Summer

Summer, so far, has included a few homemade banana shakes, a few trips to Tasty Twist, a little bit of baseball, and some good books. We've also visited my sister, who flew in from Austin; watched freighters in the St. Clair River from the dock at The River Crab; picked strawberries; and camped in our special place, the land in Oceana County which was my great-grandfather's.

Here are a few pictures from the camping trip.





And here are a few pictures from the morning we picked strawberries. We stopped at Sweetie-licious first for muffins.

New comic available Now!

It's all been a bit quiet on the blog lately, after having several larger projects on the go last year (Stranger Danger , a children's book project for YES! publications and These City Walls ) I took a little bit of a break from comics. But I'm pleased to announce that the Derry Walls project was completed on target and is on sale on a few select places nationally and locally, and as always, available directly from myself for £2.50. (email koniption@hotmail.com )
I also made a recent appearance with my new comic at 2D 2010 Derry -

First Camping Trip of 2010

We had a fantastic trip over to Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area last weekend. We hiked in and camped and had a fine site with a beautiful view, which we shared with friends who drove up from Chesterton, Indiana. There were so many good things about the trip: friends, pie irons over the campfire, morning coffee, middle-of-the-night loon calls, good wine, sound of waves, sound of wind, and good books. Last week, as I was packing for the trip, a package arrived from my friend Karin with a copy of The Cosmopolitan, poems by Donna Stonecipher. It's strange and wonderful and quite compelling -- and really fantastic to read in a tent! Stonecipher includes this note to the reader, which is an interesting (and helpful) introduction to the book:

These poems were written while I was thinking about my generation's relationship to quotation and collage. After a visit to the Metropolitan Museum's furniture collection, during which I looked at the inlaid furniture, followed by an encounter in another museum with one of Joseph Cornell's boxes, in which a postcard was hung by a pin, the first Inlay was born. As with these relationships, the inlaid quotes here are (mostly) autonomous within the surrounding poems; the quotes are from books I happened to be reading during the period the poems were written, when I was living in Berlin.

Several years ago, I read Michael Redhill's Martin Sloane, a novel rooted in the art of Joseph Cornell. I am finding extra pleasure in Stonecipher's book because of that experience.

Here is the view from inside the tent:



And our little fire the first night there: