Author: ronnyjames

Where the Apple Falls

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I have always loved art. Art with a capital A, though I’ve generally favored painting over drawing or sculpture. Loved art and loved making art.

One of my earliest memories is of attending an outdoor art show and offering my unsolicited — and at that point hardly well-trained — critique of a painting. The artist took it in good humor, though having stood in that same spot years later, I can say it must have been a little unsettling. Everyone has opinions about Art, of course. But a youngster critiquing technique? That’s a different story.

In junior high school I was given the opportunity to practice what I had been preaching. I loved helping paint the backdrop flats for our school musicals — one each year from 7th through 9th grade: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, The Pirates of Penzance, were two that I remember having worked on.

Through high school and college I continued to paint, though I stayed away from the theater department. Perhaps I assumed large-format work would never be my strength, or that there couldn’t possibly be a future in scenic design. My loss.

Rehearsal on stage at Immanuel Bible Church (2008)

Then, in my late 40s, I picked it all up again when I volunteered to help with the sets for our church’s annual Easter pageant productions. These were full-scale presentations: scenery, actors, singing and dancing, orchestra, theatrical lighting — the works. With nine or more performances each spring, they aspired to a high level of theater quality using all volunteers. At the time, much like that young art critic years before, I thought they could probably use a little help with the painting. And so I volunteered, first as a background painter working on rocks, and later as scenic designer with a team of volunteers helping to bring to life the 1st century world of Jerusalem. 

Cleaning the stage before rehearsal

One of the great blessings of living where we do is easy access to world-class theater. We’ve taken the kids to see Wicked, Mary Poppins, The Lion King, and other productions at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. And of course, a train trip to New York City for a weekend Broadway show was something we could never resist.

This year my oldest granddaughter graduates from high school, and in the fall she’ll attend a local university majoring in theater set design. I couldn’t be more proud of all she has accomplished — from the ten productions she participated in during her school years to the way she has branched into hair and makeup, costume design, props, and stage management while also earning a certification in cosmetology, a skill I’m certain will serve her well wherever life leads.

On the set of Macbeth (Freedom High School Theater)

It’s far too early to know the trajectory of her career, or even whether she’ll remain in the theater world long term. But as the coming tsunami of AI reshapes so much of the workplace, careers rooted in craftsmanship, creativity, and personal expression may prove more enduring than many expect.

What a blessing. Congratulations, young lady. Keep shining and paint your world. 

Letters From the Past

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One of the most memorable examples of handwriting analysis appears in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, in the story The Reigate Squire (also published as The Reigate Puzzle).

In that story, Sherlock Holmes examines a torn fragment of a note and performs a brilliant bit of analysis. He deduces that it was written by two different people—a younger man and an older one—based on subtle differences in pen strokes. Even more impressively, he observes that the two alternated writing individual words. From the handwriting alone, he infers personality traits and even the relationship between the writers (who turn out to be the Cunninghams, father and son).

Holmes explains his reasoning in terms both simple and elegant: the weak, irregular strokes of an elderly hand contrasted with the bold, confident lines of a younger one. The analysis becomes central to solving the crime.

The Reigate Squire is really a showcase—a kind of set piece built around handwriting as a forensic tool—and it remains one of the more scientifically intriguing episodes in the Holmes canon.

My own interest, however, is far more personal.

Recently, I came into possession of an envelope filled with old letters—ones I had written to my mother and stepfather more than fifty years ago. She had saved them all: along with grade school photos, birthday cards, and other bits of life that somehow survived the decades. When she moved into a smaller apartment, the whole collection found its way back to me.

And that raised an unexpectedly difficult question: what do you do with handwritten letters from the early 1970s?

Do you throw them away?
Or do you sit down and read them—slowly—and try to rediscover your 18-year-old self?

I chose a third option.

I scanned one of the letters and submitted it for handwriting analysis, pairing it with a recent sample of my writing. If nothing else, I thought, it might create a kind of “before and after”—a small window across half a century.

