as we drove north we talked about these blogs. i pretty much know that nothing i might write – or ponder – or rant about – will change what is happening in this country right now. i write anyway.
i am typing this blog post ahead – at the very moment that the u.s. house minority leader is speaking on the floor before a final vote is taken on the big __ bill.
and i truly want to cry.
because even the briefest scroll through social media today reveals a country being led by an administration rife with cruelty and it takes my breath away. i just cannot wrap my head around this – in 2025. i barely know what to say.
we had decided to go on a much-needed get-away-from-all-of-it date with each other and drove to walkers point in milwaukee where there is a spanish bistro that has sangria and tapas for happy hour. it was an early evening, but the tapas are $1, $3 and $5 and, as we ordered three to share, we knew that could fit in the budget we had saved for these moments.
because the moment we were in was overwhelming and last night’s date out – requiring an hour drive to and fro and some time on barstools talking – really talking about real stuff – with a young man bar-and-soul-tending was a reminder to stay in the here and now (at least for here and now).
i’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the bill – with the knee-bending, capitulating, hate-perpetuating, sycophantic incentive not to piss off their madman prez – is going to pass. [which – as an addendum – it did.] and the cruelty and inhumane treatment of real-life people will not only continue, but will escalate exponentially. the absolute cowardice of those who are supposed to be representing the needs and wishes of their constituents – the american people – is beyond appalling. i barely know what to say.
and then – in moments of their glee and gilded-golden-glory – in the sad moments of watching the cheer squad justify and cheer – in the aftermath of hope hobbled by hatred and greed – this beaten-up country will stagger into tomorrow, tears streaming down its face as its e-pluribus-unum heart shatters into a million pieces.
three sources. the bible, the statue of liberty on ellis island, the declaration of independence. all pointing – pointedly – to the same thing: no one is lesser or unworthy of respect.
in the current climate of these most-obviously un-united united states, it might do one good to remember any one of these powerful quotes. because the disrespect, minimalizing, oppression, degradation of people, the disenfranchising, the marginalization, the injustice, the out-and-out cruelty is mind-bogglingly unconscionable.
this administration’s pathetic excuses for validation are rampant gish gallop. and you – the anti-woke out there are being taken for a dangerous ride. at any moment, the gish-whip can be turned on you. but remember – you wanted this. you voted for it.
we are not forming “a more perfect union“. we – instead – are heading for dystopia.
a more perfect union loves one another. a more perfect union celebrates the richness of all diversity. a more perfect union learns from each other. a more perfect union is a place where “e pluribus unum (out of many, one) ” counts, where equality is a thriving verb, where each person’s life – regardless of any differences – is valued and cherished.
please wake up, you anti-wokers. your complicit sleep – on the galloping bandwagon over hill and dale all across this country – is killing our democracy.
“i’m a romper room do-bee, a do-bee all day long.” (romper room)
oh geeez. about to write this blogpost, i looked at this image – of this stunning bumblebee happily lingering in the flowers of our coleus – and thought of the romper room do-bee song. where does this stuff come from???
my dear husband claims that i am a circular worker-bee, that i go from one thing to the next, doing a bit, then doing a bit, then doing a bit, then circling around again and getting a bit more done, a bit more done, a bit more done. i suppose that is somewhat true – though i would like to add that eventually it all truly gets done, circular or not. as i watched this bumblebee bumbling happily around the other day, i thought that maybe i am more of a bumble than a circular worker-bee. or maybe that’s the same thing…
this little bee seemed perfectly content to flit from one flower to the next, never lingering too long on any one nectar source. it reminds me of when i had toddlers, flitting from reading from a stack of books on the floor to the matchbox cars on the floor to the studio to jot down a lyric or a melody to the stove to stir the kraft macaroni and cheese or flip over the grilled cheese sandwich. in constant motion. just like the bee. eh, truth be told, it reminds me of now.
