Or, creative people who make the world an interesting place.
"Amedeo Modigliani," by Paul Dodd, 2002. For more of Paul's paintings, check The Refrigerator.
- Like jazz, barbecue and Dan Brown’s novels of vast, pointless conspiracies, quilting is an American art form: Quilting with Margaret
- A cool guide to western New York: The Refrigerator
- Lucinda makes beautiful glass beads. She also sees the world with a wry artist’s eye: Belvedere Beads
- Support local non-commercial radio. This show makes for a delightful morning of meaningful music amid the host’s charmingly earnest malaprops: Open Tunings
- Frank DeBlase takes photos of naked women and hot rods and calls ‘em art. What a gig. Eighteen and over, please: Frank DeBlase Photography
Questions and Answers with Jeff
Q: Can you use Joe Namath, Herman Wouk and Robert Mitchum in the same paragraph?
A: Sure. Last week I walked my dog in the fall woods. The trees were yellows, reds, greens, and brown leaves shuffled at our feet, and I thought of Joe Namath’s autobiography, written back when he was young and his sideburns were long and the New York Jets walked with a swagger: I Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow… ‘Cause I Get Better Looking Every Day. Beauty gives us a reason to go on. A discovery each day. It’s the same feeling that I get when I come across a well-wrought paragraph. This is from Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War, page 884 of 885 pages, with Pug Henry standing on an overlook, looking down on the wrecked battleships after the attack on Pearl Harbor, in the early morning darkness. You may read it in Robert Mitchum’s voice, if you like:
“He could almost picture God the Father looking down with sad wonder at this mischief. In a world so rich and lovely, could his children find nothing better to do than to dig iron from the ground and work it into vast grotesque engines for blowing each other up? Yet this madness was the way of the world. He had given all his working years to it. Now he was about to risk his very life at it. Why?
“Because the others did it, he thought. Because Abel’s next-door-neighbor was Cain. Because with all its rotten spots, the United States of America was not only his homeland but the hope of the world. Because if America’s enemies dug up iron and made deadly engines of it, America had to do the same, and do it better, or die. Maybe the vicious circle would end with this first real world war. Maybe it would end with Christ’s second coming. Maybe it would never end.”