If you have a patch, sew it on... yeah, sure...

Which takes more skill, the precision shooting or the wielding of the needle and thread, and which would I rather be doing? Buy the bullets, go to the range fire away as best one may, or take the thread, black, from the thread keeper in the sewing kit (GI 1 each) separate from others, lick the end and twirl, find the needle, find the eye of the needle (how do one's eyes get so old?) stick thread through the eye of the needle, even up the thread and knot the end. Then use several bad examples of sewing stitches upon the patch upon the jacket. Yes, I have heard about the machine age, yes, there is a sewing machine in this house, and I am not technically proficient nor so inclined, I will. How do women get that kind of patience, stitch after stitch, and they do it perfectly. My wife comes by to say farewell, off to her church, and she just notes my efforts - kind enough not to laugh. I know though, she sewed on the other patch, and her stitches are so nicely aligned and true art in function, she didn't have to laugh. Still the patch is on, and the sewing kit will be returned to the desk draw, to hide until the next venture into the speedy repair. It was easier to staple the patch onto the jacket for positioning, hum, if the staples were black I might have just done the whole thing that way....

I am driven, to communicate by Mom....

My mother made me promise as I entered adulthood and wandering away from the home to write once a week. I was close to that and the Army and the US Postal Service did the best they could for years. Then my son went off to Spain for the Navy and he continues, kind of, the tradition of keeping in touch. As I was looking for some stuff of old memories I ran across all of this, Envelope Art - two from him and two of mine, must have had more time in those days or talent. The Kingdome is gone and the poetry is still real bad but I have to thank my mother for pushing me to write more and often.

In my personal artist library, an artist leaves...

Today I find that Gus Arriola has passed on, I grew up on his comic strips and always thought that Political Correctness destroyed him since Mexicans couldn't be the way he drew them. But I might have been wrong. I own and recommend, if you can find it, Accidental Ambassador GORDO: the Comic Strip Art of Gus Arriola, by Robert C. Harvey and Gus Arriola. And if you can't find it I give you this link, the best ones keep getting away, but they do make a difference. My life was so much better, Gracias, Gus.