BEACH RECEPTION DECORATIONS

Life's too short for cheap cling film - the little book of freedom

An easy to read, unconventional eye-opener of today's women's most inclined topics of day-to-day irritations; it is delivering an altogether different approach to 'breaking free', encouraging personal development by introducing ruthlessly direct advice paired with a refreshingly witty humour. Musing as someone's affair; haunting, hope abusing diets; ageing; relationships and men; trapped in a comfort zone; crooked sex; overpowering family issues; the partner's ex; being single and more - Maren Peters' open views and honest guidance will assist any modern woman disentangling herself from limiting compromises, will support unearthing self-confidence, and even more central, self-acceptance and inner independence.

Folktales of the Amur, Stories from the Russian Far East.Nagishkin, Pavlishin.

This is a book the black and whites left out for me. The illustrations make use of decorative motifs based on the communicating swirling line patterns of the ancient "symbols...of 'beginning' and becoming", as the long time gargoyle with the unusual looking hairstyle apparently based on Greek pottery art ((((I saw yesterday that he had changed his style to one which had short "butch" hair all over except on the back where a portion of the long, red, curly, pomaded hair he has always had arranged luxuriantly down his back in emulation of certain of the warriors on the red-figure vases pulled up into a longish, tight bun at the back of his head and neck.)))) as it says in his book, the Language of the Goddess, Gimbutas, (it's a broad survey of ancient pottery art and bone inscriptions in Europe from, say, 5,000 bc to 2 or 3,000.) This isn't the best example, but the swirls on the tigers body give a hint of how some paintings are built up of these designs and patterns. I think they are based on patterns the Amur people use in embroidery and other mediums. You can see the patterns pretty well in the log and the fungus growths, also.

I decided to use this story because it has a lot of tigers in it and tigers are a frequent symbol in Buddhism especially in Tibet, where they take the part of a wrathful deity that destroys the matter based ego in favor of self-realization or enlightened knowledge of the perfected, eternal self; all being. The artist has given this tiger green eyes. I think it may be to emphasize the tiger's symbolic role as nature, like that of the dragon or maybe the ouraboros in its many forms or even the tao itself. Or at least that's what I think as I contemplate the successive reincarnation of eternal consciousness in changing nature.

It's the story of two brothers whose dying father has given them an enigmatic moral dictum to "keep looking straight ahead all the time". The story begins as Indiga and his brother Solomdiga are hunting in the forest and Indiga, whose eyes were wandering, sees a tiger approaching, and pressing his palms together in what seems like an namaste but fails to take any action against the tiger which apparently carries off Solomdiga. As a result of this, Indiga is unable to carry out his work as hunter and trapper because the animals refuse to cooperate with this man with the "heart of a rabbit". The rabbit in others of these tales is a successful trickster, something like the coyote in North America. It seems to me that rabbits of this kind are frightened while coyotes are paranoid but maybe it's an unimportant distinction. When Indiga tells his mother of the problem of his rabbit's heart, she sends him to look for his "man's heart" which he has lost because of his fear. As he asks for help from various animals, an eagle gives him a feather and tells Indiga to follow it. In following it, he is confronted by seven obstacles but as he overcomes each of the first 6, he affirms this is not the fear that prevents him from finding his man's heart and continues on with his eyes on the feather. The 1 first trial is a boiling river which he passes over by clinging to an arrow. The second 2 is a tiger camp he passes through by using fire and smoke. The third 3 is a man-eating forest not unlike "The Little Shoppe of Horrors" or the bramble that protected Sleeping Beauty's castle. He overcame this one by throwing the carnivorous trees and vines hunks of the flesh cut from one of the tiger's. It reminded me of the way Atlanta was distracted by passion for the golden apples of the Hesperides. Obstacle 4 was a man with one arm and one leg who leads people astray in a swamp until they are lost and drown a little like Puck, the forest sprite in Midsummer Night's Dream who "...misleads night wanderers, laughing at their harm..." Indiga fooled this creature by tricking him into jumping so high with his one leg that he was lost in the clouds long enough for Indiga to escape. I can't think of why this swamp man had just one leg and one arm, why he was able to jump so high or why he was so easily tricked into doing so though his one arm and one leg remind me of the sound of one hand clapping, the distance of one foot walking koans we discussed while looking through Penelope Mason's book and considering zenga calligraphy and Zen master Bodidharma . After this, the 5th obstacle is represented by a flaming snake whom Indiga choked by means of a rock smeared with dirt scraped from his own body. The 6th obstacle was a man who had the power to turn indiga to stone but Indiga, after seeing one of his hands changed and tricking the monster into changing it back, took tobacco from his pouch and caused the ogre to inhale it until repeated sneezes drained him of his magical power. His tobacco pouch reminded me of North American Indian medicine bags

Signs of the past: Hautean Mike Rowe discovers rare lettering on Oak Street building

By Mark Bennett
The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — Mike Rowe knows the rush of discovery.

