My that was a truly lovely holiday season. I’d be counting my blessings, but, truly, I can’t count that high.
The gouache above is a “picture in my head” from our 5 days in the Alaskan Interior in early November. We went chasing the Northern Lights with dear friends. We failed, but we had the most lovely time together. However, I do not need to be in <0° weather again any time soon…
I realized my vision of building a community Thanksgiving in my apartment complex — and it was everything I could have hoped for. People came and had a great time (someone brought a niece was had concert piano skills and entertained us during appetizers). There was too much food and just enough good will. It felt like the type of extended family I grew up in, where “Uncle Jimmy” might have too much to drink, but the in-laws-to-be were graciously engaging him in conversation while the kids waited to see how soon they might escape.
December was a blur of gatherings and events – some big, some small, and, of course, the most important being those times we gathered in our own home to share food and love and gratitude for the friendships, the people, the time we have together, however short or long that may be.
And after all that busy-ness, we are back in the redwood forests enjoying days of quiet, holiday leftovers (how many types of stew can I make?) and torrential, life-giving rains.
I am enjoying some time to gear up painting again and am feeling good (not great) about it. I am contemplating the many observations I am taking away from the past 8 weeks and wondering in what form they will mature and blossom. And I am looking forward to all that this year holds in store – so many wonderful gifts, so much of it about time together with those we love and hold so dear in our lives.
So while 2025 had its emotional challenges and 2026 is starting off with a bang (for some dictators, not all), I am ready to embrace the days and weeks ahead, each one a precious moment I hope I can fully savor.
Best wishes to you for the year ahead — only you can make it rich and rewarding. Happy 2026.
When I was in grammar school, I was bullied by the “big kid” in class. As I recall it, this bullying was very specific — he wanted my lunch and he got it. Now, mind you, I usually had pretty great lunches: Homemade sandwiches, homemade baked goods and from time to time, fresh lobster rolls (this is a story for another time, but my grandfather was a lobsterman and during the times my father, a union worker, was out on strike lobster is what sustained us as a family — tough, I know).
So for several weeks I went without a lunch. One day this came to a head. I was both physically hungry when I got home from school as well as emotionally exhausted from my daily submission to this bully. I do not recall who else was aware of it in my circle of friends and classmates – certainly not the teacher because it would have ended with her, I’m sure. My mother pressed me as to my apparently obvious condition and I caved, letting all the stress, tension and sense of near starvation pour out to my great protector.
And protect me she did, because never once again to I recall having my lunch taken from me by this person.
I’m sure you all agree that bullying is bad. Bullying can leave a young child with a lifelong fear of aggressive behavior, with pent-up anger, with a great sense of harm done and self-righteousness earned.
I’ve carried this story with me for nearly 6 decades, repeating it many times, most often with the details about lobster rolls, which seem to lend a sense of justification to the bully’s behavior and give a warm touch to the tale.
But the knife cuts both ways, doesn’t it? As an adult, I came to realize that so much of the bully’s behavior was driven by his own family’s poverty. He came to school in old, dirty clothes — no matter how financially-strapped we were, our mother would never ever have let us go to school in something torn, stained or ill-fitting. He came to school without lunch. Whereas the rest of our small class had paper sacks and cartoon classic lunchboxes, he was most always empty-handed. That meant he was hungry. Had he even had breakfast? Or dinner the night before? And he was a large (big-framed) boy, so he clearly was wanting for proteins and carbs. So he did what he needed to do; he identified me as his provider, or his victim, and he took from me what he no doubt felt he needed more and that he deserved.
His circumstances didn’t justify his tormenting of me. But it certainly has made me see his aggressions in a different light. Of course I would have shared (maybe), had he only asked nicely (unlikely).
