The black dog I finished the black-dog art yesterday. Well, not finished. I’ll be putzing with it for the next week, darkening this color and refining that line. But I got through it. Now it’s just polishing. It was the hardest piece I’ve ever done. Took about as long to do as the icon from last month’s monastery workshop. But the icon was basically a sophisticated version of paint-by-numbers. The black dog was … whew. Flying by seat of pants. Plus I had to get myself out of a couple of self-caused scrapes. Until the last I was on edge:…
Category: Dogs and (grudgingly) cats
No description needed. Dogs are life. Cats are also necessary on the Internet.
I sometimes do nothing useful. I rarely ever goof off. The perils of being self-employed and working at home. With nothing to distinguish on-duty hours from off-duty, work becomes a preoccupation even (and sometimes especially) when I’m not doing it. Thursday I mentioned a project I had been Not Doing but thinking about. A lot. It’s a portrait of a black dog. I don’t know of anything harder to portray than black fur, especially when using an inherently matte and thin medium like colored pencil. Thursday afternoon and Friday, I finally sat down to do it. As so often happens,…
It was gay pride time last weekend. Lots of parades and marches. It’s great that it’s now okay to be everything under the sun. So why, oh why, oh why is it now NOT okay to be gay and Jewish? Man, some people have sure gotten selective about their “inclusivity.” New York pastor is surprised to discover that a gun-rights activist is human. “School vs the Gateless Gate: Fixing the Damage.” A great reprint from L. Reichard White and The Price of Liberty. Franklin Foer says the Dems need to appeal to white, working-class voters if they want to win…
Ninety-seven degrees yesterday. We go from January-in-June to too darned hot. I reminded myself Joel had it worse. I could at least keep the inside temps down (and I see that as of today, Joel has some hope for that, too; yay, Joel). Not until after 8:00 last night did it cool to pleasantness. I hauled the computer outside and completed a long and overdue pair of emails to a friend. That felt good. It was already 75 at 6:00 this morning, and 80 on our morning dog walk. But that’s where the day decided to settle. Low 80s with…
My cover gets blown The other day I was depositing the house-loan money in my local bank with a teller I didn’t recognize, a vacation sub who travels from branch-to-branch. We got to chatting, then when I went to leave, she said, “May I ask you something?” “Sure.” “Are you a writer?” I keep my professional life and my town life separate and try to avoid letting locals know what I do. If somebody must know I tell them I’m a totally obscure blogger who does “political and lifestyle” content. Then I change the subject. “Um … yeah. Why do…
It’s January in June again here in the NorthWET and all the way into the mountains of California. Wind, hard rain, perhaps even snow in the upper elevations. A good day to huddle inside, read and think. Congressman Barry Loudermilk seems to understand that guns save lives back in his home state of Georgia. But (how predictable can these people be?), in D.C. he’s all in favor of only the special people being “allowed” to bear arms. OTOH, another congressguy who was also on the shooting scene performed a hellova lot better. Damnfine statement. Here it is in writing. The…