family portrait

After feeling a little burned out from the busy holidays I decided to try my hand at a the fun, no stress art form of collage. I scanned photos of my family from a favorite trip we took to Lake Michigan about fifteen years ago and glued them onto a background I painted and layered with torn paper and a map of the area we visited. I made our clothes with material leftover from all the sewing projects I never got around to and, ta da, a family portrait like no other (Mr. bookbabie insists I write that his legs are not nearly so chicken-like). There a lots of sites online to get inspiration from, Collageart.org and the Collage Artists of America has lists of artists and their galleries.

Rosie and Claudine Hellmuth are also websites of collage artists that got me motivated to make stuff again. Thanks girls! Next up, a collage of me and George on the red carpet at the Oscars, hmmm, what should I wear?

happy birthday dad

Today is my dad’s birthday. My dad grew up on a farm in the UP in a small town called Pelkie. He was the youngest of eight, the first one in his family to graduate from college. Back then MSU was called Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science. He married my mom in 1956 and they started their family of four, that’s me and my brother on the front porch with my dad in 1961. We grew up in Detroit and Novi and I am blessed with childhood memories that include trips up my dad’s family farm, a magical place for a small child where we took sauna’s together, ate squeaky cheese my Finnish grandmother browned in a wood burning oven, and where the night sky was lit with so many stars it made me dizzy to look up at it. Many adults carry the angst of their childhoods around on their shoulders, it weighs them down, it leaves them longing for something different, something better. I don’t. Instead, my memories are mostly jewel toned and washed in honey. Maybe it’s just the passage of time blurring the past, but I don’t think so. Happy birthday dad.

wax lips and silly putty

Recently I was looking for a book to read before I went to sleep that wouldn’t cause dysfunctional family, C.I.S.-ish, war and/or grief ridden nightmares and I discovered Bill Bryson’s, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid buried in my TBR pile. Bryson is a travel writer who has taken on other subjects in his last few books, writing with the same witty, ironic style that made his travelogues so popular. The Thunderbolt Kid is a memoir of his years growing up in Iowa in the 1950’s, and although bookbabie was born at the very end of the 50’s (practically the 60’s really), much of this book still rang true for me. (Apparently Silly Putty, Slinkys, wax lips, and crazy relatives are institutions of an American childhood no matter when or where you are born!) I’m going to reccomend it to my husband, Mr. Bookbabie, who is closer to Mr. Bryson’s age (much, much older than bookbabie herself). Even though he mostly reads work related stuff, I think he will really enjoy this book. It’s a fun read, particularly for anyone who is a baby boomer, or who raised boomers in the postwar, sleepy fifties – a charmer!

read to me

BookPALS is a site sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild where various actors read children’s books on camera. Haylie Duff reads Romeow and Drooliet, Al Gore reads Brave Irene, and Jane Kaczmarek reads Thank You, Mr. Falker, a book based on the author’s own experience as a little girl who overcomes dyslexia and discovers the joy of reading. A fun site you can share with a child or with that child inside of you that still likes to have someone read them a story!

erin

I have always loved the human face. When I was a little girl my dad would bring home scrap paper from work and me and my sisters would draw on the blank side. My goal was to be able to draw a face that didn’t look like a monster! It took a long time, but I finally did it and eventually I taught myself to paint portraits in oil. Standing in front of a canvas in my studio, breathing in the scent of the paints and the turpentine, is when I felt most like myself.

This is a portrait of Erin. She is a young woman now, a student at MSU and she is still just as beautiful on the outside as she is on the inside.

two thumbs up

Metacritic is a website that takes a cross-section of reviews from national critics and publications and comes up with it’s own rating, or Metascore, for movies, televsion shows, music, books, and games. I looked up some of the books I’ve read in the past and found it pretty much in-line with how much I liked, or disliked a book. A good site to do a little research before you spend your hard earned moolah! Don’t ya just love the internet?

laughing babies

mr. poe and mr. boo

Speaking of mystery and crime fiction, the 2007 Edgar Award nominees were recently announced. First awarded in 1946 by The Mystery Writers of America, the Edgars honor achievement in mystery and crime writing in fiction, non-fiction, movies, television, and motion pictures. They are named after the “father of all mystery writing”, Edgar Allan Poe, who once said, “I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.” Here’s a photo of my daughter’s mysterious kitty-cat, “Mr. Boo”.

down on the bayou

“But the man who caught my eye was the short one. He seemed wrapped too tight for his own body, the same way a meth addict seems to boil in his own juices. His mouth was like a horizontal keyhole, the corner of his lip exposing his teeth, as though he were starting to grin. He listened intently to every word in the conversation, waiting for the green light to flash, his eyes flickering with anticipation.”

Detective Dave Robicheaux is at it again in James Lee Burke’s fifteenth installment of the Robicheaux series, Pegasus Descending. My mom Carol, a crime fiction fiend, is burning through all fifteen books right now and is my “guest” reviewer and book suggester today. She loves books that take her someplace else, in this case, into the southern Louisiana culture of the Cajun French people via the flawed but fundamentally ethical character, Detective Robicheaux. Burke, two time winner of the Edgar Award, continues the saga of Robicheaux in his latest novel, an “unforgettable roller coaster of passion, surprise, and regret.”

to oprah from bookbabie

In my recent web wanderings I stumbled across BookFinder.com,a great site to go to when you are looking for that certain book and you don’t want to just Google it and get a million useless hits. Is there a book you remember reading as child with your mom before bed that you’d like to track down? Or maybe you need a gift for, let’s say your good friend Oprah. I found a nice first edition, signed copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby for only $55,000. It was owned by Warren Baxter who starred in the silent movie version of the film in 1926, hence the high price, but hey, the divine Ms. O is worth every penny! Interesting site for the bookishly inclined.

martin

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars…Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

what nonsense is this?

How fun, Laura had a link on her blog to this cool site with a Catalog Card Generator where you can make your own library catalog cards. You’re probably wondering, what’s the point? Well, there is no point, it’s just one more thing to do rather than work on my third book or talk to my husband!

january snow

We haven’t had much snow yet here in Michigan this winter, but here’s a little reminder of the beauty of winter. The artist’s name is Cat and you can see her work on her cool blog, The Odd Neighbor.

anatomy of grief

An adaptation of Joan Didion’s touching memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, will open on Broadway March 29th starring Vanessa Redgrave for a limited twenty-four-week run.

That I was only beginning the process of mourning did not occur to me. Until now, I had only been able to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention.  ~Joan Didion