We need better words for failure. At least when it comes to creative pursuits.

It’s one thing if you fail to calculate the correct stress expected on a support beam in an architectural structure. It’s another matter entirely with many, if not most creative pursuits. By which I mean writing a song, developing a painting, even working in a lab on an experiment you have an idea about but need to play with through a series of steps. There are plenty of other examples.

You have to get inside the project, sometimes before you even understand it.

So, God help me, I’m going to quote those infamous words of Donald Rumsfeld.

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.”

Specifically related to this quote, in our country and the world at large, we are in the latter category.

But that’s not why I’m using this quote. Without going into any sort of song and dance, I’m bringing this Substack experiment to an end. I will continue elsewhere, yet to be determined.

In a variety of ways, Substack does not suit me or my needs. I didn’t understand the platform until I started using it. Now I understand that it’s become much like any other social media platform. It’s become very crowded and distracting. Substack may be soliciting my reader list for other publications. And my original intention for using this platform has changed over the last year.

Substack turned out to be its own unknown unknown — and, as it turns out, so were my own needs.

So, like so much in the world we now live in, I am morphing. It’s a good thing. My painting in progress at top of this post is a preview of pending explorations.

Questions? Comments? Please leave those below. I’d love to hear from you.

I’ll leave this channel open for a little while and will advise on my new location soon.

Too mysterious? Well, stay tuned.

I made this watercolor copy of John Sell Cotman’s 1805 Greta Bridge as a demo for one of the lessons in my Watercolor Through History course.

Cotman is renowned as one of the great pioneers of watercolor but he started by drawing on his own as a boy, unprompted and almost obsessively. This early drawing practice shaped his path through life.

Because his father disapproved of his desire to become an artist, rather wanting him to enter his draper’s business, Cotman left for London at 16, where he found work on commission from printmakers and was then employed to hand tint prints for the lithographer and publisher Rudolph Ackerman. My guess is that it was through developing skills in aquatint for Ackerman that Cotman learned to watercolor.

In London, Cotman rubbed shoulders and practiced drawing in clubs and out of doors with Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner, amongst others. He met and developed relationships with patrons.

Patron and friend Francis Cholmeley invited Cotman, still in his early 20s, to spend three summers with his family at Brandsby Hall in Yorkshire. On his last visit, an invitation to nearby Rokeby Park took him to the River Greta, where he made his two well-known Greta Bridge watercolors, around 1805 and 1810.

Although Cotman was lauded throughout the 20th century as one of the most influential watercolor landscape painters, during his lifetime he was unable to develop adequate commissions and sales to earn a proper living as an artist. As a result, he left London and independently developed ways to earn his living by teaching drawing so that he could support himself as an artist, along with his growing family.

He tutored patrons’ family members and developed a subscription library from which students could borrow and copy his drawings. Eventually, he was named Master of Landscape Drawing at King’s College School in London. Cotman was endlessly resourceful and worked diligently, but earning a living was always a struggle.

Cotman was so well thought of during the 20th century that Winsor & Newton named their student grade watercolor line after him. These budget watercolors are far superior to those that Cotman himself used and which, because of unsolved fugitive color issues and other technical details, have faded to mostly dull greens and browns.

My copies of historic watercolors are often much brighter and more cheerful than what’s left of the originals today. Joyful color is my natural proclivity with watercolor painting but it’s also the exceptional quality of paints I have to work with.

I have far better paints to work with than Cotman did but we’re basically using the same graphite for drawing. Watercolor has changed over the centuries. Drawing has not.

In John Berger’s brilliant book, Permanent Red: Essays in Seeing, his chapter on drawing begins as follows:

“The basis of all painting and sculpture is drawing.

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase, it is quite literally true. It is the actual act of drawing that forces the artist to look at the object in front of him, to dissect it in his mind’s eye and put it together again; or if he is drawing from memory, that forces him to dredge his own mind, to discover the content of his own store of past observations.”

In many of my courses, we develop drawing and watercolor skills by copying historic masters’ work while learning about their lives, milieu, and works. One part of each of those lessons is a series of long-form demo videos in which I make a copy of the lesson’s featured drawing or painting, often both, complete with a blow-by-blow account of my thoughts and experience while doing so, including more than a few deep, unconscious but audible sighs.

To learn more and be notified of openings in my online drawing and watercolor courses, click here to sign up and receive a gift of my Drawing Primer so you can start practicing right now.

Drawing is fundamental. It’s a practice that you have to do yourself. But it certainly helps to have good guidance, examples, feedback, and camaraderie to sharpen skills and enhance learning.

Like drawing, teaching is a practice. I enjoy teaching drawing and watercolor and curating my courses through the lens of history. It’s a challenge for both me and my students. I always learn a lot and feel better for having performed my demos. I think my students do, too.

Last month, a Quebec town officially recognized trees as sentient living beings with their own rights.

The municipality of Terrasse-Vaudreuil endorses the three fundamental principles of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Trees:
• Article 1: The Tree, a sentient living being and a source of Life, is a common good of humanity.
• Article 2: Life on the planet depends on the existence of the Tree.
• Article 3: Humankind, endowed with reason and conscience, must act with the Tree in a spirit of fraternity and solidarity.

Théodore Rousseau did not need these principles spelled out. He spent his creative life drawing and painting trees. He and his pals in what came to be known as the Barbizon School painted trees for the sake of the trees, not as stage sets for human figures or allegorical stories.

His close study of specific oaks in Fontainebleau led directly to activism. In 1847, he painted The Massacre of the Innocents to protest loggers cutting stands of oak in the forest, and his lobbying (with others) contributed to the creation of the world's first official nature reserve there in 1853.

But that activism evolved from first simply studying and communing with a tree—many trees. Close encounters between humans and trees are where this awareness and appreciation must begin.

Herodotus tells the story of Xerxes’ encounter with a plane tree. As Xerxes marched through Asia to invade Greece, the king saw a magnificent plane-tree by the roadside. Because of its beauty and shade, Xerxes adorned the tree with golden trinkets and ordered that a guardian watch over it forever after.

In 1738, Handel set this story to music for one aria in an otherwise forgotten opera. Ombra Mai Fu has survived and still thrives in a variety of forms. One translation (and there are many) reads as follows:

Tender and beautiful fronds
of my beloved plane tree,
let Fate smile upon you.
May thunder, lightning, and storms
never disturb your dear peace,
nor may you be profaned by blowing winds.

Never was a shade
of any plant
dearer and more lovely,
or more sweet.

Listen to Andreas Scholl perform the original aria flawlessly, with reverence and grace.

•

In 1997, while on tour as a singer songwriter, I taught a songwriting workshop at my alma mater, New College. As I considered a concluding exercise for the workshop, I sat on a bench at Sapphire Shores Park by the Sarasota Bay, leafing through that day’s Herald Tribune.

I spotted a tiny article about a tree that had been cut down in Canada. I was moved, and decided to have the students choose an article from a newspaper that week and write a song based on that. It worked out well for all of us.

Listen on YouTube:

Golden Needles

Soul packed in a naked seed
released on a springtime breeze
high fever of wanderlust
far flung and delirious

‘Cross meadow from shady grove
down river and open road
seemed like an eternity
till I fell to earth to become a tree

Sunk deep in the cool wet earth
from a new womb, another birth
burst open like a nova
unwound like a cobra

Stretched myself till I met the sun
I was a seedling and a strong one
I drank the rain, played with the wind
sang hymns, made offerings

Golden needles
precious treasure
I was a temple
a poem
shelter
memories kept in rings
the birds would sing
as I sent new seeds to go wandering

Slow dance in a spiral
each day higher
my feast the sun
the earth my home
never once did I feel alone

Summer fall winter spring
the seasons and I were old friends
centuries on the same spot
everything moved but I did not

Golden needles
precious treasure
I was a temple
a poem
shelter
memories kept in rings
the birds would sing
as I sent new seeds to go wandering

Gladly, I would have stayed here
another century, another year
I fed the air, kissed heaven
still, the odds were uneven

Mid-winter, late afternoon
approaching rise of the howling moon
I felt a blow, heard a small sound
I fell to night
I hit the ground

Golden needles
precious treasure
I was a temple
a poem
shelter
memories kept in rings
the birds sing
as again my soul goes wandering
released my soul goes a’wandering

Sarasota, FL, 1997

©1997 Suzanne McDermott/Drexel Road Music (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved

•

All is not lost. Grafts of Kiidk’yaas were taken on two occasions. If you’re in the right zone, you may start your own descendant.

•

On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree

…are the opening lines of “Place” by W. S. Merwin from his book, The Rain in the Trees

I’ve never been big on 4th of July celebrations. For the most part, I encountered them as community or neighborhood affairs with unpretentious dressing up in sneakers, shirts and shorts in all shades of red, white and blue, sparklers and little flags, fire trucks and streamers on bikes.

In 1976, I was 21 and had recently landed in Santa Monica. Someone knew that I’d been a fixture at the Main Point and told me to go apply for a job at McCabe’s, which I did. As I sat at the picking table, filling out an application, Bobby Kimmel, who happened to be across the table with his guitar, chatted me up. Within minutes, he walked me upstairs to the concert office and told the new director to hire me. That was probably in late February.

