Racists are like the lowly cockroach – filthy, repulsive and filled with the endurance to have kept it going for thousands of years. You catch one skittering by in your peripheral vision every once in a while. Smoosh a cockroach and there’s always another to take it place. Always. I grew up in one of …
Continue reading ‘from my sketchbook: racism is alive and well’ »
After a long hiatus, Monday Artday, the Monday illustration blog to which I have contributed since 2007, has returned with a new challenge word. The word this week is “medical”. Mildred Ratched, the sadistic tyrant who maintained strict order as head administrative nurse at the Oregon State Mental Hospital, in Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One …
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “acrobat”. Vaudevillians Billy Wells and The Four Fays were booked to appear on the February 9, 1964 episode of the wildly popular Ed Sullivan Show. The group, who were introduced by Sullivan as performing their “unique brand of acrobatic physical comedy”, waited backstage, anxious to make their television debut. Unfortunately …
Mike Edwards was the flamboyant cello player in Electric Light Orchestra from 1972 until 1975, when he left by his own choosing. He was a crowd favorite, known for his unusual playing techniques, sometimes involving dragging a sliced orange or grapefruit across the strings of his cello, then having his solos culminate in the instrument …
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “proverb”. “A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other. ” Several evenings ago, there was a family dinner at my in-law’s house. My wife and I attended, along with my wife’s younger brother, his wife and two …
I submitted these three halloween greeting cards to a contest earlier this year. I didn’t win.
When you’re a kid, dessert is always the best part of a meal. Who doesn’t love to find a package of Yodels in their lunch at school or have dinner followed by a chilled bowl of Jello or a slice of the cake you hungrily watched Mom bake and frost that afternoon? When I was …
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “immovable”. Robert Earl Hughes made appearances in small county fairs and festivals in his native Illinois and neighboring states. He was driven around the fairgrounds in the open flatbed of a pickup truck and curiosity seekers marveled at him. Then, the truck would stop and Robert signed souvenir …
Billy Tipton was a jazz pianist who performed to moderate success in the Spokane, Washington area in the late 1940s through the 60s. His small group, The Billy Tipton Trio, played regular gigs for years at many popular jazz venues in the Pacific Northwest. He recorded and released two albums of jazz standards for independent Tops Records, …
