Call me a sentimental sap, but every year without fail I have to watch one of my all-time favorite movies, It’s A Wonderful Life. I mean, if you dissect the movie, it has all the makings of the hero’s journey and then some. Leaving home (or wanting to), passion, deception, listening to our inner gut, redemption…and on…I’m sure you know the story quite well too. But to me, of all the gems in the movie comes when Clarence says to George Bailey, “You’ve been given a great gift, you know. You get to see what the world would be like without you. You see, you really did have a wonderful life”. I played that scene over. And over again. Here George Bailey was ready to commit...
As some of you know, this past Saturday I had a show. It was fifteen degrees and the snow was coming down hard that day so very few people showed up, I had just moved locally the day before and I was grumpy. Sad. Exhausted. Yes, definitely you could say, ‘bah humbug’ was my mantra. As I left the gallery into the bitter cold, I thought, “run, don’t walk home to my sea of boxes, a life strewn everywhere”. Ugh. More work. There to my wondering eyes was Santa and Mrs. Claus. As I began to veer even faster, picking up speed, I thought that’s just for kids, bah humbug, don’t make eye contact and I can escape. Through Santa’s fake beard, elastic straps showing, he said, “I...
Somewhere on the blue highways lie my muse. Maybe it was that I was moved around beginning at a mere three weeks old to Germany and have not stopped since. You could say traveling is in my blood. This past trip in particular beckoned me until my whispers turned into shouts saying, “you may not feel ready, but just go”. As the miles rolled by, I began to see the years of my life flying past me like they were billboards on the side of the road, me speeding past just a little too fast to read all of it. What the hell are you doing, I kept asking myself. In time, it became clear to me that I was on a...
Many people have asked me WHY I was driven to do my project, The Silver Savior; going around in my Airstream and interviewing folks for the last eight weeks. There are many reasons why, but Somewhere on the Pennsylvania turnpike the core of love overcame me. Truly. I had just left a campground where a complete stranger offered to share his dinner with me as I had gotten in late, and now I’m barreling down the highway, nothing but a thin yellow line of trust protecting me from head on traffic. I began to reflect on all the help and love on the road during my trip. The sun was setting into what I call that “juicy light”. In that moment, I was suddenly overtaken with...
I’ve finally hit the road and a month in (I can’t believe it), in my ’74 Airstream to see what I can find out about our country and the state of affairs we’re in. But, truth be told, to find about about myself and the current state of affairs I’m in as well. Beginning in Yellowstone National Park seemed fitting. I began there at twenty-one, freshly out of college and could see the future wide open like the valley floor I worked at that summer. What have I learned since then almost forty years since? Countless fits and starts, beginnings and never endings have haunted me. What am I meant to do, I plague myself with how did I get here and what is my purpose...
