I talk a lot about what I consider to be home. I suppose that definition is different for everyone. I remember going to college and making friends, most of which never really bothered to go back to their hometowns to visit friends & family very often. They got out, and for the most part, they stayed out. Home may bring up scars, pain, memories to be forgotten. They seek to find their own place. Many have, and many are making memories in that place they now call home. It's not the same for everyone. I consider myself fortunate, to be sure.
I get ribbed at work for how often I go back home. It's not even 2 hours away, and recently I needed to be there often to help with my parents' move. But it doesn't take much for me to find an excuse to come home, even when nothing is going on. I've thought a lot about why it still means so much to me. Part of it comes from my family, and the deep sense of community and love there was in how the town treated my Uncle Burt all of his life. I grew up watching those interactions between normal townspeople and a man with a handicap and an immeasurably large heart. Nothing could've resonated stronger with a little kid, learning life lessons, one post office trip at a time shadowing my uncle. Maybe it's an overwhelming sense of gratitude I have to the town for all of those moments of kindness and love shown to him while he was alive. A life that could've been so hopeless and lost, instead was one of the most meaningful and special, to the hundreds who were willing and eager to let him into theirs.
Another important reason that home is still home stems from the loss of two close friends when I was 16, and the healing that only came with time spent with other close friends who were feeling the same gaping sense of loss that I was. I never missed a chance to get together back home with the boys when I knew there was going to be a group back in town. There was no better time spent in my life than those times among friends, living moments we knew wouldn't be possible for two lives cut entirely too short.
I know I'm not alone. People transplanted much farther away than me still feel a connection they can never shake to the same home I have. Like many, you have to be away from it for a while to appreciate it. Zack is one of those people. We express our love, gratitude, and admiration of home in different ways. SOmw write about it, some make music inspiried by it. In Zack's case, he expresses it on a canvas. Now he shares his admiration of home with anyone who can appreciate the subtlties that can only be pulled out of regular, everyday scenes with an artist's eye. I'm fortunate enough to have 3 of his prints, each of which is a scene I consider to be part of my home. So many of his paintings resonate deeply with many from there. Consider me one of them.
I've attached a few pieces of his work. Below is an interview done a while back from an Omaha news station. It's good to know that I'm not alone, I guess.
Thanks for this, JB. Burt was very special to me, I have often used him as an example of small town life when co-workers make fun of me for living there. It is a 40 min. commute to Omaha each day, they make fun of me because there is nothing ther. But nothing compares to the small town atmosphere when you are home in the evening.
This has been a prevailing thought of mine for a while now, and I'm positive I'm not alone here. I'm going to try to keep my composure & not go into some long-winded tirade talking about the outrageousness that has become new baby names in the past decade. One of the reasons that I will try not to is that I have many friends who have small children, and there may or may not be a few with names that are so ridiculous that I need not bother getting pissed about them.....their children's own fate has been sealed with their own outlandish name. But one needn't go any further than their hometown newspaper's weekly supplement showing new births for that given week in their City, and simply marvel at the idiacy that are newborn names. Go ahead, pick your favorites, they're all there....I'll spare the innocent and spare you mine. Now I'm not a parent yet, so if you feel as if I'm speaking out of turn on this, I'm only looking out for the innocent...
I was woken up early by my dad, who came in slowly, quietly to my bedroom after trying to process the news he and my mother had received 45 minutes previously. The unthinkable. It was a bright, shiny Sunday morning, the sun just now coming through the curtain of my east window. I had been at a friend's house the night before playing music in our high school garage band. Had it not been for the band, and the fact that I was scheduled to work at the grocery store that Sunday morning, who's to say I wouldn't have been out at that party with them Saturday night? Dad sat down on the edge of my bed, placed his hand on my shoulder, shaking it gently. "Buddy... Buddy wake up." I rolled over quickly. Dad never woke me up in the mornings. "I've got some really bad news to tell you..." His eyes visibly red, his voice weak and shaky. "...You lost two friends last night." "Who?" Twenty years is an eternity, and also a blink of an eye. A comm...
Sometimes the weather is such that all you want to do is stay inside, point and laugh at your neighbor who is outside shoveling snow, and make some good food that fills you up and warms the cockles. I learned to love cooking when I was growing up from my mom, and the go-to guide for such dishes has been my mom's cookbook, a collection of some of my favorite recipes that mom would make growing up. She made this book for Lisa and gave it to her as a gift at her wedding shower. It's been used more than any other cookbook I have. So as a long, cold weekend at home loomed, I sat down and made up a list of 3-4 meals that I could make & chew on for the weekend, and then for lunches the rest of the week. Kicking it off for a Saturday lunch watching basketball was one of my all-time favorites, Zuccini Casserole. People probably don't go out of their way to buy up this particular vegetable, but it's been a staple in my family for as long as I can remember, whether it was a gi...
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And Zack has some beautiful work! Thanks for sharing