Tuesday, February 20, 2018

More Than a Glass Menagerie


          You need to blog so your readers can know about your life, I was advised. People who buy your books want to know what you’re like.
          I’m like my books. 
          But they want to hear the daily stuff.
          Well, the daily stuff is exactly what I use in many of my books. Granted, these books are largely fiction.  But many of the funny incidents come from real life, and if you scroll through here you will see why I write comedy.  It virtually lands in my lap. (And one of my kids says there’s no point reading my books because it’s like talking to me on the phone.)
          But – ta da! -- today I’m going to share a normal, regular moment with you. I went to Seattle, Washington to speak to a large group of LDS women.  For those of you not Mormon, this is not a recovery group for people addicted to LSD.  It is an abbreviation we use, for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
          And no trip to Seattle is complete without seeing the sights, right?  So my dear lifelong friend (and fellow blogger, Nan Slaughter) took me to the Chihuly exhibit.
          Millions of people have seen Dale Chihuly’s sculptures, and millions of dollars have been spent to buy it.  But now we can say “millions plus one” because I have evidently been living under a rock and had never known about this guy. But I love his work.  It’s a phenomenal blast of utter creativity, things you never could have imagined on your own, even if you are addicted to LSD.  And no, I did not plan for that to be my theme, nor shall it be.  I’m just saying.
          His ideas are spectacular.  Bursts of color and motion, wild and whimsical, all done with glass.
Imagine taking the most brittle object on earth to create swirling, delicate wonders that leave everyone open-mouthed, staring in amazement.
He even incorporates his art in outside gardens, making you want to go home and completely re-do your yard.
I asked Nan why no one in her Samammish area has these fabulous sculptures in their yards and she said it’s because the huge pine trees there would fall over and crush them.  This is actually a thing, folks—the rainfall makes more trees drop there than you would think, and not long ago she had a car crushed by one. This is not her car, but you get the idea:
          So, even though Mr. Chihuly lives near Seattle, it seems to me we need not only a glass artist there, but a rubber artist who can create magnificent stuff that will simply bounce back. Seems he’d sell even more of them, right?  Just problem solving, here.
I cannot promise my books will never fall on your car, but I’m pretty sure the worst you can get from them is a paper cut, so order all you can carry right here!

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