I worked some for the concert series, some at the store register, and some in the office of the owner.

As the summer approached, so did the Bicentennial celebrations. I caught wind of a parade that the city of Los Angeles was planning to run down a length of Wilshire Boulevard. I walked into the owner’s office and told him that we should enter the parade, put together a float, and call it something like “American Music Lives At McCabe’s”. He must have said yes because in no time, someone wrangled a flatbed truck, someone else (maybe me) arranged for rectangular blocks of hay, a sound system and engineer came on board, and of course, we had to have t-shirts.

Friends of McCabe’s who would soon become good friends of mine ran what would become a legendary t-shirt company, Venice T-Shirt and Medical Group. I received instructions for sizing the screen design, found two sheets of paper to work on, some cardboard backing, and got down on my knees to work with scissors, a pencil, a pen, a marker, Wite-Out, and something perfectly round. I used them to hand-letter and draw circular graphics for a well-proportioned front and back design around the classic M Guitar logo.

I seem to remember that the t-shirts were delivered on the morning of the parade, but I could be wrong. For this special first run, the shirts were red and blue with white printing. The babies and toddlers had a one-time edition with a special Sue Griffith color scheme.

Everyone who was going on board gathered that Sunday morning in the back room at McCabe’s. Ricky Jay tossed Magic Castle cards from the back alley over the roof to targets on Pico Boulevard. Could we possibly have boarded the flatbed in the alley? Wherever we climbed on, we joined the All Nations, All People Official Los Angeles County Bicentennial Parade, that July 4th in 1976.

As we started to move along that 10-mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard, I remember the thrill at seeing my little idea come to life. It was great fun and unpretentious—really a community event inside a big city setting.

Fifty years later, my design is still the official McCabe's t-shirt. They've since copied my hand lettering onto the shop's front door. It seems that I left my mark.

Thanks to Matt Kramer for taking the wonderful parade photos.

Part One

In February 2023, I wrote the following on an old blog.

The Alchemy of New College

On January 31, 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis orchestrated a well-planned, hostile takeover of New College, my alma mater. On the heels of the takeover, at the first board meeting, the president of the college, a long-time faculty member, was fired without cause and replaced with a political ally of the governor at more than twice the salary of the ousted president, an amount that threatens the New College Foundation's ability to support the college itself.

As an alum, I have wanted to write something personal in response to what has and is happening, but where to start has paralyzed me. So I've decided to make a brief entry here so that I can move on to other blog posts waiting in the wings. Then I expect that I’ll add to this post over time.

There has been a lot of press devoted to the ongoing developments, but I have yet to see any reports that actually describe what New College is, or at least what it was. The disinformation and misrepresentation of New College has been heartbreaking. Admittedly, New College is rare and difficult to describe.

New College is a place in a particular geographic setting, with unique, historic buildings, adjacent to complementary cultural institutions, all part of the larger history and culture that makes up Sarasota, Florida.

It is a community of students, faculty, administrators, alumni, patrons, public officials, and neighbors.

What may make New College so difficult to describe is that it is more than an institution of higher education. New College is an experience.

I will stop there for now and pick this up as I have time and can write about my personal experience, why New College is important, and why what is happening there is dangerous on a scale much larger than the campus and community.

Meanwhile, you can visit savenewcollege.org to learn more and read press accounts about the takeover and its aftermath.

Part Two
Coming eventually....

•

Part Two

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

On Sunday night, June 7, 2026, John Oliver covered New College as his feature on Last Week Tonight.

In just under 30 minutes, Oliver describes in his inimitable way what has happened since the takeover in January 2023. I would make only one correction to a quotation he shares from Chris Rufo: that New College was “re-captured.” It had never been “captured”. Rather, after the private college faced bankruptcy in 1975, it was merged into the University of South Florida as its honors college.

As for why the hostile takeover was dangerous on a scale much larger than the campus and community, Oliver quotes Chris Rufo’s stated intention that “It starts with this hostile takeover…And if we are to be successful, I think that we’re going to create a model for red state governors all over the country.”

Not included in the Last Week Tonight episode is that “Christopher F. Rufo, the activist and author, spent six weeks in the spring of 2023 in Hungary, just as he and other conservative trustees were mounting a hostile takeover of New College of Florida, the state’s honors college. Rufo was there as a visiting fellow at a think tank closely aligned with the country’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán.” (as reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education)

In closing, Oliver called it part of "the exact sort of smash and grab we're seeing in so many places right now, from public health to newspapers to broadcast news, ideologues capturing something that they hate, claiming that they want to fix it, then destroying it instead.”

New College was important for so many reasons. In a final sentence that has made every alum I’ve spoken to since burst into tears, he summed up by describing one. “They have destroyed a rare haven for gentle nerds.”

We tried to warn people.

•

Part Three

My personal experience

By the time I enrolled at New College in 1985, I’d already raced through half a dozen lives, including marriage and divorce. While I was recovering from an illness, an NYU film school grad urged me, for the umpteenth time, to go get a degree in something.

How I discovered Ringling School of Art & Design from my Venice Beach apartment, I couldn’t possibly reconstruct now. But I applied and was accepted on full scholarship, with a handwritten note from the new president, Arland Christ-Janer, on the back of one of his lithographs. An angel of a friend packed my Volkswagen bug with all the worldly possessions of my 28-year-old self, and drove with me across the country to Sarasota, where we landed at a classic roadside motel on the North Tamiami Trail.

Christ-Janer would go on to bring transformational change to Ringling. Although that entry class was a curious mix of the loveliest people from a range of backgrounds, aged 18 to 65 years, I found the Fine Arts program lacking.

In late winter of that first year, I was invited to move into a small, bright Mediterranean Revival house on Acacia Drive, in the Sapphire Shores neighborhood. Because my mother loved architecture, I made a pencil-and-watercolor sketch of the house to send her for Mother’s Day.

One afternoon, while discussing my Ringling program, Mary Clark, a friend of my new roommate, suggested that I apply to New College.

“What’s New College?” I asked. Mary (a New College alum from the early private days, who would soon become one of my closest friends) gave me a brief overview, and helped me organize my approach for a transfer.

I learned, over time, that New College, a few blocks north of where we’d sat, was a special project spearheaded by Phillip Hanson Hiss III in the late 1950s. It was an academic concept designed to complement the new museum of art, symphony orchestra, and theaters in Sarasota. New College was loosely fashioned after the educational system at New College, Oxford. Arnold Toynbee was brought in as a lecturer for the opening academic year, and the first faculty member named to the new private liberal arts college.

I applied for a transfer, was accepted, and, once again, fully funded. It all transpired quickly, and by the time I sat down with my advisor, I may as well have been a doe-eyed freshman.

Each student was assigned an academic advisor. I was assigned to Malena Carrasco, and thank god for that. Malena earned her Ph.D. at Yale, where she was Vincent Scully’s assistant, then landed at New College as one of the two art history professors. The art history offices were located in the old stables of Cook Hall, which housed the administrative offices and most of the rest of the humanities division. Cook Hall was another Mediterranean Style home built by Charles Ringling for his daughter. It was connected by a walkway to his Beaux-Arts/Italianate home (see postcard at top) that was the flagship image of New College.

I must have already developed that sketch of the Acacia house into a larger painting because, during our first meeting, Malena astutely suggested that I develop a project about buildings in Sarasota. I thought that was a brilliant idea and decided to focus on residential architecture, choose one each of a variety of architectural styles, highlight important architects when possible, and trace the history of the city through that set of lenses.

As a New College student, I was easily welcomed into the city’s Urban Planning Department, and for a while, I became one with the Master Site Files as I searched for and selected buildings. That was followed by scouting around town, paper map in hand. It was a singular way to learn about the city and the people who developed its culture.

I then spent many early mornings sitting on curbs, or whatever might support me, drawing houses and developing the paintings as far as I could before the heat and humidity of the day sent me back inside. I trespassed. I peered into windows of abandoned buildings. Once or twice, I knocked on doors.

Unbeknownst to me, the city was preparing for its centennial, and my project slipped into those celebrations like a hand into a glove. My project became newsworthy. I was invited to have a show of the paintings at Northern Trust Bank, followed by installations at other locations throughout that year. Although not my original intention, all but two, which were personal favorites, sold. In Los Angeles, I’d painted portraits of people on commission. Now, commissions for architectural portraits became a way to earn income.

Throughout my years in Sarasota, if I was not directly on the Gulf of Mexico or Sarasota Bay, I was rarely more than a few blocks away. The place was breathtakingly beautiful. Before jet skis, cigarette boat racing, and plagues of red tide, the sparkling blues, the softest, whitest sands, the jumpy mullets, dolphins, manta rays, pelicans, herons, egrets, and terns, spun a revelry of almost blinding splendor. In summer, billowing, towering white clouds sailed off the Gulf bringing afternoon thunderstorms you could set your watch by. It was bright. It was hot and very humid. Buildings were a refuge.

Many New College professors owned homes in “my” neighborhood, including Soo Bong Chae, a beloved math professor who was my Acacia house landlord and lived just across the street with his family. Sapphire Shores, like much of historic Sarasota, was developed during the 1920s in the Mediterranean Revival style. Those original homes were eventually joined by modest, harmonious moderns.

