I had been looking forward to reading The Nickle Boys from Colson Whitehead from the time it was announced by Doubleday. It brought with it a mix of dread and curiosity, of shame and duty to read. It is loosely based upon the horrors that occurred at the Dozier School for Boys. The sad thing is that we will NEVER know the depth of horrors that went on there. This book is equal shares grim and hopeful—grim in the horrors of times past as well as the present and hopeful in that in knowing, we can banish our own demons and, hopefully, regain our humanity. It is a brilliant and essential read. 

Photo: ©Michael Spooney Barger, Reuters, Corbis

Here is a link to a story at the Smithsonian Magazine, “Archaeologists Finally Know What Happened at This Brutal Reform School.” You might want to take a look after reading the book. 

** UPDATE**

Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

TBR

 

A few new books for my towering “to read” stack.

Opening lines: 

“Even in death the boys were in trouble.”
—Colson Whitehead’s  THE NICKEL BOYS. 

“Savannah uses an old frisbee as a pillow.”
—From the local author
Caleb Sarvis’s DEAD AQUARIUM

“Your voice is who you are.”
—JamesVictore’s FECK PERFUNCTION

Deep Silence: A Joe Ledger Novel

It’s hard to believe that the ride is over. Ten books! Every one of them is a thrill ride, and Deep Silence is no exception. This one has it all—alien tech, terrarists, terrorists, Russians, Lovecraftian horrors, Washington politics, and a lot of strings stretched back to the many previous Ledger novels. As with all of the Ledger novels, you don’t HAVE to read the previous ones to enjoy this one, as Jonathan Maberry is crafty enough to weave in just enough detail without being tiresome, but it does add a little bit of comfort in another pulse-pounding read.

Wake of Vultures – Lila Bowen

This one is a fun and easy read that will leave you with a LOT of sand in your boots!

Not everything is as it seems in Lila Bowen’s Wild West, and everyone is not the most likable cowpoke, but they have no trouble in the interesting department. It is a weird Western, jammed it into an old, cracked, weather-worn boot with a healthy dose of mythology. Take some monsters, mysteries, mayhem, and quirky characters, chuck them in that boot, shake ‘em up real good, and dump ‘em out. You’ll find them all re-arranged into a compelling coming of age/mystery/quest. Nettie Lonesome is a compelling, well-crafted protagonist who took ahold of me from the start and didn't let go.

5 stars. I will be reading the rest of her Shadow series. You should, too.

World Book Day

It’s #WorldBookDay. What's on your pile? 

 Together again.

Godspeed, Mom.

For those of you who are interested, we will be having a memorial Mass on December 15. Still working on details.

Harlan Ellison -- Pay the Writer

There was still so much to learn from him. Pay the writer. Pay the artist. Pay the designer. Pay those creative people in your life. If you aren't one of the creative types, please stop and think before asking for something for free with the promise of exposure. What do you think we want? More people like you who want us to work for free for more exposure to more people who want more free stuff?

How To Be A Person - Shane Koyczan - Lyrics/words (spoken word)

It seems like forever since I have visited. I hope you all are well.

After each book in the Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry I find myself wondering the same thing—how can he top that? How can he continue the tale of Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences without getting repetitive and stale? And then I buy the next novel and I lose myself again in the excitement, wonder, patriotism, adrenaline, loss, and, yes, terror. Lots of terror. This one features a female protagonist that goes by the name, Mother Night. A lot of the regulars are back with a few surprises. You don’t have to start at the beginning, but this series is so good, you should!

JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times bestseller and multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Patient Zero, the Pine Deep Trilogy, The Wolfman, Zombie CSU, and They Bite. His work for Marvel Comics includes The Punisher, Wolverine, DoomWar, Marvel Zombie Return, and Black Panther.

SUAU-1980

Here's an old illustration that I did for a fraternity event when I was in college. It was called Suau and generally, had its origins as a spoof of another fraternity's formal "Old South" party. They wore Confederate officers uniforms, some rode horses, and flew the rebel flag. Ours was more of a redneck luau and it was much more than a party. It started weeks before the event when most of the members stopped shaving. After about a week, we would don overalls, straw hats, and flannel shirts and deliver invitations in person. Some of us carried piglets or chickens for effect.

