Happy Holidays!

Just a quick note to wish everyone a happy holidays and a happy new year. Tomorrow, Mom and I are going to Minnesota to visit family. Dad is staying behind to care for Grandpa who is still in some pain after stumbling down the front porch steps. He was in bed for most of Christmas day and yesterday also. I am excited to see my Uncle Ronnie and his family again and my Aunt Gloria and her family and Grandma Sylvia. The temperature there right now is 32 degrees which isn't as bad as last year when it was around zero degrees at night. Unfortunately, my Grandma sold the house with the pond when Grandpa Jessie died, but Uncle Ronnie has a backyard with a hill nearby so that we can go sledding. I got lots of clothes for christmas and a game called "the sims" for my computer. I gave Grandpa the first edition of my ancestor report printed on really nice paper and put into a leather binder with our initials on it. He seemed to like it a lot and later I saw him laying down sleeping with it laying on his chest. I gave Dad a new pair of cuff links that Mom suggested I buy, but I didn't give him an edition of my report, which he didn't seem to mind, because most of the report so far has been about Grandpa Jem and I told him that I was going to write more about him next semester as well as Grandpa and Moms family. He said that it is ok and that his life hasn't been as exciting as Grandpas and I was a little surprised to hear this because I know that Dad is involved in many projects about the land and water use in California. Ok maybe movies are more exciting, but I plan to find out some stories from Dad that will be just as funny and exciting like the one about his friend climbing the goalposts naked.
I want to also say that I went to see King Kong and I liked it a lot. The computer animation was really good and the ending was sad, but overall I gave it a 7 out of 10. One thing I didn't like was how long it was and Jack Black who kept making his goofy comedy face, but Naomi Watts was very beautiful and seemed to really like king kong even though he wasn't real. Btw (whichs means by the way), my new rating system for movies had to change because Dad usually drops Tom and I off since we're 13 now so I can't rate the movies based on when my Dad falls asleep anymore. I will try to write again from Minnesota but we are only staying until Monday so I don't know if there will be time since I will be sledding and having snowball fights most of the time.
See you all in 2006!

I am enjoying the time off from school and I have found time to start reading "The Big Sky" and to see some movies. I received a birthday card last week from my Aunt Shelley who lives in Washington state and she wrote about her dog named Buddy that won second place at the dog show. I guess it won the ribbon not because it is a handsome dog but because it could "retrieve" a dead duck really fast in a pretend hunt. I had only heard of dog shows like the one on television so this was new to me. According to Aunt Shelley, Buddy has a really good sense of smell and his kind of dog is known for that (which is a black labrador). I wrote her back thanking her for the card and I wrote about my ancestor project that I started and asked her if she could write back with some stories and maybe a picture of Buddy. I showed Grandpa her card and the only thing he said was "A little late". I said that last year she didn't even send one so it is better than nothing and Grandpa just shrugged his shoulders.
I got an A on the first draft of my ancestor project and Miss Ramsey liked my stories a lot, but would like for me to write more about My Mom's side of the family, the Michaels. I said that I will be going to Minnesota right after Christmas with my parents to visit my Moms side of the family and hopefully will write down more stories. My Mom did tell me one story that I put into my report about my Grandpa Jessie and his pond-hockey parties. My Mom grew up in a house with a pond in the backyard and in the winter, Grandpa Jessie would throw parties where many of the neighbors would bring over their skates and the men would play hockey while the women would cheer and cook hamburgers. One winter that was warmer than usual, the neighborhood men came over to play but no one was quite sure if the ice was frozen enough yet. "So, everyone just stood around drinking beer and staring at the ice" said Mom. Some of the men started to get drunk and a couple of them decided to test it out anyways, so they put on their skates and started "slapping around the puck" when a loud cracking sound was heard. Everyone froze (pardon the pun) and the guys on the skates stopped skating when Grandpa Jessie yelled "GET OFF THE ICE!!" But grandpas friend Bob who had drank too many beers decided to keep skating and yelled back "It's just settling!" My Mom was only ten at the time but she remembers vividly the look on Grandpa Jessies face when Bob refused to come off the ice. He was so angry that he ran out onto the ice and grabbed Bob by the hood of his sweatshirt and started dragging him off when they both fell to the ice and the ice cracked again. Everone was really nervous and someone threw a rope onto the ice. Grandpa Jessie grabbed it and Bob and people started pulling them towards the edge of the pond when they fell through the ice. Then because they had ahold of the rope they ended up pulling 3 more people into the pond with them including Bob's wife. Luckily their was enough people left to pull everyone out one by one and "Bob had the hang-over of his life" Mom said as she laughed out loud.
This weeks word is "Retrieve" and it means "get (something) back; regain possession of; (of a dog) find and bring back (game or an object)" and an example of its use "Grandpas neighbors had to retrieve him and Bob from the pond".

From July 20, 2005:

Howdy!
Welcome to the "Stories from Lazy Eye Ranch" blog site. This site is devoted to ancestral and anecdotal stories of the Bigsky family as told by Jem Bigsky III. The Bigsky family lives and works in California and has, ever since Jerry Buckheister moved there in 1948 and became the legendary silverscreen singing cowboy, Jem Bigsky.
The stories are collected and retold to you by one imaginative and inquisitive 12 year-old boy, who is fondly referred to by his loved ones as, "The Boy", especially by his father, Jem Bigsky II. Look for his weekly entries here as well as the occasional photo of the family.