When the Acacia house disbanded, I moved one block south to the garage apartment of another Mediterranean Revival house owned by Jane Moulten. She commissioned me to make paintings of both her home on Woodland Drive, where you can see my student quarters peeking up behind the screened lanai,

and the Caples estate. The New College music department was located in Caples, and I spent more time in that building than in any other place on campus.

On the airport side of campus, Phillip Hiss connected with I.M. Pei to design the dorms surrounding Palm Court, home to weekend, late-night parties, dancing and general shenanigans.

January at New College was devoted to ISPs, or Independent Study Projects. One year, my project was to serve as Administrative Assistant to the newly formed chamber music festival, La Musica di Asolo, founded and led by Bruno Giuranna. In its second year, Bruno and company took up residence in College Hall. Long rehearsals were held in the walnut paneled music room that Charles Ringling had specifically built for good acoustics.

Bruno, a gifted violist, is an inspirational, master teacher and a shining human being. Sitting in on those long rehearsals with hand-picked, international chamber players was one of the highlights of my musical life. I learned Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht almost by ear.

My duties included securing rehearsal space, coordinating whatever needed coordinating for the public performances at the historic Asolo Theater on the Ringling Museum grounds next door, turning pages of the piano score for a Weber Trio on stage at the Opera House, general miscellany, and driving to the Tampa airport in Piero Rivolta’s old station wagon with questionable tire tread to pick up that year’s bass player, Franco Petracchi.

In the dark, in the rain, with Franco in the passenger seat and his huge, historic bass in the back, I took the wrong exit, got lost, and hydroplaned a little. I didn’t speak Italian. Franco’s English was limited. I was terrified but didn’t want to let on, so I broke into the only Italian I could think of and started belting out “Voi che sapete” in as cheerful a manner as I could muster. I cannot imagine what Franco must have thought. Eventually, I found my way back to the Rivoltas and delivered my precious cargo to no end of boisterous teasing.

In order to graduate, we were required to write and defend a thesis for our senior project. Again, I was at a loss as to how to bring things together. Once again, Malena made a brilliant suggestion, something to the effect of “Why don’t you write a play or something?” That was the master key. I was on it.

I waltzed into the world of the Asolo Repertory Theater and the FSU Theater Program next door, where I spent most of my final year. I shadowed John Ulmer, who was then the Artistic Director, and who had spent years as Sandy Meisner’s assistant at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York.

Mostly, I sat next to John and observed, from table readings, to performance. I don’t know if I have ever spent so much time with my mouth shut. The two productions I sat through were Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, for which Ulmer generously named me as Assistant Director. Sunk in the old velveteen seat next to John in the dark at the historic Asolo Theater, I watched every rehearsal unfold. Every once in a while, John would lean over to me and whisper, “Did you see that?”

Did I see what? I had no idea what he meant. What he meant was, can you tell the difference between when that person on stage is pretending and when they are behaving truthfully? I kept observing and I can’t say that one day I had a sudden revelation, but I do know that my experience with Ulmer sort of ruined me for life. By which I mean that he trained me to become a keen observer of truth in human behavior.

Then, for my senior thesis, I wrote, directed, and produced a play with music at the FSU black box theater. It was a novice venture, and though my inexperience heightened my desire to control everything, I did it and, all things considered, it was a success.

That’s a brief description of my New College Alpha and Omega with a little in between. To fully document my personal experience, I would have to, and I want to, tell you all about the people I encountered, worked with, and befriended throughout. The New College community is small, it’s intimate, and woven through the Sarasota community at large, and scattered to the four winds. Each individual that was part of my world there had a rich story and background and future. But to tell it all would take much longer than my time and this space allows.

Looking back now, and after all that’s unfolded recently, New College feels like Brigadoon or Camelot.

A fleeting wisp of glory, for one brief shining moment.

Like democracy, New College was an experiment. The New College experiment did not fail. It was ambushed and firebombed. There were protests, lawsuits, and other valiant efforts, but in the end, it wasn’t enough.

Democracy is still hanging on.

New College was a warning. There’s still hope for democracy.

“None of my books, none of my notes, no friends’ letters are at hand in my hotel room. Nowhere can I seek information, for in the whole world the mails from country to country have been disrupted or hampered by censorship. We live cut off from one another as we did a hundred years ago, before steamships, railroads, planes, and mails were invented. I have nothing more of my past with me than what I have retained in my mind. All else at this moment is unobtainable or lost. But the good art of not pining over that which is lost has been thoroughly learned by our generation, and it is quite possible that the loss of documentation and detail may actually be an advantage for my book. For I look upon our memory not as an element which accidentally retains or forgets, but rather as a consciously organizing and wisely exclusionary power. All that one forgets of one’s life was long since predestined by an inner instinct to be forgotten. Only that which wills to preserve itself has the right to be preserved for others. So choose and speak for me, ye memories, and at least give some reflection of my life before it sinks into the dark!”
                                                —Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, Preface

In 1981, some friends returned from a screening of the new Louis Malle film, My Dinner With André. When I asked how they liked it, one said, “I turned to Stan when the lights came up and said, ‘That was like having dinner with Suzanne.’”

I went to see it soon after, understood completely, and have had a fondness for André Gregory ever since.

In mid-April this year, The New York Times ran an article called “The Books You Should Have Read by Age…” enlisting a different writer for each decade. I scanned the entries and for the last, By Age 90, the Times recruited André Gregory. One of his two recommendations was Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday.

I was thrilled (which should give you an idea of what thrills me). Stefan Zweig’s autobiography has been one of the great reading pleasures of my recent life.

In late June, early July, 2024, The Rest Is History podcast spent four episodes detailing “The Murder of Franz Ferdinand”. The hosts usually open each episode by quoting some relevant person or written passage. The fourth episode of this series, “The Crime”, opened with a considerably abbreviated quote from this autobiography describing the afternoon of Sunday, the 28th of June, 1914.

I wanted more. Right away. I found and listened to a horrid AI narration of the book on YouTube, then found the book properly read on Audible. I bought the book. You can read the PDF here. I’ve read and listened to it several times since.

If you have any interest in European culture, writers, musicians, visual artists, and economics from the late 19th century to not quite the end of WWII, Zweig’s life is a remarkable document. He knew everybody. He was an inveterate collector of autographs, original music manuscripts, paraphernalia, and ephemera, clarifying that he did not consider himself their owner, only a temporary custodian.

“I do not have at hand here—in my enforced nomadic existence—the catalogue of this long-since dispersed collection and can enumerate only haphazardly some of the things to illustrate how earthly genius was embodied in a moment of eternity.”

His extensive collection included “…a leaf from Leonardo’s workbook, Napoleon’s order of the day to his soldiers at Rivoli…a complete novel in proof sheets by Balzac…a cantata by Bach and the aria of Alceste by Gluck and one by Handel…Chopin’s Barcarolle…of Mozart I had not only a crude page written by the eleven-year-old boy…, a page written just before his death…of Goethe’s life, the first leaf a translation from the Latin by the nine-year-old boy, the last a poem written in his eighty-second year…in the matter of Beethoven…I was able to acquire all the remaining pieces of furniture from his room which had been auctioned off after his death…; the great desk above all, in whose drawers were concealed pictures of two loves, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi and Countess Erdödy; the strongbox which stood next to his bed up to the last moment, the little portable desk on which he had written in bed, his last compositions and letters, a white lock of his hair cut off on his death-bed, the invitation to his funeral, the last laundry list written in a trembling hand, the inventory of Beethoven’s goods for the auction…”

Like many, I’ve been struggling with the whys and wherefores of creative practice over the past year and a half of perpetual crisis, outrageous behavior, wanton destruction and murder. Amidst this onslaught of shock, it's a masterstroke just to focus on creative work at all—let alone with any meaning or intention that isn't purely reactive.

We’re straddling realities, eras, culture, time. It’s tricky right now to envision a future. It doesn’t look good, but it really is impossible to predict. There may be multiple futures. So, I’m turning around, as usual, to look at the past, and a good place to start is with Stefan Zweig’s description of the moment the world he lived in changed.

“The summer of 1914 would have been memorable for us even without the doom which it spread over the European earth. I had rarely experienced one more luxuriant, more beautiful and, I am tempted to say, more summery. Throughout the days and nights the heavens were a silky blue, the air soft yet not sultry, the meadows fragrant and warm, the forests dark and profuse in their tender green; even today, when I use the word summer, I think involuntarily of those radiant July days which I spent in Baden near Vienna. …

“Already on the eve of that twenty-ninth of June, which Catholic Austria celebrates as the feastday of Saints Peter and Paul, many guests had arrived from Vienna. In light summer dress, gay and carefree, the crowds moved about to the music in the park. The day was mild; a cloudless sky lay over the broad chestnut trees; it was a day made to be happy. The vacation days would soon set in for the people and children, and on this holiday they anticipated the entire summer, with its fresh air, its lush green, and the forgetting of all daily cares. I was sitting at some distance from the crowd in the park, reading a book. … Nevertheless, I was simultaneously aware of the wind in the trees, the chirping of the birds, and the music which was wafted toward me from the park. I heard the melodies distinctly without being disturbed by them, for our ear is so capable of adapting itself that a continuous din, or the noise of a street, or the rippling of a brook adjusts itself completely to our consciousness, and it is only an unexpected halt in the rhythm that startles us into listening.

