Opinion - Illustration Friday

Thanksgiving is just a few days away and of course it is a time to count our blessings… to give thanks… I started counting mine a long time ago… I am so fortunate to have such a wonderful family… and friends… and I am so thankful for the creative gifts I have been given…

My job has taken me many places… this week the Museum where I work is closed for the holiday but are showing a film Thanksgiving evening… Trail of Tears : Cherokee Legacy… of course I am thankful that the native peoples provided life for the early European settlers… they taught them how to fish and grow corn and ultimately survive the winter…

So what's with the cows? I live in Jacksonville… named for Andrew Jackson our seventh president… and while I am certain that the USA would not be what it is today… or might not even exist… I am troubled to live in a city that is named after a man who championed Indian Removal… our record with the treatment of the indigenous peoples is appalling and continues to this day… Jacksonville has a long and storied history… and as a native Jacksonvillian… I much prefer our original name, Cowford to what we now have…

Happy Thanksgiving… God bless…

Pretend

Have you ever wished that you were from somewhere else? Or that you WERE someone else? At times, I am sure that we've all done so. I think it is a part of our human nature. One part of pretending that we are someone else is the "lie". One must lie in order to become who we are not or get what isn't ours. Sometimes we do it because we aren't happy with who we are. Or we want the excitement of being someone different… even if only for a little while. And it starts at an early age… in the games we play… in the excuses that we make… in the boasts we make to get attention…

I always thought that these were part of what made us human. Not in a good way, but human none-the-less. Some say that only humans kill for the sake of killing. But that isn't true. I find dead lizards on my doorstep and in my front walkway that the neighbors' cats leave. They kill to garner attention… or for fun. And it's not just cats… dogs kill too. It's part of the pack mentality. Killing seems to be the domain of most animals in one way or another. What I did not know is that animals can lie as well. I was recently watching PBS and saw the latest installment of Nature called "Clever Monkeys". One segments of the story told of a particularly shifty monkey who yells "SNAKE!" to send all of the members of his troop scurrying into the trees for safety so he could get that bird's egg for himself. It was eye-opening.

Sugary - Illustration Friday

What can I say? We eat too much… the food giants peddle their wares creating bigger and bigger portions. The food contains more and more sugar… not to mention chemicals… uggghhhh!!!!!

Illustration Friday - Packed

It's so hard to believe that I moved way back in April… and guess what? I'm still mostly in boxes…

soon…