Christmas Shopping

Hello Everyone,

As some of you may know, shopping isn’t exactly my cup of tea. I understand that it’s necessary, at least in the society in which we live, but I find it boring, expensive and difficult. Hell for me would involve a gigantic warehouse full of shoes and I would have to find an affordable, comfortable, and relatively decent-looking pair. Demons in the form of apathetic, minimum-wage-earning employees would swarm around me as I tried on each shoe. Completely uninterested in the answer, they’d nonetheless ask, “Can I help you find anything?” and then monitor me obviously from a short distance away as I failed repeatedly to find a pair that fit the adolescent hobbit feet attached to my legs.

Shoes are the worst, but even groceries are a challenge for me sometimes. I get completely overwhelmed by the possibilities and end up spending half an hour debating whether locally-grown organic sourdough is healthier for me and the environment than store brand whole grain, and in the end, I just buy graham crackers instead. I’ve measured, and it seems that I have about a 10-15 minute attention span once I enter a store, after which point, I become irritable and end up sitting on the floor.

Christmas shopping presents a dilemma for me, though, because as much as I hate shopping, I love giving gifts. I can’t think of anything more satisfying than giving someone something I know he or she will love. If I could be a professional gift giver, I would. So you’d think that shopping for gifts would be an exciting thing for me. The problem is that very often, I have absolutely no idea what to give someone, and at Christmastime, this intensifies exponentially, turning into an outright consumerist panic.

My parents are definitely the most difficult people for me to shop for partly because they are fortunate enough to really not want or need much other than what they already have. But part of the problem is that I can’t just do what I did in second grade and give them a drawing I’d made since their office walls are already totally occupied with my artwork (I’ve got to store it somewhere!). Gift certificates are out of the question. For a person who loves giving thoughtful and creative gifts, this is like an English teacher coming home after a long day, settling into his favorite chair with a glass of wine, and pouring over an instruction manual.

So after finals each fall term, I begin the greater test: trying to find something I can give my parents for Christmas. The first week or two is characterized by a serious attempt at rationality: “What do they really need? What might they really like?” This is followed by a period in which I valorize Scrooge and the Grinch and whine to anyone who will listen about the misplaced values that abound at Christmastime. “Who decided we have to spend, spend, spend, in order to have a meaningful Christmas? I doubt people will like me any less if I don’t get them a present,” I grumble. “Surely they’d rather I conserve my Gift Idea Energy and wait until I come up with an idea for a truly unique and personal present . . . in April . . .”

But then I remember what a gift really is. The word “present” comes from an Old French expression meaning to “put a thing into the presence of a person.” Gifts are not just mandatory accoutrements in a given cultural celebration. They are objects we choose to leave in people’s presence. When we are away, they remind people that we love them. I think back to presents I’ve been given. I love my red scarf not just because it is beautiful, but because my friend Nani gave it to me. I love my seat cushion not just because it is comfy and has a pretty design on it, but because it came from my friend Katy.

So I gather my courage and decide I want to give my parents Christmas presents after all. But the problem remains: I still have no ideas whatsoever. It’s round about this point when I begin free associating. This method works well when I experience a creative block while writing or drawing, but it’s not as helpful here. “Ok,” I say, summoning my energy, “let’s start with Daddy. What would he really like? How about . . . a bullfrog! No, that’s too noisy . . . . A trowel! No, you just like that word . . . . A billboard! No, we already have storage issues . . . . Some soy nuts! No, you’re just hungry . . .” After a bit more desperate rumination, I eventually come up with something. Sometimes I’m lucky and my parents love what I’ve given them. Sometimes, well, that’s why we invented clichés like, “It’s the thought that counts.”

Normally, I try to avoid clichés like, um, the plague, but in this case, it seems to fit. My parents hate shopping as much as I do, and they know that whatever I buy them costs more than the price of the item. (Last week, each of them independently thought of rewarding me with a session at Starbucks after successful shopping ventures). Giving is costly, and it should be.

This year, I gave my mom a book written by a woman who floated down the Nile on a fisherman’s skiff. My dad got a Car Talk daily calendar. Not the best ideas I’ve ever had, but not the worst either. At least neither of them wanted shoes.

Have a good week,

Sarah/Mouse

On the Edge of My Seat

Hello Everyone,

When I was in college, I had the following conversation with a nurse:

Me: “I think I’m growing a tail.”
Nurse: “Oh?”
Me: “Yup!”
Nurse: “Um . . .”

I have since learned that my initial diagnosis wasn’t quite right. I didn’t have a tail. I had a cyst near my tailbone. It wasn’t serious enough to treat, so I’ve lived with it for several years. I decided, however, that while I had time over my break, and while I still have insurance, I would get it removed. This required surgery, which I had last Wednesday.

For this surgery, I needed a general anesthetic, an IV and hospital socks with trendy rubber grips on the bottom. I wasn’t wearing my contacts, making the gurney ride to the operating room feel much faster than I’m sure it really was. All of this made me pretend I was on ER. I’ve never actually seen the show, but that’s what our imaginations are for, right? I don’t remember anything else until after the surgery, when I woke up for a moment. I thought vaguely, “I should show someone I’m awake so that they can have this bed for someone else.” THUNK. I plopped back asleep for an hour. I later asked a nurse if I was glaring at her. She said I wasn’t, but I’m sure I was. I always glare when I wake up.

And then I got to go home. At some point in my life (probably round about the time I had my first tooth pulled), I managed to convince myself that all surgery merits a milkshake upon completion, so my mom kindly obliged and got me one on the way home. For the first few days, I couldn’t do much beside sleep, read and eat. I couldn’t sit or lie on my back, so I reclined Roman-style all over the house and when I got tired of that, did several thousand laps around our kitchen/living room in small steps. I found to my surprise that I was bored for the first time in years. It turns out that much of what I enjoy doing involves sitting!

Over the next few days, my progress was a somewhat accelerated and more maladroit version of those evolution diagrams you see in which a monkey with serious back problems gradually transforms into a fully upright functioning human pedestrian. By Sunday morning, I was doing well enough that I was able to leave the house for the first time in four days and go to church. I was fine, but I had to sit forward in my chair the whole time. During the sermon, I chuckled to myself because I probably looked like the most attentive person in the congregation.

It was the third Sunday of Advent, the period in the church calendar leading up to Christmas. And as I sat listening to our pastor talk about the arrival of Jesus, I realized that perhaps my posture was more appropriate than I’d intended.

“Are you ready for Christmas?” People (usually cashiers in grocery stores) are always asking me this question this time of year, but I never know precisely what they mean. I suppose some mean, “Are you ready to be at home with your family?” Lots of people mean “Have you finished your Christmas shopping?” I’m sure some mean nothing, and it’s just a way to make conversation. But if Advent is all about that -- getting ready -- then how do we prepare ourselves for Christmas? I think that part of it is by being on the edge of your seat. It’s certainly not the most comfortable position. For one thing, it makes you stand out, like the eager student who gets to class fifteen minutes early to make sure he can sit front and center. In addition, it’s tiring and takes more energy than slumping back in our chairs. But all of that couldn’t be further from our mind when something we hear makes us sit up straight. Consider two situations:

First, you are watching TV at home one night when you hear an unfamiliar noise in another room. You sit up straight, mute the TV and whisper, “What was that?”

Second, you are at your son’s school play, for which he has been rehearsing for weeks. He comes on stage to say his two lines. You sit up straight and pay attention to every detail, straining to hear his voice.

Part of what happens in Advent is a strange, paradoxical combination of these two scenarios. Jesus’ birth is sudden but also long-anticipated, alarming but also fervently desired, unknown but also thoroughly intimate, loud enough to get our attention but also quiet enough that we have to silence all other distractions to truly hear it. In both cases, we sit up, we pay attention. God breaks into our world not with a clatter and a bang, but with a baby’s first bellow and a firmament full of hallelujahs. This is an event which the Old Testament prophets have been rehearsing for centuries, only this time it’s the real thing.

If I actually believe that Christmas is what it claims to be, I should be on the edge of my seat as I wait for it to come. Kids understand this part of Advent better than adults do, I think. Even when their eagerness is more about presents and Santa than about the Incarnation, I suspect it comes closer to true worship than the dread with which many adults approach this season.

