August 29, 2017
Support harvey Relief, Win An Original Painting
Austin Bakes is a group of bloggers, foodies, and local businesses based in Austin, Texas, that raises money for disaster relief efforts and other humanitarian aid via that age-old method, the community bake sale. Since 2011, the group has raised over $50,000 for various relief efforts. I've been participating with the group since 2013, sometimes just donating baked goods, sometimes helping organize and promote the fundraisers, and sometimes as a hands-on volunteer at the sales.
May 30, 2017
Candor
My car's engine was not happy. It was over 100 degrees, and the long drive upwards from near sea level at west Texas interstate speeds did not agree with its aging parts and pieces. For the fourth time, I had pulled over on the side of the road, allowing it to simmer down and catch its breath. It made a long drive even longer, and were it not for the monumental show filling the sky to the north, sitting in a hot car on a hot road on a hot day in no shade would have been pure misery.
May 29, 2017
What Are You?
It seems like an honest enough question, especially when you've just been mistaken for a very large flower.
I was making my semi-regular pilgrimage to the Big Bend area of Texas, just me and my new 4WD Jeep that unlocked a vast amount of unexplored territory. I was in a remote area of a remote park and had made a short hike out to a spot overlooking a canyon, complete with a little desert oasis and waterfall seeping out of the cliff walls. Perfect temps. Blue skies. Puffy clouds. A gorgeous view in all directions. The whole nine yards. And not a soul around, save me.
May 28, 2017
100 Days of Science in Art
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day."
—Albert Einstein
And, really, what better way to do that than by making art about it on a daily basis?
April 11, 2017
Black oUroboros
There are places that call to us. At least I assume that others experience this same kind of beckoning. My own insatiable wanderlust must be whetted periodically, and it's become almost ritual for me to climb into my car and make the long drive across Texas to the Big Bend area. For fun, for escape, for solace, for beauty, for a small reminder of my place in this universe as I stand among some of the oldest rocks on the Earth and look up into a night sky where layers upon layers of stars, galaxy clusters, and other celestial bodies are still visible to the naked eye, free to enchant and stir awe and wonder.
February 4, 2017
Sunflowers
On July 4 last summer I woke up far earlier than I'd hoped to on that holiday morning. Lying there ruminating, as I am wont to do at times, I remembered a suggestion someone had recently made to me: that when I find myself in the throes of a spiraling brain spinning all my energy outward, to picture myself as a sunflower. To remember to include myself in the equation. Visualization is not something I do. It felt weird. But I was annoyed that I wasn't able to take advantage of the rare opportunity to sleep late, so up I rose.
November 20, 2016
Do Good, Win a Print
This week in the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday seeped in tradition and harkening back to the shared harvest feast at Plymouth between the colonists and the Wampanoag, reinforced after the close of the American Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a day of thanksgiving, and finally declared a national holiday in 1939 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the midst of the Great Depression.
February 6, 2017
5 Stages of Grief (Revised For Accuracy)
It always starts with a moment in time. It could be a split second or it could be minutes, but in every case that moment in time becomes its own expanded universe where every detail is exaggerated, commanding the attention of all of your senses and yet experienced as if you are outside yourself watching the events transpire, powerless to stop them and fully aware that the moment will change everything, and that there is no going back.