Goiter Guy Hangs Again

Coming In April, 2023

​"Tropical Depression," the final episode of the "Equal and Opposite Reactions Trilogy," will be released on APRIL 27, 2023 by Black Rose Writing.

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​
​GOITER GUY HANGS AGAIN

     A few months ago I posted a blog about the random pieces of art hanging and sitting around my house and their random origins (see https://www.ailantha.com/blog/art-in-the-family​).
      Among the pieces I mentioned was this one, which hung in our home when I was growing up and which one of my siblings - or it could have been myself - christened "Goiter Guy." *​

​      "Goiter Guy" was made of ceramic and cardboard on wood, and was made by one of my father's artist friends. (Though my father was a doctor, he hung with an arty crowd). The piece depicted a person with a swelling on their neck as described in an ancient manuscript by the Roman poet Juvenal. (Or so goes the story connected with the piece).

        The artist made the picture in honor of my father, who was a distinguished endocrinologist and whose specialty was diseases of the thyroid, one of which diseases, purportedly, was the cause of the thing on Goiter Guy's neck.
      Here's an old picture of a painting of my father that I believe still hangs in the halls of Thomas Jefferson University College of Medicine, where my father taught.  ​

​​     Anyway, when the time came for my siblings and me to see to the disposition of my parents' house and all the things in it, Goiter Guy was destined to be among the disposed of, as none of us wanted him. For one thing, the tip of his hat had broken off.

    However, Goiter Guy was saved from what likely would have been an indignant terminus in some landfill when one of my daughters decided that she wanted him, broken hat and all. 
         My daughter wanted him, but as it turned out, not right away; alas, there was no room for him in her current digs. She asked me if I would keep him until she had a space big enough to hang him.
         And so for over two years Goiter Guy sat in an upstairs closet in my house.

        But then a couple of months ago while I was roaming through the contents of the closet it hit me: Why keep Goiter Guy stuck away in the closet? Though my daughter may not yet have a wall on which to hang him, I do. 
         But first I needed to fix his hat.
        One of my neighbors, a talented home-improvement artiste  who owned a tile cutter, offered to help me. I needed only to supply a piece of tile and a template of the piece I wanted replaced.
         I looked around local supply stores and online but couldn't seem to locate any place where I could purchase a single tile in close to the same shade of glazed Fiesta blue as the Guy's hat.       

          I decided to see if I could get away with making his hat a bi-colored affair by replacing the tip, not in the same blue as the rest of the hat (which I couldn't find anyway), but in a cream color to coordinate with the cream in his robe,

...this shade being conveniently close to the color of my kitchen tiles, of which I had a few left over from when the new backsplash was installed last year. 

     Having my material now at hand, I proceeded to cut a hat-tip template from a piece of cardboard.      

     I then gave the cardboard template and a tile to my kind neighbor, who cut a wee little triangle from the tile which I glued onto the top of the hat with rubber cement then outlined with a black Sharpie, so as to resemble all the other ceramic pieces that the artist had outlined in black.
     As it turned out, Goiter Guy's new off-white hat tip skewed just a bit, but rather jauntily, I thought. 

     So Goiter Guy, after two years-plus in the closet, was ready to hang again. I found a nice spot for him in the dining room,

...where I hung him a few days before my daughter and her family arrived from Los Angeles for their Christmas visit, and from where he oversaw the numerous holiday festivities.

       One day during their visit my daughter shared with me that one of her daughters told her that she hoped that Grammie and Grandpa (myself and my mate Tom) would never sell our house because when she grew up she wanted to move into the house. 
        "Tell Grammie and Grandpa to never change a single thing in this house," my grand daughter told her mother. "Except for Goiter Guy. They can get rid of him."

* It has been recently pointed out to me that Goiter Guy might in fact be a Goiter Gal. Yeah, I think this could be true.