Oh, the car. We had a Jeep Liberty which we thought was just the thing for Hannah to learn to drive in as it was more or less like putting her into a small tank. I mean the thing was a beast. It weighed more than 4000 pounds after all. But gas prices got so high we actually had a monthly bill of over $400 and hadn't been anywhere notable that month. Just driving around town. 4000 pounds means protection but it also means less that 20 mpg. Anyway, when we paid that huge gas bill we looked at one another and said, "we could buy a high gas mileage car and use what we save in gas costs to pay the car loan." I mean, it seemed stupid not to look into it. So we looked and we bought a new Honda Insight hybrid. we have been averaging around 48 mpg and it doesn't seem to matter whether it was on highway or city roads. A very cool little car. Certainly not the small tank we were driving but our gas bills are already much lower.
Reading. I've read about six or seven books this summer. The best were: two books by a spanish author, Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The first is named "The Shadow of the Wind" and the second is "The Angel's Game" and they are both superb. Two of the best I have ever read. I also read "The Lion" by Nelson DeMille, "61 Hours" by Lee Child, two or three books from the Lake Wobegone series by Garrison Keillor and have been re-reading Peter Steinhart's "The Undressed Art; Why We Draw" a wonderful book about the connection between not only artists and models, but also drawing and the human psyche-he examines drawing as a necessity for human communication and expression. He writes, "I know I'm thinking, but what I want to do is in a way that language cannot describe. I want to let the unraveling line push all the burdens of the day out of my head." In other words, he is looking for an altered state. "All the time, I am trying to get an impression of the gesture, the mood behind it, the sense of connection I feel with it. And I'm thinking about where it will go on the paper, where the center of the interest will be, how the trailing limbs may draw attention from the corners of the page back to the face or whatever is the center of the drawing's focus." "There's no bigger rush," says Ann Curran Turner, an artist interviewed by Steinart. "All of a sudden it's beyond you. You have no control over it. And there's nothing more exhilarating." A superb book about why we make art and why we as humans are driven to the practice. There are animals who spread paint, but (with the exception of Koko the gorilla) none who express through drawing. It is a purely human experience and I find it hard to believe anyone has written a better book exploring the why and how of the drive to do it. And so I read it again. But why am I telling you this? No one is reading this anyway.
