Turning the pages of the first half of 2018

What I've read so far this year:

• Wooden Lions, by Karla K. Morton, former Texas poet laureate, my annual poetry book from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum's Western Heritage Awards. Every poem features an animal, from cats to copperheads.
• The Paper Trail by Alexander Monro, about the fascinating history of a revolutionary invention that has changed the world, paper. We think the western world is civilized. The Chinese have been centuries ahead of us in so many ways, and paper was part of it.
• Enchantment and Exploitation-The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range, by William DeBuys. Not a new book, but I finished it this year about my beloved Sangre de Cristos in New Mexico.
• Cave of Bones, by Anne Hillerman. My one fiction so far this year, a mystery set in New Mexico by the daughter of a favorite Tony Hillerman.
• Under the Table, A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide, by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick. Cocktails from A to Z, from the Roaring 20s and beyond, garnished with tales of a dazzling writer and woman.
• Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting, Edgar A. Whitney. Part of my DIY art school by the late master.
• Falling Upward, by Fr. Richard Rohr. Reread this spiritual guide for the second half of life.
• The Best Cook in the World, by Rick Bragg.

Next: Atlas of the Lost World, Travels in Ice Age America, by Craig Childs.

In the news recently, one fourth of Americans haven't read a book in a year. How shallow and provincial in thought and character.

A new brushstroke

My paintings exhibited at  In Your Eye Gallery and Studio, Paseo Arts District

Lives are like brushstrokes sometimes.
I've been reading about Chinese calligraphy and writing that exploded with its invention of paper, and how the masters viewed each stroke as an art form. The idea was that the brush would never leave the paper until the characters were finished.
If we view life like that, we become more aware of constant being, of movement on many levels. In watercolor once a brush stroke has been made, it's often irreversible, and the maxim  is not to waste them, not to waste them or just put paint on paper for no reason. 
Good advice, which is hard enough in watercolor, and harder in living.
But I'm more aware now in both mediums. Retirement has resulted in many new brush strokes, and each leads to another, making the next one possible. 
The newest brushstroke has been joining In Your Eye Gallery and Studio in Oklahoma City's Paseo Arts District, where I'll be exhibiting my paintings on a regular basis, starting today, in time for tomorrow's First Friday Art Walk..

Grapes of Wrath--Dust Bowl Future

Dust Bowl Future, 9 by 12 watercolor, 140# Fabriano Artistico

The Dust Bowl Future looms on humanity's horizon like Black Sunday did in the Dust Bowl Depression.
 Read Mr. Steinbeck's opening lines in "Grapes of Wrath"--

•     "To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale pink in the red country and white in the gray country....
•    "The air and the sky darkened and through them the sun shone redly, and there was  a raw sting in the air....
•    "In the morning the dust hung like fog, and the sun was as red as ripe new blood. All day the dust sifted down from the sky, and the next day it sifted down. An even blanket covered the earth."

"We will see this again," I thought," forgetting the lessons of that man-made disaster," and starting painting, from the gut. 

Humanity is inhumanely writing its obituary, its extinction notice. 
Science, and detailed books about mass extinctions, and politicos ignoring factual science about climate change, spurring contempt for any regard for our planet's health turned my thoughts to the opening paragraphs of Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath."

Just nine years from now--in about 2026--wars will be probably be fought over water and food, not oil, and exploding populations and increasing heat will turn much of the earth brown, with coastlines swamped under rising oxygen-dead oceans.
As the politicos have no concern for  the future, only lining their corporate pockets with more greed, at my age I don't have much to worry about. But my children and grandchildren do.

This is not "dystopian." (I had to look that word up the first time I heard it. It isn't pretty) Facts--2026--Ten billion people, less water, less farmland, less food, less water, fewer jobs. Chinese will be the most spoken language. Islam will be the largest religion. 
Unless there is a pandemic, or a nuclear war, it will happen because the leaders of the world's most powerful country are trying to speed up the process, ignoring science, attacking the environment, to make a quick buck. 
Best single example, of many,  is  Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA...the fox in charge of the hen house. He's a foe of environment because his puppet strings are pulled by big corporations, big energy and others  like the Koch Bros., who want to rape the earth to make more money, screwing the future of the middle class and poor.

 We have passed the tipping point of turning the process around where humans can survive on earth. This isn't politics. This is science.
Don't believe it? It's happened before. Don't agree with it? You didn't live in the Dust Bowl, or study it,  did you?
Thus the vision of this painting...more to come.