The party itself started Friday night. We stayed up all night with out chef as he cooked the pig. Poker and beer were essentials as was a good dose of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels, and the Allman Brothers. Saturday morning the party started back up with games (usually involving mass quantities of beer), lunch, more music, and usually, mud was involved somehow. After lunch, we usually dropped our dates back at their rooms and everyone got showers and naps before it all started up again at night for a little more refined dance party with most of the brothers now clean-shaven and dressed much better. The party would usually start breaking up around 1am but would continue in some form as long as the beer was still flowing. Somewhere along the way, the party lost favor and then, my fraternity was banned from campus.

Random Thoughts…

Last week, and despite all that is going on these days politically, I encountered two situations that gave me pause. The first struck me as odd when I stopped at a street vendor for lunch. She was selling hot dogs from a small hot dog cart and was being paid a visit by the Health Inspector. Nothing out of the ordinary there. The cart, I assume, passed as he finished his inspection while I was waiting and didn't appear to issue any citations. At the very least, he didn't shut her down so I assumed the food was safe. That said, as I stood and waited, I also watched. The cart operator was wearing sanitary gloves as food preparation was taking place. I am not aware of the actual law but she wore them while preparing the food and removed them before handling money—as she always does. The odd thing was that while the food inspector was rummaging around in her coolers, he did not wear gloves. Time and again, he handled raw meat and vegetables, and not once did he wear gloves. Another odd practice was that, while checking temperatures, he repeatedly used his thermometer without sanitizing it prior to sticking it into another item. I find that odd. If something was contaminated, his negligence would contaminate almost everything else in the cooler. To be fair, he did wipe it off each time BUT HE USED AN OLD STORE RECEIPT!

Saturday, I had another experience with a situation that makes me go "hmmm".  I had stopped at a Raceway in Orange Park to get gas. Not my first choice as I like to know what kind of gas is going in my car but the place looked clean and well cared for. After filling 'er up, I pulled up to the store to wait for my wife. That was when I noticed the Brinks truck. As you would expect, there was an armed guard outside waiting for the second guard to exit the store—security measures. The problem with the picture that I was seeing was that the guard positioned outside the store had one hand occupied by her cigarette and the other was very much engaged by her phone. Had I been someone with ulterior motives, her behavior would have made for an easy target.

The things that you will see when you take a few moments to really take in what's going on around you is something. I'm not sure that something is something that makes me feel better about how distracted or intimidated people are these days.  

David

I woke this morning to sad news. My cousin, David Courtney, passed away. He was so many things to me, and I know he touched many lives. When you lose a parent far too early—as I lost my father to cancer when I was in my 20s—Dave was like a father. He was also a creative force in my life—an artist, a musician, a writer, and a master engraver. His memoir, From Tea Boy to Tiffanys, is a great read. I do hope it gets published someday. Dave was my mentor, and he was a friend. He believed in my own talents when so many others dismissed them as distractions or hobbies.

Tonight, while I grieve, I will remember the good times, the parties, and the laughter. I know that the heavens will be shining a little brighter, and I will remember the amazing family that he leaves behind, and I will keep them in my prayers.

Nick Offerman Recites a Poem

One of my paintings was used for the City of Jacksonville’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast. It’s a great morning of friendship and tribute. I highly recommend attending.

The Greatest Love of All | Don't Miss A Beat All-Stars | TEDxJacksonville

I really missed being with my TEDxJax tribe this year for FearLess. After being part of the startup and working with the team for more than four years, I had to step away. We had far too much going on at work. These kids share what this country needs so much more of.

What to know what's going on next weekend for #UFvsUGA? Here's the Weekend Guide. It is also one of the reasons that you haven't seen much of me recently.

Butterflies are monsters.

