Month: September 2026

Sadie and Dilly are good company. Trying to trap Dilly under the scissors to clip out mats is a challenge. One more to go and so far neither of us has drawn blood. She never had them before so I will blame it on the heat and humidity this year.

Mornings are still lovely and now with a tiny chill in the air.

The fog hangs around until mid morning.

With Annie Dillard passing this week, I recalled her writings that stuck with me. Remember the one…probably from An American Childhood…where her teacher, with all good intentions of showing her class a science experiment, raised a moth (or was it a butterfly?) in a glass jar? And when it went to spread its wings their was not enough room and one wing became deformed. The last she saw of it, it was walking away down the sidewalk. The story made me feel so sad and angry at the same time. And the image of a limping butterfly making its way down a concrete walk has forever lodged in my mind. I don’t remember if my own children ever read Annie Dillard’s books. I came across them after they were grown and off on their own. If their college readings centered around the natural world, they probably did. But I suspect most their reading was science based without the emotion of reading Dillard and others like her. I thought I still had most of her books on my shelves but only found, The Writing Life.

I remember not too many years ago, I saw a large female frog in the pond. It was patiently waiting for a much smaller male frog to finish his business while perched on her back. She kept trying to keep her head up while he busied himself with the task at hand. I wanted her to roll over and slap the little bugger. And when she didn’t, I just had to look away. And you know the first thought I had was when I looked away? Annie Dillard would have watched to the end and probably taken notes! I looked back and with a feeling of not being up to the task, I found both frogs had disappeared. Missed opportunities!

Anyway, Annie Dillard always made me to pay closer attention to Nature. Annie Proulx, to people. Remember how she, Proulx, was sitting in a bar in Wyoming when two fellows came in and something about them prompted her story, Brokeback Mountain? I don’t think much got past her or her imagination.

Nowadays I notice people more than Nature. Probably because I don’t take off onto unsteady ground to get among the frogs who might be waiting for me to show up. And people are most anywhere I look if I get out of my house and into town. Mostly I stay home and pretend I know what is going on without having to be there in person.

Speaking of pretending to be somewhere in person, I am vicariously attending the latest Tasmanian Basket Gathering and drawing/stitching in the Gathering Book. I only have the back side of this facing page and the book is complete. Should I make another book?

I think I am ready to make another political work for the garage. Already the Reflecting Pool one seems a year old. It is probably because the people’s choice for president can’t help himself from bouncing from one national embarrassment to another. And, of course, his ignorant, loyal followers need to know he is there for them. I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to hear so many complaints about what he causes and yet, see so little protest artwork being posted on social media. Thank heavens for the political cartoonists who have no problem putting their work out there. As long as I have space to hang a work and the time to give myself an opening reception, I will keep on.

Now an early drink is in order…a toast to the Annies.

Til later….

 

Another week and still working out my issues with saving files on the computer. One of the biggest issues is that I wanted to save the Publisher files that were used to design all my limited edition artist books. Since I have not opened most of them in years, Publisher could not open them with the font I used at the time.

You know how it is…Times New Roman is nice but over the years there were so many free fonts that fit the content of the book so much better. Turns out not very many of those artist book fonts followed over to a newer computer. Several hours yesterday were spent going to every document I had that showed it had been composed in Publisher and then checking to see if it was telling me that it would have to find a substitute for such and such font. Then I would go online, find that original font that I used and reloading it onto the computer.

Now I will probably not ever make any more of those books…BUT…just in case, I need to save each one of them as a pdf file so I can open it and use it as it is. PDFs can not be altered in any way, but if the artist book pages are found in Publisher before October, then I can save each file that made up that artist book as a pdf to use exactly as I have before.

Not only am I finding many artist books saved in Publisher, but several workshop handouts as well. All need to have a duplicate saved as a pdf. Busy times ahead. Now I am thinking that I will likely pay an annual fee to use an Adobe program that will run much like my trusted (until now) Publisher program.

I went to poetry this week and find it interesting how many in the group want more information than the poet is giving in their poem. We are not sharing memoirs, short stories, etc. in a poetry critique meeting…we are sharing thoughts in poem form. I found this quote from Carl Sandburg that I will share with them next month.

“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.”

And here is a poem I wrote the week before that I shared with the group.

 

I Am Thinking About Words Today               S. Webster

What if, on the day we are born,

we’re given a bag full of words.

And those would be all we had to last a lifetime.

How long would they last?

 

As children we are discouraged from using our words.

“Be quiet! Pipe down! Shut up!”

“Don’t speak unless spoken to.”

“If you can’t say anything nice, ….”

 

Some of us could go quiet in mid-sentence.

While others will take their seldom-opened bags

to the grave, leaving survivors

to use up their own in the silence.

 

I started hoarding mine early.

With my silence saying as much

as the sideways glances

when I failed to respond.

 

But on occasion my words will fall out.

And all I can do is mumble them into place,

while wishing I had simply put them on a page instead.

And left them there.

 

So that is all I have today. Except for this. I found this book on my shelf made up by reversing the folds on cards made using prints of my woodcuts and then fitting them as single folios stitched into a Coptic book. The cover was textured and painted using pigments from the Japanese Garden that inspired the prints. Small windows were cut on each folio to act as a framing of the printed image. No text comes into the book until the last page. With this little 4″ x 5″ book you should be able to see why laying it out in Publisher was necessary to get two cards to each sheet of cardstock loaded into the printer. Also the font was likely not standard issue but chosen off the internet because it fit the content of the book.

Anyway, that’s all I have for today.

Til later…..

 

 

 

Lovely mornings now with a bit of fog settling in. BUT. The day also starts with the awareness of how stupid we have become because of a belief that what we have come to rely on, is now not so reliable.  And I am not talking about the 30% population of my fellow countrymen who are all beginning to look like Stephen Miller, but the tech giants as well.

For many, many years I have used the easily available and understandable program called Publisher that came with my Microsoft package. This past year they have been letting us know that that program will no longer be supported after October 2026. Now they are claiming it will simply be non existent and we should save all Publisher files to something else.  For me that would be saving in a PDF format. Fine. I can do that. But there is no guarantee that Microsoft will be able to interpret the PDFs as I have laid them out. Some people are facing having to change thousands of Publisher files to something else. This does not appear to matter to Microsoft. Evidently it does not pay enough for them to continue offering their Publisher program. And no one else in tech has shown an interest in doing so, except the grifters we have grown used to here in the States who are always looking for the gullible ones willing to purchase a questionable substitute.

All of my books, cards, brochures, etc., anything requiring a layout of text with image, have been using Publisher. Now I am stuck with going through every single folder looking for anything with the Publisher logo so I can also save it in a PDF file format. All must be changed before October.

Today I took to making a change on my Iphone. From now on I will use Mapquest instead of Google Maps. Like most people with the slightest ounce of sense, I am not accepting Gulf of America OR Lake America. How amazingly stupid and fearful those companies must be to go along with such arrogance and ignorance. How stupid we are showing the world we are by being the only country in the UN that refuses to accept an accurate map of the world.

If you are looking to hire employees from the United States, rethink that option because we are fast becoming the dumbest choice you can make.

It is a holiday weekend here. So I have the rest of today and all day tomorrow to work on my files.

Now a smoothie for lunch made from a banana about to cross over. Then maybe a bit of poetry writing before falling into a nice Manhattan.

Til later….