waking to a cool-comfy house [it won't stay that way long today....]

I've found myself thinking about this, off and on, over the past year or so, and today my shower thoughts put it to me this way:

The political divide of our current culture can be boiled down to two opposing beliefs:

1. If people need help to get by, then they ought to get that help.
2. If people can't get by on their own, then they don't deserve to get by, and they should fail [and possibly die].

Pretty much every other political position seems [to me] to grow out of one or the other of these.

To no one's surprise, I lean toward 1. Setting aside the fact that I find 2. morally repugnant, here's why I also find it untenable:

No one gets by on their own. No newborn human can survive without outside intervention.

To which I expect some Two-Believers to say Well Yes Of Course But®. It can be argued that there are other creatures that need to be nurtured at first, but once they are able to leave the nest, then they get by on their own. Only natural.

But humans are social creatures, which by their very nature continue to function within their society for their entire lives. And the fact that human society is so exceedingly complex compared to other creatures, seems to suggest that humans the most inherently and deeply social of all creatures on earth. We aren't really built to leave the nest. So, to argue that at some point in our lives, we are suddenly able to function completely independently... well, that strikes me as not just completely arbitrary, but also naive.


[At which point we could go on to argue about what kinds of social help, and how much, are Right® and which are Wrong®.... which is also arbitrary. And hair-splitty.]

the songs of robins — been a long time coming

a nice enough day that we can open the windows!

As a part of training my eye and hand for a new upcoming project, I've been drawing studies of Lee Holley's Ponytail panels from the early 60s. And I find myself learning [yet again] the lesson that comes from pretty much any 20th-century cartoonist: while the drawing may appear and feel pretty simple, it is deceptively simple. There is always a lot more intricate work involved than that. Always an inspiring eye-opener for me.

something I don't usually get to see [I got curious]....

I am calling this my eleventh gouache painting, even though technically that isn't correct: this was done on a 4-by-6 canvas board and all my other gouaches were on paper, and the paint calls itself acrylic paint rather than gouache. Bear with me while I explain:






This was my first time trying Deco Earth brand “reclaimed acrylic” paint — claims to be more opaque and more matte finish than regular acrylic. The opaque is maybe a bit true, but the matte finish is way true. It's a lot like working with acrylic gouache IMHO — hence my labelling it such. Handles nice and I look forward to working with it again. (Even though the range of pigments available to work with leaves a little to be desired, I think.) 

It's already April! March went by so fast!

Seeing robins on the first day of spring — always a good thing.