January 5, 2008 -- Saturday evening

Reading Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris.

Something good she read recently--Blindness, by Jose Saramago. She liked it for the plot--it's about a mass epidemic of blindness-- and for the profound passages, for instance there's one woman who doesn't get stricken with the blindness and she walks into a cathedral and describes to her husband that she sees white sashes around the afflicteds' eyes, and she says "art has eyes through its viewers." ...which is what my blog is about. Art needs to be appreciated.

She is a sculptor and if she finishes her website over her holiday from school, I want to link to it __here__

Click to see another reader of Blindness.

If she were to write her own book, it'd be about human nature--fiction, but with scientific musings.

The panther picture behind the register makes me think about a joke Charlie Russell, the great Western artist, played when commissioned to do a painting in the House Chambers of the Montana State Capital Building--he painted a beautiful scene of Lewis and Clark meeting with the Flathead Indians....and in the foreground a wolf, directly behind the desk of the Speaker of the House, positioned so that the wolf is breathing down Speaker's neck. Ha!

I can't help but see the panther and think she is in eminent danger. I was on my way up to Twin Peaks where there is a coyote....a mild natured coyote. I learned this not on Twin Peaks, but in Bernal while doing my Christmas shopping at Red Hill Books (where my friend Sasha Cagen will be having an event on Jan 10, 7pm). On a stand near the register is a book by San Francisco author, Janet Kessler entitled Myca of Twin Peaks: Our mild natured neighbor. Panthers, I'm guessing, are less mild than coyotes.