So how do we foster an unabashed excitement for Christmas? How do we sit on the edge of our seats? We mute some of the distractions in our lives, even if it means standing out uncomfortably. We pay attention to details, the important ones. We spend some time with kids and borrow their enthusiasm. Advent marks the beginning of the church calendar, a time for starting out, for waking up. And if we’re lucky, we really do wake up, we shed our anesthetic fog and approach the morning glare-free.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Kid Version -- Picture Books Part II

Hi guys!

Have you ever made a book? Maybe your teacher asked you to in school, or maybe you just had a good idea for one and you did it on your own. Most people stop making books as they get older, but I never saw a good reason to stop, so I didn’t. And now, as you might know, I am in graduate school (where you go after college if you want to keep studying), learning about children’s books and about illustration.

This fall, I took a class all about illustrating books for children. It was so much fun! I wanted to share some of what I learned about what goes into making a picture book. This is the process that most illustrators use:

1.) We started with a written story. Some people chose a song or a well-known story like a fairy tale. Some people wrote their own stories. I wrote one about a boy in South Africa who discovers that painting with mud is lots of fun (imagine where I got that idea!).


2.) We divided the text so that it would spread across 32 pages. Did you know that most picture books are 32 pages long? That is because the printers that print the pages for books can do them in big sheets of 8 pages each. How many of these big sheets would be needed for a 32 page book?

Before I even thought about what pictures I wanted to draw,
I figured out what words would go on which page.

3.) We made a map of what our book would look like using tiny, simple pictures. This is called a storyboard. I tried several of them. The good thing about a storyboard is that you can see the whole book all at once.

In this storyboard, I was experimenting with a vertical book.

I decided I didn't like it as much as a horizontal one.



Here is the final storyboard that I turned in.

4.) We then made a practice book, called a dummy. This doesn’t mean it was made by dumb people. “Dummy” just means a substitute or a replacement. In this case, it is a substitute for the final book. The good thing about a dummy book is that you can tell what it will feel like to read the story with the text divided the way it is, and with the images the way they are. But the pictures are still simple enough that it’s not a big deal if you need to make changes. Illustrators often make many dummies to get the book looking just the way they want before they start the final art.

5.) Our teacher looked at our dummies and gave us suggestions or feedback. Most of the time, professional authors and illustrators will get this kind of advice from editors.

6.) We made the changes our teacher had suggested, and we got to work on the art for our final dummies. These are sample books that we could send to an editor to see if he or she wanted to publish it. We needed to make a book that had finished drawings (in black and white) and included three finished illustrations. The three finished illustrations would give anyone who looks at the book an idea of what the other drawings will look like when they are finished.

Now you might be thinking, “Sarah Jackson, why don’t illustrators just finish all the pictures in a dummy? After all, when my teacher tells me to do my homework, I have to do all of it.” Good question. There are two reasons why an illustrator might not send a completely finished book to an editor. The first is that she might not want to put all the effort and time into finishing the book until she knows it actually will be published. The second is that, as I mentioned earlier, part of an editor’s job is to make suggestions. They want to know that the illustrator is still open to changing her pictures. By having only a few finished illustrations in the dummy, an illustrator shows her ideas of what the book could look like, but also that the book is still in process, and so is open to change.

Here is an example of a black and white picture.

I painted it in ink because it is similar to mud in the kinds of textures it can create.
If the book were to be published, I would paint all of the pictures,
including this one, in mud.

Here is one of the finished illustrations. I painted it in mud
that I collected from lots of different places in South Africa.
The text reads: "The cows shuffled slowly through the tall, yellow grass. 'Uhsso, uhsso,' whispered the bushes as the herd went by."

"He tried painting on the cow."



"All day long, Sipho painted and painted. He stopped only
when the sky fell asleep and it was too dark to see."

7.) Our class ended with the final dummies, but the next step if we want to get our books published is to send our dummies to people who we think might want to help us publish our books. We could try sending them to editors, but most of the time, unless you’ve already had a book published, they won’t look at your work because they have too much to do. Another option is to try to get an agent, someone you pay to find a publisher for you. I haven’t done either of these things yet, but I will after I make some more changes to my final dummy.

