By now, everyone in America has seen video of a cop body-slamming a teenage girl at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina. The story is made more painful by reports that she recently lost her mother and grandmother and is now in foster care. My father was a school psychologist who took in strays. […]
It’s time for a brief update on my home-repair project. It seemed to me like I’ve been treading water. These pictures make me realize I have made progress.
This afternoon, my daughter and her family leave after a five-day visit. It was timely; my joints were killing me from all that heavy remodeling work. But it wasn’t a rest: they have a 6-week old and a 13-month old, and this house is a construction zone, not a home. I never stayed home full-time […]
My friend lives in a town of 3,000 people. She is the mail recipient for a defunct rod and gun club. When it folded, she agreed to let any mail be forwarded to her. Rod and gun clubs are made up of people who like huntin’ and fishin’. Their corporate interest in any kind of social question […]
Robert Clunie was a California realist plein air painter. If he’d never painted anything but the High Sierra, he wouldn’t interest me overmuch. This is even though his work is fresh and colorful, and his draftsmanship on high peaks, boulders and cliffs is perfect. However, I recently saw two paintings by him of the Saginaw River that […]
Last night a friend messaged me that she was seriously ill. She’s at that age when women get breast cancer, so that’s what I feared. No such luck; she has a primary brain tumor. I can tell you all the ways she is special: she’s a PhD scientist, a mother, a professor, a wife, a church […]
My mother had a garden of several acres. Being sent out to weed a single row seemed like a life sentence. The plants stretched out to eternity. Knowing I wasn’t free until it was done was the worst feeling in the world. That was before my brother and sister died in separate accidents four years apart. Then […]
While my father taught me to paint, my parents had no interest in me growing up to be an artist. My father would often tell me how he’d had a scholarship to the Albright Art School but had given it up because of “the War.” Being a graphic designer or an art teacher was OK; […]
Most everything I know about home repair, I learned from my parents. It’s not that they set out to teach me, mind you. It’s just that those were the days when parents had no qualms about enlisting their children as free labor. “Hold this,” “Get me that pipe wrench,” “Mix this while I run over and buy more […]
A few weeks ago, Victoria Brzustowicz, co-chair of the newly-formed Greater Rochester Plein Air Painters, asked me if I’d be interested in teaching a weekend workshop featuring the sere and lovely landscape of late autumn. “I’d be delighted!” I exclaimed. This is my favorite season of the year. We all know how lovely the bright […]
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