“And so it was that I suddenly stopped reading when the music broke off abruptly. I did not know what piece the band was playing. I noticed only that the music had broken off. Instinctively I looked up from my book. The crowd which strolled through the trees as a single, light, moving mass, also seemed to have undergone a change; it, too, had suddenly come to a halt. Something must have happened. I got up and saw that the musicians had left their pavilion. This too was strange, for the park concert usually lasted for an hour or more. What could have caused this brusque conclusion? Coming closer I noticed that the people had crowded excitedly around the bandstand because of an announcement which had evidently just been put up. It was, as I soon learned, the text of a telegram announcing that His Imperial Majesty, the successor to the crown, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, who had gone to the maneuvers in Bosnia, had fallen victims of a political assassination there.”
                                                —Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday

I don’t think it’s possible to tease out one moment since that marked such profound change. There have been markers, though, since the end of the last world war. November 22, 1963. November 4, 1980. September 11, 2001. I would include particular dates for the introduction of the web, AI, social media, the iPhone, but those are impossible to nail down, or debatable. November 8, 2016, of course, is noteworthy. We—at least some of us—knew that the world had changed but not exactly how.

To learn about how other noteworthy artists and their work were impacted by war and change, see my essays on Charlotte Salomon, E. H. Shepard, Wassily Kandinsky and Gabrielle Münter, and I guess that Reclaiming Attention falls alongside this set.

More to come…

Read Stefan Zweig’s The World Of Yesterday. It will do you a world of good.

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When I was building my beautiful studio, I was out the back door of my house early every morning overseeing every aspect of the process from demolition of the old dirt floor garage to the seemingly unending interior tasks, and everything in between. I rarely took a break.

My next door neighbor was a Tennessee native who told me early on that I needed to take a breath and sharpen my saw. Until today’s Ecosia search, I thought that was some quaint southern euphemism.

At that time, Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People sat in my library. Apparently, I did not read it or possibly even scan the contents. The seventh habit is “Sharpen the Saw.”

While researching this saw sharpening expression, I learned about Kaizen and many of its variations.

I’ve been feeling just a little bit overwhelmed this season. Some of it is time of year tasks: planting the garden, switching out the winter wardrobe and linens for warm weather stuff, spring cleaning (please make the pollen stop), critter care, some of it is teaching work, and all the rest is daily and seasonal life. I’m not complaining. I enjoy it all. But did it ever feel like everything took up so much time?

One argument is that this is related to my (old) age. Even though I have trained myself away from social media, and only glance at the news cycle, add to that the argument pointing to information overload.

What to do? What to do?

It just so happens that I have one additional big, rare task underway. I am shopping for a car. Not just any car. I am shopping for a Toyota. And what do you know? Kaizen is a core principle of the Toyota production system which is demonstrably why I want to buy a Toyota!

Kaizen can be translated into English as change (Kai) and good (zen)—good change, change for the better, or continuous improvement.

Just taking Kaizen into consideration makes me feel less overwhelmed. I can’t do anything about my age or the culture in which I am living but, generally speaking, I am making small improvements daily.

If only just moving through each day didn’t create disorder. If only I didn’t want everything done at once. As if anything is ever done.

While writing this, I’ve been glancing up at the watercolor featured at the top of this post. I made it about ten years ago, as students were working on a watercolor assignment in a Raleigh class. It’s a personal favorite because I used a random photo from a magazine at hand. There was no deliberation or hesitation because, at any moment, I could easily have been called away or distracted.

To work without (too much) deliberation or hesitation may be the most difficult thing to teach about watercolor. It certainly took me a long time to learn and that was a result of one comment to me by Phil Geiger at UVA. “Watercolor is a performance.”

But to perform with grace and expertise takes a lot of practice and continuous improvement. So does moving through the tasks of daily and seasonal life. And often it can feel like being in a darkened tunnel.

Kaizen can act as a road map, as a way of clarifying a path to the light at the end of a tunnel. At least enough to keep on course.

So, what I am going to do shortly (after spending 15 minutes cleaning up after myself) is settle in with the Kaizen Wikipedia page, make some notes for myself, and do a little cognitive reframing over a nice, cool glass of sparkling Pellegrino water with a slice of fresh lemon.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I hope this helps a little.

When we got the call, we were looking out the window in a westerly direction.
We checked the road at the place where it curved away into tomorrow.
We dropped whatever we were doing, packed our babies and belongings, 
and followed the rainbow, assured of the dream and all it foretold.

We killed whatever moved, we cut down anything that sprouted.
This was our land after all. It was manifest, our destiny.
The sound of bells and hammers blew in the wind of happy industry.
We made roads to get to roads, to get to roads to get our hands on all the gold.

We found it all in the California sun,
in the California sun, California sun, yeah.
Found it all in the California sun, in the California sun, 
we found it all.

When we first set eyes upon the jewels of the Pacific,
we knew our god at last had brought us to the rainbow's end.
And there we dreamed machines we built that made new dreams we thirsted for.
We poured in girls and oil and oranges, and just a little more gold,
just a little more.

We spent it all in the California sun,
in the California sun, California sun, yeah.
Spent it all in the California sun, in the California sun, 
we spent it all.

We went as far as we could go, we dug as deep as we could dig.
We flew as high as we could fly. We even made it to the moon.
And when we finally came to, we acted so surprised,
as if we thought we could expand that way forever.
And when our gold turned into lead, and all our instincts said slow down,
we climbed behind the wheel, and we accelerated anyway.

We drove it right through the California sun,
through the California sun, California sun, yeah.
Drove it right through the California sun,
through the California sun…

And if we could, would we do it all over again?
If we could, and we knew the things that we know now?
Split the difference in the middle of the country?
Kept the lessons that we learned in our pockets?

Now the sun is setting, night comes to remind us of the darkness.
The glow of dawn, the flame of day flicker quick before our sleepy eyes.
We are wandering, we are longing for a home that's gone forever,
for some tree to sit beneath, and for some time to think it over.

We burned it all in the California sun,
in the California sun, California sun, yeah.
Burned it all in the California sun, in the California sun,
we burned it all.

And when the ashes turn back into dust,
the spirit will rise because the spirit must.
And we'll turn with the earth, and we'll move with the wind, 
and we'll start something different all over again.	


©1994 Suzanne McDermott/Drexel Road Music (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved
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Suzanne McDermott Songs

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In the late spring of 2006, I moved into my new studio in Nashville, and started experimenting with varieties of watercolor paper, paint makers, color and brushes. The previous year had been devoted entirely to architectural concerns. The two or three years prior to that were spent painting large bouquets of flowers.

Now, flowers are always an excellent subject for drawing and painting, but I needed a change of focus. While playing with paper content, texture, weight, sizing and surfaces, comparing gum arabic and honey as binders, whose Prussian Blue I preferred, which brush had an adequate well and which held its tip, a funny thing began to happen.

I started painting imaginary landscapes. I couldn’t seem to help it. A door opened up and I walked right into a new field of possibility, making and learning about landscape painting.

I bought two books.

I don’t remember how I found either of them but the first was Curtis O. Baer’s Landscape Drawings. I’ve referred to and copied drawings from his collection extending from 1440 through 1962. It’s a lovingly acquired and assembled collection that, alas, was sold off, piecemeal after Baer’s death. But this book remains with his thoughts.

It weighs seven pounds, I have two copies, and it’s been within feet of me for 20 years. I’ve lugged it in and out of classrooms and every student of mine is familiar with it. I’ve urged friends and acquaintances with interest in such things to buy copies of their own and once received a thank you note for the recommendation from Luis Colon.

Another book that moved into my household around this time is Kenneth Clark’s Landscape into Art. It’s a “tidied up” version of lectures that Clark gave during the winter of 1945-6, during his first year as a Slade Professor at Oxford.

Clark examines the landscapes of Symbols, Fact, Fantasy, the Ideal, Natural Vision, Northern Lights and The Return to Order. It’s a long love poem examining the history, artists and soul of landscape painting.

On first reading, I was reminded of another “tidied up” series of lectures. In 1959, Aldous Huxley was invited to deliver lectures at University of California, Santa Barbara, on The Human Situation which were also developed into a book. That book has traveled with me since 1978.

Sure enough, the parallel held. Opening the Huxley lectures again, I found in the section “More Art in Nature”,

"There is something profoundly religious in landscape painting inasmuch as it seems to explore and to express that layer of the unconscious which is beyond the personal unconscious and which, it seems to me, is just as much given, impersonal, and not immediately connected with me as the external world. So the value of landscape paintings is not merely that they present us with images of the external world, but that they present us in the most powerful way with images of this deep, fundamental essence of Mind at large, from which the individual mind takes its source."

I then found Richard Kendall’s Degas Landscapes and Edgar Degas: The Last Landscapes, led by Ann Dumas’ entry “Degas, The Secret Landscapist”.

Let’s just say that I took to Degas’ landscapes in a big way. Both of these books have since inspired and fueled my soul, my drawings, watercolors, and teaching. Each book has many, many post-it notes sticking out the top, the sides and bottoms of pages.