So I get back to my first question: have you ever made a book? The steps I just described may sound difficult and complicated. They are. But you don’t have to go through all of them to make a good book. The most important thing in any picture book is to have a good idea. And I know from experience that you all have hundreds of good ideas every day! So why not put a few of them down on paper and make a book? And when you do, be sure to show me!

Have a good week,
Sarah Jackson

ps: I did some other work this fall and if you’re interested in seeing it, check out my website at www.clearasmudillustration.com.

Children's Books -- Part 1

Hi Everyone,

A while ago, I came across a quote that connects a lot of the things I am most interested in. Picture book author and illustrator Karla Kuskin said, “There are great advantages to being a stranger because as a stranger you pay attention to everything, and that’s what children do. And that is also what you want to do as a writer or as an artist drawing: to see what is different and what is important.” Kuskin connects being in a new place to being a child. Often what is old hat to an adult is a fascinating adventure to a child. Going to the post office is as interesting as going to Timbuktu. Tying your shoe for the first time is as much a triumph as slaying a dragon or climbing Everest.

The Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards wrote in his journals, “the world exists anew every moment . . . we every moment see the same proof of a God as we should have seen if we had seen Him create the world at first.” If we are to remain childlike -- an essential characteristic if you are wanting to write and illustrate for children -- we need to ensure that we continue to see the world as Edwards described, as perpetually and wonderfully new.

This is one of the main reasons why I love picture books for children. Though not aware of it, child readers demand an equal balance between consistency and surprise. Without some stability in a story, the setting, characters and plot would be not only unbelievable, but incomprehensible. If an astronaut on the moon on page twelve turns into a teacher in a classroom on page thirteen with no explanation, the reader will be as lost as the characters. Furthermore, patterns and repetition play a huge role in learning to read, and being aware of this as an author or illustrator can enhance the book as a learning tool.

And yet if there weren’t new developments on every page, you wouldn’t have a story, you’d have a series of photocopies. And it’s the delicate dance between consistency and surprise that produces the best parts of picture books, whether verbally or visually. In the following sequence, the break in the pattern has punch only because the pattern is there in the first place:

On Monday, Jacob danced with the dog.
On Tuesday, he danced with the cat.
On Wednesday, he danced with the rabbit.
On Thursday, he danced with the goat.
On Friday, the llama danced with Jacob.

Without the first four sentences, the llama dancing with Jacob would not be as interesting because we wouldn’t have the back-story, as it were. However, without the last sentence, the story would be too flat, a joke without a punchline.

In my art criticism class this term, we had a discussion about Activist Art, art that attempts to change some aspect or viewpoint in society, be it patriarchal assumptions about the role of women or the stigma of AIDS. We noted how Activist Art often relies heavily on specific cultural vocabularies, using symbols, words and ideas that are well known to people of a certain culture.

"Health Coverage" (2008) -- Luba Lukova

For example, Luba Lukova’s image about the health care system depends on our familiarity with the image of an umbrella and with the caduceus, the symbol for medicine (though traditionally, the rod of Asclepius, with one snake and no wings, represented medicine, while the caduceus represented commerce, among other concepts). In capitalizing on these communal symbols, the art is often considered more “democratic” because it is accessible to a wide variety of people. Activist Art can lose some of the subtlety found in other kinds of art, however, and some people criticize it, saying that it deserves a quick read only, and nothing more. Other kinds of fine art, on the other hand, and painting in particular, can sometimes seem exclusive because artists often use their own private vocabularies initially unknown to the viewer.

"The Persistence of Memory" (1931) -- Salvador Dali

For example, the ants we can see in the lower left corner of this Salvador Dali piece represent decay and rot, which we know because he has established this as a personal symbol in the context of his other work. Apart from its sheer aesthetic value, Dali’s work is full of layers and hidden meanings, and as such, merits a more sustained viewing than, say, a poster protesting cutbacks in government services.

