Category Archives: Articles on travel

Travel articles including trips where art is a large focus. Food, travel and general interests including food reviews.

What else do I need to know?

This is a rant I guess you would say. My first question is when did we as a society become young helpless children that are feed what we need to know, told what to eat, told what we should be afraid of and how we should feed our kids and talk to our kids-there is this unknown adult that is always in our homes and on our  computers that talk to us much like the old teacher in the charlie brown cartoons. We are talked down to, treated like we are stupid, third class citizens all with a smile from beautiful people that assume we wish we were them.

The media, some celebrities and the government seem to have created this overblown image of themselves that seem to think their job is to help us make good decisions. We are told how we should feed our kids and what food is bad for them-who would have thought eating Mcdonalds all the time would be harmful to our children or ourselves for that matter-do we need to be protected from them? The government seems to think they are our stewards, they can’t take care of their own lives and keep themselves on the straight and narrow but they need to talk to us about how we live. Somehow we have inadvertently created a ruling class, a cancer that keeps itself in charge of us children.

I heard a radio commercial about drugs the other day-the other option was ridiculous even though it explained what the government has been saying for years-just say no but than it said go to the website to find out how to talk to your kids about drugs. Do we not have any common sense, do we not have friends or family that know us better and can give us options better than some government entity. We are advertised to and steered in the right direction, this week the stock market is a no-brainer next week-don’t waste your time with the stock market all under the guise of this company really caring. Buy gold-buy it now-what do they expect to be paid for that gold the same dollar that they are saying is history-they care that much about us that they will take our bad money so we can have gold-I’m a little skeptical.

The media, I guess it would be considered our big brother or sister-it tells us that all the things we thought might be safe are now dangerous. We shouldn’t leave our kids in cars in the summer? Wow, I am so glad they are here to help us with raising our kids, of course you never hear about their kids or their daily family traumas. I think we are shown too much bad news, we constantly have a neighbor looking out the window or over our shoulder and the news is never good-we are moths to the flame-interested and yet the flame burns us. Somewhere along the way all of these entities have grown to a level of a royalty that tends to make us little people pale in comparison-or so they would have us think.

The last entity is the celebrity-granted not all celebrities but definitely a large cross section act like they are Gods and the media treats them as such. Did you hear what Madonna said, did you see Kim’s new dress? We shouldn’t care but I guess we do because the television shows keep coming so we can see a family spend their daily lives. So here is the problem and it makes me wonder-maybe it is us, maybe they didn’t assume we were these needy children, maybe we’ve become the needy children after all. We are curios about car wrecks, some of us wan to know what the celebrities are wearing and some of us don’t realize it’s not good to eat too much fast food and we get a lawyer to blame another entity because it couldn’t possibly be our lack of judgement.

So enough of this rant-what is missing in our society that would replace these entities that treat us like children-I believe it’s one word-community. A self contained group of people that live together, learn together and share eachothers’ experiences, make stupid mistakes, feed our children questionable food choices and don’t do everything well-it’s the community, the people we care about and have grown up with that should help us with making good decisions and help us to learn how to be better people and better parents-not the overbearing government, the condescending media or the self involved celebrity-
we’re the only ones that can change our choice of role models and mentors-until we do, there’ll be television to teach our children and the media to tell us how to eat.

Tonight’s questions– For fellow creatives-what inspires you to create and do words often come from pictures or do pictures follow words? For the non-creatives-what about art attracts or interests you and again do you think of images while reading a story or do images tell more of a story than words? I hope to have lots of comments and insights on both sides of the creative spectrum-maybe we’ll all learn something about what inspires us and where true inspiration originates from.


In this blog I will include a painting and than the words behind them-normally that would be poetry but in this case it is more of a prose description of a time and place.

At the beginning of football season-my son was ten I think, I sat on the ground watching storms pass through the sky over the field as all the parents wondered if they would call the practice but it continued. Later we even sat on slick bleachers and ignored the fact that we were all soaked, that’s parenting I guess and I can tell you not one seemed put out-okay we hide it well-another parent thing.