I could wade much further into the weeds here, but I'll save that for another time, except to say that I became obsessed with one particular image enough to copy it in watercolor over and over again.

Degas did not paint in watercolor. Along with oil and pastel, he was seriously into monotypes, often intimately connected to his use of photography.

This small (10 5/8 x 14 1/8 inches) pastel and oil paint over monotype on laid paper, is not in either of the aforementioned books. It’s in the Morgan Library which didn’t digitize their collection until 2014. So I probably first spotted it while teaching in Raleigh.

Since the pandemic, I’ve taught exclusively online. In the last decade or so, I’ve taught, not entirely, but primarily through the use of historic painters and images. I’ll save the whys and wherefores for another post.

But this little monotype served as the model for a favorite lesson in 2023. I tried out my colors in a tiny scribble.

Then I filmed the step by step development of the 9” x 12”, featured at top, as my demo for that segment of the lesson. It took another year for me to satisfy my urge to blow it up full sheet.

Both the small and the full sheet copies are up on my walls within glancing distance at all times. I’m not tired of them yet.

As I said, I could go on but that’s absolutely plenty, if not a little too much.

“Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people’s experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.” —Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

As John Mulaney pointed out six years ago, there’s a horse loose in a hospital. (Watch it! if you haven’t already.)

Anyone operating with half a brain cell must acknowledge that, on his second visit to the hospital, this horse is a genius at attracting attention. In fact, it’s fair to say that this horse is addicted to capturing attention from every possible source, everywhere, 24/7.

That would include my attention. I don’t like it. I do like being informed about national and world affairs but not to this pathological degree, to the exclusion of other things I have to think about.

Combine this with the recent industries reaping unprecedented profits from a craftier sleight of hand. Who, exactly, is controlling my eyeballs, my thoughts, my oh, so limited time on earth? Who is controlling yours?

Like most of us, I have other things to think about. Even if that’s just about physically navigating what’s in my immediately vicinity.

I am dependent on what I’ve heard stand ups refer to as self-assignment. It’s an independent creative’s necessity. With self-assignment, you have to come up with a task, a reason for the task, a deadline for the task, allot time to work on the task, and motivation. Unless you’re set financially or outside of the capitalist machinery, motivation is usually linked to financial reward. In creative fields and endeavors, financial reward, unless you’re established, is rarely a guarantee. My essential point is that, all of this attentional time—for teaching, for writing, for painting, for practicing musical instruments, dance - takes up a lot of thinking time and space.

This sort of thinking time requires freedom.

Freedom. It’s an overused word that, once bandied about politically, sort of lost its meaning. Like “liberal” and “conservative”. The freedom I refer to is that of time and space. Attentional time and space. Freedom of thought requires dominion over one’s attention.

Personally, I can’t stand my participation in this hijacking of my personal attention anymore. It’s interfering with my ability to work, to be inspired, to create.

Of course, it’s ironic that I am writing and publishing this on Substack, what has become another crowded highway of words and reels clamoring for your (or anyone’s) attention.

What I’ve been doing to reclaim my attention is scattered, unplanned and often uncomfortable. It’s a bit of bait and switch, but whatever works.

While I’ve been out on sick leave, I deleted my Facebook account, have kept my Instagram for now (so I don’t go cold turkey), and for relief, have been listening to books that generally fall into a “magical realism” category. Some are better than others. Time travel of any sort has always been attractive to me. It’s been fun. I intend to continue this pursuit in lieu of pundit podcasts.

Instead of tackling formal paintings, I’ve been doing what I would categorize as doodling. This is not at all satisfying but at least I’ve been taking action. Failure (which falls under the not at all satisfying action) has an odd effect of making me want to do better rather than giving up in defeat. This is good. It’s an irritating, humbling, perverted sort of motivation but as long as I don’t give up, it’s good.

I’ve been planting baby life forms that will soon produce a garden. Gardening. Gardening requires a leap of faith, an acceptance of failure and death as a normal course of events, a willingness to see what happens, hope and curiosity. It’s dirty. It’s messy. It’s beautiful and miraculous. After hours of semi-annual lifting, hauling, digging, et al, I’m reminded that I need at least 24 hours of recovery from using muscles I forgot that I had. It’s a perfectly acceptable discomfort for the ultimate reward. New life. Beauty.

I am hacking out this unplanned missive because if I lose one more week of writing discipline, I may lose the overall thread entirely. I don’t want to do that. As the saying goes, imperfect action is better than perfect action. Amen.

Honestly, I don’t know how Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception showed up in my Audible library. I didn’t buy it. But there it is and I’ve been listening. As revolutionary as this description of his mescaline trip was, the writing is obtuse in an antique sort of way. I love Aldous Huxley but mostly for his essays on The Human Situation and just for being him.

I also have a paperback copy of Island that I’ve been moving from room to room while advancing the bookmark page by page. It’s such an important novel but, like so many other things at this moment, it feels a little archaic at the same time.

Still, the take away from Huxley’s remarkable journey through life, what he learned, observed, and shared with us is, basically, the importance of paying attention.

What are you paying attention to?

“Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.” —Aldous Huxley, Island

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Twenty years ago, right about now, a big, black uncle cat carried food scraps from my neighbor to the only survivor of a kitten litter under the house next door in Nashville, TN.

For long time fans and followers of Tallulah, this is a bit of a rerun but it’s a big day around here and worth a special observance. Tallulah is celebrating her 20th birthday on this full moon first of April, 2026.

I think she’s still quite a beauty for the centenary mark (of course, I do), but you can judge for yourself (at top).

She still ventures out a few times a week to graze on the immediate lawn and catch a few rays. She sleeps a lot, is mostly deaf and on meds for high blood pressure, arthritis, her thyroid and kidneys. I can’t do anything about her poor teeth but she still chows down her puréed treats, homemade and canned food. Most of the time.

20 years ago, my Nashville studio was supposed to be a cat-free zone. But when this dusty, flea bitten kitten showed up, I had to break my own rule.

After normal wild kitten tending to, she cleaned up quite nicely and immediately took to (mostly) indoor life.

Ginger Ale and Alonso eventually welcomed her into the household. (A friend once remarked that I lived with the Charlie’s Angels of cats.)

We all got along famously until the day came when there were only the two of us. This didn’t seem to bother Tallulah much. She assumed her rightly position as if to say, Now, you are all mine!

I almost lost her a few times. Twice to raging hyperthyroid disease. She survived successful thyroid surgery. Another time to a saddle thrombus from which I managed to nurse her back from paralysis (almost unheard of). A number of events would not have been manageable without the veterinary skills of Page Wages and Keri Reeves, and the generous help of dear friends and members of her fan club. She and I thank you all very, very much from the bottom of our hearts.

I’ll be happy to pass along your birthday greetings. Although she still enjoys her fresh catnip, she’s not much interested in toys or presents anymore. If you live with a companion animal, you’ll appreciate that her medications are way more expensive than mine so she is open to elder care contributions in lieu of birthday presents.

Tallulah has traveled like a champ, far and wide, from coast to coast. Enjoy a brief review of some memorable stops along the way. In no particular order.

Of course, there’s no place like home.

Robins have been hopping all over the wormy ground here for at least a month. Now that we’ve passed the vernal equinox, it’s officially spring and the air is filled with their whistling, tschp, tschp, tschp, and trills. The air is also filled with yellow pollen that incessantly coats everything. Including my nasal passages.

Each year about this time, I remember and listen to a favorite song.

The story goes that in the early spring of 1880, Edvard Grieg found a volume of poems by Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, a lawyer and renowned Norwegian journalist and writer. The poems were written in Landsmål, an early version of what would become one of the two official modern Norwegian languages.

Both Vinje and Grieg—each in their own fashion—were Norwegian Romantic Nationalists. In short order, Grieg set fifteen of these poems to music but tossed 3 of those before he completed his manuscript of 12 Melodies to Poems by A. O. Vinje, Op. 33, on what looks like May 20, 1880.

I only know this song because, once upon a time, I happened to find Per Vollestad's magnificent recording of Edvard Grieg: Songs with Orchestra for $1 at a yard sale in Florida.

The recording is long out of print but you can listen on YouTube here.

The poet describes beholding spring for what may be his last time. You can read a translation here.

My first serious job was at Theodore Presser, a music publisher located in a cavernous, mint green warehouse by the Bryn Mawr train station. I was hired, essentially because of my handwriting, to work in the retail store while in high school. Later, I managed the import department, surrounded by skyscraper tall metal shelving units where stacks of sheet music were filed alphabetically, in several languages, by instrumentation. We took inventory by the inch, with a ruler. I didn’t have to pull and carry much but I did learn how heavy paper is.

In subsequent jobs, large parts of my duties involved organizing paper. At McCabe’s in Santa Monica, along with other duties, I was hired to tackle a pair of file cabinets in the owner’s office whose drawers could not shut because they were so overstuffed. That tiny, smoky, filthy space with dusty louvered windows open to Pico Boulevard, was jam packed with utter disarray, and supported on one shelf the first personal computer I ever saw. As the owner stirred his coffee with a rarely washed tuning fork, he would promote his belief in chaos theory, explaining that the place may look like a mess but there was, in fact an underlying order and that he knew where everything was. I would bum a Merit cigarette and continue to advocate for alphabetization of the paper files where I once found, amongst other things, a plastic alligator.

