This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “mysterious”. On Saturday, I went to meet my son at a free concert at the Great Plaza on the Delaware River’s waterfront. Instead of driving and fighting for a parking space on a busy holiday weekend, I took the train into downtown Philadelphia. I disembarked at the Market …
My wife’s grandmother turned 101 this past July. When I met her nearly thirty years ago, she was a feisty, strong-willed woman who called things as she saw them and took no shit from anyone. She came from humble beginnings in Russia and lived an even more humble existence upon her arrival in the United …
Continue reading ‘from my sketchbook: an exercise in selfishness’ »
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “obsession”. Regular readers of my blog (all four of you) are already familiar with my obsession the one aside from drawing. I love old movies, Hollywood scandals, obscure actors and actresses and stories of untimely demise. So, how do I satisfy all of those interests at one shot? I visit cemeteries, …
In the long-ago days when a band called Led Zeppelin still existed, when the mention of The Rolling Stones entering a recording studio did not evoke an exasperated “eye roll” and Cat Stevens was singing about the joys of moonshadows instead of Jihad, a local stop on your favorite band’s concert tour came with the perennial regularity of Daylight Savings Time, the …
The Illustration Friday website suggests “midsummer night” as this week’s inspiration. My son and I experienced Niagara Falls for the first time at the same time. My wife, whose parents took their three children on numerous family vacations, saw the renowned natural spectacle in her youth. I went on my last furlough with my parents …
My father’s low tolerance for other humans kept my parent’s accumulation of friends to a minimum. There was one couple with which my parents maintained a close relationship and that was Jack and Myrna. They’d go out to dinner regularly. They’d visit each others homes, sometimes including a few other couples so the men could …
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “shadows”. “There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears …
This week’s Illustration Friday suggested topic is “asleep”. The morning began like every morning begins. My alarm went off at six and I smacked the snooze button every ten minutes until I kicked myself out of bed at 6:30. I showered, brushed my teeth and checked the mirror to see if I could get away …
Summer 1979. My friends and I had just graduated from high school. We were all turning eighteen, the then-legal drinking age in New Jersey. Four of us ― Alan, Scott, Sam and ol’ Josh Pincus ― crossed the Pennsylvania border, headed for Atlantic City, for what would be a beer-soaked, debauchery-filled last hurrah before college. Atlantic City …
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “safari”. Every kid grows up listening to novelty songs and every generation had their favorites. From the early 20th century’s “K-K-K-Katy” and “Yes We Have No Bananas” to the wildly popular “Der Fuher’s Face” during World War II, novelty songs have always been crowd-pleasers. When I was in …
