Get your ass under some trees!

Behold the life forms on our planet from whatever vantage point you have...Experience the sky. The birds.  The land. Trees. Squirrels. Water. Fish. So much. Everything.

Experience a Forest Bath. Just go for a walk as close to your residence or work place as you can, to wherever there are trees and other species of animals (mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians). 

Appreciate the interconnectedness. All of the everything you behold gives us the biospheric system that allows us to breathe and exist at all. Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate.

Thank your lucky stars that you were born onto this planet at this particular moment and place in time. All of the craziness and wondrousness, the love and hate and fear and trust and grief and longing— all of this is part of being a spiritual being in a human experience on earth at this particular time. For a limited amount of time. Limited.

Accept that you are living through a magnificent time of change on this planet Make a list of things you have to be grateful for. Keep your Syrian pen pal in mind .

Especially the trees with every living thing that breathes.

​I wish that everyone would shut up already about square footage and the price tag of land.

It might not bother me so much in theory except that every time I turn a corner, another lot of undeveloped property (what a concept), by which I mean untouched plots of trees and and grass and nests and dens and rich root systems and microbiomes and shaded earth, bird song and scampering through leaf sounds, is being clear cut and dug up for real estate profit. Real Estate. Let those two words together sink in.

Witnessing this destruction of the earth makes me physically sick. It's difficult to keep my blinders on. 

And yet, if I bring myself back to the present moment, to my immediate vicinity, almost all I see are trees. Trees and my garden. I have the great and time-limited fortune of living beneath a canopy of willow oaks with the mother tree immediately outside my front door. I desperately appreciate my situation.

This is a great trick, by the way, especially if you suffer from the same malady as I do, or if you regularly read the news. When the world is too, too much (when I click through to news or social media or whatever entity is selling soap or cars or drugs on the back of human and biological tragedy), I bring myself back to the present moment, to my immediate vicinity, which I intentionally fill with beauty and nature, my freakout subsides. I allow my eyes to rest on the trees, my darling, magnificent plants, well-made pretty fabric, phenomenal books, Miss Tallulah, or the way the light bounces off any surface, more... I allow my hand to feel something tangible, within reach and notice why I brought it into my world to begin with. The color, the form, the texture, the pleasure the life form or object brings me.

Then I take a deep breath and all's right with the world again. It's a form of meditation.

This is actually why I teach drawing. To help people connect to what is right in front of them. It's mindfulness on steroids. 

I love living on Earth. I love this planet. With every passing day, my appointment with death is a gamble. It's kind of nice to know for sure that one thing (death) is absolutely out of my control because, if I accept that, my experience of life is amplified to the max. I just have to keep remembering...

Life is a process. Healing is a process. It truly amazes me how far away from a wound we can get to engage in an actual healing process of that wound. Especially if it's emotional. All of that is a subject for another lengthy post. But... when you are feeling hurt or sad or low, my suggestion is to...

Turn to Earth. Turn to the manifest forms of energy designed specifically to work with us to help and heal us through our lifetimes. 

By Earth or Nature, I mean the energetic forms that spring from the systems born of and engaged with our planet. Including you, as a person or earthling, and me. With that defined in approximately 25 words, I'll move into the meat of this post.

How do you allow nature to nurture you? 

​Let me know in the comments below.

Summer rolls in on the 21st at 12:24 am. Do something special to mark the longest day of the year.

Any plans for the season? I'm preparing a set of new online drawing and watercolor courses that debut (to alums of my foundation courses) in September. Also, I am taking my first, actual, planned vacation in late August and truly looking forward to that. But on the other hand, I'm enjoying life immensely right now, so I can wait.

I am leaving behind the habits of checking the news more than once daily (if that often), and of streaming movies and tv shows online. I'm sick to death of both and am back to reading.

I've just discovered Andrew Garve (aka Paul Winterton, aka Roger Bax, aka Paul Somers), and finished his Hide And Go Seek this afternoon.  I discovered this book in a free basket (as I have several other fab reads over the years), opened to a random page, read a paragraph aloud, put it under my arm and am committed to three more of his. 

