Wolves

Behind all that mesh fencing is a red fox. An urban red fox. Near the back corner of my condo building.

I'd been on the bus for a while by the time the man got on. I was in one of the senior/handicapped seats facing the center, and he sat near me in the first forward facing row. As people got on many were exclaiming about the weather since the temperature was dropping. Chit chat. I don't mind talking to people on a city bus. It's not forever. And there's this thing here known as Minnesota nice.    Which is way more complicated than it sounds, but anyway. "Did you have a good day?" the man asked me.

"I did," I said. 

"What made it a good day?" he asked.

"Good people," I said.

"Mmmm," he said, are you sure they were good? Sometimes people fool you."

"They were good," I said.

"How do you know?"

"Intuition," I said, though my intuition certainly has steered me wrong in this department more than once. 

"You got to watch out for the wolves in sheep's clothing," the man said. About this time the rowdy gaggle of addicts so high they practically had needles hanging from their arms moved past us to exit. "Look at them," the man said. "What the hell?"

They were wolves in wolves clothing. But too fucked up to be of any harm since they could barely stand. The man was right. Wolves in sheep's clothing are far more dangerous. 

I stood up to ask the driver how far east he went after the bus turns on Washington.

"Hmmm," the man said after I got my answer. "I didn't even know that was east. Look at that, I learned something from you."

"Well, I know where the sun sets," I said.

The man got off just before the bus turned. "Take it easy," he said.

[happy] New War

It just so happened that today I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to see the exhibit Artists Respond American Art and the Viet Nam War.  Coincidentally,  this country of ours is now back in the saddle on its war horse. Will it ever be any different? I doubt it.

It was a moving experience to wander through this exhibit. There were a lot of guys my age or somewhat older. Groups of us stood in silent clutches looking at old photos from "Life" and "Look." If those photos brought the Viet Nam war back for me, bringing it back meant something else entirely for someone who served there.

And there was this. Thick sheaves of responses to the questions below.

And there was a Hmong component to the exhibit because so many Hmong now live in the Twin Cities. A local artist has painted a 50 panel series telling the story of his people and their flight from Laos to Minnesota post Viet Nam war. Some of those panels were on exhibit today. It made me think of the Kurds.

So yeah. Hopes and dreams for the New Year. 2020--and all that BS about perfect vision and seeing clearly. I think our nation is blind to suffering. Viet Nam was the first televised war. It was shocking. Walter Cronkite. The nightly body count. 

And here we are.

Top reasons for a writer to love paper making and paper marbling

It's not just black and white.

You get to use fun tools like eyedroppers and whisks made out of broom straws.

 A tray of water with paint floating on the surface is more fun than a laptop.

You do it while standing up and moving around.

Even the flawed pieces are great.

You can turn out a lot of pieces in an afternoon.

The above photos are from a Turkish marbling or "ebru" workshop at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Below is some of the paper I recently worked on at Cave Paper. While I didn't form the sheets, I did apply all the walnut crackle onto the sheets. This paper is spectacularly beautiful in person. It would make a gorgeous journal cover for....writing.

Love in the Slow Lane

Somehow, it's already eleven years ago that I met Dan Paik.
The essay I wrote about it got published today in P.S. I Love You, a Medium publication.

https://psiloveyou.xyz/love-in-the-slow-lane-467df7d9ccc7?source=friends_link&sk=471110cfdbd9cefec817166908394638