It’s so easy to armchair quarterback this. The lunch was mine, provided by my mother and 100% totally belonging to me and provided for my personal sustenance. Taking my lunch, particularly taking it in an aggressive manner, wasn’t justified by his circumstance, no matter how hungry he may have felt, no matter how right he was that food was easier for me to get than for him. The food was mine. And because he chose — or only knew — an aggressive path toward acquiring what he wanted and felt he deserved, we both ended up suffering.
I wonder if he remembers this today, and what has become of his life given the challenges he faced in his upbringing. I wonder if only I wonder how we could have navigated those moments better, together, for a more mutually rewarding result. Would 10 year old me be willing to share his sandwich? Would 10 year old him be able to say, “I’m hungry, can you help me?”
And what happened after I told my mother the truth? I don’t recall speaking with the teacher or principal, so it’s likely someone else in my family did. Did the teacher then reprimand the bully? Was he put on warning for his behavior and “theft?” We had no food kitchen available where I lived (I don’t think – not that I am aware of). Was he just made to feel shame or anger or “less than” and wrong?
Oh to be able to go back with my full adult self in that first moment when everything could have (possibly) gone differently. But that’s the cruel thing about life, isn’t it. There’s no going back, there’s only going forward and hoping that we carry forward these experiences and these thoughts into a better world for tomorrow.
One last thing. If you think this is about Venezuela, you are likely right. I’m not totally sure.
It’s been a busy past few months, and I’ve given permission for many things to take me away from writing and painting.
Isn’t it wonderful how, in the midst of our hectic, over scheduled, anxious and often chaotic lives there are these shining moments of profound joy. Moments of Grace, some of my friends would say. Yes, I agree, moments of grace.
A few weeks ago we got a call from an old neighbor, someone we hadn’t seen in quite a few years and someone with whom we never spoke frequently but with whom we always had a close and warm friendship built over decades of living next door to one another and always insisting on intentionally holding a gracious, inclusive relationship. There were never disagreements, there were always helping hands, there was always genuine happiness in greetings and, as with so many things that bring us such joy, never enough time given to the friendship.
The phone call brought us back to our old haunt in the form of attending a block party set up by the newer, younger residents who now called the alley home. We were the “old timers” who had helped create the new neighborhood through advocacy, political will and persistent presence. We were the ones with the infamous Christmas Tree that could be seen from Outer Space. We were the ones who had hosted a large, neighborhood inclusive holiday gathering with abundant food and drink for all who dropped by.
We were fortunate to run into several people who were either still living there or who had returned to celebrate the block’s continued success in building community. And this brings me to my point today.
You know that feeling when you run into someone with whom you were close — perhaps not the best of friends, but always warm and open and direct and loving. There must be a word for it somewhere — perhaps in Scandahoovian. “That feeling you get upon seeing an old friend after years apart, yet it feels like you had never been apart.” The way you feel warm inside, the smile that you couldn’t keep from your face if you tried, the strong and gentle embrace or handshake, the look of kindness and acknowledgement in each other’s eyes.
We have these moments in life with different people we know as they come back around – by phone, now by email, in person at a gathering or even still by mail. We bask in the warmth of the shared affinity for one another – the sense of connectedness that will never go away.
I still have this feeling when I reconnect with someone I haven’t seen since my youth — my childhood, my teens, my college years. There is some sense of knowing that we have both “survived” all these years and — well — there you are. Hello there.
When I look back at my friendships through life, I mourn for so many that are lost and that I feel sure will never or could never be returned to. Perhaps that is fine for some relations; perhaps they were meant to be temporal, period-specific, right for the moment. But others I think are friendships of the soul, even if they are not powerfully deep, they can be strong across time. And then, of course, there are those that are indeed powerfully deep over time – those friendships where the connection is visceral, where you can feel it even through a mention of the name, where the memories are so evocative of the power of the connection that you are moved just in the thinking of the person.
