Monday, September 28, 2009

Rainy Days and Mondays Always Make Me Smile

I have to be at work by 9:30 but there's just enough time to sip a little coffee and turn a few pages of a book. Just picked up this new book by Ed Dobson.


















I like it so far. Mostly because it's interesting but also because its a little weird. I've come to appreciate weird. Normal is...well...normal. Ed sat with me for maybe half an hour on a park bench in front of where my sculpture is showing and he talked to me like we had been friends for a long time. He liked my sculpture which made me like him even more. With his ALS, long beard, and red white and blue track suit on, he looked like a homeless man. That made me like him more too. Anyway, the book came out yesterday, I'll let you know what I think. Or you can read it too and tell me.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

What a beautiful morning. -Or at least it was. Where did all the fog come from? Hey, with all this talk of ArtPrize, my friend Pat Perry is in ArtPrize too and his entry is super sweet. Check out his blog for some images and updates.
I don't know if you "subscribe" to blogs or not but not that long ago I figured out to use Google Reader (it isn't very hard) and I love it. Basically I "subscribe" to any blog OR webpage I want to stay up to date on and it auto-loads all of them on one page for you to keep track of. No having to remember to check someones blog, or a band's website for tour news or album releases. Just subscribe to the sites and your reader will post the update when it happens. Most of you probably already know all of this, but I threw it out there just in case you were like me a few months ago and had no idea at the technological convieniences available to me.

Monday, September 21, 2009

So here's number in the ArtPrize production videos. Hope you enjoy!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Here's the newest installment of our ArtPrize Production Video. I hope you enjoy it. More will be coming soon.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

We always want things to stay the same but they don't. They can't.


We had to put our 11 & 1/2 year old Bernese Mountain Dog, Annina, to sleep today. She was an amazing dog. We loved her. She had two beautiful litters of puppies. She was stubborn and strong-willed, but that made her the confindent girl she was. She was faithful and loving. Gentle and Kind. We miss you and love you Good Girl.

All this has me thinking.

One of the hardest truths I'm struggling with is not death right now. It is the changing of life. Death is tough, -maybe the toughest thing about life. But it is something we think about often, at least I do. I'm having a hard time with the changing eras of life. Something I don't spend too much time thinking about. Annina dying today kind of signified the end of an era for Molly and I.

We were young and married. We were full of ambition and optimistic dreams. We lived in a little house down by a stream. And we had Pepper and Annina. We didn't have human kids, we had puppy kids. They were what we poured our love and lives into. I played outside with them daily. Long walks through the fields and wading down the stream. I made a special porch bench for them so they could see out the front windows. They slept on our bed with us and we didn't care a bit.

We put Pepper down about a year ago. It was one of the toughest things I've ever had to do. Now, a year later, Annina has joined her. They are remembered by stone-marks graves down by the lake and right now I hurt very badly. But with their passing so also goes the era. We have three beautiful girls now. We have busy young-family lives now. Our kids weren't there in that era. They don't know the history and memories we have from those days. It isn't less of a life, in fact in most ways its much better. But it's different. And Annina leaving us today was the final tether to that former era.

Life is just like that I guess. We always want things to stay the same but they don't. They can't. And that is really really tough to realize. I know from a bigger more logical view it all works to make God's plan develop. But that doesn't keep you from being sad, -very sad for the passing of the era. -Not just the passing of a friend.

The thing I'm taking from this as I go forward is to realize I cannot stop this progression, but rather, thoroughly enjoy the era I'm in right now. One day I will be mourning this era and it's passing. I love my wonderful beautiful wife. I love the girls I'm so richly blessed with. I have, currently, an amazing life. I am amidst the very moments I will look back on with fondness some day.
Thank you Lord. Help me move past this sadness.

[the images are graphite drawings i did a few years back. Annina is the top one, Pepper the bottom]