I’ve had a poem in my head around this subject for a good week-ish now. It all happened after I stopped into Local First Grocer, a local food co-op that only sources local food. I asked if they take EBT, which I have been on up until the end of this month. They said, “not yet.” I knew the cashier and I mentioned something about going off of food stamps soon, and that it was kind of embarrassing.

“No, it isn’t.”

Say what?

You see I’ve bought into the American philosophy, namely this: If I am on food stamps, I am abusing the system, I should have done better, and I should work harder to get myself out of the mess I put myself in.

Nevermind that I am a poor college student who just graduated with $40,000 in student loans. Nope. Nevermind that.

I was still just a broke…

A friend recently asked me to write a letter to people who are always worried how they’re coming across to others. She doesn’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings by sharing hers, but she’s also sick of editing herself. In her awesome words, “I mean, when will I stop fretting over this sh*t?” (Oh dear, someone might be offended by my language. Oh well. F*ck it.) Sound familiar? Do you constantly censor yourself because you’re worried about other people’s reactions?

In our hunter-gatherer primitive nature, women especially have an inherent urge to nurture and protect. So it is completely natural to care about the feelings and opinions of others. What tends to happen, though, is that we too often put those feelings and opinions above our own. I’m not saying we shouldn’t care about how our words impact other people. Of course that matters. But the more we hold back our authenticity, the less connection we feel…

Source: Themetapicture

For today’s Fun Friday, I submit for your approval, the following cartoon.  

Have a wonderful weekend!

It was a black film canister, rattling around the bottom of an old Naturalizer shoebox labeled “photos.” I opened it, wondering if it was a roll of unused film. Instead, I found a twist of white tissue paper wrapped around tightly rolled black-and-white negatives. I held them up to the light. At first I saw…legs.

Then, people with bicycles.

Wait, that looks like the Monument to the People’s Heroes. Is that Tiananmen Square? With banners?

Next, a white form rising above a crowd, holding…a torch?

Oh man, is this what I think it is?

On Sunday night, I was searching through my parents’ photos for a piece I was writing on Tiananmen Square and my father, when I stumbled across two rolls of negatives that appeared to be from the 1989 student democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. I was stunned. I had no idea where they were from, why my parents had…

Sometimes poetry is silent…
Sometimes a masterpiece has no canvas…
Sometimes music has no sound…
Sometimes…
It’s just good to be alive.

Cat Trying To Catch A Fly

“A beautiful painting depicts the harmony between nature and imagination.”  Lian Quan Zhen

Lian Quan Zhen is one of my favorite contemporary artists. He creates amazing watercolors using only the three primary colors.  From this simple palette he miraculously creates paintings that glow with all of Mother Nature’s hues.  I really admire his work and  have found myself using increasingly fewer tubes of secondary and “designer” colors in my own painting.

Creating a beautiful spectrum of colors by letting just three of nature’s brilliant colors mingle, suspended in a pool of water is an exciting alternative to choosing from a palette of many colors.

My first palette had 17 wells for holding paint and two large areas for mixing.  I filled it with Windsor Newton Professional Artist’s watercolor paints,  two of each primary color, several “earthy” shades like Sepia, Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber, Sap Green and Veridian and a…

Cat On A Cushion

I was in a lecture the other day that involved a variety of strangers discussing a serious topic in French. While I was in Lost Anglo mode, I found myself watching the body language. How the audience was listening so raptly, and the presenter was delivering so intensely.

The pen is  always moving. Logging more mileage. Doing the ‘hard yards’ as the Aussie say. I can feel my fidelity with faces and expression, inching upward. Faster than my French.

I created the image below with a canvas of deep pink in PicMonkey, then simply fiddled with all the gizmos on PIcMonkey, Pixlr and BeFunky to create the background images and patterns. And over those I added an overlay of a digitally altered photo of a firework taken during one of the fireworks displays put on by the Merit Hotel close to us here in Alsancak, North Cyprus.

Once again, the name popped up: In The Summertime, and it seemed pretty appropriate to illustrate how we cheer up in the summer, get out and about, do gardening, travel, take holidays and generally feel pretty cheerful about life. There are, however, dark areas in the painting to remind ourselves that not all on this planet of ours are able to embrace the joys of summertime, the shadow side of our summer world.

Music? Well, of course, it’s Mungo Jerry’s “In the…