This charming book by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch, which I bought in Zurich, cleverly presents its theme on the cover as a title: “Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat” on the cover. Egils translates this as “From small Mole, who wanted to know who dropped this thing [...]

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. -Thomas Merton Bookmark

Like Dark Striker ((Nidhogg), the dragon who was an enormous force of evil in Norse mythology, Hurricane Sandy has left a broad swath of destruction and darkness in her path. Large areas of New York and New Jersey are swamped and disconnected to an extent never seen before. The fires that reduced acres of homes [...]

John Flanagan’s strengths are dramatic action, innovative conflict, and complex male characters who breathe and sweat. This fantasy adventure trilogy with a Middle Ages setting combines humor, intelligent language and complex characters to propagate a fast-paced, engaging tale awash with daring plot twists. Although mostly promoting good morals, the level of violence over these first [...]

Today, October 8 is Leif Eriksson Day in the U.S. About 1,000 A.D., Leif and his men sailed from Greenland to what is now L’Anse Aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland, Canada. He beat Columbus by nearly 500 years to be verifiably the first European to set foot in North America, where he built an outpost. [...]

Patience please, the video is coming soon, along with other aspects of the sculpture. JAZ Bookmark

Leif Eiriksson discovered something big around 1,000 A.D. You can still see the footprints of his longhouses at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, N. A. But scholars argue about exactly where his Vínland is, which is puzzling. Maybe they don’t have a GPS? The reconstructed sod longhouse at Leifsbudir, which means [...]

On May 24th, after going to a magical book launch party on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston,  I did a post about the book Willow’s Walkabout: A Children’s Guide to Boston by Sheila S. Cunningham and illustrated by Kathie Kelleher. Kathie, who is an endlessly fascinating and talented friend and neighbor, agreed to the following interview. [...]

For a number of years I have been collecting children’s picturebooks from other countries when I travel or friends and relatives do. It is good to be aware of the visual voices from other lands, so now and then I will post images of a few. The first entry in this series was October, 2010, [...]

Willow’s Walkabout: A Children’s Guide to Boston had a fabulous launch at the Agonquin Club on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston recently. This picturebook, written by Sheila S. Cunningham and illustrated by my friend Kathie Kelleher,  is about a wallaby named Willow who goes on a walkabout from the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, MA to explore [...]

Yesterday Egils and I transported my just-finished sculpture to the Barn Gallery in Ogunquit, Maine for the Invited New England Sculptors exhibit. Lindley Briggs has been curator for the show each summer for a number of years and I have been fortunate that she has the patience to include my work in the sculpture courtyard [...]

Today cupidslitconnection.blogspot.com had a nifty competition where authors could submit the first 250 words of their manuscript along with the plot part of a query letter. Those who got in would be “coached” in terms of fine-tuning, then these submissions would go to literary agents, who would choose among, or fight over them. The trick [...]

History does begin with yesterday, after all. Nineteen seventy one, when cigarette ads were banned from TV, The Rolling Stones’ Brown Sugar topped the charts, and Clockwork Orange and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory were playing at the movies, does not seem so very long ago. Then again, gasoline was forty cents a gallon. [...]

As I watched the goldfinches at our feeder today something in the next yard startled them. They spurted up and away in various directions. One unfortunate flew toward me and hit the glass of the atrium door, bang! She landed a foot away, wings and tail splayed on the new snow, each feather arrayed in [...]

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Story for Children by Gabriel Garcia Marquez may be more for you and me than for children (at least American ones).  But that is an assumption. An unfair one perhaps. But it has left behind a scraggly feather on the shore of my memory. You can read [...]

At the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum yesterday in pouring rain I voted my opinion into Steve Lambert’s Capitalism: It Works For Me! True/False, which includes a counter of the votes cast. How would you vote? This future/retro neon thingy was part of the museum’s biennial, installed in front of the entrance. Inside, hidden back [...]

You work alone developing something that has never before existed in the world. You see it from a unique perspective, but what about the rest of the world? Is this newly created entity ready for exposure? Is it balanced and complete? Does it say what you think it says? What you need is a good [...]

En route to a two week trip around Latvia, during a layover at Keflavik airport in Iceland, I experienced Directions, a sculpture installation by Steinunn Thorarinsdottir. Four life casts in aluminum are mounted on columns of basalt, a hard volcanic stone common to this seismic island. The figures face outward, toward the four compass points [...]

Miranda and I went on a walk. She was telling me what she thinks about books. Here’s what she said. Topics that some kids like (kids that I know): Fluffy kitty cat books (I hate them completely) Books with some scary moments and action (I personally like these best J) Craft books like how to [...]

By JULIE BOSMAN Published in The New York Times: August 9, 2011 “The publishing industry has expanded in the past three years as Americans increasingly turned to e-books and juvenile and adult fiction, according to a new survey of thousands of publishers, retailers and distributors that challenges the doom and gloom that tends to dominate [...]

Conley Harris, a Boston artist known for his paintings inspired by Persian landscape paintings, is organizing pop-up exhibits at his studio loft in Boston, in collaboration with the Joseph Carroll and Sons Gallery. Four sheets of small watercolors from my Etudes series, twelve of which are now in the Boston Drawing Project at the gallery, [...]

That is the first sentence of a new book that arrived on my radar just as suddenly. I should not be surprised at the power of buzz by now, but I am. On my way to teach my sculpture class yesterday afternoon I heard a thing on the radio about the book that sounded intriguing. [...]

For last year’s NaNoWriMo I laid the groundwork for What Else is There?, my YA historical novel about Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir. It is set in Iceland, Greenland, and America about 1,000 A.D. Approaching the end of the story, I am meanwhile exploring references to Norse mythology in books and other media. In the past two days [...]

Alas, I have been so busy with life, so you have not heard from me. But here is something intriguing. My sister Norma alerted me to a certain delicate Edinburgh mystery. This NPR article by Robert Krulwich describes a trail of surprise gifts given anonymously to those with eyes, a heart, and a brain. Bookmark

For the past year I have been working on a YA novel about a Norse teen from 1,000 A.D. I read about Gudrid Thorbjarnadottir in two of the Icelandic sagas where she is shown to have had a truly amazing life. I’ve tried to show her in 3D in What Else is There? The story [...]