Ramblings....

This has been a strange week for me.  We have been working on income tax which means revisiting the fire and all the memories when we look back at inventory and such.  Gene's mom passed away last April and he is working on her estate.  It was my father's birthday on June 18, he passed away in 1980 and my mother in 1983.  My best friend, Martha, from elementary, we called it grade school, died a few months ago.  Very recently one of Joanna's friends, Karen, passed away, too. 

I really like the quote that Karen's family put in her obituary:

"Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight." -- Rossiter Worthington Raymond 1840-1918

We are at that stage in life, going backwards in time.  More forgetful, slower, less healthy and "old timers" disease which makes us more cranky, too!  Ah, well, dying is just part of life, we just never know when we will go over the horizon, eh?

In the meantime, we will keep doing what we do.  We are enjoying our new home and have the ability to travel this summer again.  That is really wonderful.  We two kids from Magdalena have done all right for ourselves.  A special thanks to Gene for all his hard work over the years and caring for both of our families.

We plan a trip to Alaska very soon.  It will include flying, cruising the coast, train rides, bus,  Danali National Park, Fairbanks, and the Arctic Circle.  Not much time for art, but am taking the new watercolor kit mentioned in the previous post.

I will get to take an art workshop in Montana this summer and Gene can go with me.  It is in a beautiful area fairly close to the Canadian border.  Gene can bike and read and have a real vacation while I have a great time with other artists.  We went to a workshop similar to this over 15 years ago with Jack Hines and Jessica Zemsky.  We met Sue and Wally Modrak from Michigan at the workshp.  Wally passed away several years ago, but we have continued to see Sue.  She has been a great painting buddy.  You remember me talking about our week of marathon painting when we get together every year.  In fact, Sue may go to the workshop, too.

To have a look at the workshop, go to Wanda Mumm's website.  Click on Artists Workshops on the left and then Adult Workshops.  It looks like lots of fun.  There is a similar workshop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in September, with the Susan K. Black Foundation, but we won't be that far north for it.

After the workshop we will visit some of our old haunts in B.C.  We had such a good time in Canada over the years.  Can't wait for that.  I will keep you posted and hope to be doing lots of art.

Mora Stop, 8 x 9 inches, pastel, painted plein air with Sue.