I have just returned to this blog from which I have been missing since 2012.  Some changes with e-mail address and password, made it nigh impossible for me to do anything over a three year period, only visit my blog, yet not sign in to make changes.  I am now making this attempt, as son Alex has been visiting and with his technological skills I am perhaps able to bring this space more up to date.  I have always to be thankful for Brooke, youngest daughter, who originally designed and set up this site.  
     The Hostess paintings are now somewhat passe.  I see that the supposed treats have returned to the grocery stores and so the hunger for these particular junk foods, even as art,  has subsided. I loved painting them but have gone on to bigger and I hope better subjects.
     2015 has been a year offering me three opportunities to show work.  Tiles of apples and birds went to The Waterworks Museum in Miles City, whereas ten of my grain elevator pieces have been on exhibition at The Emerson Center for Art & Culture, in Bozeman.  They were hung as part of a trio.  As well, Vern Hall and Bruce Selyem's art/photography have been a part of this show, The Art of the Prairie which opened early August and will be hanging until October 4th.
     My third opportunity to hang work in a public place will take place at The Bozeman Public Library
during the months of November and December.  The exhibit is tentatively called, Bozeman, Downtown and Beyond, thus allowing me to hang iconic structures alongside more scenic views of outside the town center.  I hope to include rodeo scenes;  Bozeman has always been a town sporting a rodeo or two during any given year.  

Cathedral at Ethridge

Square Butte Grainery, Montana

Showing at the Daily Coffee House in Bozeman, Montana

What Colors?

My middle name is CRAYOLA.
I’ve been wrapping myself in color
since I was old enough to choose
ribbons, anklets, scarves.
My patron saint, Iris,
goddess of the rainbow
offers a sky so many hues.
How I must have lusted
for the cadmiums, thalos,
alizarins when the child, me,
looked out a window and never saw brown.
Across our Brooklyn backyard
vermillion and ochre bricks
went zing across my retina.

Bless our Montana winters, redeemed
by splashes of red-twig dogwoods
growing beneath a wash of palest orange,
the all-glowing limbs of golden willows.
If you were an apprentice
in the studio of the angels
wouldn’t you whimsically want
to wipe out white?
I came into this world understanding
the connection between monochromatic
and monotony.
What colors ooze out of you?

The Rodeo Roper

Pastel 11" x 14"

The World Every Morning

As early risers, sometimes we glimpse
in the dawn light the three children
who seven days a week bring us
our newspaper. Three girls, the oldest ten,
all wrapped in responsibility.
We hear mommy sews. They wear pastel
polartec bunny-earred hats
around such earnest faces.
Especially the oldest,
a blue-eyed entrepreneur
and surrogate mother of six siblings.
Her voice, one of authority in the lower
register, a forthrightness that can
only come from that variety of pride
that grows in families made large
for religious reasons.

In our vestibule we detain the sisters
as we write out a check
and figure in a tip. They answer all questions.
“Mommy’s expecting again,” they offer.
Father sometimes pulls the youngest
in a sturdy green plastic wagon these
duty-filled mornings, while the other two
struggle with sacks across flimsy shoulders
as they criss-cross our darkened street
thrusting the morning chronicle into
metal news boxes as if shoving fists and arms
into coat sleeves.

Since September 11th, I’ve walked out the front door
to retrieve the paper and carried it inside
with nary a glance at the headlines.
Breakfast has to come first, before the details
of a world gone mad. News can curdle even coffee.
Borders have dissolved. The latitude and longitude
of international worries make up a new map. I wish
I could carry the paper as jauntily as they.
I can’t hold Montana newspaper carriers
responsible for world events, can I ? They’ll
always come collecting and leave with a smile.
Whatever war we’re waging, the young
deliverers seem never to apologize for bringing
disasters right up on to our property.