Is there a middle ground between accessible and understandable work on the one hand and work that has a richness in the visual vocabulary it employs? Of course. And one solution to this dichotomy comes in the form of picture books precisely because of the relationship between pattern and variation, between consistency and surprise. Picture books are essentially tiny worlds, usually created in a mere 32 pages. The author and illustrator must establish their own system of symbols and rules for their world. At first, it is unfamiliar to the readers, as strange as traveling to a foreign country; initially, picture books are like Dali’s painting. However, the author and illustrator are responsible for teaching the reader these symbols and rules. They not only create the world, they guide us through it. Because picture books are comprised of a series of words and images, we grow accustomed to the books’ individual vocabularies as we read. By the time we close a picture book, we should be naturalized citizens of the world it contains.

If, as Edwards wrote, the world really is created anew every moment, it could follow that there are an infinite number of worlds. This is a thrilling prospect, and I’m not yet sure what I think about it. At any rate, a picture book is a chance to enter into one moment’s world, to get to know its inhabitants and its culture, and to leave better able to distinguish “what is different and what is important.”

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Amazing Things

Hi Everyone,

When I was in Lacoste, I took a bookmaking class. We made several small books to practice binding techniques, and I wanted to find the best use for them. They were too small for my normal journaling or sketching habits, but I didn’t want them to sit around being cute but empty (I feel the same way about books as I do about people).

At the time, there were several frustrating scenarios that I was dealing with and it was easy to get bogged down with them. But I didn’t want my time in Lacoste to be wasted: I was doing art in the south of France in the springtime and that was AMAZING. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was experiencing tons of amazing things everyday. In the end, I decided to use my journals to write down one amazing thing -- the most amazing thing -- that happened each day. I found that doing this made me more open to remarkable occurrences and that ending the day with a specific example of something truly wonderful caused any frustrations I had to take a backseat.

My two most recent Amazing Journals

Here are some of the most interesting entries from my Amazing Journal from the last few months:


August 3: Today I hit Matthew in the arm with a bag of tortillas. It was so much fun I did it again to his other arm.

August 20: Today, Judi and I were unpacking some pedestals for the gallery and they came with ziplock baggies which each had five binder clips, one screw and a Jolly Rancher.

August 25: Today, about 30 minutes outside of Wenatchee, our bus got pulled over. After a few minutes, the driver got on and asked if a Mackenzie so-and-so was on board. No one answered, so he said everyone who had gotten on in Wenatchee had to raise their hands because there were two extra passengers. Two girls got up and went up to the cop who had boarded the bus by this point. He took them away.

August 27: Today Katie Stout told us that she knows someone whose friend got to choose her name when she was six. She chose “Beanbag.”

August 30: Today Elizabeth told me that her husband, who is in the Coast Guard and is learning to deep sea dive, is in charge of buoy tenders, the boats that maintain the buoys along the coast (among other tasks). I’d always wondered who did that!

September 2: Today I learned that James and the Giant Peach is on the list of banned books. What on earth for? How could you get offended by a fictional giant fruit?

September 3: Today I learned that while in remote Indonesia, Luca found a bunch of WSU sweatshirts. What?!

September 4: Today, while Krisi and I were walking, I found a tiny snake (about 2.5 inches long). Its front half was black and yellow and its tail was baboon-bum blue. It really looked like it was two different snakes fused together.

September 5: Today in Home Depot, Matthew and I stumbled across two employees cutting a gigantic onion with a pair of oversized shears.

September 7: Today, as Becky was driving me back from the airport, there was a road sign (lit in red letters) that said “September is preparedness month. Plan ahead and be prepared.”

September 16: Today Jonathan Mayer told me that NASA spent millions of dollars trying to develop a toilet that would work in zero gravity. The problem was that it had spinning blades (to prevent poo from getting loose) so nobody wanted to use it. It turned out that the astronauts were just wearing diapers.

September 18: Today two Christians accosted me in Forsyth and asked to do a video interview of me. They asked me 1.) “Do you think you could love someone unconditionally?” 2.) “How are you prepared for the Day of Judgment?” and 3.) “Do you have any siblings?” They then told me that a huge group of people in the park were doing a Nordic dance. Upon further investigation, I realized that they were essentially jazzercising to Christian music.