How lucky we are to be humans and to have emotions like this! To truly cherish people we know and that we have known, and to be able to reconnect with those emotions and those people despite great distance and times apart. Not that I think my dog does not have this power — oh, for sure he does! But how fortunate are we that we can choose to pull out these memories like old photographs, to pick up the phone, to call, to connect, to hug at a block party in an old neighborhood, to smile and say “hello there, dear old friend of mine.” A feeling like no other.
Everything I know about anxiety I learned from my dog.
Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. While I have learned so much about anxiety over my years, I never really appreciated the absolute sense of no control over anxiety that some folks feel.
We all, I think, experience anxiety — to various levels. If you think you never experience anxiety, I invite you to spend more time in self-reflection.
Anxiety is an integral part of our daily lives. It is organic, systemic, it is “part and parcel” of our existence, our experience.
Anxiety comes from little things, like the anxiety I felt serving cupcakes to my birthday party guests knowing I had forgotten the baking soda. As a friend likes to say, “no one died.” Oh thank god.
Anxiety comes from big things, like waiting for the results of the latest biopsy and wondering why the nurse insists that you’ll need to speak directly to the doctor. That’s a biggie.
And anxiety is filtered through every other possible moment of existence — driving down the street, sitting quietly in a chair, staring at the checking account balance and wondering if the [fill in this blank!] will ever work again and what you’ll do if it doesn’t.
Anxiety requires Coping Mechanisms, not all of which are healthy. Rational Thought, Meditation, Long Walks in the Woods, Long Talks with Friends and “A Great Therapist” are all excellent CMs. Day Drinking, Weed, “Just Gummies” and “A Total Lack of Anger Management” are not. I’m just sayin’.
But mostly anxiety is debilitating. It causes doubt and worry, it causes lack of sleep, it makes us twitchy, defensive, frightened and insecure. It makes Mountains out of Mole Hills and puts almost everything on an equal footing. Equal Footings are not good in the World of Anxieties.
Coping Mechanisms are not just for our personal anxieties, but also how we are able to deal with/manage/address/discuss the anxieties of those we love. “Talking someone down” is a famous Coping Mechanism, but quite often not what the other person really wants. Quite often they just want acknowledgement of their anxiety. Sometimes a rational discussion has a very irrational reaction. Fuel on the Fire and all that.
And so we return to my dog — my poor, helpless rescue who experiences anxiety in its purest of forms: Inexpressible, inconsolable, raw and real. Will this thing fall on me? Will the fireworks outside cause me hurt? Will the backfiring truck be my demise? This poor animal wants only to escape, not knowing the fear is entirely inside and we would never let anything harm him. Yet he hides, he quivers, he shakes and he stares at us as if we could somehow be the saviors of his internal terror.
And that is what I’ve learned. That anxiety is a true internal terror that needs first and foremost to simply be acknowledged. Where possible and wanted, holding someone close in your warm and protective embrace, saying that you understand, providing shelter in all its meanings, not trying to say “you shouldn’t feel this way,” saying instead, “I understand.”
I, too, am anxious. I understand. And I am here for you.
I am trying very intentionally to move on from both larger format acrylics and small watercolors. My goal over the coming months is to produce more, smaller acrylics.
This first one (9×12 on birch board), from a friend’s stunning photo of the night sky from beneath live oaks, took me an unacceptable amount of time futzing with the right sky color and capturing the varying amounts of light in the sky. Once I stopped working on the sky and starting filling in the stars and trees, I was done in under a few hours. I may return to this to try and even out the light distribution and wisps of nighttime “fog,” but I also may not.
Moving through and Moving on are themes from my several past years of learning to paint. I’ve learned the lesson so many times — stopping to dwell, to “over paint,” to seek perfection in a world where there is no such thing and truly no reason to pursue it — these are not valuable activities. My “best work” comes from the spontaneity, the “feeling” of the work. And my “best experience” as a painter comes ultimately from knowing when to move through and to move on.
No doubt this is a reflection of Life, and so I won’t dwell on it. Knowing when to just let the line play out (oh now I’m on a fishing metaphor!), knowing when to step back, knowing when to walk away (and, as the song goes, “know when to run!”) are all so important.
