March 4, 2010

Horse Paints To Pass Time During This Long Winter
By Aaron Martin

Iron Ridge, Wis. (AP) Buggs clinches the wooden handle of a paintbrush in his teeth and stands before an easel. Earlier, the 13-year-old stock-bred horse added broad, gray brushstrokes to a canvas board. Now, with gobs of yellow paint dripping from a narrow brush, he is ready to add a little detail.

He slowly extends the brush toward the canvas. When he feels it touch, he bobs his head up and down, creating short, swirls of yellow along the bottom of his latest masterpiece.

Carol Jensen, the proud owner of Buggs, takes the brush from his mouth and replaces it with a treat. She surveys his work and decides to follow up with black.

Jensen and Buggs have partnered on paintings for about two years. She read about a Florida woman who taught her horse to paint and thought it could be a good way to keep Buggs engaged during the winter. She quickly found that if she didn't occupy Buggs' time he would get into mischief, pulling siding from the barn or harassing her three other horses.

``Horses need a job to do. Especially this horse because he's like the really smart, high-energy kid in the classroom. If he's not challenged, he gets into trouble. He gets bored and then starts acting up,'' Jensen said.

Using positive reinforcement and repetition Jensen first taught Buggs how to hold a brush in his mouth. Then, she taught him how to move his head about, thusly painting a canvas. Within a month Buggs' had completed his first work: a gray background overlaid with patches of mustard yellow, a black design swooping through the middle looks vaguely Asian, while thick traces of vibrant red accent the work.

``I thought it turned out really well. I like Asian art, and it looks very Asian to me.''

This first painting was on stretched canvas, but Jensen had to switch to canvas boards because Buggs tends to poke the brush through canvases, but his work hasn't suffered from the transition. He continued to churn out, and sometimes sell, paintings.

Today, the walls of Jensen's living room are lined with Buggs' original work. She also documents every step of Buggs' painting with photography.

``I think it's important to have it documented, otherwise people won't believe it,'' Jensen said.

A lot of things about Buggs are hard to believe. Painting aside, he also plays a plastic keyboard, drops a basketball into a 3-foot hoop, gives a wide smile when greeted by visitors, and nods his head up and down when he hears Jensen talking about him.It is clear that Buggs bubbles with charisma.

But does Buggs have artistic vision?

``Horses have a hard time seeing at the end of their nose because of their eye position. I don't know what he's seeing. I don't know if he's just enjoying the activity and the fact that he is getting rewarded for it,'' Jensen said.

One thing, however, is certain. Buggs visibly enjoys the act of painting, and furthermore, the act of pleasing people. When Jensen acquired Buggs from a friend about four years ago that wasn't the case. He was withdrawn, sullen.

``I think he felt really bad when she gave him up. I think it hurt his feelings. I think he was depressed,'' Jensen said. ``His whole personality changed once I started giving him something to do.''

Jensen says Buggs has enough personality for two horses, and she is right. It's hard not to smile back when he greets you with his wide, goofy smile.

With that said, Buggs likely won't unseat Jackson Pollock as the king of modern abstract painting anytime soon. But abstract art is defined as expression that is independent of the world's visual references, so perhaps no one is more qualified for it than Buggs.

Short Snorter Is A Piece Of WWll History And Mystery
By Brian Mcvicar

Norton Shores, Mich. (AP) The 1935 one-dollar bill, its edges frayed and its color faded, reads like a World War II history book.

Scrawled on the back of the bill is a list of some of the most notable spots in the history of the war.

The entries start with the U.S. at Camp Perry, Ohio, and end with the former eastern European nation of Yugoslavia.

In between are some of World War II's most historic spots, including Omaha Beach, France, where thousands of Americans lost their lives in one of the war's defining periods.

But who carried the worn dollar continues to puzzle Ed Sechen, an 82-year-old Norton Shores resident who was handed the bill by a friend 20 years ago.

``It must be from a soldier from that time,'' said Sechen, a lifelong coin collector who was attracted by the history of the bill. ``It looks like he went to a lot of different places.''

More than 16 million U.S. armed forces personnel served between Dec. 1, 1941, and Dec. 31, 1946, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Approximately 292,000 U.S. service members were killed in battle.

It wasn't uncommon for soldiers to record a list of places they visited on a dollar bill, said John McGarry III, executive director of the Lakeshore Museum Center in Muskegon. The bills had a name: a ``short snorter,'' McGarry said.

Some service members had other soldiers sign their dollar bills during their travels.

``First of all, you want something easy to carry and that you're not going to lose,'' McGarry said. ``You can fold up a dollar bill and put it in your pocket.''

He said the practice dates back at least to the Civil War when soldiers would write the names of locations they visited on canteens.

At World War II veterans' reunions, it wasn't uncommon for vets to compare their short snorters to see who visited the most locations during the war, McGarry said. The vet with the longest list was often treated to a drink or two, he said.

McGarry said each short snorter ``is unique because every soldier's story is different.''

Sechen has always wanted to know who carried the bill. But because there are no signatures or other identifying marks, tracking down the owner could be nearly impossible, he said.

It might have been a soldier from Muskegon. But with the way bills circulate, it could have come from anywhere in the U.S.

If someone can show Sechen evidence that the bill belonged to a family member, he's willing to turn it over free of charge.

``He would have had to carry that for a long time,'' Sechen said of the dollar bill. ``You would think someone in his family knew about it.''