The results were…interesting.

What’s especially striking is not just that the structural traits match—it’s that the movement signature matches. Handwriting, it turns out, is less about the shapes themselves and more about how the hand moves across the page. In both samples, the rhythm, the rightward momentum, the confident t-bars, and the distinctive descender curves all carry the same kinetic “accent.”

In other words: it still feels like me.

What’s changed over time feels natural—almost reassuring:

  • The size is slightly reduced → more efficiency than diminished energy
  • The pressure is lighter → a common effect of age, as muscles soften
  • There’s a bit more angularity → often a sign of reflection and analysis
  • The baseline remains steady → suggesting continued motor control and cognitive stability

That consistency across decades points to something deeper: a stable personality core—expressive, engaged, structured in thought, and purposeful in communication.

And there’s one subtle distinction I find especially meaningful. The earlier sample shows an expansiveness of life; the later one shows a depth of thought. That’s not decline—it’s development.

The analysis itself considered a wide range of characteristics: letter size, loops and lines, pressure and stroke strength, formation patterns, rhythm, flow, even emotional tone. The conclusion was clear: this is the same writer.

But not the same person. Or perhaps more accurately—the same person, continued.

The evolution tells a quiet story:

  • Emotional expressiveness retained
  • Increased discipline and structure
  • A slight softening of stroke
  • A more deliberate, measured pace

If I had to summarize it in one sentence: the later sample reads like the same voice—just seasoned, steadier, and more intentional. It’s comforting to discover that 18-year-old me and 74-year-old me still have so much in common.

We don’t often get the chance to revisit our younger selves—much less to recognize them, and feel at ease with who they’ve become. It was a fun visit, less scary than I had expected. How about you? Have you taken any trips down Memory Lane lately?

Rancho Roundup

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Plaid work shirts, cuffed trousers, wide-brim felt hats; Western-style boots (especially the stitched details on the girl’s boots). The guitar style (flat-top acoustic, likely a budget student model common at the time). Tinted photography was common for family or promotional photos in the early ’40s and in fact the coordinated Western attire across all five members points to a performing sibling group.

The photograph fits exactly with how radio station youth or family acts were photographed in small and mid-market stations like KFXM. Everything about this photo matches what we know about KFXM at the California Hotel: KFXM regularly used local talent, especially teenagers. Western / cowboy programming was extremely popular during WWII and shows like Rancho Roundup often featured live music, family groups, and youth performers filling daytime or weekend slots.

But what does Mom say?

“The war was still going on. When I was 14, we 4 younger kids sang cowboy songs on the radio. We were known as “The Rancho Roundup.” There were two or three others who sang with us, but I only remember Norman Newberry, who came from Texas, and whom we teased incessantly because of his accent.  He is in the picture of us sitting on the corral gate.”

The country music group Rancho Roundup was a live performance band that appeared on San Bernardino radio station KFXM, and met and performed with Tennessee Ernie Ford there. Their appearances took place in the early-to-mid 1940s. 

Bonita Hinds, in an audio interview recorded for the San Bernardino Public Library in 2003, recalled that her brother (who played guitar), her mother, and other friends and neighbors performed as the Rancho Roundup as well, the name given more to the show rather than a particular group. 

“Oh, yes, California Hotel. We were called the Rancho Roundup and we were on the radio, KFXM, which was at the California Hotel, and we met Tennessee Ernie Ford and we would play – sing – for about half an hour, I don’t remember how long. My brother played the guitar – and mother and Eleanor, all three played the guitar. And there’s different people in the, friends from our neighborhood that were in the show-dozen of us, or maybe less, eight of us maybe. And we did that one whole summer for about half an hour or so.”

Later, after World War II, Country music personality Tennessee Ernie Ford worked as a disc jockey at KFXM where he hosted an early morning country music program called “Bar Nothin’ Ranch Time”. He created his “Tennessee Ernie” persona during this time and became popular in the area before moving to another station in Pasadena. 

