Ha! Back to my blog in JUST over a week. That's progress. I've been to a two-day portrait workshop. Actually it was a "children's portrait" workshop. Since I don't have upteen grandchildren that I just HAVE to paint, I painted Gary and his Mother. The photo I used to draw it is a black and white (they didn't HAVE color) from 67 years ago. I'm pretty happy about the study and I feel as if I'm beginning to become uncontrollable with color, which is what I'm aiming for.

Things DID improve . . .

I haven't added a post since August and yet I visit my blog at least once a week to add a new book that I've read.

I was just now thinking I love the sound of tires hissing on wet pavement. I can hear them passing my home. It's raining. I think we'll get snow again in a day or so . . . but until then, rain.

I noticed that at my last blog I was complaining about the events of 2010 SO FAR. They DID improve in that nobody else died. But we took a vacation to Mackinac Island and around Lake Michigan that could have been better. Gary and I are not "spring chickens" and yet the rest of the folks on this (escorted) trip were far older than we were. Folks got lost a lot. There was as much traveling as seeing and doing and we didn't care for that. We won't be doing a vacation like this again. I DO believe that the Road Scholar (Elderhostel) folks are much more intellectually engaged than any other groups except possibly the Smithsonian and I'm not so sure about them.

We visited my brother at his home outside of Atlanta and that visit didn't go well. Mainly because he wanted to talk politics. I believe he thinks that arguing politics passes for conversation. Gary reminded me that my brother "for whatever reason, HAS to win."

We went to Myrtle Beach in November so I could take another class with Carla O'Connor (see my rave review below). The workshop lasted 5 days and she was ill the last two and not there. So much for that particular (twice a year) group of workshops. I don't think I'll go again.

Our Christmas holidays in Kentucky were just fine. We enjoyed Gary's extended family very much. We visited his nephew's new house in Richmond and saw his operatic niece. A good old fashioned Xmas, at a very laid-back pace. His brother and sister are wonderful, non-judgmental folks. It's a pleasure to be around them.

"Pictures" from The Lacuna by Kingsolver

" . . . in the first hour of dawn, just as the hem of the sky began to whiten." p.1

"In front of the flat stone breast of the church . . . " p.10

"The heat made a necklace of black pearls on each white tortilla as it cooked." p. 20

"Three long-legged girls in dresses straddling one grey mare, their legs hanging down like a giant insect." p. 37

"Married couples come at a clip, the children like rafts towed on ropes behind the ship." p.396

And on page 319 the following, which is very interesting to me because of where I come from and because I make an extra syllable of the past tense.

Her words seem scripted by Chaucer. She says "strip-ed" and "learn-ed", making an extra syllable of the past tense. A sack is a "poke." Surveying the piles of letters she declared, "Mr. Shepherd, you get mail by the passel." She says "nought" and "nary a one," and the garden greens she brought me were "sallets," the word Shakespeare used. She says "queasy" to mean worried, as did King Lear.

Jaime for Luck!

It's been a rough year. I'm hopeful that things will get better. We started out in February with a bathroom remodeling job that just didn't quit. Gary's good friend, Dewey, went into hospice care and died within months. Then Aunt Mary (Gary's) died almost simultaneously with our nephew Brian, who was only 40 and in a car wreck. At the same time our niece and her husband decided to call it quits. Soooooo, it hasn't been a pretty site. I'm hopeful the only way is up from here.

I took a figure painting class with Carla O'Conner and am hooked. Again. I've been heading this way for a while, but wouldn't admit it. Jaime is partially finished and I've included her in this post.

I've been oh, so happy with my flowers this spring. The crocus, daffodils, and tulips came first; then the redbud, fothergilla, and bridal white spirea, followed by the lilac, odorata clematis, sea thrift, and siberian iris. Now one of the day lilys is in bloom, the snow-in-summer, the henrii clematis and the berengaria. It's been one continuous show.

Jack B. Nimblequick

At the left you see a "sketch" for Jack B. Niblequick. I've spent 4 days at a workshop with Karlyn Holman and am inspired. Jack was actually an experiment gone wrong (we were using water soluble pens) but I liked him so much that I'm determined to do him again--this time with a candle holder on the window frame. I also think I'll do "bread and honey" and "four and twenty". See if you can guess what those are about?

Are we guilty?

Ghandi's list of mankind's seven social sins:

Commerce without Morality

Politics without Principle

Wealth without Work

Pleasure without Conscience

Education without Character

Science without Humanity

Worship without Sacrifice