This cartoon relates to the fact that the Commonwealth Health Center has been placed on "immediate jeopardy" not once, but in three separate notices. Each one seems focused on more serious and problematic issues than the one before. At one point after they came out, the newspapers reported how some of the Board members were over at CHC trying to find the CEO, who was not there. I "borrowed" the lobster content from other Administration figures (press secretary Angel Demapan, insider trading ex-official Mike Ada, the Governor). The politics makes ordinary people lose their appetite.
This week I was asked to create a banner for New England's SCBWI Facebook page. This was an honour and a lot of fun to do. What better than lobster and water on a day that was over 90F .. phew, Maine!
Here is the banner.
View it on Facebook at
NESCBWI pageI wanted to keep it fun and lively, so it's one of my digital drawings straight into Photoshop, no sketching. It stops me overthinking and it's a style that is appealing to younger eyes. And older ones too I hope!
Right now I am packing to go to ALA (American Library Conference) in Anaheim, CA. This is my first time at a big library conference and it's exciting. I have two book signings, so if you are going, catch me at Kane Miller (with Anastasia Suen, author of 'All Star Cheerleaders') at 11am Saturday and at Charlesbridge's booth Saturday 2-3pm signing 'Hidden New Jersey'.
I am looking forward to meeting LIBRARIANS and catching up with some industry friends. So please come and say HELLO!
There will be photos ...
Right, back to packing.
Toodles
Hazel
On the bedside table:
A slew of Emily Gravett picture books
'Picture This' and 'What it is' by Lynda Barry - recommend highly.
Into the Trap is a made-up story but I drew on a number of experiences in my life, if only indirectly, to make the story come alive.
Years ago, I was lucky enough to work for a legend among Cape Cod lobstermen named Harry Hunt. His boat was called Gertrude H., named for his wife. The boat was a Virginia-built wooden boat, beamy and solid and beautiful in her workboat lines. Harry himself resembled the boat in the sense that he was all about work—no varnish on him. He had bluff shoulders like the slopes of mountains and Popeye forearms and massive meaty hands. He was one of the saltiest men I’d ever heard speak. In his profane way, he stood solo against the world.
The first time I worked for him I was already crewing for Rick Verlik aboard his jigboat Sea Hunter. Rick got a call from Harry one day in early October: He was short of crew and needed a couple of extra hands to help find and haul a number of traps that had gone missing during a blow. So Rick and I found ourselves signed on for a flat fee of around two hundred bucks, and steamed out of Wychmere Harbor in Harwich Port one cool evening. Our course took us through the fishing grounds that Rick and I frequented: Nantucket Shoals where we fished for striped bass and the Great South Channel, where we handlined to catch codfish. But Harry wasn’t stopping there: One of the pioneers of offshore lobstering, he was bound for the canyons of the Continental Shelf, a hundred miles offshore where the Gulf Stream swirled.
By Stuie
as narrated to Susan Fensten, Senior Publicist
I’m often understandably mistaken for a Pomeranian. We are cousins. I am a 4 year-old German Spitz Klein [small Spitz] and I was adopted by my human friend at BARC Shelter in Williamsburg. It was love at first sight.
But don’t let my silky fur and cute, little cookie face fool you, when it comes to reading I’m dead serious. Life is too short and there’s no time for fiction. I’m a true crime lover. There’s nothing better than curling up on my pillow spending hours lost in the fervor of a terrifying crime spree and its aftermath. The excitement, the fear, the victim/s, the suspect/s, the cops, the investigation, I love it. Then ultimately the trial and surprise verdict keeps me turning the pages.
Murder is the territory and the idle, filthy rich are the adventurers in this unique true crime story. Savage Grace: The True Story of Fatal Relations in a Rich and Famous American Family by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson. Born into staggering wealth and privilege, Tony Baekland’s fate was sealed by the very elements which propelled him throughout his tragic life. His grandfather was the inventor of plastic, bakelite it was called, in its early form. A suffocating, beautiful mother, Barbara and a critical, distant and demanding father Brooks Baekland both lit the fuse that would later shock the world elite, the beautiful people. Poor unfortunate Tony. What could he do? Nothing, except to maybe put an end to all of the noise in his mind.
The book is told entirely through actual correspondence between family members and their wheel-heeled, well off friends. The Baeklands trundled aimlessly to the glamorous ports of the world, staying only for short spates before pushing on, writing mountains of letters, ever rambling. Chasing endless pursuits each more futile than the one before it. In their own words they express finely nuanced details about themselves as only the self can know. They reveal their insecurities, egos, their pettiness and pomposity, their dreams and crushing disappointments in themse
lves and in each other. It’s a jungle of madness and murder, letters and locations and dark secrets.
My adoring human friends are taking me to Maine next week and I cannot wait. We are going back to Stonington on Deer Island in Penobscot Bay. We went there last year. I loved the pines, the tide washed coves, the sharp-eyed fledglings and most of all, the lobster rolls! Seacoast Maine: People and Places by Martin Dibner with photographs by George E. Tice is the per
More cartoon/comic experimentation. I picked an event from this past weekend and only got around to doing these two panels. This was my second lobster boil, the first having been in Cape Cod many, many years ago. Of course, lobster aren’t native to South Texas, where I grew up. Plenty of gulf shrimp, oysters, and [...]
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You Run Away by Barenaked Ladies
Life -
Today is how a day off should be. Especially when you consider it was kind of a work-related trip. We sell live Maine lobsters at work, the only drug store in the nation to do so, and I've kind of become the Lobster Manager by default, dealing with the tank, keeping us in stock, etc... And one of the best/worst parts is actually obtaining
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Love it:)