romper room was a staple back in the day. though the host never saw me (she never said my name aloud) in her magic mirror, i remained a fan through my pre-school years. the fact that i have the romper room do-bee songs 45 rpm record attests to the impact of this little show back then. it’s interesting that i still have it – in my 45rpm record case – the kind that perfectly fits 45s with a buckle on the front and the handle on the top. and it does make me wonder how mitch miller and his orchestra, along with the sandpipers recorded this side a/side b with straight faces. “i always do what’s right. i never do anything wrong. i’m a romper rom do-bee, a do-bee all day long,” the big finish has a predictably rising (and crescendoing) melody despite impossible-to-humanly-achieve lyrics.
we write blogposts six days a week, as you know. five of them are based on images of photography or quotes we have come across in our path, while saturday is the cartoon smack-dab that we produce. that you have gotten to this sentence is amazing to me and i want to thank you for reading – however often or sporadically you read. i’m never quite sure of what i will write as we open up our laptops (ok, well, not my laptop now as that is refusing to remember its role in life, so i open up my mini ipad). i’m never sure of how you might react or respond to what i have written. sometimes i feel vulnerable about what i have shared. sometimes i feel nervous about what i’ve put out there. sometimes i’m a little tiny bit proud of something i’ve written. nevertheless, i keep writing and telling you of life from my little corner of the world. it is, after all, a romper room rule:
i’m an artist. always i know that there will be another flower, there will be another source of nectar. the next image, the next day. and i will happily – and bumbly – share words and thoughts with whomever wishes to read them.
you and i – we are together in this moment. we are doing-do-bees, sharing time in the world.
and, from the bottom of my trying-to-be-a-do-bee-all-day-long heart, i wish you plentiful flowers filled with plentiful sweet nectar as you flit from one moment of your life to the next.
though not as existential as ‘what is the purpose of life?’, when i read this question – “what’s the purpose of a blog?” – in our website email i admit to sitting and staring at it for awhile. good question.
since you are reading this, you must find some value in a blog. somehow it must resonate with you. something we are saying must find a spot to linger a moment in your mind or heart. or maybe we are dear to each other and you are staying in touch – albeit virtually – with what’s going on in our lives. maybe we have never met but you are walking this path of living for this period of time with me, with us. i’m not sure why you have clicked on this, but i am curious and, mostly, i am grateful.
this is part of what i wrote back to the question:
“we originally published our mutual website and blogs as a way to draw attention to our varied artistries. david is a painter and writer and i – well, you know.“ (the question was posed by a person who was quite instrumental with encouragement for my first full-length original solo piano album.) “but i was also doing a lot of writing (the written word) and we developed several cartoons and products. it was a mélange of artistic mediums, hence the name – the mélange.
as you know, being an artist presents many challenges, not the least of which is to earn money. people turn to the arts for sustenance, for comfort, for reassurance, for insight, to celebrate their bliss. but, as in the music world, for example, that is often derived via “free” formats…formats that pay the artists little to nothing: spotify, pandora, apple music etc. in an effort to hold true to our artistries, our site – developed a few years ago – combined all of what we do under the bigger umbrella of ‘the arts’ and put it out there.
theoretically, the purpose of a blog is to draw attention to product, to establish credibility, to perhaps be inspiring, to share thoughts, to form a community, to connect with like and not like-minded people, to ask questions, to drive engagement, to repurpose old content that still has life to live.
our blogs are read in over 80 countries – according to the stats. it’s a delight to see that anyone at all is reading what i or david have to say. even better is when they share content – outside our concentric circle – that means something to them or respond because something we said or posted or generated resonated with them.
many artists (and others) blog or vlog (video blog) now. they include ways to help support them. in our case, we have a BuyMeACoffee link (that’s the QR code on the blog pages) which is like a tip-jar website. others have patreon which is a subscription to which people can sign up and regularly support the continuing creating of artists whose work they value. it is simply an effort to continue to be artists in a financial world that doesn’t value artists in a financial way. sigh. with the encouragement of others, we will likely open a patreon account one of these days.
