Month: September 2010
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Turning
I don’t need the calendar to tell me that fall has arrived. For one thing, the enormous garden spiders are back, guarding our house and reveling in the rain that’s come early this year. For another, when the sun finally came out, and the skies cleared, the air was suddenly crisper, thinner, fragile in its…
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Nose to the grindstone
Lately I’ve spent nearly every waking minute of each day with my face an inch away from the drafting table. Let’s step back, and stretch out a bit. My studio is often a sea of papers—an occupational hazard—but these days the swells have consisted of pencil snapshots for my Mt. Rainier book. Dozens, and dozens,…
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Blue ribbon morning
Judging by the chilly rain that’s suddenly arrived, the rapidly diminishing daylight and the maples that are already starting to turn, summer is officially over. But maybe it’s all those years I spent going to the Minnesota State Fair, because the end of summer has always got me dreaming of still-hot days and fried food…
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On a Mission
As autumn approaches and the inevitable rainy season knocks at our doors, Jessica and I are dreaming of the sunny skies of Arizona—where the not-so-sunny SB 1070, the state’s contentious new immigration reform bill, was signed into law earlier this year. At every turn, controversy pricks underfoot and looms overhead—with no easy, clear-cut answers in…