As humans, I think it is our natural tendency to stop and stare, to ponder “how can I fix this,” to stay on stage far far too long and then bend toward an awkward exit.
But there is so much more still to paint! So much more art still inside to come out!
We recently had to empty our car’s trunk, glovebox, center console and side door pockets in a very very short period of time – about 10 minutes. We literally dumped everything into the very handy, very large quantity of grocery bags stored in the trunk (both paper and reusable). Later we sorted through these things, a treasure chest and time capsule of the past dozen years of our lives. Finally found those missing in-n-out gift cards (what were they doing in the trunk?). Found a Giants 2012 World Series license plate holder (now, finally, and never too late, put to good use!). We found a plethora of bye-gone tech (cords, adapters, cigarette lighter converters). And, of course, sundry bottles of water for the dog or for us should the emergency arise. There was even 2 brand new decks of playing cards (in case we were ever bored and just sitting in the car?). Huh.
Like a tree’s rings, the things we carry with us for years and years forward through life tell our story. Oddly, it wasn’t the car trunk that really struck me as poignant but rather this tool chest.
I think I bought this tool box back in the late 1980s or early 1990s at a time when I was a true Weekend Warrior. Saturday mornings were spent at home depot or the neighborhood hardware store, saturday afternoons and all day sundays were spent restoring a string of apartments and homes on the east coast.
I say this every now and then, and it is a deeply meaningful statement for me: I have lost so many things in life, but somehow I managed to hold on to this. “This” is a very small list of things — a brass table that sat by my mom’s living room chair, a cast iron frying pan that I believe was my grandmother’s (or I have created the myth that it is so), a photo of my parents from the 1970s. How is it that so many things are lost along our way and somethings, like this big hulking tool box, are still here to tell the story of all those years.
I have this toolbox “out” because it is making yet another journey, this time from the city to the country. Having moved into an apartment a few years back, it’s high time to downsize the small number of tools that would be useful in town, but still keep a healthy amount for all the honey-do chores of country living. My “project” is to swap this out for the small, totable toolbox (plastic!) that’s in the cupboard here, but first I must decide what tools go to town and what stay out here.
Here’s just a sampling of what came out of the big red toolbox! Yikes! Where on earth did all those screwdrivers come from? And how many times have I actually used more than 2 or 3 of those wrenches? I have a rather sizable collection of box cutters — but there are already more than I need in the junk drawers both in the city and in the country.
*sigh*. I trust you are not laughing. Tell me you have nothing that reminds you of this.
I can look at some of these tools and go back to the project for which they were acquired. Many of them have gone mute and do not speak to me — no doubt due to my complete lack of attention to them over the years.
And I never found out what that nasty smell was that was coming from the toolbox whenever I opened it up. I trust that with the good cleaning it just got and an extra dose of lysol, plus a day or two in the fresh country air, the source of the mystery odor will leave like a smelly old ghost, both gone and very soon forgotten.
I confess to being somewhat maudlin about this “downsizing.” I know I can’t simply restuff this stuff into the toolbox drawers, that I must pick and choose what’s necessary.
And then? What am I to do with a lifetime of tools that have been there for me in that very specific moment of need and then have stood dutifully by for literally decades, watching me age, watching me grow, learn and change, even watching me buy power tools. Poor things. I suppose I will need to put them in a bag and find a home for lost and aging toys. I mean tools.
And then, tomorrow, I have the newer, younger toolbox to confront — the one with only a decade (or so) under its (tool)belt.
I appreciate that software companies have designers on staff to enhance the overall user experience. As “soft”ware, there is a certain amount of on-going enhancement that we users have come to expect.
But when does it just become decor for decor’s sake — when is it time to leave well enough alone? And who makes this call (well, I likely no the answer to that and I am going to posit that it is NOT the end user who says “hey, time to update those graphics!).