david and i sit and write each morning together. we choose images for the week and post them. then we sit – side by side with our laptops – and write our blogposts, not peeking or sharing until we are done. this process is truly meaningful to us and brings great joy as we read what the image has brought up for each of us – often quite different. david is much more esoteric than i am and my blogposts are usually thready, really from the heart. it’s a good balance, particularly in relationship.”
so, what’s the purpose?
the person who posed this question is an actuary. i suspect that a blog seems somewhat frivolous to them, maybe even out of the realm of pragmatic, certainly not sustaining or financially rewarding. and – though having millions of followers or subscribers could be very lucrative – i suppose all those other points could be true. and yet, there is this imperative we both feel – to write – that we answer, each and every day. it’s both the blessing and the curse of being an artist.
i can’t imagine that there are readers who read each and every of our six-days-a-week postings. but to think that someone in a different US time zone, in africa, in south america, in the EU or indonesia or the middle east or australia or canada or ukraine is sitting with coffee and taking time to read my words is humbling. it’s how i feel about listeners spinning my music. the same. humbling. shy of being in the same room with me or having some kind of live exchange or sharing time together, my music and my words are the closest you can get to me, to what i am thinking or feeling, questions i am trying to answer, the way i parse out what it means to live. it is relationship on the relationship target circle – the circle a couple circles in, where you are not only acknowledging existence, but you are paying attention, responding, even if silently.
we don’t know what would happen if we stopped writing. all of sudden – boom! – full stop! we don’t know if there are those people who would miss these ramblings. we don’t know if there are those people who might just notice, a tad regretfully, our blogs were no longer there. we do know there are those people who would never even know we were gone. it’s a funny thing. and as an artist you must be careful not to let ego and its attention-seeking behavior stand in your way. you just keep on. until you stop. and then, because imperative is – after all – imperative, you do something else. artistry is a living and breathing thing.
i hardly think that the words i write are gloriously wise or the smidgiest-bit funny or new thoughts in an old universe. i just know they are uniquely mine and, for some crazy reason, i am open to being vulnerable enough to share them.
maybe one day you and i will have a conversation about this. and you might be able to tell me what the purpose is of writing a blog.
after coffee, after breakfast, after hugging on dogga snuffling in our faces, after the weather app, after a littabittanews…my sturdy old laptop and our quilt.
i know that not everyone wants to read all these words. i know that many will do much to avoid it. i know that – in the grand scheme of things – my blahblah doesn’t really matter much. sometimes there are responses, comments from people, questions, validations, pushbacks. sometimes people ask if we have a patreon account or a way to donate a cup of coffee. that there is someone out there who takes time to write a few words back at all is pretty gigantic. because in today’s world, there are an inordinate number of things – out there – one could choose to read, to watch, to listen to.
but i guess it all doesn’t matter.
because i have found – now – that i write for me.
writing each morning – this practice – makes me think and ponder and rehash and sort. it is a caffeinated burst in the day, a jump-start to everything that will follow.
sometimes it is a walk into a bank of memories, complete with tears or laughter.
sometimes it is a wondering for the future, attempting to connect the dots of constellations i have yet to see.
sometimes it is a rant about the world, the country, the community, things i perceive as wrongdoings.
sometimes it lifts others up, those who levitate our spirits and souls with generosity.
sometimes it is with amazement for what we see and hear and taste and smell – out there – in nature and on this good earth.
always it is with a sense of impermanence.
these words will stay on the page, so to speak, for as long as wordpress allows them to. they will eventually fade as more words will enter the big melting pot of written thoughts.
our writings will lift off someday into the atmosphere. they will float around, bouncing off stars and planets – like the silver balls in a pinball machine. maybe they will leave a little something behind, a touch of evanescent dust that someone will see and remember.
the other night – around 2:30am – we heard the owl. outside our window, the great horned owl spoke into the night. it didn’t know if anyone was listening. but we did. we listened. we heard it call. and for its unspoken spoken words, we were grateful. we will remember.