September 24: Today I learned that the average college-educated native English speaker has a conversational vocabulary of about 30,000 words. Level 2 students in ESL have 2,000-4,000. Wow.

October 1: Today Cindy told me about how when she asked her nephew what he wanted her to draw if she could draw anything for him, he said without any hesitation, “God’s thumb.”

October 9: Today I learned that SCAD has an intramural Quidditch team.

October 17: Today Becky told me that when she was little, her family found orphan guinea pigs in a dumpster in Canada and they smuggled them across the border by having her grandfather keep them tucked in his shirt.

October 18: Today as I was walking back from Kroger, the bag I was carrying kept catching the breeze in just the right way so that the little plastic flaps kept making kazoo noises.

October 21: Today I learned that Professor Drummond was taught by Quentin Blake!

October 24: Today in church, one of the hymns we sang was written by someone named Augustus Montague Toplady.

Have a good and amazing week! Happy Halloween!

Sarah/Mouse

ps: I discovered a great website this week that gives a “Wonder of the Day.” Each day, a different question is posed along with an accompanying YouTube video, an explanation of the answer and activities that kids can do to further investigate the topic. The website is intended to promote curiosity and learning between parents and children, but it’s also pretty interesting for those of us who don’t fit in those categories. The website is: http://wonderopolis.org/.

Artistic Modesty

Hello Everyone,

This week, I turned in an assignment for my Illustration Markets class which I loved doing. A year or so ago, our professor created all the illustrations for an issue of a magazine called In Character. Each issue highlighted a different virtue, everything from thrift to loyalty to forgiveness. We were instructed to choose a volume that we resonated with, re-illustrate the cover and do two inside “spot” illustrations. I chose modesty because I have been thinking about it a lot in the last few years, especially since coming to SCAD.

Modesty (and its younger sister, humility) is something I hear about all the time in a religious context, but rarely in an artistic one. And when I do, it’s always negative. “You have to have an ego,” our professors tell us. “You have to be able to sell yourselves or you won’t make it as professional artists.” Modesty, in other words, is fine for people who have a “normal” profession with job security and health benefits. Us artists? We can’t afford it.

Every fiber of my being refuses to believe this. I think it’s not only unnecessary but actually detrimental to separate my religious beliefs from my artistic ones; surely it is possible to be humble and creative at the same time. So when I got a chance to do an entire project dedicated to the concept of modesty, I leapt at it. And when I saw that this issue included an article called, “Can Artists Ever Truly Be Modest?” by Eric Gibson, the editor of the Leisure and Arts page of the Wall Street Journal, I leapt again, this time literally.

Gibson highlights several reasons why artists generally aren’t modest. For one thing, as he says, “Artists are in the business of drawing attention to themselves” and, I would add, to their work. This is partly for reasons of patronage and financial survival, but also because you have to be confident enough in your work that you think it’s worth seeing. In general, an artwork isn’t truly complete until it has been viewed by someone. (If a painting is done in the woods and no one is there to see it, is it still art?) Also, art almost always deals with the human experience. My professor said of this particular project that “it’s all about us” as people. But it could be equally said of all art anywhere; we are inspired by events, emotions, scenes, objects, actions that involve us. How narcissistic! Furthermore, making a work of art is inherently tied up with identity. We sign our work. We paint self portraits. There is a sense that when we paint a picture, part of us is represented on the page. When I look at pictures by Henri Matisse or Jackson Pollock or Eric Carle, I feel like I know their makers. This makes sense religiously too: looking at Creation is a way of knowing the Creator.

It seems like making art is destined to be wrapped up in ego and self-promotion, and this is dismaying. How do I deal with moments in the artistic process that tempt my pride: professors telling us we need to be confident and sell ourselves; people complimenting me on my work; the occasional dreams I have of winning the Caldecott? Assuming that false modesty is really just a more sneaky form of pride, how do I respond? Of course, humility is the trickiest virtue to cultivate because if you recognize any progress in yourself, it almost always turns instantly to pride at your accomplishment. One step forward, two steps back.

