My baby left a survey for the tooth fairy under her pillow tonight. I transcribe it below: Dear tot- h fairy are you real, _____ “I hope so,” be cause It too- k a long time… For tha- t toth to come out. sign in your na- me ______ What Do you Do with your th- eth. ______ ______ ______ I hope you Do not eat them!… thank you for […]
Close to our vineyard there was a pear tree laden with fruit. This fruit was not enticing, either in appearance or in flavor. We nasty lads went there to shake down the fruit and carry it off at dead of night… We took enormous quantities, not to feast on ourselves but perhaps to throw to the pigs; we did eat a few, but that was not our motive: we derived […]
“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” — Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire On Sunday, I was one of the 23,000 dots pictured below. I “ran” the 2011 Capitol 10,000, a race I first tackled in 1989 and last took on somewhere around 2000. That would be pre-kids. Or as The Big M and I call it, “BC.” As 10K’s go, it’s a pretty easy course. There […]
It was a Weltschmerz — which we used to call “Welshrats” — the world sadness that rises into the soul like a gas and spreads despair so that you probe for the offending event and can find none. –John Steinbeck, East of Eden I’ve got the Welsh rats nipping at my heels today, and I can’t pinpoint why. The sun is shining, the house is clean, the kids are behaving, […]
This morning I was looking back over the list of books I’ve read over the last couple of years, and I didn’t even remember having read some of them. This is why I write them down. My friend Sylvia is very smart; she writes a mini-review of each book after she reads it. That way, when she looks back she not only can remember what the book is about, she […]
Now that I’m working in color, my first project is to paint an apple. This is harder than it sounds. My setup is below. You can see the color wheel I made on the left. The apple is more or less blocked in with three tonal ranges in the red. This is where I started today. What you see above represents the previous lesson’s work. Since I was starting from […]
I’ve reached stage four of my beginning oil painting class: the color course. The following pictures were taken over two successive three-hour classes. I’ve had to slow down as we move into the world of color. The first step was to take a look at the primary colors I had in my tubes of paint, and then to mix their secondary colors. This isn’t a completely faithful image of the […]
I’ve been out of touch for a while. Take that as you will. Before I get back to my regular posting, I’d like to share this amazing photo that my Aunt Carolyn sent from her current journey. She was snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and happened upon this fish: Isn’t that about the craziest thing you’ve ever seen? It’s called a Hump Headed Maori Wrasse. The locals […]
Flabby Brain 