helen’s words have stayed with me for a few years now. we had told her of various frog encounters we were having including the time the frog jumped out of my sweet momma’s toilet (!) when we opened the lid and the first surprise frog at our little pond. “frog,” she quietly pointed out in a slight southern drawl, “is simply an acronym for fully-rely-on-god.” there was something stabilizing in her tone, something full of wisdom and experience and the flow of life. in her words there was reassurance. in her words there was encouragement.
magic appeared earlier this summer. we check for him pretty much every day. at some point one of us meanders out there and walks slowly around the pond, studying the places where a sweet frog can linger, sun, or hide. some days he isn’t there and we worry about him. when you name a frog in your pond, he becomes part of your family and pando and epic and tiny were no exceptions. we celebrated the day magic suddenly poofed into our pond. i’m certain we both heard helen’s words whispered in our ears.
i know that magic is vulnerable and yet, he sits in it. this pond is tiny and he would be hard-pressed to evade the neighborhood hawk should it decide froglegs were on the menu. the sun warms the pond each day and the rocks around it are hot to the touch, but magic has apparently figured all that out, afternooning in the shaded garden bushes, i suppose. he doesn’t seem to be scared of a big black furry dogdog running around the pond incessantly; i imagine he rolls his eyes, giggles at the visual absurdity and somehow knows dogga would never hurt him. he seems pretty secure. maybe he knows the f-r-o-g thing. no matter, taking chances, he sits in his vulnerability.
these two days – thursdays and fridays – are dedicated to our artistries. dr thursday and ks friday offer specific chances for us to dive into our craft, to talk about it, to divulge.
i have found, in these last years now of writing, that we are much like magic. the more we write, the more we divulge of where we are. our vulnerability is not just limited to artistry days. instead, we take chances each day of the week, writing where we are, where we have come from, where we may be going. we click ‘publish’ and sit in it.
at points in time, the neighborhood hawk somehow removed us from facebook for unknown reasons – a hankering for froglegs, i suppose – and trashed our youtube – burning hot reasons we will never know. it is hard to evade the acts of close-mindedness, of conspiracy theory, of damaging rhetoric, of exclusion. but we just keep writing anyway.
it was late evening when i went to look for magic. the air had deliciously cooled and we were outside – just with the pondlight and bulbs strung over the yard. there he was. in the spotlight of the pond, confidently on the edge of the rocks, breathing deeply – or however it is frogs breathe best. he didn’t move as i approached and he stayed right there, inches away, for the photoshoot. unafraid and in his own skin, he didn’t flinch. he just stayed right there. in the middle of his vulnerability.
“look it up,” my sweet momma would say. i blame her. for my word-curiosity. for my policing of spelling, punctuation, grammar. for my love of dictionaries and my commitment to learning. at 93 she was still asking questions, being curious, looking it up.
black and white composition books, of both thick and thin variety, populated my growing up, my teenage years, my college years, and ever since. though i do have a thready fondness of using My Girl’s and My Boy’s old unfinished spiral notebooks these days, we have piles of waiting-to-be-used composition books and they beckon when i open the supply cabinet in the sunlit office upstairs. places to jot poetry, thoughts, reflections, stories, lyrics, these composition books always make me think of my mom. they are places to process, to remember, to dream, to sort. they are the beginnings of stories, lyrics to ponder, the coda to the song. to someone else they are simply words on the page. to me, it is my breath that gives them life. we each have stories to tell, songs to write.
in the last few days i have had the frustration of feeling silenced. as i wrote in yesterday’s post, someone marked all five of my blogposts of last week on facebook as “spam” and that somehow triggered facebook to pull every last one of my blogposts – and any mention of my blogsite – down. every word – the simple ones, the ones that require looking-it-up – pulled down. with 650 posts, even averaging 500 words, that is 325,000 words. MY 325,000 words. gone.
in these times of chaos and unrest and pandemic, there are plenty of words out there. foul words, words of peaceful mantras, words of untruth, twisted words of conspiracy theories, imploring words, scientific words, words of wisdom from giants of wisdom, accessible words, words we have to look up, words we can hardly believe we’ve heard from various people-in-the-spotlight, words at which we roll our eyes, words we find reassuring.
