That Harry Bliss


No, not Barry Blitt. Harry Bliss. BLISS.

I am a huge fan of Harry Bliss with his crazy, funny, mind and brilliant drawings and hilarious video clips. He did the above cover for Heartbeat and also the cover for Replay:

(The blurriness is my faulty picture taking, not Harry's. The image is actually much crisper than my rendering here.)

Harry also did the cover and all illustrations for A Fine, Fine School, which contains one of my all-time favorite Bliss illustrations. The school children have just been told they will have school on Saturdays and Sundays and holidays and all summer long, every single day.

Cover of A Fine, Fine School









You may know him from his covers and cartoons for The New Yorker. Brilliant! We are fortunate in that our regional newspaper carries Bliss's syndicated cartoons. Does your paper have them, too? (Again, the blurriness is mine, sorry, sorry.)

Finally, for today anyway, Harry Bliss is on Facebook and YouTube, where you can access his 100+ video clips.

Happy Fourth of July

It's a cool (weatherwise) Saturday here on Lake Chautauqua. Neighbors are gathering firewood for bonfires tonight. Later they will line up flares along the beach for the traditional lighting of the flares at 10:00 pm. The tradition is so well-established that there will be a ring of red flares burning at that hour, outlining the shores of this 20-mile-long lake, and fireworks will be blasting from four or five towns so that you can look in any direction and see the bright displays. 

We used to sit on the dock to watch . . . until a neighbor's fireworks began pinging us on our heads.

Maybe we will sit up on the porch instead.  Sounds a bit less thrilling but it looks quaint and cozy, mm? Well, yes, it is, except for
the bats . . .

  

Tap Shoes

Thursday, 2 July, 2009

I couldn't help it. Walking by a discount shoe store, I spotted these through the window. Tap shoes! I felt dizzy. I was pulled toward them. In a box, right there, my granddaughter's size. I bought them. She will flip!

How much I would have loved a pair of tap shoes when I was young. I would've tapped and tapped my way around the neighborhood.

Fleurs

Fleurs

Tuesday, 30 June, 2009

The pink rose at bottom is, I think, a perfect rose, and it blooms today, June 30, which was my parents' anniversary. My father was an avid and proud gardener of both flowers and vegetables. His most prized flowers were tea roses and peonies; his most prized vegetables were big, red, beefy tomatoes.

My mother took pleasure in my father's gardens, perhaps especially because he did all the work: all the tilling of soil and planting and weeding. She had her hands full with us five children. We siblings were later pressed into weeding and trimming labors, and although we grumbled plenty, we are all appreciative gardeners as a result. None of us is as good at it as my father was, though.

Lately, I realized that I've been replicating the plants and trees of my childhood home: rhododendrons, azaleas, onions, tomatoes and herbs, maple and pear trees, and of course, peonies and roses, roses, roses.

Ready to Fly

Sunday, 28 June, 2009

These are last year's baby robins just before they left the nest on our front porch. We saw them fly, one by one. Four of them were crammed in this nest and then one day the parents sat in a nearby tree calling to them and off they went. We watched, astounded at this 'normal' miracle.

Robins (the same?) built a nest in the same place this spring, laid eggs, and the mother sat on them. One morning, though, we found the nest on the porch floor, the eggs crushed. We can't figure out what could have knocked them down, as this lamp is about six feet high, with no place for an animal to climb nearby. Bats, maybe?

Choices

Friday, 26 June, 2009

I have a love-hate relationship with fan mail, which arrives in lumps like this (above), usually a day or two after I've finished answering the last batch. Once I calculated how long it took me to open each letter, read it, answer it, address an envelope, close it and stamp it, and then I figured in the cost of the paper, envelope and stamp. I forget the result, but it wasn't encouraging. I bless everyone who sends an S.A.S.E. Sometimes I kiss the S.A.S.E.

But it would be bad form to whinge too much. I am fortunate to have readers, to do what I love to do, and to make a living from it. I am grateful for all the incredible teachers out there who fire kids up over books. (I am not always so grateful for the ones who ask students to tell me what they did not like about the book.) And as every writer knows, sometimes you get those letters that take you to your knees. My most recent favorite is from a girl who, as she read one of my books, nibbled at the corners. She read the book many times, each time nibbling more. She literally ATE the book because she loved it so.

Today the sun is shining; the dock beckons. Lie on the dock or answer mail? Maybe this compromise: dock first, mail later.

Superheroes

Wednesday, 24 June, 2009

This is Nico and Pearl. Give them paper masks and stickers and, ta da! Superheroes! I love how they get into character so quickly and spin out their fantasies so passionately. Children: ahh.