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As people age and the odds of getting sick and out of sorts becomes greater, it becomes increasingly important to rely on intuition salted with good common sense and a lifetime of experience to get through confusing symptoms and bad days. The odd tingling here, the unexplained headache there—not to mention feeling downright irritable or depressed—can lead one’s imagination to run wild, prompting questions like, “Is my diabetes acting up, am I having a stroke?” These events can be serious but they also might be nothing but instigators for bewildering and frightening experiences—especially if they come on a bad day when a person is lonely, or otherwise not feeling “up to it.” More questions surface, “Should I call my doctor? Can I afford another medical expense?” A whole litany of concerns pop into the mind, compounding the problem by adding to any anxiety or depression already manifesting itself.

Naturally, if a person suspects or has reason to believe a serious issue is presenting itself, a visit to the doctor would be appropriate. However, where there is reasonable doubt, a lifetime of having to solve problems requiring responses where one doesn’t have all the answers can encourage the senior to rely on intuition, common sense and previous experience. A decision to call the doctor will then be based on deep insight coming from the body itself, and can really help the doctor treat the person accordingly.

Most of us have had little motivation to develop intuition

However, most likely, we have not developed intuition for a number of reasons. For one thing, it was almost never taught in school despite the fact that most scientific advances come as a result of intuitive insight. Also, perhaps in younger days there weren’t so many “gray areas,” especially concerning health. Chances are, when we were in the full bloom of youth and health, we only dealt with issues that have ready solutions, or had a medical problem for which the doctors were able to heal or at least adequately address. The chronic conditions were a lot fewer. If we broke a leg skiing; we got a cast on our leg. If we contracted a strep throat; we were given an antibiotic to fight it. Most of us didn’t “listen” to our bodies. We took our good health for granted and lived in blissful ignorance.

So aging seems to bring, along with the gray hair, more and more gray areas in life, especially health related issues, where there are no set solutions to matters of mind, body and spirit A little more than an apple a day is needed to address the problem of an arthritic knee, and no one person has all the answers. In some cases, there simply are no answers or cures. One must somehow forge one’s own path ahead to get light and definition in the gray areas. This can be done through intuition.

Never too late to Build Intuitive Skills

Intuition is something all of us are born with, but few of us make a point to work on as we would work on building our muscles or financial portfolio. Yet like our muscles and portfolios, it’s never too late to work on our intuitive abilities as long as we are mentally competent.

At first this effort to develop intuitive skills most likely will seem completely stupid, especially if one hasn’t tried it. After all, within is where all the problems are felt—between the pounding heart, the tightened stomach and splitting headache!

Where to Start

It helps beginners to read a few good books on intuition or maybe take a class in intuition. It takes a little guidance for most adults to go from the head to the heart, a journey described as one of the longest anyone can possibly make. Like every serious undertaking, a little groundwork and the learning of a few techniques are required. And being serious about it helps. You can’t just say a few “oms” and expect to feel better. For some seniors, reading the books and applying the self-help techniques to develop intuition are quite enough and could prove very beneficial. Others will become fascinated by what they learn, and realize they possess special intuitive gifts which they may want to develop through the help of a trainer. Most will certainly become more confident in making decisions regarding the “gray areas.” The discovery of these gifts could open up a new phase of life not only for self development but for helping others.

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As a young artist Brian Gray had been influenced by graffiti art, vintage comic books, old school hand drawn advertising, MAD Magazine, and the Saturday morning cartoons of the 80’s. As his artwork developed Brian became heavily influenced by the “lowbrow” art movement and the underground art scene that dominates so much of Los Angeles and the West Coast scene in general. He began to follow several artists he read about in various art magazines and on numerous art blogs. Artists such as Joe Ledbetter, Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Greg "Craola" Simkins, David Hovarth, and Buff Monster, are some of the artists that have made a lasting impression on Brian over recent years. Brian best describes his art as, “fun, imaginative, and whimsical but, with a slight touch of a hidden darkness.”

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Donald Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Our Constitution, and The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion, looks at The New York Times decision not to break the Watergate story. Ritchie, who has been Associate Historian of the United States Senate for more than three decades, reveals that it was a series of mistakes, not just one, that led to The Washington Post breaking the story. Ritchie’s book, Reporting from Washington, was also ahead of the pack, identifying Deep Throat as being in the FBI months before Mark Felt confessed.