The Inland Empire had a thriving country-swing music scene in those early years. San Bernardino was a hub for the “Dust Bowl” migration, and many local bands played live “Western Swing” in the hotel’s ballroom or the studio. Names often associated with that era’s local circuit include groups led by Cliffie Stone or early versions of the Town Hall Party musicians who were active in the Riverside/San Bernardino area.

A number of groups were active in the area during the 1940s. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were widely known as the “King of Western Swing,” Wills and his band moved their operations to California in the early 1940s, performing extensively across Southern California venues. Foy Willing and the Riders of the Purple Sage performed both on radio and in regional venues. Tommy Sargent’s Range Boys were Southern California-based western swing group active in the 1940s as were Tex Williams and the Western Caravan.

All of these groups created a sound that lived on for years, performing in local concert and dancehall venues throughout Southern California. Western swing, which peaked in popularity during the 1930s and 1940s, began to decline in the late 1940s and saw a significant drop by the late 1950s. Key factors for its decline included a wartime tax on dance halls in 1944, the rise of rock and roll, the advent of television, and shifting popularity toward smaller-band honky-tonk. But I still love that sound!

DRAW!

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DRAW! Illustrator and over-sized exhibit icon of President Johnson from the Archives’ 1991 annual Report here.

Ink, Irony, and the American Eye: A (Very) Brief History of
Political Cartoons

Nearly 35 years ago, I worked on a museum exhibit that explored the cultural influence and reach of political cartoons. The National Archives hosted the exhibit “Draw! Political Cartoons from Left to Right” starting in 1991, which celebrated American political cartoons and their role in public discourse, as noted in their annual reports from 1991.

The exhibit company that I worked for produced and installed the exhibit. At a time from before large scale digital graphics have become widely used throughout the industry, we silkscreened all the text and background imagery on large painted panels. Hand drawn political cartoons were scanned, enlarged, and turned into photo stencils to serve as a kind of supergraphic to fit the many panels that lined the curved walls of the Circular Gallery.

Political cartoons have been part of the American conversation almost from the beginning. Long before radio, television, or the internet, these drawings carried arguments, insults, warnings, and humor directly to the public. Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” snake, published in 1754, is often cited as the starting point—not just of political cartooning in America, but of visual persuasion as a civic act. From the outset, cartoons were not decorative; they were meant to persuade, provoke, and occasionally unsettle.

The late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries now feel, in hindsight, like the glory days of political cartooning. As literacy expanded and printing technology improved, newspapers multiplied at an astonishing rate. From a few hundred papers in the early 1800s, the country grew to thousands by the Civil War and beyond. Editorial pages became expected reading, and political cartoons claimed a permanent place there—bold, unavoidable, and often memorable long after the day’s headlines were forgotten.

A Most Cordial Understanding is my first shot at a cartoon in the early style of 1840s Punch Magazine. It is very much in the Punch sweet spot: Polite on its face, slightly smug in tone, faintly ominous once you sit with it. We get a sense of two “respectable” powers conducting business as usual over tea; when paired with the recent pronouncements regarding Greenland, one can only wonder what they are really thinking.

This era produced giants whose influence still lingers. Thomas Nast’s crusade against Tammany Hall corruption helped bring down Boss Tweed and left us with the elephant and donkey as enduring political symbols. Others followed—Homer Davenport, John T. McCutcheon, Rollin Kirby—each shaping how Americans learned to “read” politics visually. Their drawings assumed patience and attention. They asked readers to stop, look, and think.

One of my favorites, Pat Oliphant stands out as one of the last great heirs to that lineage. His cartoons were spare, sharply drawn, and unsparing in their judgment. Presidents, generals, and bureaucrats were rendered slightly ridiculous, sometimes cruelly so, and always human. Oliphant’s recurring penguin—part conscience, part heckler—gave voice to public skepticism with a wit that felt earned rather than manufactured. Polite on its face. Slightly smug in tone.

