Sidetracked Charley

End of Days 16 x 30 Watercolor on Canvas $1200 One day you are strolling along through your life making plans with your sister for a Maine vacation. Biggest worry is how to find someone to watch your house and your pets while you are away for two weeks. Since I am the house and pet sitter in my neighborhood that is a big enough problem. But then the pandemic hits and trip is cancelled. Problem solved? That problem at least. Studio is closed down by governor but the pet sitting business is booming. Especially Dog Gone Park play days. But the lockdown from the pandemic presents its own problems, but a new business line - masks. But everyday I worry about my sister who is on the front lines at a Texas hospital. We talk almost every day to relieve her stress. I learn things I did not need to know which add to my stress. News media begins to focus on stress from the pandemic. Having once had a very stressful job I know what to do. I dig out the old journal with my list compiled after my fat...

Walking the high bridge Time Magazine in the mid 1980's had a lead article on stress and consequences of it. Some research facility had assigned points to various events in life; so many points for losing a job, moving, getting a divorce, etc.  Those were the big ones.  At the time the list appeared I had been moved by the company I was working for, was going through filing for divorce from an alcoholic husband, visiting a dying parent in a hospital, while temporarily living with my mother facing the eminent death of her husband. The last was not on the list but should have been. Oh, and I was less than a year clean and sober and had a sponsor who said I should not be doing any of those things. If you tallied up just those life events on the list I should have checked myself into a mental institution. Or committed suicide. But I come from a long line of troupers. We keep on keeping on. And are the perfect model of decorum while doing it. There was a t-shirt I saw duri...

For most of the world the title would mean climbing a mountain or selling their home and becoming a vagabond or getting married, yet again. For me it means pushing the envelope just beyond my comfort zone. I have almost all my life (except for one crazy year upon graduation from college) been the person who did not believe in burning bridges. Never know when you might want to cross them again. But I have always believed in strategic retreats to high ground or safe caves. Retreats are not as easy in a small community as they were in my moving around days. I find myself rather firmly rooted to my spot on the mountain. So retreat is to my studio or behind my camera on in front of my computer. I am not totally convinced the computer is a retreat, but that is a subject for another blog on another day. Retreat is closing myself off. And this year is about opening myself up. The year 2015 was about finally getting myself free of a toxic friend, bringing a new cat into my life, an...

Distant Promise by J. Binford-Bell Supposedly for a good black and white landscape you need a noisy sky. I feel as if my life this winter and spring has been a noisy sky. So much going on around me. Some things I have written about like the tenant situation and some not. Some things I have actually not been aware of myself. It is like not noticing the clouds until a dark one shuts out the sun. And some nagging little things I ignore because to acknowledge them might give them power. Denial is a God given survival skill after all. The bad tenants and the things I had to do in order to rent the apartment to get a good tenant of course caused financial issues. And it takes a while to catch up once you get behind. And that of course causes stress. And then some years back I committed support to my neighbor when her husband was diagnosed with a fatal cancer. At the time I made that commitment she and I figured months. It has been years. Not all of them critical. But since Good Frid...