Watergate is back in the news thanks to the recent confessions of a former New York Times reporter, Robert M. Smith, and his Washington bureau editor, Robert H. Phelps, about how they failed to report a hot tip on the Nixon administration’s involvement in the cover-up. Preparing to leave the paper in August 1972, to attend law school, Smith held a farewell lunch with acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray, who revealed that his agents had found evidence of “dirty tricks” being employed by the Nixon reelection campaign, leading to the top levels. Smith reported this to Phelps, but he was leaving on a month-long vacation and let the story drop. The rest of the media has relished reporting on how the Times let the political story of the century slip away.

Of course, the rest of the media–with the notable exception of the Washington Post– fumbled the Watergate scandal as well. Even at the Post, the story was almost the exclusive property of two green reporters from the Metro section. Those who covered the national news dismissed the idea of presidential involvement in the Watergate burglary as being highly implausible. Washington correspondents may not have liked Richard Nixon, but they respected his intelligence and held it inconceivable that he would jeopardize his presidency by bugging his faltering opposition.

Without detracting from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s assiduous reporting, we know now that their chief inside information was coming from the FBI’s deputy director, W. Mark Felt. He systematically leaked in order to prevent the White House from derailing the FBI’s investigation. The insights Felt provided the Post kept the story alive for months.

When the Watergate burglars were arraigned, it was initially seen as a local police story. Since the New York Times’ Washington bureau only covered federal courts, the Times buried a short report deep inside the next day’s paper, while the Washington Post put it on the front page. Max Frankel, the Times’ Washington bureau chief, discouraged his correspondents from pursing Watergate. “Not even my most cynical view of Nixon had allowed for his stupid behavior,” Frankel later lamented. It went on that way for the rest of 1972, with the Post running story after story, and the rest of the media sharing the Times’ reluctance. Further clouding the Washington bureau’s judgment was its condescending attitude toward the Washington Post, which the New Yorkers regarded as little more than a provincial paper in a government town–a step or two above Albany. Despite Woodward and Bernstein’s prodigious output during the summer of 1972, Frankel insisted that their reporting failed to measure up to his standards of reporting. Small wonder, then, that Robert Smith’s tip never made it into the “paper of record.”

The New York Times finally got a handle on Watergate when it hired the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. In January 1973, Hersh scooped even Woodward and Bernstein by documenting how White House hush money had gone to the Watergate burglars. Reporters for other papers were developing their own leads and the rest of the pack piled on top. Ever since then–right up to the current revelations–Washington reporters have puzzled over why they missed the Watergate story for so long. The White House press corps came in for the harshest criticism, accused by former press secretary Bill Moyers of being “sheep with short attention spans.” But White House reporters, dependent on White House sources, were no more likely to uncover White House scandals than police reporters were to expose police graft. It took a couple of young, ambitious, local news reporters to think the unthinkable.

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Here are a few interior illustrations from chapters in the book "Forts" that I'm currently working on. Nothing amazing, just simple black and white drawings to go over the chapter titles. I'll put up a few more in the coming weeks.

Steve

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Here's a small illustration I did for a book denoting a chart to show activities in respect to energy/calories expended. Being a couch potato takes little energy, while a vigorous bicycle ride takes much. Just in case you didn't know that... : ) And below is a close up.

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Something gray can sometimes spark the imagination like no color.

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It's been a surprisingly light week, which has given me time to work on some stuff of my own, which is good.

At the same time it's also given me the opportunity to laze around my house wasting time and not showering until nearly three-thirty in the afternoon, which is not quite as good.

(My wife doesn't appreciate the odors).

The above cat drawing is a little sketch I finished off this morning for a possible job, proving that even on the laziest of weeks there is still work to do.

Steve~

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I wasn't able to get a whole heck of a lot done on this illustration over the past week. Too much other stuff to do. I did manage to find some time to throw down a couple really basic colors though. I'm thinking it's going to look decent when finished. I'm going with some nice cool grays for the train which should look good.

That's about it.

As the kids would say, I'm outy.

Steve~

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It's funny, how you think you know someone in the public eye as they come into your world view and then discover they have a life going on you never imagined. I was trolling the remainders section of a bookstore in Berkeley (Moe's? Pegassus?) shortly after the release of the film A Perfect Murder starting Mortensen, Michael Douglas and Gweneth Paltrow. Its a remake of Hitchcock's Dial M for

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