the following instructions.

Preheat oven to 350.
Remove crust of the sourdough bread and cut into cubes. Set aside.
Mix eggs, condensed milk, salt, cinnammon, a healthy splash of rum, and fruit cocktail together.
Add bread and allow to soak up mixture.
Butter inside of cake pan.
Pour bread mixture into pan.
Drizzle or spoon in caramel.
Cook for 1 hour.
Drizzle with rum sauce.

Rum sauce
1 stick butter.
Confectioners sugar.
Spiced dark rum.

Melt butter and stir in confectioners sugar until it is a smooth consistency. How much rum you use is entirely up to you.

Days of the Dead, Days of the Living, Days of Me

mixed-media collage

Days of Me
Stuart Dischell

When people say they miss me,
I think how much I miss me too,
Me, the old me, the great me,
Lover of three women in one day,
Modest me, the best me, friend
To waiters and bartenders, hearty
Laugher and name rememberer,
Proud me, handsome and hirsute
In soccer shoes and shorts
On the ball fields behind MIT,
Strong me in a weightbelt at the gym,
Mutual sweat dripper in and out
Of the sauna, furtive observer
Of the coeducated and scantily clad,
Speedy me, cyclist of rivers,
Goose and peregrine falcon
Counter, all season venturer,
Chatterer-up of corner cops,
Groundskeepers, mothers with strollers,
Outwitter of panhandlers and bill
Collectors, avoider of levies, excises,
Me in a taxi in the rain,
Pressing my luck all the way home.

That's me at the dice table, baby,
Betting come, little Joe, and yo,
Blowing the coals, laying thunder,
My foot on top a fifty dollar chip
Some drunk spilled on the floor,
Dishonest me, evener of scores,
Eager accepter of the extra change,
Hotel towel pilferer, coffee spoon
Lifter, fervent retailer of others'
Humor, blackhearted gossiper,
Poisoner at the well, dweller
In unsavory detail, delighted sayer
Of the vulgar, off course belier
Of the true me, empiric builder
Newly haircutted, stickerer-up
For pals, jam unpriser, medic
To the self-inflicted, attorney
To the self-indicted, petty accountant
And keeper of the double books,
Great divider of the universe
And all its forms of existence
Into its relationship to me,
Fellow trembler to the future,
Thin air gawker, apprehender
Of the frameless door.


For Day of the Dead, the plan is that in addition to toasting my dead, I will celebrate the living, and since I am the center of my universe and all things refer back to me, the intention is to reimagine this poem in my own image.

Howard's Left Foot

Howard Sides Army Hospital 194
Note the direction his left foot has taken


I met my Howard Sides, my father-in-law, in 1995 when I began dating my husband. He died the slow death cancer offers eleven years ago, but he never complained, even at the very last. I hope I can meet my end with as much grace.

Howard landed on Normandy Beach eight days after D-Day as part of a reconnaissance unit to search bombed-out buildings and the terrain for future campains. It was on this tour that he lost his leg.

Howard never talked about the war until the last year of his life, and at one point expressed interest in seeing Saving Private Ryan, but wanted us to see it first and let him know if he'd like it. My husband told Howard a little about it, and he decided he'd rather not see the film.

I asked Howard to tell me how he lost his leg, and he told me that he had just exited a building, saw a German Panzer turn the corner, and he turned to warn his comrades, and the next thing he knew he woke up three days later covered in blood. The shell blew the heel off his left foot,and the big toe off his right foot. Gangrene would claim the rest of left leg up to his knee. Howard said that the cold kept him from freezing to death as he and another man waited in various stages of consciousness, three days for help to arrive. That last year he called the other survivor who had laid there with him, and the man filled in the gaps of what had transpired during that three day wait.

Howard had a michievious sense of humor. While recovering in the hospital, he held wheelchair races.His wife Betty recounted that Howard would purposely attach his leg backwards and then walk into cafes as if it were perfectly normal for his left foot to face the opposite direction. He absolutely loved to dance. That he had one leg never deterred him from "shaking a leg" whenever the opportunity to dance presented itself, sometimes by firelight, like at the family campouts in the Uintahs.

When my daughter was four, Howard asked her to pull his leg, she did, and the leg came off. Instead of the reaction he expected, she laughed.