Concerns

Most of the time I don't mention politics or the current state of affairs in our beloved country but now I feel helpless! What has happened to us? A once proud nation is now experiencing an economic decline. A number of years ago economists forecast the change to a service economy. Well we are certainly getting there. Instead in leading the world in manufacturing goods, we can look forward to leading the world to providing services. Or to say it another way: experts at operating the drive-through windows. Look around you today. How many people do you know who are involved in making a tangible product? I would venture to say that most of your friends are in some form of service industry. Whether it is banking or health care or lawn service they are not creating products. Why is this a bad thing? Real wealth is in the tangible. Would you rather have a new sports car or a promissory note for one? The note is easily destroyed and has no utility. But the car is real and has utility. Why is this happening? I think it is because we have become a society of the "entitled". People seem to think they are entitled to a certain life-style whether they have worked to obtain it or not. Success, if measured by a certain life-style, is not achieved by hard work but simply by "being". If you feel entitled there is no reason to learn a skill to obtain a better job. Therefore, we have become less educated and less capable of difficult tasks. The majority of candidates for advanced degrees in our institutions of higher education are now foreigners. If this trend is not reversed we will continue our slide to the bottom of the industrial nations list. And we, the European immigrants of the past seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, who made this country great will be operating the drive-through windows at McDonalds serving the customers of Asian ancestry.

Vacation Flix

Sometime good things happen.

I have carried and used a sketchbook for many years and our trip to the British Isles was no different. I have never, NEVER, in over forty years of carrying a sketchbook lost one. But ,alas, with the advancing of age things happen. While visiting the Ironbridge in England I lost, a.k.a. misplaced, my sketchbook. It was not a new book bought for the trip but a book with drawings and notes from trips to Alaska and the Dominican Republic and other assorted and sundry drawings. I first noticed the 6 x 9 inch spiral bound book missing about half-way across the Irish Sea. I needed entertainment and did not like the movie on the ferry. Sketchbooks are more than just a place for drawings. they are repositories of visual data and words of thoughts. Indeed a visual record of my life. Needless to say that the search for a new book was of top priority upon docking in Dublin. We enjoyed watching the street musicians and found a local ATM for we needed Euros. And then a pub for some food before shopping for a new sketchbook. I bought a Moleskine book, my first, but it's more for drawing and writing the painting, I think.

Lest I forget, an unknown friend found my book and mailed it home to me!

Gee, it's good to be back home again...

We're home from our visit to the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was great. We put over 2500 miles on our rental car. Needless to say we didn't stay any one place very long. We spent two nights in each London and Edinbrugh but every where else was a one night stay. We used public transportation in both those cities extensively. We stayed at B & B's so we ate breakfast there and pub food for dinner. We usually had bread, cheese and fruit for lunch. We saw many great things and met many great people.

A few highlights would be seeing a rainbow over the walled city, Derry, above and sunset over the harbor in Oban, Scotland. Once while driving a lonely road in the highlands of Scotland a Royal Air Force plane tipped it's wings to us. The silence the crowd of tourists as they paid their respects to the war dead at a memorial to the Royal Marines on a mountain top in Scotland. The quiet reverence of the tourist crowd in Durham's Cathedral as bread and wine were served. People have worshipped on that spot since 1093 A. D. New-born lambs were playing nearby when we visited Hadrian's Wall. Soft-serve custard ice cream on the way the seeing Romeo and Juliette at the Globe was a delight!

It is a wonderful world.

Whew!

Just a quick entry. I've been busy working on a video about the military career of my great-grandfather, a Civil War veteran. But I did have the opportunity to paint with some friends for a few hours. "Sabine" is the results. I've painted landscapes for quite awhile and needed something more frivolous to paint. She fills the requirement. She has watched the fish in the fishbowl long enough, she's now becoming Pro-Active! Her name comes from the female character in the book, "Griffin and Sabine" by Nick Bantock. Every artist should read it.