Probably some of my organizational skill was inherent but I certainly had a lot of practice honing it. Decades later, one supervisor’s words still ring in my head, “A misfiled file is a lost file!”

Organizing offices, itineraries, files, personal effects, et al, for other people, provided me with a sense of order, a sense of calm. While determining what went where, I learned so much while reading documents and letters and other stuff of life committed to paper.

Today, I intended to write an article about paper, and I probably will in the future. So much of my life involves and revolves around paper. I start every day with a fountain pen, writing in my paper journal, working out plans, neuroses, ideas. I draw and paint on paper. I compose on paper. I teach about the use and history of paper.

I am currently surrounded by paper. My library is in disarray. I have boxes, portfolios and piles of artwork to organize. My studio has sketch books and stacks of used and about to be used drawing and watercolor paper that need sorting. Then there are the little stack of books for different lessons and projects in various spots. Can you feel the rising hysteria in my description?

It looks like I’m not going to write about paper after all. I started to, but it led me to reverie about organizing paper. I’m going for a sense of order and calm. I need it in order to work.

With the ever-expanding chaos in the world at large, and the little on-again, off-again emergencies of every day life, I’m finding it extra difficult to focus on work. So I’m devoting the rest of what’s left of today and available time tomorrow to organizing my own domain.

Once I put these aforementioned things in order, I’ll be free to think more clearly and work more easily. I suspect that, if only temporarily, I’ll feel a little bit more at ease, even if it’s an illusion, as the world continues to turn

.

Back at the dawn of Reaganomics, I worked a part-time job with the title, “Investment Research Librarian” for a private investor in Los Angeles who also happened to be Chairman of the Republican Finance Committee of California. (I didn’t seek the job, the job found me.)

In fact, I was a glorified file clerk who ordered, opened and filed the top Quarterly and Annual Reports for about 2400 corporations while wondering who, in their right minds actually believed that earnings would increase for each with every report. I mean, didn’t they learn about Newton sitting under the apple tree?

When I wasn’t working in what was, in fact, a huge closet, I was painting portraits on commission and performing my songs at anti-nuclear and CISPES rallies, and opening for Gore Vidal during his California Senate campaign. Back at work, I would bump into H. R. Bob Haldeman in the lunch room and chit chat while we made our cups of coffee. For example.

I can’t say that it was a double-life or that I was duplicitous. With some exceptions, people of differing viewpoints were not so fractious then. My friends and most of those with whom I worked knew, more or less, how I was earning my rent and spending the rest of my time. I considered the job to be a rare opportunity for observation. Eventually, that part-time job took its toll on my moral sensibility, but I did learn a lot. Especially having just previously been previously involved, in a completely different world and way, with the final days of the Carter White House.

Looking back from 2026, one thing is clear. The world of high-finance can defy the law of gravity as long as there isn’t any moral conscience at play.

All that is just memory lane preface. One day, my supervisor, the Sr. Vice President walked into my “office” to ask what I was doing. I must not have given him a satisfactory answer (I was probably typing out lyrics on my IBM Selectric). So, he gave me a task of accounting for every five minutes of my time by checking my watch and writing down my activity. To be fair, he was a three-degree Harvard Business grad with a doctorate in Decision and Control Theory. I don’t remember ever actually handing over an accounting of my time.

But that lesson stuck with me.

Over my decades of teaching, I have often recommended that students set a timer for 15 minutes and then to just start working on whatever it is they’re avoiding working on. It’s not an original idea and it definitely works. 15 minutes seems to be just enough time to overcome avoidance and become involved in whatever task is at hand.

Currently, I am on a 20-minute practice spree. While a drawing might take a minute or two, twenty minutes is almost just enough time to make a satisfying watercolor.

There’s plenty more to say about time and management and practice but that’s it for words today. Below is raw footage with various utterings of a watercolor in twenty minutes. Okay, twenty-nine.

One more thing… When I was out in public markets, I was frequently asked by someone looking at a watercolor, “How long did it take you to do this?” Always struck by the odd question, there were any number of replies depending on what was being pointed to. Two hours? A week? A month?

The correct and uniform answer is, “All my life.”

Creative ideas often begin as a chaotic set of unruly threads that loosely weave together until some form takes shape. It’s a mysterious process.

I am currently at work on a course exploring the spiritual, the sacred, and symbolic in art. One image that first came to mind was the Chi Rho page from the Book of Kells. I remembered kneeling backwards on our moss green Naugahyde armchair to closely examine the woven lines and spiral patterns, the human heads and animals entwined in the print on the wall behind.

Then I took a mental inventory of what my mother hung on our living room walls and realized, or remembered, that I grew up amidst sacred imagery. It may not have struck me as unusual while growing up as sacred images and religious symbols were part of the air that I breathed in convent schools from K through 12, mass on Sundays and every day in summer at the only Catholic summer camp in the Catskills.

In reconstructing the main artwork from my childhood home, I have burrowed down many rabbit holes only to back out quickly or risk emotional exhaustion.

Deciding on a title for this post was a challenge. Sacred art? No, this art was in our house with all the unpredictable traffic, activity and emotional upheavals. Religious art? Some might say so but I would argue that religious art is found in churches and places of worship.

I thought that I had it for a minute with the word sanctuary, what might describe a sacred space, a place of refuge, or a protected area for wildlife. I could easily argue that my mother created a protected area for her two wild and heathen children.

This is a visual tour of lost things. A love letter to my mother, her deep faith and exquisite artistic sensibilities.

Always, just inside the front door over the switch plate there was a small, framed Rédouté card. I have echoed this tradition by hanging a framed watercolor flower painting of my own in the same location in my many, many places of residence.

Our living room opened up to the right of our front door where the main attraction was the large Madonna of the Oranges, a late 19th century print of some kind on a ropy textured canvas. This was my mother’s prize possession and hung above the mantle.

I spent many hours examining the leaves and folded fabric and carpet design. So many that years later, I made a cartoon from memory. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of and cannot find that though I’m sure I’ll come across it as soon as this missive is posted.

On a long wall over the sofa hung “A Map of the United States of America Showing a Part of the Role Played by Catholics in its Discovery, Exploration, Development and Defense” I seem to remember that my mother received this from George Robbins, an architect she once worked for.

I spent a lot more time on my knees (and feet for the top parts) against the back of the sofa reading the inscriptions and admiring the drawing and watercolor work. After landing in California in my early 20s, I learned to reassess the persons and activities on this map. Still, history is time-bound and this was an historical document.

Not this exactly but one like it with more musical notation, less text hung near the Chi Rho. I probably worked out some of the Latin midway through high school but remember being more intrigued by the very large sheet of slightly buckled vellum and the application of ink on the page of what must have been a huge hymnal.

My mother moved her Della Robia Madonna and Child ceramic around the house a bit. Again, a slightly different presentation than ours of the Christ child, but the wreath of fruit and blue are identical. This was always, and still is, refreshing to lay eyes on.

Somewhere there hung a Hummel Child Jesus holy water font, and yes, there were crucifixes above switch plates inside the bedroom doors. For years, I thought that having a crucified body on display in the house was a bit barbaric. Recently, though, I’ve come to think that in a way, it’s just a Catholic reminder of the Buddhist teaching that suffering is a fundamental aspect of human existence. Like the Buddhist ways of overcoming suffering caused by desire, attachment, and ignorance through the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, so there is the Catholic path which has changed over the centuries but must be just as valid, along with other paths if we’re ever going to have peace on earth. Okay, with certain exceptions. Like Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. And those nouveau Catholic White Nationalists and Technocrats. And the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. And, but I digress…

If this large inventory of Catholic imagery seems odd to anyone reading, I should tell you that my mother’s paternal great uncle was Rev. Lawrence J. Wall who spent his pastoral life developing St. Dominic’s in Philadelphia. St. Katherine Drexel credited him with influencing her to enter the convent.

My mother’s paternal uncle, Rev. Patrick F. Fogarty, held many pastorates in the Philadelphia area and was known to be accompanied everywhere, later in life, by his large Irish Setter, Pony. Her cousin, Rev. James R. Fogarty (Father Jim), was pastor of St. Rose of Lima Church in Philadelphia and later of St. Anne’s in Phoenixville.

There was a great flurry of excitement in preparation for a visit one afternoon from a distant cousin, Bishop Bernard Patrick Wall of Brentwood, UK. Our living room walls set a good stage for the occasion.

It’s a pity, and sometimes a crime, that so many Catholic children experienced such a range of tortures. Still, my heart has sunk the many times I’ve encountered truly vehement hostility of so many ex-Catholics towards their upbringing related to the church. I’ve navigated such a treacherous personal experience adjacent to Born Again Christianity that for decades I could not utter the name of Jesus out loud. Religion. Deep sigh. Although I haven’t practiced throughout my adult life, I still consider myself Catholic and feel relieved that my related experiences were good thanks to my parents and teachers and companions.

When asked to state my religious preference, I usually shrug and write down Buddhist. That’s where I find sense and refuge. And frankly, thanks to my mother, I can trace that back to early exposure to Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton, as much as to my later lay-Buddhist training.

But back to the tour.

There was some secular art in the house. My bedroom walls till the age of ten featured Degas-like charcoals or pastels of ballet dancers in preparation.

