It's been months since I drew trees and goats in Florida.  Now warm enough outside that it's time to get out and do the same thing here.

Happy first day of Summer!

I've spent the past week working on the Henry L. Zietlow Memorial Trophy project.  My father and I began work on this project almost exactly two years ago, and, finally, it's reached its end stages. In memory, I sense that this work will merge into the unmoored passage of the months through the Covid-19 pandemic; I'll look back on these two years in a very particular time and way that will be marked by a heightened sensation of death and mortality and our places in that arc.

As I write this the pandemic is not over, but its character, post the release of four effective vaccinations this past spring, has very clearly changed. We have a means of protecting ourselves, whether or not we are able, as human beings, to deploy it effectively or humanely. So--the virus has evolved, but so has our capacity to evolve with it.

I read the Nicholas Carey article this morning and found it fascinating. Largely, it's about identity, and questions of self that address the ancient nurture/nature conundrum.

These thoughts are colliding in my head, and then, one of the commentators in Carey's piece chipped in with the quotation that closes this entry.

It pulled some ideas together in my mind about all the things I've written above. Not in a way I could express here--that would take hours of writing and revision for a piece that is meant to be short.

But also it made me want to read Of Human Bondage, to find the context for these words.

Ivana Kupala Day is celebrated in Ukraine July 6-7. It's more a festival than a holiday: the celebrations roots are ancient, as a celebration of the summer solstice, but it ... had a hard time making it intact through the 20th century, under the Soviet Regime.

We live in an amazing age when it comes to family documentation.  Philip Sampson was my grandmother's older brother.  He was one of the soldiers who participated in that famous "Christmas in the trenches."

Thanks go to my cousin Julie, for finding, and sharing, this article with me.

As I clear my desk & toss old envelopes...

Comical dog in lifejacket, ~2015

When I was young, my mother did a number of bad portraits of me. Or so I thought, at the time she was doing them.

My feral child self thought this one in particular was hideous, and especially was furious that she gave me yellow eyes.

Now that I am not young ... I better appreciate that my Mother was a patient painter.

​I was not a patient model.

Practicing drawing foxes, because pen and ink is not very forgiving... (sketch for an illustration of a few years back)

I send out Christmas cards, yearly. When I have time, I do an illustration. When I don't have time, they become... New Year's cards, or even Valentine's Day cards. I have lots of reasons for sending them, many of which have changed as the years go by. At this point in my life, having reliably updated mailing for my friends and the people I care about are definitely a big part of it. An "Addressee Unknown/Returned to Sender" rubber-stamped envelope is a pretty good way to be sure you've lost track of someone you once had much love for!

This year, with our late (U.S.) Thanksgiving, I am doomed. Lots of New Year's cards, for sure.