I live in Central Florida, which is a different world from coastal Florida. Coastal Florida is inhabited mostly by Yankee transplants and has beautiful beaches, pricey real estate, and billboards advertising sinkhole insurance. True cracker Florida extends down the center of the state, where they know how to catch, cook and eat gators, can fix … Continue reading
The Holy Fool is a Russian archetype which derives from the idea that a person who truly does what Jesus said must be a fool. Kind of an admirable fool, but a fool nonetheless. It comes from those outrageous things Jesus said like, “Forgive your enemies, give to the poor, and restrict your sex life … Continue reading
I teach at the Suwannee River Studio as a volunteer and one day launched into a mini-lecture about being serious artists. Then I noticed two members were making something under the table. It turned out they were sculpting spiders to scare me with, so I gave up on my serious artist speech. Nothing wrong with … Continue reading
Janice was once a beautiful woman, smart, and funny. She had traveled to Kuwait and Spain to teach English and had been loved by her students. Jane was abused by her alcoholic father throughout her childhood and as often happens, she married an abusive man. Her vow to herself was that she would have … Continue reading
Somebody gave me a bunch of gourds, which look like birds, so I’m making them into redneck birds-the Gourdy family. So far I have Kenny Ray and Cletis. I find this takes a combination of all my skills, polymer clay sculpting, bit of woodworking, painting, jewelry making, and a certain looniness. Cletis is 30″ tall … Continue reading
Art Snobs and Status Symbols Since status symbols seem to be a human universal, they will probably never become extinct. Ancient tribal leaders wore special hats, gold necklaces and rode fancy horses to separate themselves from the common peons. Queen Elizabeth passed a law that lower class folks could not wear silk, since they might … Continue reading
Why Panic if Space Aliens Land? Supposedly, the existence of space aliens would cause mass panic on earth. I have tried for years to understand why this panic would take place. After all, the probability that other life exists in the universe is high; indeed life is everywhere present, but that’s not what seems to … Continue reading
Throughout the history of humanity, the vast majority of humans have believed that YOU live on after your earth body gives up. In the past few hundred years, a mere drop in the bucket of human existence, a weird idea has emerged that humans are basically soul-less machines and anything beyond what our senses can … Continue reading
Dear followers: Thank you! I am humbled that anyone reads what I write. My fervent hope is that I can be of service to you. We all want freedom, by which most of us mean the freedom to choose-where to live, who to marry, what to say, hundreds of choices every day. Most of us … Continue reading
You might think the 800 souls at Pleasantville are all sweet old Christians. Ha. Actually, there are some of those. And there are alcoholics, drug addicts, perverts and sociopaths as well. I shouldn’t have been surprised…after all, we’re all different and we can be good or bad depending on how the day’s going, or even … Continue reading