Here's what else I have stacked up for summer:

Alice Carter, The Red Rose Girls
Andrew Garvey, Murder in Moscow, Ashes of Loda, Cuckoo Line Affair
Umberto Eco, History of Beauty
M. J. Rose, The Book of Lost Fragrances
re-read, again, Landscape into Art 
Jacob Wenzel, Landscapes From Brueghel to Kandinsky 
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve
finish Jeffrey Archer's Be Careful What You Wish For √ and
next installment of The Clifton Chronicles, Mightier Than The Sword
Joyce Cary, Art and Reality
Alice Munro, Runaway
re-read Ram Dass, Still Here
and, if there's any time left, would like to re-read
Leonie Swann, Three Bags Full
Conrad Richter, The Light in the Forest and
Hansen & Davis, Boone

How are you celebrating the Solstice? What are your plans for the summer? Any good reading suggestions to share? Tell me everything! Leave a comment below.

Recently, I have been missing my Dad. A lot. I think of him now, especially while I am swimming laps, remembering the simple, loose, lined '60's Jantzen swim trunks he wore in olive green or khaki. 

Approaching Father's Day, rather than compose some sentimental essay, I am making a list of random facts about him, as they come to mind. The massively interesting, good stuff I remember. Okay, here goes.

He

• was once arrested on Atlantic City beach for bathing without a top on.
• had just come back from horseback riding on Atlantic City beach when he heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
• taught Naval officers accounting at Penn during WWII.
• was one of the youngest lawyers to go before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1932 at the age of 24. 
• graduated third in his class, Order of the Coif, at University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1930.
• entered St. Joseph's College in 1927, at the age of 15.
• rowed single scull on the Schulykill River.
• was a master bridge player.
• regularly bought records from Sam Goody at his first record shop on 9th Avenue in NYC, relying on Sam for au courant recommendations.
• said, "Here. I understand that you should listen to this." while handing me a copy of Meet the Beatles.
• taught me how to work an amplifier and tone arm when I was about five years old and later, how to change a diamond stylus .
• built a woofer and tweeter into the playroom wall of our first house.
• learned the hard way about storing LPs above a tube amp.
• built two giant sound boxes on casters for speakers when stereo hit the market.
• taught me how to body surf.
• took me to see a matinee of Forbidden Planet and explained to me how it was based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Best first date ever. Decades later, I went to a matinee of same and sat a few rows behind a father with his very little daughter. The three of us were almost the only ones in the theater. Yes, I cried.
• always said "Go into the ocean, it'll heal you up." when I hurt myself at the shore.
• read Donald Francis Tovey's Essays in Musical Analysis for fun.
• collected all of the Arthur Quiller Couch and John Dover Wilson editions of Shakespeare.
• knew Shakespeare's plays by heart and would turn to the act, scene and line to show me source of title when I'd come home from school with reading assignments like Brave New World, or The Sound and the Fury.
• loved to walk and took me jogging with him around our neighborhood park or up and down the beach at Longport when jogging became a thing.
• took me regularly to the Robin Hood Dell in the summer. One time, it started raining while Van Cliburn was in the middle of a concerto. Daddy pointed out to me all the umbrellas popping up in the "Friends of the Dell" section and as the Friends scurried out, we dashed up and watched the rest of the concert, a few feet from the stage, sitting on the concrete steps, in the rain. It was fantastic!
• ​loved convertibles filled with beautiful girls before he was married.
• drank a lot when he was young until, according to my late aunt, his doctor told him that he really had to stop.
• attended 6:30 am mass every morning, without ever saying a word about it, at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church at 13th and Market Streets in Philadelphia. 
• collected every volume of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History. When then master photographer, Mr. Okada asked Daddy to give me something to hold in one of my baby pictures, he handed over Toynbee's Greek Civilization and Character. I don't know for sure but this may have been with a sense of humor. At least I think it's funny.
• loved history and the idea, philosophy of history. 
• kept his possessions simple and elegant. This approach applied to his clothing, tools and memorabilia. He splurged on books, records, his wife and children.
• had two good coats (one camel hair, one black cashmere), a cream silk tuxedo scarf, a sports jacket, a couple of fine wool suits, a seersucker suit, Norm Thompson slippers, an Irish Tweed Walking Hat and a classic, Gregory Peck, fedora.
• was an early "health nut" and we always had plenty of wheat germ, black strap molasses, honey with the comb, protein bread.