Rewind a bit – I am a VLTU/VEA (very long term user/very early adaptor) to/of Duolingo. I am on something like a 5 or 6 year streak and have spent oh so very much time inside their product learning spanish, italian, german, french and now japanese.
And so it is with some amount of Authority that I come to you today to ask exactly WTF is going on with this past week’s release of updated Duo characterizations?
Rewind a bit again. “Duo” is their brilliant green “owl” who stands as mascot to all things “Duolingo.” Duo is cheerleader, nudge, host and oh so many other things as the user progresses their way through this character strewn world.
As a relatively young and rapidly growing company, I have forgiven the Good People behind Duolingo for many of what I see as Points of Interest along their learning curve: Their overly invasive sales pitches for tiered service upsells, their willingness to pool users together in competition where it just isn’t humanly possible that someone(s) are making 5,000 points per day, even the unsettling reuse of clearly male vs female character graphics AND NAMES accompanied by voices which are also clearly of the opposite sex. Unsettling but something one can adapt to as a limitation caused by far too few native Japanese speakers.
But what the actual eff is going on with this?
I tried not to be too jolted when the head of the owl appeared on the body of the unicorn. Well, I did complain about it a bit and certainly asked a lot of WTFs. But, I moved on. I shall move on from this as well, but not until I’ve put this out there and asked — WTF? Is this Duo experiencing the Rapture? Did Duo take way to big a bump of meth? Is Duo under the influence of a softworld hypnotist and even as we watch is leaping off a cliff to his very death.
Unsettling at best and certainly not a warm and cozy way of saying “way to go on that last (endless) lesson of learning to type in hirigana.”
And then there was this.
This makes me feel like I should drink more decaf. And so should Duo. As someone who is well familiar with Anger Management Issues, this just reeks to me of screaming abuse. This image actually upset me a bit when it first popped up (these are all parts of animation, and certainly an excellent effort on the staffs’ part, but gheesh, really?). Duo needs a big ol’ time out. And I need a valium.
Now, did I do this screed for just a couple of images? No, I surely did not.
Moving on.
I mean, I guess we all guess where this is going, right? This is “atta boy, great job, you’re a super star.” But Duolingo is international and aimed (me thinks) at all age groups. I also believe that the Good People behind Duolingo are a pretty DEI-driven group (oh yes I did — nothing to be seen here, move along). They have multiple gay characters in various relationships including marriage. They have old and young, single dads, internationally diverse and on and on. The whole banana. The full spectrum.
And so I was a bit shocked to see such a hyper masculine use of the (usually quite round and soft and somewhat lazy?) Duo. Also, is #1 just for body-building? And isn’t Duolingo much much much more of an intellectual pursuit — learning languages, math, playing chess — even mastering a musical instrument like piano? Why the association of “winning” and being “the best” with such a hyper-masculine image of their mascot? This feels both a tad creepy and a little far afield.
Ah, and last but certainly never least, this rant would not be complete without this Outing.
Duo in Drag.
Or is there finally a Ms Duo?
Is this a love interest? Or is this a full-on, out of the closet and into the sunshine Duo in Drag (DD) moment!?!? I’m not even sure I understood the context in which I was “rewarded” with a flying Due updating their lipsticks while saying “way to finish that chapter, superstar.” Maybe this is Beyoncé Duo? I just don’t know. So many Duos, so many costume changes, so much morphing.
Sorry for the gap in writing, but we’ve had a dozen different projects that have taken all the time away from artistic endeavors. I must strive to make time for my art.
I’ve also been pondering. Like most of us, I’ll assume, I have struggled with how to talk about the deaths of so many young children in Texas during the Guadaloupe River floods.
We have seven nieces, nephews and god children of child-rearing age who have a collective dozen children, most of whom are under the age of 10. I know without a doubt in my soul that each one of those parents would lay down their life for one of their children, so I cannot possibly imagine the type of anguish the parents of all these lost children are going through, not to mention their extended family circles and their communities.