This first painting was inspired after the storms had subsided and a swarm of dragonflies stormed in the sky around the great burst of light that broke through the clouds. The light was amazing and the break in the rain was a welcome spectacle for us drenched parents at the beginning of another football season.

The wonderful thing about that space and time of
watching my son practice is I actually get to sit and spend time observing, the time is his not mine, we actually act like a community-If I wanted to be hoaky I would say the light coming through the clouds was hope for a winning season or maybe just a spark of hope through the storm, but I won’t be hoaky-no really, I won’t. The inspiration for it was the beginning of the season, my son and I enjoying a time that was precious and unable to be duplicated. It was a moment in time-the dragonflies, the end of summer and time to notice the simple things-my life stopped for that moment and even when it was a burden to go at times, even sitting in the pouring rain, it was somehow worth it and the relationships my son         and I developed were wonderful.

The bottom picture is another pastel of the same place, different time- he was more like five and the sport was soccer, another group of people to know, another great moment in our lives captured. These images were all sketched out for several years before I ever actually finished them, it’s almost like they have to ferment for a while.

Now we are in football again, different group of people, again moments captured that create images that become pastel sketches and always remind me of those moments. I’ll always remember the dragonflies, the light of the evening and the light of the storms that would pass-all of these feelings and moments become the colors in my paintings.

Funeral for a Celebrity

The body in the standard layout,
the same state, the same ritual, 
a line of cars,
the press were pallbearers
taking pieces of the corpse like ants
bits of anything left
scraps of dirty remnants of their lives
nothing sacred
nothing safe
all of those human moments exposed
sadness was the standard costume
crying eyes of those who took posesssion of the corpse
but no one knew her
sterile bits of words
from voices of strangers
tomorrow the front page
all the wars their demons rage
all the things they shouldn’t have said
no respect, no emotion
for the dead
the possession
a celebrity becomes
the possession
all decorum lost to the story at hand
speak the words like vultures at a feast
without choking on a single word
cast out across the news
every dirty, filthy thought they ever had
and how they once did drugs
and how they beat their kids
facts like seasoning
that add or detract
to fill the space and compensate
for all the dignity we lack……

Blame….

A child’s suicide
Because he was being bullied
What do we do in this world
That gets more violent
ignore or Punish the violence
Raise the child in a warm wonderful place
That hides societies’ cruel uncomfortable face
Ashamed of our darkness
Ignore the disgraceful
Tear down idles of sports
And movies
And wonder why
Our children are mean
Attack fast food for hurting our children
And wonder why our children
won’t take responsibility
cockroaches in expensive suits
sell lottery tickets
for damages rendered
everyone is a potential victim
everyone is a potential donor
and let’s sell the kindness of disasters
join together with tears
and ignore all the corruption
and the fingers reaching
imprison the Christian
dismantle the church
disgard God from every corner
of our lives
and question who’s responsible
for a child suicide.

Another Landscape


Indifferent blackbirds in pastel fields
Demons entangled
In last years broken stems
Broken rays of light
Find tired eyes
How quick and quietly
Compromised
That  I can not see
The sun
Or wake without the light
Without noticing
Gray
A shadow across the lens
Keeping blackbirds from getting in
When all around me clouds
The silence of  words
streaming out

A Winter Sky


You don’t know what road to take
Your eyes are cold and gray like winter
How do you fit in your skin
When your not like them
And the winter drags like the flu
As all the trees that grab the sky
Seem closer and darker to you
And the orange sky you remember as a child
Was the beginning of the snow
How quietly the sound of emptiness
In harmony with being lonely
You grow in size and weight
The forest dark and foreign
How many days did you walk by the stream
Searching for a reflection that never came
But it was you in that dark place
So close and dark like the dying trees
How sad that no one knew your face
Even you- a stranger on your own set
Where all the vines pulled at sinews bleeding
Did anyone notice you had forgotten your lines
Did anyone think to mercilessly leave
You behind
But you in that dark place
Remembering December like a life that passed you by
All the gray sky
The sadness of trees indifferent in the cold steel breezes
And that orange sky that hung for you like a beacon
As if there was a safe warm place
Not too far away
And if you found the road you sought
You could simply walk away…..