in a daily email he receives, david shares a new word with me. “kawaii,” he reports, “means cute.”
the baby raccoons, most definitely kawaii, peeked out from behind the tree trunk. upon seeing us on the trail, they had scrambled from the little pond up the tree. they stared at us; we stared at them. they didn’t move, quizzically grasping onto bark and watching quietly. we didn’t move either. we just stood quietly on the trail and watched. the story they would tell about our encounter wouldn’t have many words. all was silent. all was motionless. they were safe; we were safe. for a few minutes, we shared the serene woods together, a little eye contact in hushed regard of each other. maybe, in their re-telling, in their speckled composition book, they would just tell the coda – “and then they left.”
every now and again i take out an old composition book. it’s astounding. i was so…..wordy.
during this time that FB, impossible to contact, figures out i am not ill-intended nor do i post SPAM, i would ask you a favor: if you have found any post of mine to be thought-provoking or encouraging or reassuring in some way and have enjoyed reading, please “follow” this blog. you can “follow” it on this post or later go to our website www.kerrianddavid.com/the-melange to find the link to this blogsite. wordpress will send you an email each day with my 5 day-a-week blog. you can certainly choose to read or not read each day and, at any time, you can choose to “unfollow” the blog. just as it is your decision whether or not to read my post on facebook each day, i would like to think you still have the option. subscribing gives you that. hopefully, FB will allow and restore my written work soon.
in a matter of thirteen minutes yesterday all 650 of my blogposts were wiped off of facebook. it seems someone, in the matter of thirteen minutes, marked five of my blogs as SPAM and this must have triggered the facebook “community standards” filter which POOF eliminated everything. over two and a half years of writing. at merely an hour to an hour and a half each, that is well over a month of writing, 24 hours a day. vanished off of the facebook platform. because someone had a beef. i would call that cowardice.
cowardice (noun): a lack of bravery.
all because, i am guessing, someone disagreed with me for some reason and could not bring themselves to have an adult discussion about it. instead, this person chose a different approach, a way to end up censoring my words. cowardice.
i am not paid to write. i do not receive any money for writing. my catalogue of blogposts was written from my heart, from an honest and well-intended place. i am more than happy to entertain any dialogue about any topic, as long as it remains respectful and kind. i am more than happy to have a conversation. i do not take kindly to being censored. i do not take kindly to being a target. i do not take kindly to being on the receiving end of someone’s spinelessness, their secret malintent and inability to give voice, whatever their reason. rendering me voiceless on facebook is mean-spirited and appalling. and seemingly deliberate. it does beg a couple obvious questions.
truth be told, facebook is making me tired. scrolling through a myriad of temper tantrums and boasting-posts to find wee bits of news about beloved family and friends is disconcerting. trying to use my own 200% copyrighted music on facebook and having facebook block it claiming copyright violations is beyond frustrating. watching facebook allow misinformation and foul language to prevail on the platform is disappointing. scouring facebook for ways to communicate with an actual person or to find avenues for correcting their errors is pointless. it’s tiresome. but those wee bits keep me going back – seeking a few more pictures to drink in of people i-love-but-cannot-see-right-now or reading viewpoints that give me food for thought, lead me to ask questions, make me learn.
during this time that FB, impossible to contact, figures out i am not ill-intended nor do i post SPAM, i would ask you a favor: if you have found any post of mine to be thought-provoking or encouraging or reassuring in some way and have enjoyed reading, please “follow” this blog. you can “follow” it on this post or later go to our website www.kerrianddavid.com/the-melange to find the link to this blogsite. wordpress will send you an email each day with my 5 day-a-week blog. you can certainly choose to read or not read each day and, at any time, you can choose to “unfollow” the blog. just as it is your decision whether or not to read my post on facebook each day, i would like to think you still have the option. subscribing gives you that. hopefully, FB will allow and restore my written work soon.
in the meanwhile, just as no one should be hushed in the expression of thoughts about living life, i am dedicated to continue sharing my own in a variety of ways.
