Film on the Editing Room Floor

picked up in segments and scotch taped together, run through an old 8mm projector, often blurry and with that continuous clacking sound, that is how these memories appear. I don't get the pure uncut version, they are memories filtered through time and I am sure, tempered by who I am today. Someone once said that when telling a story, "start with the now". Between this and my other blog I have gone back and forth searching for the beginning. I have been searching deep in that pile of transparent cellulose, cutting and pasting and taping when maybe the answer was on the top of the pile all along!

The most incredible fantastic thing is that I am alive at all. I had stage "three and one half"

Hodgkin's Lymphoma that had spread to my spleen and spine. There is no such thing as stage 31/2 but the doctor wanted to offer some hope. I fought that hard battle and the day to day account of it is here. Okay, that is a whole damned website, but at the top, where it says, "BLOG", that is it.

Art plays a big part in the make up of me. I have always liked a challenge, not in a competitive

sporty kind of way, but a personal best, doing more or better than I did yesterday. And I just plain like to make things, this desk I am writing on and the studio in which it sits, the house I call home and everything in between.

Art became powerful when I was fifty years old and decided to make my living at it. I threw away a career I grew to hate, completing the jobs at hand and laying off my remaining employees. That summer I became unemployed. I became an Artist! A work at home artist with a studio in my backyard, and a little pool, and a greenhouse, and the most beautiful of gardens.

Shortening the story a bit, it was all pretty easy. I used all my construction experience and applied it to my art, inventing some things and reinventing others. My "stuff" was available at

five local shops and two more down the valley a bit. One year I decided to try the Galleries just

for fun, just to say I did it. That was easy too. In a town used to $300 garden arbors I introduced them to $3,500 ones, always bigger and better, never imported, I made these. When giant entry gates were ordered from three designs I offered my own, and art deco, design with art, not just framed fence panels. My biggest thrill to all of this was in encouraging my competition to step up and do a better job. I kept no secretes from them, would happily tell them everything I knew. One can only copy what I have done not what I will do tomorrow.

I enjoy teaching and encouraging and inspiring others, that has to be a big part of who I am.

I'll tell that story tomorrow!