What distinguished Oliphant’s work was its confidence in the medium. A single image, printed once a day, was enough. It didn’t need a monologue, a laugh track, or a follow-up explanation. You encountered it over coffee, folded into the paper, and it stayed with you. His cartoons were meant to be revisited, clipped, argued over, and remembered.

That world has largely disappeared. As newspapers have closed or shrunk, so too has the space for daily editorial cartooning. Political commentary has not vanished, but it has migrated. Memes flash by in seconds, optimized for recognition and outrage. Late-night television hosts and podcast personalities deliver satire in real time—often smart, often funny, but designed for immediacy rather than endurance. The encounter is louder, faster, and easier to share, but also easier to forget.

This shift doesn’t signal a decline in political engagement so much as a change in how it is experienced. Where cartoonists like Oliphant trusted silence and reflection, modern satire thrives on performance and momentum. Where cartoons once surprised readers on the editorial page, today’s commentary must be sought out, subscribed to, and algorithmically reinforced.

Looking back—through exhibitions like “Draw: Political Cartoons from Left to Right,” and through the artifacts that remain—it’s tempting to see that earlier period as a high point. Not because it was more civil or more virtuous, but because it trusted the reader. It trusted that a drawing could carry an idea, that ambiguity had value, and that satire could linger. In an age of endless commentary, the old cartoons remind us of the power of ink, restraint, and a moment of pause.

Below are a series of cartoons I’ve created over the past few weeks that incorporate that sense of urgency compiled with a mix of wry humor or satire. I’ve been using the considerable skills of ChatGPT augmented with my own perspective of the times in which we live. For good or ill, we find our country at a very troubling crossroads. I might not get out and walk in protest as I once did; it doesn’t mean I like what’s happening and am planning on remaining silent. Quiet maybe, but not silent.

Back to Work, Ozians!

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Admittedly I haven’t read the books. So that’s an awkward place to start. But I have to wonder about “world-building” in these new movies. Movies, sequels, prequels, adjacent, streaming, stage play, stage play into a movie, all of that.

For me, I think it began with the Hobbit, followed up with reading the Lord of the Rings; which became a series of movies (six movies from four books, imagine that). The Wizarding World of Harry Potter spawned a complete set of movies, theme park, then a stage play, and now a series on HBO. 

My question has always been about the details: are these created fictional worlds filled out enough to sustain multiple iterations and new storylines, remain faithful to their source material, and still be entertaining? or at best, even plausible reality?

Frank Baum created a series of 14 full-length novels that tell the fictional history of the Land of Oz. That is quite a universe to explore. I’m tempted to pick up the first novel and see where all of this started.

Gregory Maguire wrote the book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,  published in 1995 and turned into a very successful stage musical and now a two-part movie. There are an additional three books in the reimagined OZ Universe by Maguire. In 2025 Maguire published a true prequel to Elphaba’s story, Elphie: A Wicked Childhood: This 2025 prequel details the early life of the character, Elphaba and is set 30 years before the events of Wicked. 

There has been recent online discussion (here) of Universal Pictures exploring additional movies set in the OZ universe. Though I found the saturated coloring of the sets designed by Nathan Crawley to be eye-popping in the first movie (more muted tones in the second), the Art Deco inspired Emerald City was off the charts! The more art nouveau inspired buildings of Munchkin land at least looked like they had been built by the people who lived there.

But all I could think of was, “who built this place? How does it run? Do they use electricity, or some kind of magic?” Folks are dancing across the stage in fitted costumes: they couldn’t possibly be the working class? Who are they? What do they do? Who keeps the lights on, works in the sanitation department, or runs their mass transit system? I can’t wait for more stories from the Oz Universe, hopefully we will get a glimpse behind the curtain of how it all works!

