Longtime special
friends Martha and Dick Andersen, who know well my affinity for all things
Scottish, sent me a Scottish Santa tree ornament this week. To my delight, it
is by folk artist Jim Shore. More than a few years ago Shore’s Christmas
figures—Santa, angels, snowmen—were the rage in Texas, or maybe I just thought
that because I had a friend who carried his work in her gift shop. My great
splurge one year was to buy a Saint Nicholas figure. A year or two later I
looked for a tree ornament for a friend who collects angels but could not find
a single Jim Shore angel ornament. I assumed his popularity had peaked and waned,
so I was surprised to get this wonderful figure.
A web search
showed me how wrong I was. Shore has gone from a regional artist with a few
subjects to a one-man industry, with a craft studio, a superstore, an
affiliation with Amazon, and contracts with Disney, Peanuts, Coca Cola and
other name brands. His Heartwood Creek brand is now internationally known. But
he still relies on themes and patterns from folk art—quilting, rosemaling
(stylized painting on wood, a Scandinavian artform), and tole painting.
It’s a Jim Shore
Christmas at my cottage. Want to see more of his work? Here’s a link: https://jimshore.com/pages/shop-by-type
I had a second
nostalgia trip this morning when a friend confessed to one of those
incongruities that can creep into fiction—she had mentioned the Golden Gate
Bridge (I think that was the bridge) in a story set several years before the
bridge was built. That triggered a memory of the Dorothy Johnson short story, “The
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,”—I have a vague memory that Johnson had a Congressman
witness an Old West gunfight and then head for the airport. It was corrected
before publication, but the memory is rattling around in my head. One mention led to another, and it turned out
another friend is a huge fan of the film version of that story but knew nothing about Johnson’s other work.
Now she’s reading one of the short story collections.
Dorothy died in
1984, and her work, once widely heralded and filmed, is now pretty much
unknown. Her most famous short stories, in addition to Liberty Valance, are “The
Hanging Tree,” “A Man Called Horse,” and “Lost Sister,” her take on the sad
story of Cynthia Ann Parker’s return from Indian captivity to white society. Western
author Jack Schaefer wrote a classic introduction to her stories, describing the
“singing sentence” at the end which causes readers to gasp with surprise and
delight.
I was privileged
to know Dorothy. Met her at Western Writers of America meetings and developed a
correspondence with her. After her death, I gave my thick Dorothy Johnson file to
Sue Hart of the University of Montana, who did a documentary on Dorothy’s work.
My folder included not only letters but research notes for two introductions to
short story volumes and the text of a monograph.
So this morning,
Dorothy came galloping back into my memory, half falling off her horse as she
did on her letterhead photo. A pleasant trip into the past. I wish I’d written
that book about her. The memories are fuzzy now, the people who knew her well
all gone.
Christmas is a
time for making new memories and treasuring the old. Tomorrow night my entire family
will be gathered under one roof. Lots of memories to be made. I am like a kid
waiting for Santa, fidgety with anticipation.