• kept his treasures on and in the top drawer of his bureau. On top of his bureau, he kept two framed photos, one of his mother, the other of his father. (They were the only photos I ever saw of his parents.) In his top drawer, he kept a letter from Arnold J. Toynbee, a short story he once wrote, a sterling silver swizzle stick from his drinking days, a pair of gold and amber cufflinks, and his Order of the Coif medal. Later, after his brother, Charlie, passed, he added Charlie's eye glass frames. With these, he also kept a scrap of paper with quick notes about my maternal grandmother's origin after a surprise visit from an unknown cousin on my mother's side. But that's another story.
• bought a copy of The Beach Boy's Surfin' USA for my 2nd grade school Pollyanna. I, of course, went for the LP shaped gift and listened to that album as much as any. Over the years, I occasionally wondered who's parent had bought that gift until, decades later, it dawned on me. Of course, Sam Goody.
• rarely gave me advice but once told me, "Always work for yourself."
• was very excited to hand me a copy of the 1973 U.S. Court of Claims document for the Williams & Wilkins Company v. The United States decision, indicating to me now that he knew then that my work would primarily concern intellectual property. And it has.
• had a distinctive whistle: a long G# followed by a smooth ribbon of short G, G#, G, G#, G, repeated twice to call for my brother and/or me. 
• could play untold variations with impeccable skill and invention on the piano of "We are Collegiate" and that's about all I ever heard him play. 
• married late, had children in his late 40s and absolutely loved and adored my mother, my brother and me.
• compiled and published the multi-volume Modern Federal contract law: Modern digest of decisions of United States Court of Claims and of Supreme Court of the United States (U.S. Court of Claims cases) 1969
• specialized in the United States Court of Claims and wrote an article for the American Bar Association Journal, The Court of Claims: The Nation's Conscience. 
• ate half a grapefruit every morning. My Dad loved grapefruit.
• ate oranges over the sink.
• made sure that my brother and I found an orange at the bottom of our Christmas stockings every year.
• enjoyed reading authors' works in chronological order: Graham Greene, Ian Flemming, Erle Stanley Gardner, Joyce Cary.
• collected Modern Library books. 
• was excited by all new technology.
• took some exceptional photographs that demonstrated a sophisticated sense of composition during the 1940s through early 1950s.
• loved the TV show, Secret Agent Man, The Prisoner, and early Masterpiece Theater.
• would love to have gone to Ireland.
• was the son of Charles J. McDermott, originally a drayman, later a Teamster, finally a Motor Freighter. I think that his father owned one of the first trucking companies in Philadelphia. His mother's name was Margaret F. Murphy and I am very sorry to say that that is all I know about her except that she looked very sad in the photo of her young self atop my father's dresser and that my Aunt Peggy threw all photos and identifying information about her parents away after they died.
• used Gaby Suntan Lotion and Noskote.
• walked to the Overbrook, later the Wynnewood train station every weekday morning during our life together and took the Paoli local into Philadelphia.
• taught me to drive in our 1968 Grecian Green Camaro on Sunday mornings in the John Wanamaker Parking lot in Wynnewood, PA.
• signed my brother and me up for swim lessons at Friends' Central when we were knee high. I took to the pool like a fish.
• Santa left me a guitar for my tenth Christmas. When I later found the guitar in two pieces in the attic thanks to my little brother and his friend (boys!), Daddy took me out to Main Line Music and bought me an Aria guitar. When I started performing at local colleges and clubs a few years later, he bought me a Martin D-18. 
• A few years after my father passed, I was at the opening party for the American Film Institute's festival at producer Marty Ransahoff's house in Bel Air. Chatting to an elderly attorney next to me on the sofa, I discovered that my father was his upperclassman at University of Pennsylvania. I'd never met anyone in my personal life who had known my father. The man turned to me and said, "Your father had a huge​ mind."

There's more, and I'll add to this later, but that's enough for now. He taught me to love music, learning and physical exercise, to think critically, and to be myself. I wish that I could have been more helpful to him at the end. Always my first love.

This week, it's just a quick note.

With the start of the recent Basic Drawing class that I teach for the city of Raleigh, I've celebrated my 20th year anniversary of teaching drawing and watercolor. Had to share!

Little did I know when I created those morning and afternoon drawing and watercolor workshops for guests at the Kiawah Island Resort in South Carolina that two decades later, I'd still be at it.  In a big way.

These week after week city classes have given me opportunities to serve while growing my method and developing new courses. I have to thank the city and all the students—not only the great successes but also those who've challenged me and made me a better teacher.  I am so looking forward to bringing my teaching back online. 

And I must not forget to include thanks to my best drawing and painting teacher ever, Ronn Davis, and best art history teacher, Jim Urmston. Both at Santa Monica College where I studied so many moons ago when, as Jim put it a few years back, "all things seemed possible". 

Minus a few absentees, the above shots are a peek at my 20th anniversary classes.