Butterflies are monsters. I first heard that in a line from 'Giant Ant' from the The Handsome Family's first album "Odessa". I had no idea what Renni is going on about here so I googled it and found a few interesting tidbits. First one is about the Pope. He is definitely not afraid of calling a spade a spade and has labelled certain priests 'Butterfly-Priests". When responding to a question he repleied“...What is the place of Jesus Christ in my priestly life? Is it a living relationship, from the disciple to the Master, or is it a somewhat artificial relationship... that does not come from the heart?....We are anointed by the Spirit, and when a priest is far from Jesus Christ he can lose this unction.... Those who put their strength in artificial things, in vanity, in an attitude... in a cutesy language... ‘This is a butterfly-priest,’ because they are always vain.” Food for thought. I was brought up Catholic but am at odds with some of the teachings of the Church and more specifically how some of the priests handle the responsibilities of the power of their position. I read into this butterfly-priest concept as validation that we must not blindly accept what a priest or minister tells us. Blind allegiance to anything can lead to trouble.

The second post that caught my attention, Butterflies are Monsters Who Drink the Tears of Turtles was the from The Mary Sue. It is a quick and interesting read but better than the real reason, it would be a great prompt for writers.

And that leads me to the drawing above. It is for this week's Illustration Friday prompt, Stomach. Most of us tend to get butterflies in our stomach when we think about starting something important to us. Whatever that is, the more difficult the task, the more anxiety we face. I've been struggling with finding time in my life for a few projects. I have come to realize that starting is not the difficult part. Finishing is but we cannot finish something if we don't start. So we all need to make the time necessary to start and finish the things that are important to us.

TEETH

First of all, I am NOT a Gator, but I do have to do creative work for them every now and then. I used to be a regular contributor to Illustration Friday. It has been quite some time since I last participated. I do hope this signals a change. This is an illustration created for the annual Florida-Georgia Game in Jacksonville. I also painted a Dawg. It also has teeth but the Gator has many more.

And for all those Gator fans who might find this… Go NOLES!!!

The Next Step for Jacksonville

I'll say this again, Jacksonville needs and deserves to have a spectacular and iconic building on our beautiful river. The opportunities are there. We have the redesign of the Jacksonville Landing in the heart of our downtown riverfront, the Shipyards, a new convention center, the District and the old Courthouse/City Hall property currently sinking into the river. When we start the design process, let's not pay too much homage to the automobile. Much of Jacksonville has been designed to make it easy to get through places as quickly as possible. One of the recent ill-fated redesigns of the Landing placed a street along the riverfront between the river and the green-space that they were showcasing.

The American Institute of Architects has an ad campaign in which they say, "We look up because we know the world is counting on us to look ahead." Leaders and people of Jacksonville, we too, must look up to look ahead. Great cities are not known for their sprawling, stuccoed, suburbs. They are known for their cultural treasures—their art, their museums, their music and the buildings that house them. Think of a great destination place for a vacation. If it isn't the natural beauty of a place like the Everglades or Yosemite, it is what makes up its cultural heart. New York? Broadway, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, MoMA, the Met, the great high rises. Chicago? The Navy Pier, Millennium Park, the ART Institute. Paris? The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame. London? Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, The Eye. Jacksonville? the Main Street Bridge? EverBank Field? We can and must use this pivotal point in our history to look forward.

We deserve better.

One of Those Days

Tuesday was one of those days…one of those days where you are slammed at work but you get things done and you feel good about it…one of those days where you run into or have lunch with old friends from MOCA Jacksonville…one of those days where you meet up with kindred souls and plot out how you plan on changing at least one little piece of the world…one of those days when your MOCA friends just keep turning up and you realize how incredible everyone was (and still is)…one of those days when you get home exhausted, you have an amazing life partner there for you who loves you and supports you though all of those days…one of those days when you get a late dinner and your amazing daughter calls from her first year of college and you realize that she's on speaker phone at her regular seat at the table and while she is away, she's not gone. Tuesday was one of those days where you can't believe how fortunate you are. Thank you to all of those people who made Tuesday one of those days.