Tomorrow is the last day of school before winter break and I am busy trying to finish the first draft of my ancestor report and after tomorrow I will have more time to post stories to the blog. Someone suggested to me (I think it was Gretchens friend Beth) that I take more pictures with a camera because it will help to illustrate my recent stories, but I told her about how my writing teacher suggested that I put only a few (like I have) so that I learn to illustrate stories using words so that readers can create the story in their head. Mr. grady said that a great writer has to learn how to "create a vivid" story by including details and "illustrative" words rather than too many pictures which limit the readers imagination. He said that it is ok to include pictures of certain characters so that it helps "spark" the readers imagination, like in newspaper stories, or to use occasional colorful illustrations, like the one of my Grandpas hat, but pictures can also mislead people by giving too little account of a story that only words can fully give. A picture is only a very short period of time (less than one second) and sometimes stories happen over many minutes, hours, days or even years. An example of what he is saying can be found by just picking up a book and looking at the cover. Some books have a photo or a drawing on the cover and some do not, but the ones that do, like "The Big Sky" by A.B. Guthrie, Jr.(the picture above), help the reader to start to imagine what the story could look like, but it is up to the reader to make up the rest. I also told Beth that I have trouble with cameras because they always break when I touch them. I brought home a video camera from school recently to videotape the house, the horses, and hopefully to sneak a shot of grandpa and when I turned it on the camera went "haywire" (a word I heard on the Wallace and Gromit movie which was great). "Haywire" means "erratic; out of control, from the use of hay-baling wire in makeshift repairs". "her imagination had gone haywire" is another example of its use (besides with the video camera). Grandpa said that it was because I pointed it at his face, but I said it was because I touched it or maybe because I discovered that I had put the tape in backwards, either way, I forgot to mention it to Miss Cataline, the equipment officer. I guess that cameras and I don't get along and I decided to take Mr. Gradys advice and stick to writing.

The first part of my ancestor report talks about Grandpa and how he legally changed his name to Bigsky after moving to California and being "disowned" by my grandparents. "Disown" means "refuse to acknowledge or maintain any connection with" and its use is "Howard's rich family had disowned him because of his marriage." (Thats two words for today for those keeping score) He was inspired by the book that I mentioned earlier, "the Big Sky" by A.B. Guthrie and he read it on the train ride out to California. It was written in 1947 and the main character is named Boone Caudill. I asked Grandpa why he didn't change his name to Caudill or Boone and he said that he wanted to keep his same initials since he liked being called "JB" in high school and he didn't like Boone because it was too much like Daniel Boone. I found an old copy at the library and plan to read it during the winter break. Mr. Grady talked about another book written a long time ago called "Don Quixote" (he had to write it down for me) and about how similar it is to some of the old westerns like "the Big Sky" even though it was written over 40o years earlier. He said that it is difficult to read and it is 1000 pages long so he said to wait till high school to read it. "O-K" I said as if I was about to try to read 1000 pages of anything and said that I will try to remember it, but seeing the initials DQ made me think of Dairy Queen so then I talked him into taking the whole class out for ice cream to celebrate a great semester. He agreed and before long I was eating a banana split blizzard and ate more red cherries than anyone and was feeling sick when Mr. Grady said "be careful what you do around other journalists before your eating frenzy winds up in the next Red Hill Reporter". "I'll remember that also", i said and I wiped my face and we went back to school.

Today is my 13th birthday and we had a party at school in writing class and my Mom made me a cake with aliens on it. I also got some nice presents and some balloons that were in my room when I came home from school. My favorite present was a telescope from my parents that I can't wait to try out. Gretchen gave me a t-shirt with Alf on it (she knows that I like Alf) and Grandpa gave me an old hat that he had to "wrangle away" from the Hopalong Cassidy museum in Wichita. It was supposed to eventually go in the new Jem Bigsky and singing cowboy museum in Grandpas hometown, but he decided that to honor my interest in his history that I should have it. "You are interested in history for the right reason and not just for money", Grandpa said, "so you should have it". The hat is one that he wore in three different movies making it his favorite and he considered it his lucky hat. The first time he wore it was when he went to eat at a diner in Culver city and that is where he met Grandma. She was a waitress there and she accidentally spilled coffee on the seat right next to the hat and some of the coffee got on the bottom of the back brim. The stain was too small "for any movie director to notice", but it was big enough that he would see it and he would be reminded of Grandma. He had mistakenly given it to the museum in Wichita and didn't have the nerve to ask for it back, but when the new museum in Missouri wanted some of Grandpas things that Grandpa thought it was a good time to ask for it back. It doesn't really fit me, but I will hang it on my wall above my computer. I guess it was a pretty good birthday and Cousin Bruce said that now that I am an official teenager that I can go see PG-13 movies and swear at my friends. I said that sounds like a pretty damn good idea and tomorrow after school Tom and I are going to see Harry Potter without our parents. Gretchen is only 12 so she can't go, but I've promised to take her to see Wallace and Gromit on Saturday. By the way, I hope because 13 is an unlucky number that I don't have an unlucky year. People have told me that it is often the worst year of your life because everything changes very fast inside your body and nothing seems the same from day to day. I wasn't to happy to hear this, but I guess that if 13 is unlucky than I just have to start telling people my age in months, so today I turned 156 months old. Now, I can't wait until I turn 192 so that I can drive.