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PEN IN HAND: April 2015

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Art, Dogs, Body and Soul. Sunday, April 19, 2015. People who know jazz know guitar legend Pat Martino. I didn't hear of him till last week, when I was asked to share info about his weekend gig at Nighttown. Something struck me just in reading about him, however: I wanted to hear him play. Plus, he was with an ace drummer and B3 player, and they were doing very tuneful, sophisticated stuff. Monday, April 06, 2015. This modern scale isn’t so modern as to report on my body mass index, thank heaven, th...

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PEN IN HAND: June 2015

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Art, Dogs, Body and Soul. Sunday, June 14, 2015. The great Flannery O'Connor grew up in Georgia, where her childhood passions included raising feathered creatures of all kinds. My brother Eric just sent me a collection of her works, and though I'd previously read a number of her short stories, today I read an essay - "King of the Birds - first published the year I was born. It's about peacocks. Gorgeous. Funny. (The birds and the writing.). Subscribe to: Posts (Atom). Stop By My Website! I dont paint but .

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PEN IN HAND: July 2015

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Art, Dogs, Body and Soul. Thursday, July 30, 2015. The Luxury of a Bad Vacation. The Luxury of a Bad Vacation. I know there is such a thing as a bad vacation – the truly terrible kind that leave people fundamentally changed. But as I sit in the little place we rent year after year at The Nice Part of the Jersey Shore (thanks, Snooki), I know I’ve never had one of those. This is a place my parents introduced us to when we were still kids. They’ve both been gone a long time now, but coming here b...The oth...

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PEN IN HAND: August 2014

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Art, Dogs, Body and Soul. Monday, August 18, 2014. Today was Convocation at the college. For those of you not immersed in academia, that's the official start to the new collegiate year. I like the idea of this tradition. I like the idea of our work lives broken up into chunks that coincide with the school year we knew as kids. Saturday, August 16, 2014. Bunnies on the Brain. Thursday, August 14, 2014. Happy Friday in August. Alonzo has been on holiday as the summer has done its summery, unscheduled thing.

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PEN IN HAND: March 2015

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Art, Dogs, Body and Soul. Monday, March 30, 2015. What's left of Easter. The Easters of my Catholic childhood. Were, as I remember them, optimistic Sundays of budding crocuses and crowded church pews. We woke to birdsong and splendid baskets my mother had fluffed with plastic grass, then were whisked off to Mass to be reminded that Jesus rose from the dead. My trust in the Church has been replaced by certainty in a couple of less mystical truths. 1 The grownups rarely have it all worked out. All of this ...

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PEN IN HAND: December 2014

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Art, Dogs, Body and Soul. Sunday, December 07, 2014. You Get What You Need. In thinking about life and abundance recently, I realized something startling: Everything I ever wanted - anything that was ever deeply meaningful to me - has come my way over the course of my life. It didn't always come in the form I'd hoped for. I didn't get the blond kid I was sure I loved in 7th grade. Nonetheless, the love arrived. Bushels of it. I was so over it. Tuesday, December 02, 2014. Here is a question for you: How i...

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PEN IN HAND: February 2015

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Art, Dogs, Body and Soul. Monday, February 16, 2015. A CIA friend was musing on Facebook that she wanted to get back to practicing her sketching with a purpose. Excellent idea, I thought. The above drawing was an answer to a blog challenge on Valentine's Day, and I wanted to work on what I think of as the design of cuteness. I also tend to stop my sketchbook scribbles with the character itself, so I forced myself to add at least the hint of an environment. Subscribe to: Posts (Atom). Stop By My Website!

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PEN IN HAND: Bird in Captivity

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Art, Dogs, Body and Soul. Monday, April 06, 2015. The bathroom scale I grew up with was covered in gold carpet. Your tootsies stayed warm while your blood ran cold. The numerals were marked off every five pounds with little slash marks in between. If you stepped on the scale three times, you could get three different readings. And there were many times, in my fat-obsessed teenage years, that I stepped on the scale three times in succession. Deep into this this lifelong dance with food and fat, I still pa...

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PEN IN HAND: September 2014

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Art, Dogs, Body and Soul. Friday, September 19, 2014. Children's Book Conference Weekend. I chose the part of the story that introduces the boy character, who wakes up surrounded by dinosaurs, which which he is obsessed. Thursday, September 04, 2014. You'll have to click to see the whole recipe - a favorite from my mother's recipe box, and a staple of the 1960s housewife. Subscribe to: Posts (Atom). Stop By My Website! Beautiful blogs, wondrous websites and my portfolio. Books Can Save a Life.

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PEN IN HAND: July 2014

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Art, Dogs, Body and Soul. Thursday, July 31, 2014. The difference now, as I've gotten a little more, uh, seasoned. Is that I no longer think my reptilian pace is necessarily wrong, or that the hamster wheel of constant activity is necessarily ideal. Deadlines are good, but so is breathing room. Sunday, July 13, 2014. Some Art and Words From the Land of the Gulls. First day at Stone Harbor. First drawing of the vacation. Lylah and Katy encouraged me to resist the urge to add color. I cannot say when first...