You, Me, and AI

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It’s been almost three years since the introduction of ChatGPT (November 30, 2022). And while I don’t think it has quite taken over the internet, it has certainly made a very large and, at times divisive, impact on our world. It seems whenever I see or hear something online these days, my first thought is, Is this real? Or is it it AI? And I don’t suppose that it helps that I enjoy the talking baby videos as much as I do (real? or AI?). Our politicians seem to have a love/hate relationship with AI-generated or augmented content at the moment: some have embraced the technology yet others rail against it. The Guardian has an article on AI-generated campaign videos here. For good or evil, AI. is here to stay.

I dipped my toes into AI tentatively back in 2023 with a blog post on the post-apocalyptic television series The Last of Us. You can catch the series on HBO here, or read my post from February 2023 here. I had never played the video game the streaming series was based on so I used ChatGPT to delve a little deeper into some of the themes and possible end-of-series scenarios presented. The series wasn’t meant for everyone but it definitely held one’s attention over the course of nine episodes.

After that initial foray into AI (Artificial Intelligence) I began to explore how it could be helpful in some of the areas I have interest. Recently I used it to rewrite a brief blog post on an article I submitted, having felt that it needed a good edit to get my point across. It wasn’t…half bad actually. I used Chad (my term for my online helper) to write a four-week devotional booklet for Advent. I gave it a theme to explore, possible characters to include, a couple of scriptural references and we were off! It came up with scripture focus, theme, devotional angle, and application. It would have added graphics and compiled a PDF booklet if I had kept at it. All in under a minute. If time is a precious commodity, AI can be a gamechanger. For our small group’s participation in Trunk-or-Treat this year, I had AI create a couple of images to use for inspiration.

Vacation planning? Yep. An eight-day itinerary for a visit to Scotland and travel through England. A seven-day family vacation to Maine with stops in Pennsylvania and Connecticut along the way. That stop in Connecticut was to visit a cemetery with headstones of my earliest American ancestors. ChatGPT ran a population growth calculator to see how many possible ancestors I might have from Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather Thomas Ranney (who died at 97 in 1713).

Here’s the answer with initial suppositions: Let’s calculate how many people would be there after 350 years, with the following assumptions: Each generation spans 30 years. The initial family has 4 children. Each subsequent family has 4 children who marry and have 4 children. In the 11th generation alone, there would be 4,194,304 people. Thanks Chad! That’s a lot of Christmas cards to address. (photo from findagrave.com)

I’ve since used ChatGPT to design a deck for the cottage, enhance the bathroom, and redesign my outfit to look more “Ralph Lauren” inspired. It’s created a garden layout that features deer-resistant plants and gave me a separate planting guide. For one gardening project, it created an entire proposal complete with an RFP for contractor bid submissions.

It’s done a reasonable job on paint color samples for my neighbor’s house; calculated how many solar panels I would need to go off grid; created a Fall menu for an outdoor party; it wrote a seven-day gluten free menu plan along with a two-week menu plan (and shopping list!) for another person.

It even gave me an estimate of how many adults in the US own cellphones (As of 2024, approximately 98% of U.S. adults own a cellphone of some kind, with about 91% owning a smartphone.)

So then I’m curious: how are you using AI, or are you? At work? Blog posts or other personal correspondence? Are you involved in video or media production and using AI either to enhance or create content? I guess what I am really asking is, where do we go from here?

Settling In

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It’s now been a month since we made the move and downsized from a 1900 square foot townhouse to a 1,00 square foot, two bedroom apartment. It hasn’t been without a few challenges. Overall, however, I’m surprised at how well we have managed. 

Boxing, packing, renting a storage unit, more sorting thru, donating and discarding all helped to prepare our townhouse for sale. The final move was over in a day—we had movers come in and load all the boxes and furniture and after that it was just directing where things were to go.

The pictures and family photos have now all been hung. We have fewer walls than our townhome so not everything went back up. And there has been some rearranging: the Nevada Room is now the living room, before it was the decor for the guest bedroom. The second bedroom in the apartment has been reconfigured as our Den/TV/Office. A small daybed serves double duty as a couch and a bed for future guests. 