He once unearthed a long-lost recipe for his hometown’s trademark beer, revived the town’s old brewery and gave Terre Haute its first sips of Champagne Velvet in a half-century. Popular leisure spots such as Mogger’s Brewery, the CV Tap Room, Stables Steak House and the Brew Haus all trace their rebirth to Rowe’s passion for restoring relic buildings.

He’s part carpenter, part archaeologist, in a way, of Hautean history.

Rowe recently found another gem. On a similar mission for a group of local investors, he and a crew began peeling metal siding off the old Bent Elbow Tavern at 831 Oak St.

Before they began working, the two-story, corner building looked indistinct, to the untrained eye. Vertical aluminum sheets wrapped its exterior. Dated paneling masked the interior walls.

Rowe had a hunch this place, dating back to the turn of the 20th century, held some hidden beauty. He’s a student of the legends of Terre Haute’s brewing district and its heyday in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. The old tavern at 831 Oak held a spot in that vast legacy. As those legends tell it, the massive Champagne Velvet brewery that stood right across Ninth Street supplied that bar with its own pipeline of CV beer, flowing from the vats, under the road and into the tavern’s taps. The brewery tabulated the bill by reading a meter, almost like the gas company would do.

So, this place’s past has some color.

That’s the part Rowe already knew.

The surprise came when he and his crew began pulling down the aluminum siding. Starting on the northeast corner, they stripped the sheets off the east wall, the one that once faced the old brewery. After a couple pieces came down, one of the guys spotted something and hollered at Rowe.

There was some lettering on the grimy, shielded bricks.

“I saw the ‘R’ and then ‘E,’ and I said, ‘OK, Vanna, give me another letter,’” Rowe recalled, grinning like Indiana Jones.

What they found is a scarce, surviving “ghost sign,” explained Andrew Conner of Downtown Terre Haute Inc. In the early half of the 20th century, businesses used their buildings’ brick exteriors as a canvas for painted wall advertisements.

“As time goes by, the buildings just disappear and the paint fades,” Conner said. “Those are getting rarer and rarer.”

The ghost sign at the tavern, fittingly, promotes the beer pumping straight from the brewery to its taps. With a mix of black, white and colored paints, it urges passers-by to: “Drink Champagne Velvet Beer.” Just to emphasize the message, the word “beer” is repeated, not so subliminally, in larger, block, black letters. At the bottom is the slogan, “Bigger Beer, Enjoy the Mellow Strength.” Just above the ad is the name “Andy Byrne.”

Byrne ran a grocery store at 831 Oak St. in the 1920s, according to research by Terre Haute historian Mike McCormick. Then, around 1933 or ’34, Byrne’s place became a saloon, McCormick said.

The wall advertisement probably got painted in the 1930s, Rowe estimated.

Rowe plans to have the sign professionally restored.

It is one of the few ghost signs remaining in Terre Haute. The most visible survivor is a tobacco wall advertisement, featuring a frog, on the side of the Copper Bar at 810 Wabash Ave. Another can be found at 120 S. Eighth St. on the former WTHI Radio building.

The wall ad isn’t the only element worth saving at the old Oak Street tavern, also once known as the Crown Lounge. The roof’s 22-inch overhang offered Rowe a hint of its architectural roots. “I said, ‘I’ll bet this is an outstanding Italianate,’” Rowe said.

The decorative brackets had long been removed, but Rowe found some antique brackets similar to the building’s original design and soon had replacements up.

Inside, Rowe and his team have taken the remaining, original dark wood and filled in its missing gaps with matching replacement pieces. The woodwork stretches from the floor to the ceiling high above, and some of the original window frames are still in place. On the interior side of that east wall, wood covers a large opening that once looked out at the cavernous factory across Ninth Street. That neighboring facility housed not only the CV brewery until the mid-1950s, but later the Chesty’s Potato Chips factory. Employees at both businesses often finished or started their workdays (or both) with a stop at the tavern.

“Those people would pour out of the plant into the bar,” Rowe said.

Over the years, the soot from the city’s once-busy industrial district stuck to the tavern’s brick exterior. That sticky dust still clings to those walls. The gritty silhouettes of long-gone window shutters linger.

Rowe intends to clean and tuckpoint the brickwork.

Though the final use of the revitalized building will be up to the owners, GLX Enterprises, Rowe said it likely will be available by lease as a two-level tave