“There was a crooked man,

And he went a crooked mile.

He found a crooked sixpence,

Beside a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat,

That caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together,

In a crooked little house.”

I can’t get that bloomin’ Mother Goose rhyme out of my head. I figure there must be a reason.

The poem doesn’t conclude with ‘They all lived happily ever after/’ so that leads me to ponder exactly what happened. How did the man get crooked? Did he injure his back? Why was the mile crooked? Couldn’t he go from point A to point B in a straight line or did he follow the high areas to avoid the low, wet ground. What is a crooked stile? By their very nature, they have to be angled, so how was it crooked? Then there’s the crooked cat and mouse business — doesn’t that go against the laws of nature? I love the crooked little house plan. It would be fan to visit and peak around the crooked corners, something like the Cosmos in South Dakota that appears to defy gravity.

I believe that this crooked man with his crooked lifestyle was probably thinking outside the box. He was a creative guy. He liked reaching beyond the norm.

Artist Diane Hill has created a painting and note cards that emphasize that idea. She had a box of crayons in her car on a very hot day, and the melting wax created a design that she just couldn’t resist. The resulting painting is colorful, fun, and thought provoking.

I believe that is what creativity is all about. We use it every day throughout our lives. Every problem we solve, or contemplate, requires creative thinking. “How can we accomplish this? What are our goals? Who has the knowledge to help us through? What other resources are at our disposal? How do I get this thing to work?

Creativity has many other labels — resourcefulness, design, originality, inspiration, invention, formation, and problem solving, and we don’t realize how often our own creative genes kick in.

There is a wonderful old legend about the city of Basle, Switzerland. The story is told that hundreds of years ago, Basle was surrounded by the enemy whose plan was to hold the city, allowing no travel in or out, until the good citizens starved or begged for mercy. A group of discontented citizens, inside the city walls, schemed to hasten the city’s fall, and the decision was made between the two groups, that one night as the town clock struck twelve midnight, they would attack from both inside and outside the city walls.

Only minutes before midnight, the watchman learned of the plan, and he quickly decided to move the hand of the great clock ahead one hour, so that instead of striking twelve, the clock struck one. As the traitors inside the city and out shuffled about in confusion, each thinking they had been betrayed by the other group, the alarm was raised, and Basle’s good citizens banded together and routed the enemy. For many years, the city’s great clock remained one hour ahead as the courageous watchman had set it that night.

Was he thinking “outside the box?” Do you call that creativity? I think so.

As I wandered through galleries at the current “50th Anniversary Celebration of Art and Artists” show at the Albert Lea Art Center, I was struck by the variety of work that fits in the “art” category — oil, acrylic, and watercolor paintings, wood carvings, ceramics, rug hooking, photography, weaving, realistic, abstract, precise and free, some pieces photographically real and others emotionally abstract — creativity at its finest. Do these artists think outside the box? I think so. Are they like Mother Goose’s crooked man? Maybe not, but then again …

Bev Jackson Cotter is a member of the Albert Lea Art Center where the show “Celebration of Art and Artists” will continue through Feb. 21, noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.