A personal favorite for up-close study was a print of George Biddle’s drawing and watercolor, “Don Juan, Santo Domingo”, 1927. Lots of donkeys! And a couple of dogs looking not unlike some in the Book of Kells.

I recently discovered that this print was included as a reproduction in the July, 1937, issue of Scribner’s Magazine. I found and immediately ordered a copy on eBay. No. 5 in its American Painters Series, the facing page features an absolutely delightful bio on Biddle written by Bernard Myers. I am sure that’s where our Biddle print must have come from.

In the dining room, my mother hung a fox hunt print over the mahogany sideboard. I never really got that or examined it very closely but it must have been a fashion statement of sorts. On two occasions, I spotted the very same print in houses of high school friends.

A four-panel black folding screen decorated with Meiji-like bamboo and egrets stood in one corner of the living room behind which was stored folding card tables and chairs for my parents’ bridge games. A late addition was a pair of very attractive green and gold glazed ceramic Fu Dogs on stands that guarded a book case while keeping some special books upright.

Still struggling with a proper title for this thing, my mind turned to the books those Fu Dogs guarded. Amongst the others, Shakespeare. I was reminded that all the world is indeed a stage and here were the backdrops for my first two acts.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women, merely Players;
They have their Exits and their Entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His Acts being seven ages.
                —William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII 

As I was considering this post on the Chinese Fire Horse New Year, I kept thinking of an old, odd, spontaneous painting that escaped the circular file. I knew that I’d kept it because every once in a while, I’ve come across it.

When I don’t have a specific project on the drafting table and I don’t feel like thinking too hard about what to paint, I’ll sometimes just slop some watercolor onto paper. Once in a while, a sort of recognizable form will present itself and if I’m interested and have time, I’ll develop that form. Just for fun.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to look too hard for that painting and here it is. I have little memory of making it but it’s dated late December 1997, to early January 1998. I was living in Charleston then so I know what table it was birthed on and what window I looked out through. It’s titled Breaking Free: The Possible Horse. Still partially saddled but untamed or startled. Free of reins. What’s left of the saddle and stirrups rock a Tang Horse vibe.

I must have made it for today. It so well describes what I’ve read about the character of the new and upcoming year, according to Chinese Astrology.

火馬

This morning at 7:01 AM Eastern, we have the New Moon. Traditionally, New Moons are good for planting seeds, setting goals and starting new projects. However, today’s New Moon also happens to also be a Solar Eclipse which is not a good time to set intentions.

Solar eclipses are tricky sleights of hand that interrupt the normal energetic scheme. Day, dusk, dark, dusk day. All in just a few hours. Unsettling, even if you’re not directly under the celestial light show. The eclipse sets something in motion whether you choose it or not.

But wait, there’s more. I am not an astrologer by any stretch of the imagination but I listen, on and off, to a few who’ve been at that practice for years and who’s interpretations I find palatable.

Frankly, I let the technicalities of conjunctions, trines, planetary movements and such slide in one ear and out the other but an occasional interpretation will hit pay dirt and encourage or inspire me with helpful perspective. I’ll take helpful perspective wherever I can find it.

Here’s Simon of Raising Vibrations’ take on this Solar Eclipse in Aquarius. He concludes with three prompts to ask yourself:

• Where does my life no longer reflect my values?

• What future do I sense and what would it require me to change?

• What am I ready to live, not just understand?

Molly McCord, another seasoned pro, shares her Solar Eclipse interpretation here.

火馬

Jing Gao, entrepreneur and cultural interpreter, says this about the Fire Horse. Two highlights worth remembering from her 2 minutes and 40 seconds:

“Fire Horse energy doesn’t wait for anyone”

“Care for yourself, and care for each other.”

In China, the New Year permits at least a week off. Wherever you are, give yourself as much space and time as you possibly can for a couple of weeks. Ground and center yourself in every way that you can. It’s totally worth it.

Hang on to your hat and your saddle. Focus on your breath and inner strength. Be aware of what input you allow into your private space. That includes your eyes, your body, your mind and your soul.

Personally, I will ride into this new year practicing the instructions of Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara who recently led the Walk for Peace from Fort Worth to D.C.

"Peace always begins from with ourself. It's not the world peace out there,"
—Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara

Every morning, when you wake up, repeat to yourself, “Today will be my peaceful day.” Then write that down. “Today will be my peaceful day.” Then breathe. Repeat.

It’s late. I have more to say but for now, I’ll leave you with a Confucius quote I am reminded of.

“We have two lives. When we realize that we only have one, the second begins.”

Happy New Year.

PS. I forgot to add Ronny Chieng’s translation of classic Chinese New Year greeting.

Yesterday, I pulled out my tattered copy of Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art. This 1914 translation is dense with archaic prose and is mostly an argument to support Kandinsky’s theory of—really ideas about a spiritual approach to the arts.

In general, I am all about direct experience and don’t have much patience for theory. However, I don’t mind saying that here, at what must be the tail end of late stage capitalism, I’m sick to death of material and financial excess. That’s why I reached for the Kandinsky book. And look what I found him writing before the Russian Revolution and World War 1.

“The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.”

— Wassily Kandinsky, 1910. Concerning the Spiritual in Art (M.T.H. Sadler, Trans.)

Not yet past by a long shot.

In 1909, the artist, Gabriele Münter bought a house with a garden in Murnau, Germany. She and Kandinsky had traveled together since 1903. Kandinsky helped Münter paint more quickly and spontaneously, and while living together in Murnau, he was inspired by her paintings to use more saturated colors in a more expressive manner.

While together in Murnau, they hosted artist friends—the painters Frans Marc, Maria Franck, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Auguste Macke and his wife, the writer Elisabeth Macke. Together, they explored, sketched, painted, played and argued. They experienced the colors and forms of nature and landscape, contending with application of paint, composition, color, form, representation. All good fodder for soul searching and developing ideas.

Modern European painting emerged from their artwork, conversations and writing in that idyllic Bavarian setting.

In 1911, Münter, Kandinsky and Marc formed Der Blaue Reiter, a group to organize exhibits. Along with exhibits, Kandinsky wrote Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and together, they created Der Blaue Reiter Almanac. There was only one edition but two publication runs.

World War I intervened, scattered the artists and both Marc and Macke were killed at the front. Münter and Kandinsky moved to Switzerland, then Kandinsky returned to Russia alone. They split up, and after the war, Münter returned to Germany where she collected and stored in a warehouse much of the artwork from that Murnau idyll.

“Hitler’s rise to power on 30 January 1933, was quickly followed by the censorship of modern art: book burnings were organized, artists and musicians were dismissed from teaching positions, and curators who had shown a partiality for modern art were replaced by Party members.”

“As dictator, Hitler gave his personal taste in art the force of law to a degree never before seen. Only in Stalin’s Soviet Union, where Socialist Realism was the mandatory style, had a modern state shown such concern with regulation of the arts. In the case of Germany, the model was to be classical Greek and Roman art, regarded by Hitler as an art whose exterior form embodied an inner racial ideal.”

—Wikipedia entry on Degenerate Art

Münter moved all of the warehoused Blaue Reiter artwork to her house in Murnau where she hid and preserved it. During WW II, Murnau was a hotbed of both Nazi activity and resistance. While loads of modern art was destroyed throughout the Third Reich, even after several house searches, Münter managed to save what was produced there between 1909 to 1914.

The “degenerate” artwork not sold abroad was burned. The work of the Blaue Reiter group and its influence was thanks to international sales of the Almanac, artwork sold abroad by the Nazis, and post-war, the work that Münter preserved and protected.

Since my early 20s, I’ve been strongly influenced by Kandinsky’s ideas. Now, I know that those ideas could not have only been his. They were some amalgamation of his own and Gabriele Münter’s along with their guests at Murnau.

To this day, more than anything, I continue to find creative guiding light in Kandinsky’s Blue Rider Almanac essay, “On the Question of Form”, especially the notion of what he describes as the White Fertilizing Ray, and the Black Death Bringing Hand.

“This act of choosing, so that the spiritual may take form, is the positive, the creative; the good: The white, fertilizing ray.

“This white ray leads to evolution, to elevation. However, the Creative Spirit is not only hidden behind matter, but also concealed within matter. The veiling of the Spirit in the material is often so dense that there are generally few people who can see through to the Spirit (since the eyes of people, generally at such times, cannot see the Spirit). It was so in the nineteenth century and is on the whole still so today.

“People are blinded. A black hand is laid over their eyes. The black hand belongs to the person who hates. He who hates, endeavors with all means at his disposal to hold back this evolution, this elevation. This holding back is the negative, the destructive. This is the evil: The black, death-bringing hand.”

I guess the question here then is how long will the nightmare of materialism hold the awakening soul in its grip?

Or maybe the better question is, how long will the awakening soul allow the nightmare of materialism to keep the upper hand?

“History is just one damned thing after another.”

Well, isn’t this interesting? All these years, I’ve attributed this quote to Winston Churchill.

But I double checked just now. In fact it was Arnold Toynbee who wrote it to describe an interpretation of history with which he disagreed. It was a take-off of an older, popular expression that life was one damned thing after another.

