Crap-camtastic!

Why I love this owl. Tune in at 11.

Ok, so I didn't say it would be sometime past 11 and 4 days later.

First, I hope you're all enjoying the crap-cam images. (I don't know where I first heard someone use the term crap-cam, but I think it's appropriate.)

Second, lets talk about color.

Sure, Crayola would like to think it's got the market on color nostalgia. Many kids love to color, the coloring book market is multi-million dollar I'm sure, and dollar-store survivors everywhere covet the yellow and green box o' 64.

But I don't pick up a crayon and say "heh, this green reminds me of that time when ..."

Now, this owl has a few different things going on with its coloring. First, the orange and green highlights are perfectly reminiscent of 1950s color schemes. A time long before I was born, but the country was coming out of WWII and, after a fashion, finally recovering from the Great Depression. While I couldn't find any exact information on how colors have reflected the attitudes of an era or generation, it seems that nostalgia and the 50s just go together for many cultural and purely American reasons.

So anyway (I ran out of time to type yesterday and published without meaning to). The colors of the owl give me nostaligia for a time when I wasn't alive. Blahty blahty blah.

What else the owl gives me nostalgia for, however, is the Weatherbee's picture window on Island Drive. You knew it was getting time for fall when Mrs. Weatherbee put the Halloween decorations up in the front window. Sure, school had already started and the weather had started to get a bit of a chill, but that window was a sign that the holiday seasons had begun. Everything else in life could be chaos (and often it was for me), but that window was an escape. I loved the pumpkin she had. A true Jack-o-lantern fellow with poseable arms and legs and a toothy grin.

(Dammit! I saved again! Too much time working in word and automatically hitting that ctrl+s combination.)

Something about the fall has always comforted me. Sweaters, the leaves turning, Halloween costumes, school even. The fall made me feel safe. There's a lot more behind this than I'm willing to go into. But this owl, now taped to an otherwise blank white wall in my office, reminds me of that safe feeling. Takes me back to walking out the door for school and seeing the Weatherbee's window. Overnight the world seemed to change.

I'm not sure what family life was like beyond that window. The girl who lived there was an on-again/off-again companion. She seemed to keep to herself. I think age was part of it, she was one of the youngest kids on the block.

My nostalgia for those orange and green hues is a connection to one of my most pleasant childhood memories. The other being lying in bed at dusk and listening to the chickadees call. To this day I will defend the chickadee's song as one of the most beautiful bird songs ever. Nothing will dissuade me.

Now I'm really going to publish and end this post.