"Copy of Klee's 'Vogel Garten'" 

mixed media on newspaper on cardboard, 31 x 40 inches.

I love Paul Klee. Brilliant designer. Unsurpassed stylist. A very special human being. I worked through the better part of his notebooks and Bauhaus lessons and while I'm not saying it was a complete waste of time, it was almost a complete waste of time. Not sure if he was a hustler or was sincerely attempting to document and explain his process in earnest technically, but the teachings amount to a whole lot of psuedo-intellectual hot air. Couched in exclusivity jargon and fancy terms for brick-simple concepts, the bulk of the materials aren't worth the time for a person trying to improve his or her craft. People claiming his writings on Art are on par with da Vinci are lying or confused. Whereas da Vinci informed generations of not just artists and craftspeople but also engineers and technicians, Klee's writings are thousands of pages the end result of which can be better internalized by understanding the golden mean and a brief survey of his artist's statement/manifesto. Or better yet, study his pictures. I imagine it was a combination of needing to justify his approach and teaching position, keep pace with the intelligentsia fashions of pre-Great War Germany and fill time when asked to speak publicly on his work that led to his prodigious overly complex prose. That or he was sincere and extremely neurotic. His math exercises take the student on long tedious journeys of arithmetic that end up illustrating principles that if not patently obvious or intuitively graspable are demonstrable by considerably more direct and simple means. That and they aren't particularly helpful to a person trying to improve his or her design powers.

Regardless, he's great. My favorite of the...whaddya call it? Was he Cubist or Expressionist? Whatever. I'm glad he defies classification. That's a hallmark of Quality, in my humble opinion.

Oh, also, like Klee, I made this frame by hand for the painting and the mat area is part of the painting itself. Note that the original is around 10.5" x 15.5" whereas my loose interpretive copy is a bit bigger at 31 x 40 inches. It hangs in my home above the landing on the stairs.

 "Numquam Amavit Omnino"

A list of blog topics I was going to write up, but I'm NOT going to write now because I don't have time.

 1.) Agnes Sorel and What We Can Learn about 15th Century Competition. ~ Proto-feminism or simply boobs FTW?

2.) Red Madder Dyes and Why the Roman Legions Were Actually Pink (plus West's "Death of General Wolfe.") ~ Rethink what you think things looked like.

3.) Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher's Sino-American Wargame He Keeps Making People Play. ~ "Taiwan Tabletop Exercise (TTX)." Wargames are important practical tools. China war bad and scary.

4.) How GMT's "This Accursed Civil War" Map of Naseby is Very Wrong. ~ It's wrong. Sulby Hedges shaped wrong and field 200-300 yards too wide East to West.

5.) How Chris Peers's "Death in the Dark Continent" Got it Right. ~ Solid game. Even solider reference. On the shelf alongside Pakenham.

6.) Why You Can't Do Much Better than "De Bellis Antiquitatis." ~ Really and truly, you probably just can't.

7.) Why Spike Jones is an Underappreciated Genius and You Should Love Him. ~ Hilarious, ubiquitous and of high quality. 

8.) My Favorite Depictions of George IV in Film & Television. ~ Jim Howick's my current favorite.

9.) Albrecht Altdorfer & Early Modern Design. ~ He did it first and better. Except maybe see C. Corot. 

10.) A Review of "The Faithful Executioner." ~ A fantastic book.

11.) Depictions of Speed of Foot in Gaming Compared to Real Life: An Informal Survey of Several Popular Systems. ~ Basically 1mph for masses of troops in battle array, moving and maintaining formations. Frequent stops by section to dress lines. Slow.

12.) The Real Reason Shakespeare is Stylistically Inconsistent. ~ No scoring or special effects. Or even sets really. Language alone cues audience on pace, tone and intensity of a given scene.

13.) In Praise of Ronald Lacey. ~ Best bad guys. 

14.) Words and Ideas that Don't Exist in English: l'histoire des mentalités & Tagesmarsch ~ As utilitarian as it is, English is at times deficient in its Artfulness.

 "Aliena Rerum"

 What do Alien Abductions and Conquistadors Have in Common? 

 

No, not (just) the ancient aliens guy with the hair from History Channel...

 

 

 

  While reading the rules to the old SPI game 'Conquistador,' from S&T magazine no.58 Sept/Oct 1976, and looking at the credits, was surprised to see Whitley Strieber's name under acknowledgements.

                                                                          What? How? Why?

All I can gather from google is that Strieber was working in advertising in NYC during SPI days. Must be a study in nerdiness here we're missing out on. Who knew whom, I wonder. 

 

 

 

* - In case the name doesn't immediately ring a bell, Strieber wrote, among others, the book "Communion" about his experiences with alien abduction at the hands of the now-famous big-eyed gray aliens. This book along with X-files, media coverage of the Roswell incident and JFK conspiracy theories all made for an exciting period for nerdery in the 1990s.

 The ALBUM "Psi-Witch" 

by me for ALBUM

 

Confusion In and About Warlord Games Publications 

~ a lighthearted critique from a newb ~

Warlord Games works with or is part of Osprey Press, a known publisher of history texts. I am entirely new to Warlord Games product line and yet my initial brief perusal of the materials has been somewhat confounding. In barely cracking the covers of a couple of these books I've found some alarming and, to me, entirely new information.

To begin, in the Thirty Years War section of the Pike & Shotte rulebook, page 128 says that events in 1643 led to "...Sweden once more becoming the dominant force in Scandinavia and the Balkans."

Did the Turks know about this? Did anyone consult the Sultan?!

Then in the introduction to the Battle of the Bulge Bolt Action supplement, pg. 9 says that as a result of the Allied invasion of Normandy "...Hitler’s forces in northern France were comprehensively defeated and forced to retreat westward."  

Was there a failed German withdrawal maneuver that somehow escaped the attention of the Allies and everyone else in the world including a couple subsequent generations of academics and historians? (Thinking: this'll confuse the yanks and brits, everybody run away from Berlin!)

Or perhaps an aborted large-scale amphibious frog-man operation for the seizure and occupation of the Atlantic Ocean?

I realize, after being reminded every few paragraphs, that these rules in no way attempt to simulate "real" conflicts, but then the books proceed to offer chapter after chapter of seeming technical and historical information. If the games are in no way intended to reflect the reality of anything, why the copious amounts of (questionable?) background information? It's sort of a confusing stance in my opinion. Why partner with Osprey Press who clearly do intend their publications to be regarded as serious efforts at history?

If these publications were small press with limited budgets some of the confusion might be understandable, if only regrettable, but these are fairly large corporate entities with large market footprints and with presumably capable and qualified editorial departments. Is this just contempt for consumers, actual ignorance or something else? 

Still, the pictures are really nice in some of these books and those alone make them interesting to me. Nice pictures. Lovely toys. The "fun" side of warfare, I guess, to be taken lightly, as they spare no effort to remind the reader. VERY lightly.

Finally, and I do apologize for invoking the following but it's too apropos here to forgo, perhaps the lady doth protest too much. Or maybe she could just do a better job.

 

Wars of Beleriand, a Silmarillion board game, preview video.

 

 A short video by Winfield showing the Wars of Beleriand game parts and pieces etc. and a little about what will become of it.

 "The American Schematic"

watercolor, ink & gouache on paper, 15 x 20 inches