when he said, “make hundreds”, he wasn’t referring to blogposts. my sweet poppo was for-sure-analog and didn’t really even know what a blog was. he was sending me off to school or work, calling after me to “make hundreds”, a tad bit of pressure for an A+ seeking student but taken with a bit of a grain of salt because my poppo said it with great love. today starts the one-hundredth week of our blogposts in the melange and daddy-o would be impressed. it’s one hundred weeks, after all.
clearly, in just a few short weeks it will be two full years. two years that we have sat next to each other and written a post that was inspired by the same image, the same quote, the same painting or piece of music. it has been a profound experience. we have written on the raft with dogdog and babycat curled up next to us, on the beach, in the high mountains, in hotels and airbnbs, in coffeehouses, in relatives’ homes, in the noise of a city, in the quiet on island. whether or not others are reading my words, i look forward to every single day of writing and am stunned to think that i probably have more in the way of written word now than songs. is that possible? (even at a mere 500 words a post it is somewhere around 250,000 words, about 3-4 novels worth.) it is the best stuff of sitting up in the maple tree outside my growing-up-house on long island for hours on end, writing, writing, writing.
we sit at the starting gate with our inspiration of the day and then, without looking at what the other is writing, we expound on what we see or feel or think. it’s ‘he said, she said.’ we’ve often thought about, and might just follow through, capturing them into a journal where the same image or quote could stimulate a third person’s writing. a ‘he said, she said, you said’ book. having a prompt is the juicy stuff that makes it absolute fun.
my posts are often stories, emotional – perhaps poetic – glimpses into our life. david’s are more esoteric, more complex. a friend of ours said she can tell the difference without even looking. goodness! i’m sure that is true. when we share our writing with each other, reading aloud, i often wonder about the value of what i’ve said. like recording an album, these are words ‘put out there’ for all to see and you and i both know that judgement is alive and well. but i always bravely try to remember what our point is.
we wanted a place to put a variety-pack of endeavors, a place that our conglomerate artistries could live under some kind of umbrella. that umbrella became our‘studio melange’ and we found we could offer our individual work (paintings and music) in addition to our cartoons (earlier on, the melange included chicken marsala and flawed cartoon) as well as the quotes we jotted down each week and the images i recorded on camera that we found pertinent or thought-provoking. about a year along the line we changed the melange and added ‘merely-a-thought monday’ and ‘not-so-flawed wednesday’ in lieu of our cartoons.
if you pare our melange down you will find one overwhelming similarity. hundreds upon hundreds of moments. moments captured, moments written down, moments to remember, moments we’d sometimes rather forget, moments of confusion, moments of regret, moments of incredulousness, moments of fear, moments of scary honesty, moments of challenge, moments of pushing back, moments of questioning, moments of indescribable joy and moments of deep sorrow. all of them moments of life, a reminder to grasp onto them and hold on dearly. for that is what we have. the ability to make moments. the ability to make moments count.
i just re-read the first week of our MELANGE, a calendar-year ago now. words about our little boy CHICKEN MARSALA, words spoken by my sweet momma, words about our community, words about david’s studio and my studio, two artists living together, and our own work-in-the-world. i can feel it. that first week.
we come to this place. one year later. i kind of want to go back and re-read each day. study the images we chose, browse the products we created, watch the arc of changes in design through the year, notice the growth, the things we added, the things we let fall off. somewhere around week 3 i wondered if i would have enough to say, enough words that would be interesting or, at-the-very-least, palatable, inviting for others to read.
i write from my heart, most of it experiential…moments i have netted and captured, written down to hold onto the feeling-of-it. i wondered if that might be too….much…for some. in the middle of living life, i want to remember some of the tiniest morsels of time, layered in the sedimentary layers, bits of shining mica in the middle of ordinary….mica that is celebration, that is eye-opening, that is excruciatingly simple bliss, that is painful, that is full of maturing, that is on-the-edge-of-your-seat-nerve-wracking, that is full of hopes and dreams and regrets…all mica indeed.
“live life, my sweet potato,” my sweet momma said to me. yes, momma. this sweet potato is feeling it.
reverse threading 