“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
I drew and posted this a year ago along with the story of my mother’s brain hemorrhage and my extensive burns. Go here to read it.
Day 2
“Education is the progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” – Will Durant, author
And that’s why devout and scared people of any stripe don’t often intellectually venture outside their silo. They don’t want to be challenged when their well being is dependent on them knowing exactly how everything already is. Upset that and kaboom, up goes their world in flames.
Day 3
“If you analyze your happiness you become sad.” – Miguel Hernández
Day 4
“The moment you make someone promise anything is the same moment you ask them to lie to you.” – Molly Ringwald
Day 5
“Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back.”
Drawn 10/10/2011
Day 6
“Never let a problem to be solved become more important than the person to be loved.”
Drawn 10/14/2011
Day 7
“Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend’s forehead.”
“Humans are wealthy in proportion to the things they can do without.”
Henry David Thoreau
Day 27
“The soul without imagination is an observatory without a telescope.”
Henry Ward Beecher
Day 28
“In order to love who you are you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you.”
Andréa Dykstra
Drawn 9/6/2017
Day 29
Waiting at SFO
I drew this as I was waiting at the San Francisco airport to come back to Dallas. It was fun because a young girl sitting next to me was watching, mesmerized, the whole time. I asked her if I should show it to the woman and she said yes because it was really good. I think she liked it more than the woman did. I painted it with Copic markers after I got home, finishing it this morning.
Day 30
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but all very lively debate within that spectrum.”
I went to prison last week. In particular San Quentin Prison. My daughter Chelsea is a leader in a non-profit called ‘Alive Inside’ that helps the incarcerated with issues of grief, hope and loss. It was Mental Health Awareness week and her team and she played music out in the prison yard along with a number musicians from among the prisoners while hundreds listened or did their outdoor activities. It was a pretty astonishing and eye opening day for me. So many came up to me expressing their appreciation for Chelsea, her music and her ability to listen and help process their emotions when they are doing smaller, more intimate group activities. It was something listening to an entire prison yard full of tough men sing an enthusiastic happy birthday to my daughter. No cameras were allowed but my sketchbook was so I spent time drawing what I saw. Do I have to say how proud I am of her? Yes, I do. I am a very proud papa.
The Band in San Quentin Yard
Peer Support/Hearing Impaired
Chelsea Singing in San Quentin Yard 1
Chelsea Singing in San Quentin Yard 2
One interesting note about San Quentin. There is no Saint Quentin. What there was was an indigenous Coast Miwok warrior named Quentin who lived in that area. He was captured after a fight with the Mexican military in the 1820s and his people named the area after him. When American settlers came later they mistakenly assumed any named place in California had to be named after a saint, as so many were, and named the land San Quentin.
I also drew 3 more drawings during my trip, 2 in airports and one in a club, Vita Brevis, that Chelsea belongs to.
