Alberta just sold a painting

Yes, it walked right out of the gallery---Your Own Personal Jesus, a mixed media work with a red/orange/pink/yellow color scheme. I'm delighted to say it featured (in the bottom right corner) my photo of Jesus, taken on the way back from Myrtle Beach, although I guess she should now share collab credits with the person who had the statue of a purple Jesus in his or her front yard.

My sister, the hotcakes-like-selling artist. Mine. I knew I taught art history for something. Now I'm the most qualified applicant when Alberta opens her own gallery and needs a curator.

Happy Valentine's Day

Scots and clocks

I used to teach with a Scot on an exchange program who mocked me for not wearing a watch. "That's such an English teacher thing," he said. What? He attributed it to some entrenched Emily Dickinson-free spirit affectation.



Which was fine; I liked being bohemian. He also called a wrench a "spanner" and kept threatening to invite me over for haggis, so of course I thought of him Sunday when I skipped going to church to look for clocks instead.



They're not easy to find. Here's the short list for Walton/Gwinnett county:
1. Monroe courthouse
2. Funeral home in Social Circle
3. Duluth town square


That's it. I scurried around feeling like the White Rabbit, looking for a good clock. Instead I found a nice green swing, a stucco former jail,



and a couple of appealing rooflines. Oh, and I was also seduced by a few windows, cause I'm easy.
A toast to all watch-wearing Scots wielding spanners and haggis(Poor wee slicket timorous beasties; sorry, I can't help myself) and bon voyage to Melissa, Scotland-bound with a sore throat and knocking back tea with honey, who will no doubt come back all bohemian, sans watch.

My Christmas decorations

A tree, a rock, a cloud

I'm thinking in fragments lately. Because I'm teaching the kids not to use them and I'm perverse? Because I'm scatterbrained? I don't know. I'm trying to write lately about my daddy, and the only way I can is in fragments. I fancy them up and call them "vignettes," but I know what they really are.

He's kind of like Ozymandias in the Shelley poem--"two vast and trunkless legs of stone" are all that's left. Anyway, I have four or five little Daddy fragments, not enough to say I'm working on a book yet, and all my eye notices is a bit of a landscape here and there. So there they are, little pieces of my town.

I'm thinking Carson McCullers was right; to love, you have to start with little things--a tree, a rock, a cloud, and go from there. Or a meter, a paintball building, a fence. Daddy would have no idea what I'm talking about.

Recalcitrant Geisha--Arty Girlz' Challenge

This is mine for Arty Girlz' Blue and Yellow Challenge
http://artygirlzchallengeblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/arty-girlz-challenge-75-blueyellow.html

Walt Whitman at the disco

The Dark--for Mixed Media Monday

A nuit, tous les chats sont gris

Flashlight

More men who look good on paper

I'm in love again. Last month it was the Athens chef; last night Alberta, Mr. Alberta, and I were serenaded by these captivating men in tangerine pantsuits, and it was a good thing their guitar straps said, "Police line, do not cross" or I wouldn't even be here this morning.

I tried to get Mr. Alberta to request "Ring of Fire" but he was deep into a fit of shyness brought on by his second margarita. Anyway, out of respect for our own impetuousity, Alberta and I better not go back to Frontera for a while.

XLo05's 73rd birthday card

“Chickie, my chickie, my craney crow”
The children mark off a space for their home; the old witch comes along, and they follow her, chanting, “Chickie, my chickie, my craney crow went to the well to wash her toe. What time is it, old witch?” The witch answers, “Six o’clock” (any time she chooses). They repeat the whole until she says, “Twelve o’clock,” whereupon she tags as many as possible and puts them in her home. The whole thing is repeated until all children are tagged. The last one caught is witch for the next time.