The 4th of July

Well, America.  All that it means to us…the history, the narrative, the many wonderful people just trying to live a life.  Maybe the fourth of July is when I can put aside the politics and the incessant bad news of NPR and just revel in what I think summer in America is…for me anyway… Pie […]

Salem Sketchers

For a couple of years an intrepid group of local artists has been participating one Saturday a month in what is an international movement of urban sketchers…very casual, very fun.  Each month they draw at a different location…I’ve dropped in and out, but decided to join today, even though the weather was iffy…(58 degrees on […]

Creative Thinking When Zoning Fails

“Densification” “Infill”…modern words.  These words weren’t part of the vocabulary 25 years ago when we bought this little beach house… Across the street was a heavily wooded lot with huckleberries, salal, shorepines, rhoadies…it looked like this…and birds lived here…”habitat.” For 25 years we rolled up to our house knowing that one day we’d drive in […]

The Life I Lead

Life changes in a second or two…we have come to know that.  A misstep, a speeding paint truck, a diagnosis, a sloppy politician who has the nuclear codes, a tsunami or earthquake…poof…our beautiful lives are gone or irrevocably changed.  While we are in these lives though, it is worthwhile to notice them, to be impressed […]

City Day

Saturday we left home early to hear George Johanson talk about his new show at Augen Gallery (in the DeSoto Building)…the paintings are lovely and lively, as is the painter.  I particularly liked this self portrait…(just above George’s head in the upper left of the painting is Louis Bunce’s life mask, which hangs in George’s […]