Although I’ve taken a handful of history courses along the way, mostly of art and music, I can’t say that it ever occurred to me to pursue a formal academic study of history. And yet, I have spent my entire adult life studying history.

In my late teens, I became obsessed with Gustav Mahler and immersed myself in relevant details of the fin de siècle Austrian Empire, the early 20th century cultural scene, his wife, his influences, and those he influenced. It was a massively fun way to study history.

This learning pattern stuck. I became a ravenously curious autodidact and had the fortune of falling into jobs where I worked beside people who were either at the top of their fields or who had lived very interesting lives, all carrying histories with them. I can’t say that I earned much money, but boy, I learned a lot.

A considerable number of my songs are based in history and whaddaya know? After the absolute basics, all of my drawing and watercolor teaching has drawn on (pun intended) history.

Although I did not set out to focus on history, I must refer to my formal baby picture (see above) taken by Itaro Okada.

Maybe this Toynbee book was in my father’s pocket when Mr. Okada asked for a prop, it could have been a joke, or possibly handed over with more aspirational intention. I’ll never know but I do think it’s hilarious.

Along with Shakespeare, Beethoven, recordings and recording equipment, my father was a loyal fan of Arnold Toynbee. In fact, I have a letter from Toynbee to my father framed up on my wall.

I always intended to read Toynbee but have never gotten past a few paragraphs and can’t say that I fully understand his theoretical model. What I did glean, correct or not, is that civilizations are born, develop (or not), mature and die. So, they’re kind of like us. This idea has always seemed logical to me. After all, what are civilizations but a bunch of humans being human?

While life may be one damned thing after another, a human life is finite. Damned things begin and damned things end.

Is that it? Can’t prove it, but I think not. I have no idea, no interest in scientific proof of this, it’s just a sense I have.

I was genuinely surprised when I asked my friend, Tony French about this, years ago. He said, no, nothing after death. When you’re dead, it’s over. For someone who helped to create the atomic and hydrogen bombs, who witnessed the aftermath of The Blitz, Chaired the Physics Department at South Carolina, and taught first year Quantum Physics at MIT for over a quarter of a century, it seemed a very sure response to something for which there is no proof, one way or another. I mean, that I know of.

So, what might happen before and after a human life is belief, conjecture, opinion, speculation. In my opinion.

Civilization, though, doesn’t just begin and end (except for the occasional natural or human-caused cataclysm). When a civilization ends, there are bardo-like movements of people across space and time until another civilization starts to cohere because of geography, weather, human individuals, that sort of thing.

Historian Michael Lang wrote that for much of the twentieth century, “Toynbee was perhaps the world’s most read, translated, and discussed living scholar.” As often is the case with popular people and ideas, they are clobbered with eventual criticism, fall out of favor, and all but forgotten.

I’ll get myself into trouble if I pretend to know any more about Toynbee than this except that I seem to remember that he experienced a shift in sentiment after the use of the atomic bomb and all that followed. I once owned a book called The Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue: Man Himself Must Choose (later renamed, perhaps unfortunately considering the new title’s later adoption as a movement banner). It was part of an effort Toynbee made to promote international dialogue for the sake of sanity.

If you’d like to learn more without diving into the deep end, the New York Times wrote a good obituary when Toynbee died in 1975.

Writing is such a fascinating process. I had no intention of writing about Toynbee but look at what’s unspooled.

Initially, I wanted to get at something about this moment we are living through and witness to. It feels different. There is a splitting apart of sorts. Not just factionally (or fictionally) but something pulling apart from the material realm. I’m reminded of Paolo Soleri’s book, The Bridge Between Matter and Spirit is Matter Becoming Spirit.

Toynbee suggested that spiritual rather than material forces controlled the course of history and that individuals played a creative (or destructive) role in the unfolding of events.

“According to an Editor’s Note in an edition of Toynbee’s A Study of History, Toynbee believed that societies always die from suicide or murder rather than natural causes; and nearly always the former. He sees the growth and decline of civilizations as a spiritual process, writing that “Man achieves civilization, not as a result of superior biological endowment or geographical environment, but as a response to a challenge in a situation of special difficulty which rouses him to make a hitherto unprecedented effort.” —from Toynbee’s Wikipedia entry

I would say that we are currently in “a situation of special difficulty” and that we are witnessing at least the beginnings of “hitherto unprecedented effort.”

It’s impossible to see the big picture when you’re right in the middle of the scenario but I have a hunch that there are spiritual matters involved.

•

Self-citation is generally frowned upon but apropos this post and general subject, I’m going to do it anyway and leave you with a personal favorite, the final verse of my song, Goose Steppin’. Just for the record, I wrote this 24 years ago.

History is a bunch of facts,
a lot of opinion and a bit of crap.
War and conquest, God and country
Greedy, crazy, power hungry.
Again and again the fools rush in
to follow the fool who claims he’s king.

Goose steppin’.

from Goose Steppin’, The Glory
©2002 Suzanne McDermott/Drexel Road Music (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved

I went to visit the Buddhist monks on their Walk for Peace in Pittsboro, NC.

As they approached their rest place for the evening, I was surprised to be handed flowers by one of the monks. I was not expecting that.

Dog crazy person that I am, it was a delight to spot Aloka on his first day back after recovering from surgery.

With a front row seat, I watched the Mayor of Pittsboro present the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara with an official something to add to his cīvarām.

Surrounded by children who had wormed their way up to the front, I listened to the evening talk as the yellow mums leaned against the back of one boy next to his mother.

Someone had bought and given the monk these flowers. He just passed them along to me. I’m looking at them right now.

Just as these flowers were passed along to me, in case you haven’t been following these monks or don’t understand the purpose of their Walk For Peace, I’ll pass the gist of it along here.

The message is pretty simple, the practice is, well, it’s a practice. Their walk is intended to promote peace, compassion, nonviolence, and mindfulness (or being present in the here and now).

The message is what Jill Jackson-Miller wrote in a song many of us grew up singing, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

The instructions are straightforward.

Every morning, tell yourself and then write it down, “Today will be my peaceful day.”

To practice stilling your mind, follow your breath. In. Out. In. Out.

Bhikkhu Pannakara specifically suggests focusing on the tip of your nose—not with your eyes but with your mind as your breath passes in and out. Practice not reacting (non-violence).

Easier said than done, of course. But again, it’s a practice and the mind is a wild beast unwilling to be controlled. This is meditation 101. Basically, it’s what I learned in Shambhala Training many years ago and what Pema Chödrön continues to teach now.

It works. And like drawing, it’s a practice.

Bhikkhu Pannakara also tells every gathered crowd to put down their “lovers” (cell phones), an hour before bed and to wait at least an hour in the morning before reaching for that phone.

My mind is terribly wild and even more so thanks to my cell phone. But if these men are walking from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. without stopping for rain, snow, sleet, ice, insults, or unfortunately, the loss of a leg, the least I can do is to pull myself together and practice stilling my mind. To practice peace.

Just to be clear, practicing peace involves deliberate actions to foster open communication, to resolve conflicts, to forgive and renew trust, from a non-reactive mental state. It does not mean doing nothing.

Almost every day, some variation of this message is shared at the monks’ mid-day and evening stops. Here’s one selected at random, delivered by Bhikkhu Pannakara at the Transfiguration Catholic Church in Blythewood, SC.

I don’t know what could be more important than practicing peace right now. So, just as the flowers were passed along to me, I’m passing this gift along to you.

If you need a little heart warming, visit this link to see photos of the monks in Raleigh at the State Capitol with Governor Stein, the mayor, and the Capitol City Police.

In 2022, a week or two after the invasion of Ukraine, I interrupted my previously scheduled teaching program to make a bonus module on Ukrainian art, the first target of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Last night, as I write this in 2026, “President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Russia had fired “a significant number” of ballistic and cruise missiles, along with over 300 attack drones, across the country overnight…[leaving] more than 5,600 high-rise buildings…without heat on Tuesday.”—NYT

It’s very cold right now. This series of moves is an ancient and effective conquest method going back to the earliest records of history. First kill the soul, then kill the body.

In 2022, the first report I read was about the destruction of The Museum of Local History in Ivankiv that housed many of Maria Pryimachenko‘s work.

Then I read that the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol had been destroyed, I looked into the artist it was named for and learned about Arkhip Kuindzhi and found examples of his work. Other artists whose work were housed in the same museum included Ivan Aivazovsky, Victoria Kovalchuk, Vasily Vereshchagin, Ivan Shishkin.

Important architectural, world heritage and world monument sites were also threatened, damaged or destroyed. You can find a list of those to date here and the Ukrainian religious sites destroyed as of 30 March 22.

That’s just a sliver of the lesson I delivered almost four years ago and, ofcourse the human and cultural atrocities have since multiplied.

The most interesting thing I learned through my research was about Ukrainian traditional embroidery, fabric patterns, and their regional variations, the meaning behind traditional patterns in Ukrainian embroidery, vintage patterns of Ukrainian traditional embroidery and the Vyshyvanka.

As I write this on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I’ll just add that there are more ways to kill art, culture and history for that matter, than by bombing buildings.

Patterns of the past might be used as templates but the present is ever changing and the future is unknown.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

World Central Kitchen is feeding Ukrainians in need right now. Donate here.

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