Over dinner the day or two after the flood, I tried to draw a line between Sandy Hook and Camp Mystic, but ran into some vehement disagreement that these two things are associated. My good friend argued that one was an Act of God, the other an Act of Humanity. But I have thought a lot about these things and think that I disagree — I think these are both “Acts of God” if you will, in that neither of them are things that we can reasonably plan against although both were situations that we can reasonably expect our children to be safe within.
We are no longer in the wild, wild west. Very few of us are pioneers and even fewer of us “take our lives into our own hands” when we venture out hiking in the back country, climbing a mountain, sky diving, scuba diving, speeding and other activities where we can have a reasonable expectation of risk to life. We understand the difference.
But when parents send their kids to school, on a bus, to hockey or soccer practice, to a friend’s birthday party or off to summer camp, I think we all share a “reasonable expectation of safety.” That comes from a combination of Trust Factors, including familiarity with the bus driver, the town in which we live, trust that our kids can make decent decisions on their own, trust that schools and camps and activity organizers all provide Trusted Adult oversight and safety protocols, and we also trust that the government to which we pay our taxes provides a safety net in the form of highway patrols, police and fire, and emergency management.
The government – local, state and federal – also establishes guidelines in the form of laws and policies to help support that reasonable expectation of safety. That’s why we have building codes, and highway departments, and a whole web of laws and policies intended (a risky word here) to help keep us all safe together as a community, as “leadership” has always promised and, for the most part, done.
So when that reasonable expectation fails us in such an unfathomable way – through the deaths of the most defenseless among us – those for whom we believe we are responsible, what do we do to try and lessen the likelihood that this could ever happen again? Because isn’t that the point of society and government, of civilization – to help us build protections from things that cause us harm and loss?
I think that’s all at the moment. I’m just trying to comprehend the horrific sense of loss and what type of actions we can all collectively agree need to be taken to not let this happen to another single life.
I have what I think are reasonable expectations of safety for me, my family and my fellow humans.
We’ve spent the past two evenings warmly wrapped in joy (and excellent food and drink!) as invitees to the 3 day marriage festival of our good friends’ only child.
She is marrying into a family from abroad, and the large cohort of friends and family from both sides are diverse and far flung. This reminds me so much of when we were married 11 years ago this summer; the most important aspect to both of us was the introduction of Our People, for it only stands to reason if WE love YOU, YOU will love EACH OTHER.
The excitement of introductions is viscous – you can feel the thick and clingy warmth wrapping your arms and chest long after the hug and kiss are gone, and you can taste the sweetness of connection it is so powerful among these conjoining clans.
There is so so much raw emotion here: The marrying off of an only child you have protected since birth, the acknowledgement of another level of generation coming into being, the creation of ever larger circles of friendship that have been gathered for ten minutes, ten days, ten years or nearly ten decades.
I think these events, these gatherings that literally worship the essence of “family,” not just “of blood” but equally “of choice,” are the finest, most poignant moments of our lives. We see beyond the dimness of our past lives and generations, and we see infinite horizons stretching forward where this love, this warmth of the soul, continues for infinity.
The eldest in the room, the baby on the floor, the awkward teens, the young professionals with careers in full bloom — we can sit back and see ourselves painted into this canvas for all time, taking our seat at the table, hugging, holding a touch, looking into the eyes, creating new branches to our family tree while invited to sit in the shade of many others.
I want my good friends to know how much this inclusion in this moment of their lives means to us. This is one of the strongest expressions of love, to be warmly and excitedly introduced, to feel the assuredness that the connections will be strong and lasting, to feel welcome into a home we never had but now can never lose.
If I am feeling this way after 2 nights of “getting to know one another,” I can’t imagine how wonderful tonight’s actual wedding event will be. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be present in this magnificent moment. ❤️
Coastal Notes 