Previously we had a separate kitchen, dining room, and living room. In our new place, those are all combined in one large central room, which I thought would be too small but actually functions quite well. The big bonus for me is the extra kitchen storage and the large kitchen island. The granite countertops are an upgrade as well as the under-cabinet task lighting. Really, it’s been quite an improvement. And having the washer dryer in the kitchen is a huge blessing! No more walking down two levels to do laundry.

We are getting spoiled by a couple of amenities that the apartments offer. A covered parking garage means no more walking in the rain between house and car. “Trash Valet” picks up our trash and recycling every evening at our door. The trip from the townhouse backyard up a snow-covered slope with our trash receptacles was more adventure than I cared to repeat, especially in dark December and no walkway. Now we just set the containers out and bring them back in before 9am the following morning. Sweet!

We’ve had to bring our small wheeled cart out of storage to use transporting boxes and bags from my truck, through the parking garage and down the long hallway to our apartment. I think it’s seen more action this week than in the previous four years of use. As boxes make the trip from our storage unit to the new apartment, I’m struck by how many we have. I had packed boxes and moved them to storage over the course of many weeks, stacking them until I couldn’t reach the top of the pile. Everything got packed. Now, as we unpack and try to find room for what we have, we are continuing the process of sorting, donating, and trashing, looking at every memento, book, or CD with a more discerning eye. Out it goes!

The 424-acre Kincora site has 180 acres of natural area with scenic nature trails bordering the Broad Run River, a tributary of the Potomac. I hope to get out and start walking some of them once the heat of summer begins to fade, right now the humidity is oppressive (typical Virginia summer!). There is quite a bit of construction activity in the to-be-developed area here at Kincora. More apartments, townhouses and retail will join the Northern Virginia Science Center under development. We had looked at moving here back in 2019; as we begin this new chapter in our lives, it looks like we picked a great time to relocate!

It’s Been a Week

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It has been a week! Which started roughly six months ago, but finished up today.

When we first moved to Ashburn, it was the beginning of a rather long and protracted downsizing. I had recently retired, we were in a house which over the years had begun to feel too large for us, and my wife had just a few years left in her then-current job when she would have to decide, “what’s next?” Moving from Fairfax, we expected that the townhouse we had bought in Ashburn would be an interim step for us as we downsized, expecting it to last us for perhaps five years. We ended up staying six before selling and moving this spring, downsizing again.

The process of getting ready to sell our home began in earnest back in January. While we debated the pros and cons of buying or renting another place (we eventually decided to rent), we knew a lot had to go to squeeze the contents of a 1,900 square foot townhouse into a 1,000 square foot apartment. Here’s a great hack: get a storage unit close to where you will be moving: those hard decisions about what to purge can be made later when you aren’t under pressure to pack up everything and go.

So it’s been six months of preparing followed by a long day of movers wrapping and packing and moving us into an apartment. Most of our boxes have now been unpacked, newspaper and bubblewrap cleared out. I’ve run the dishwasher once; we have trash valet service which means no more trips with trash cans up an icy or snow-covered hill to the street. We’ve run a load of wash in the new full-size stackable washer/dryer and tonight I’m planning on using both the gas range and the stove to make dinner. Big steps!

We had two assigned parking spots at our townhouse, here we have a parking garage with open parking. An elevator provides a quick ride downstairs to the apartment lobby and the mail room, the gym is on the ground floor level and a rooftop deck is great for viewing the sunset.

Already I miss our bit of yard and common area green space from the old home even though the deer here in Ashburn ate almost everything I ever planted. I have to say, all-in-all it’s been a good experience. Deb has never lived in an apartment and it’s been nearly 40 years since I have. The times we’ve moved as a married couple can be counted on one hand, not all that bad for boomers. My Mom wrote recently that she had moved ten times in the seven years after she had graduated high school in 1946. I’m not complaining! It’s another My Retired Life Adventure.