My Life As A Great Master

Monday I had a blast playing with graphics for book illustrations and Gimp software trying to make a bookcover for Strangers On The Earth. After many mistakes, I’m beginning to get the hang of it. The problem is that I can’t decide which of my exquisite designs I want to use. They’re all wonderful (If you like my sort of art, that is).

The afternoon mail brought my corrected proof copies of A Dirty Old Man Goes Bad. I double checked pagination, index correlation, etc. Looks as perfect as I can make it. Thanks be to God! It’s now available for sale on my www.bluefishbooks.info storefront. Bring a fist full of money and get in line for your copy.

I need to celebrate.

I haven’t been celebrating small victories enough recently.

Life’s too short and tough not to celebrate every victory you can; if you don’t mark even the small things by rewarding yourself some little something, then you tend to forget triumphs and only remember bad nasties in life. That’s a downer…

I’m going to have to think about that for a bit. At the moment, any reward that occurs to me to give myself is immoral. Yes, I’m going to have to think about this a bit more. But I feel I deserve something. I just can’t decide what right now.

Yesterday my friend Barbara came over between one doctor’s visit and another. Last week she broke a toe stumbling over her own aluminum walker! She has one of those electric scooters to get around the old folks home but the tire had gone flat and she fell over her walker on the way to the dining hall.

I comforted her by saying her accident can’t be blamed on old age, she’s always been clumsy.

I took her out to breakfast at Dave’s. One of my waiter friends there has started growing a Captain Ahab beard. He didn’t believe me when I told him that 30 years ago I grew that same style beard. So, Chris, here are two photos to prove it.

Way back then, in a mad fit of evangelistic fervor, I used to spread the Gospel by doing paintings in city parks as part of street preaching. Not many souls were saved but many people found it amusing to see a guy as shy as I am doing this. This first photo was taken at the slave market in St. Augustine; notice my cool beard:

This second photo was taken when I was invited to teach a lesson at a Korean Church. And, no, I do not speak Korean. For the honor of speaking in their church, I learned to draw the letters and say five words which were the main points of my lesson. Again, notice my debonair whiskers:

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Oh, the question I painted at the top of the easel asks, “What Is God Like”. The five points of my drawings and the Korean words down the side say:

* God is Great
* God is Holy
* God is Light
* God is Love
* God is Near.

Ah yes, as you can see from my drawings, the world lost a great artist, comparable to Rim Brant or Van Go, when I turned from painting to writing. And, before I finally shaved it off, that beard grew long enough to tuck under my belt!

So, being the renaissance man that I am, I’m having great fun not only writing Strangers but also designing my own book cover for it. Having such varied talents humbles me — but not much.

Oh, yes, one other thing. This will be posted on Valentine’s Day but Ginny and I do not pay any attention to any holidays except Easter, Christmas and our anniversary. We were just as in love last Thursday as we are today so we feel no need to do anything different than on any other day. But for those of you who do observe the day, I wish you love and joy.