Fortunately Gibson concludes that, though rare, it is actually possible for artists to be modest, and that perhaps they have a modesty unique to their profession. He describes the humility artists have when they recognize the artists who have come before them, when they acknowledge that they create within a larger context. He talks about artists being daunted by the immensity of the work ahead of them. At one point, he even quotes Michelangelo saying, “I am not . . . a painter” as he was working on the Sistine Chapel. Often, artists can feel that their art is bigger or beyond themselves, that they can get lost in their work. Gibson discusses artists sacrificing themselves for their work (and though he doesn’t mention them, there are clear Biblical parallels here too).

I would add several reasons to Gibson’s observations. Artists working in any kind of a community, be it a class or a company, must continually hear and hopefully incorporate advice from others. This is particularly true in Illustration, where an art director or an editor can manage your project until the final publication. Cooperation fosters humility when it reminds us that our methods and opinions are only one possible approach.

Mostly, I think that artists can be modest when they recognize that everything they have, be it talent, training or opportunities, comes from someone or somewhere else. After honesty, I think thankfulness is the biggest contributor to humility. And very occasionally, in our best work, there is a sense of awe. Every so often, I look at a picture I’ve made and think, “Wow! That’s good! I wonder how I did that.” It sounds prideful, but I think it’s actually the point in the artistic process when artists can be most modest. I’m always pleasantly surprised when I remember I was somehow connected with making the work in front of me. And it is that surprise that reminds me that I’m not completely in control as I create. And that is terrifying, amazing and relieving. It is, in other words, humbling.

And we’re back to the infuriating thing about modesty: here I am, telling you how humble I am as I make art, the iteration of which isn’t exactly modest. But as I get caught in moral eddies, I am aware of the impending deadline -- my assignment needs to be completed, not just thought to death. And again, I find that art (like children, stories, nature, and good friends) takes me out of myself long enough for me to forget the whole debate and actually make something.

Here are the results of this assignment:

The cover: My friend Erin suggested doing a peacock precisely because they are known for their vanity. I thought it would be a striking image for a cover, and it would be fun to have the peacock with a sort of fan in front of his eyes.





For the first "spot" illustration, I wanted to show an artist locating herself in history and yet still making a distinct impression: "It is here, in relation to the past and their sense of their place in the history of art, that artists exhibit modesty in the truest sense of the term."






For the second "spot" illustration, I decided to do an image for an article about how scientists won't ever be able to know everything about the world: "From time to time, when we catch glimpses of the unknown, we feel a sense of pride and satisfaction in learning something that no human has ever known before -- but we are equally humbled by how much we don't know."

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

ps: If you’re interested in reading Gibson’s article, or any others from In Character, you can access the full text online at http://incharacter.org/archives/. I find this a very thought-provoking publication.

Website!

I recently got a website to display my art. You can find it at here or by clicking the blue link to the left. I'd love any feedback you may have.

Enjoy!

Catch Up -- Back in Savannah

Hello Everyone,

I have just finished up the fourth week of class in my second year at SCAD, and it’s hard to believe that I’m already two fifths of the way through the quarter. Things have been busy, as usual, and I’m sorry I haven’t been more consistent about writing. (I know I owe many of you individual emails.) It’s definitely not because of a lack of things to write about. There have been several significant changes to my experience at SCAD this year, and I want to take a minute to catch you up with them.

Most significantly, I have moved into an apartment. It’s close to the Illustration building, and it’s on one of the lovely downtown streets of Savannah. The apartment was pretty disgusting when we moved in (we suspect that the previous tenants not only didn’t clean once during their stay here -- they actually sprinkled dust and dirt in every possible nook as part of some sacred ritual we haven’t yet figured out). We spent the first few days scrubbing every surface we could find, including our walls.

Meanwhile, we needed furniture. I had many Craigslist encounters, some more rewarding than others. We rented a U-Haul truck which I drove around Chatham County successfully after an initial stressful moment when I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t keep from reversing. I eventually determined that I actually needed to turn the engine on. Imagine that! And people say automatics are easier than manuals! By the end of the day, I was even able to park without leaving six feet between the curb and the front of the truck. Slowly, we gathered pieces of furniture and managed to haul them up two flights of steep stairs. We are settled in quite nicely now, and aside from the occasional cockroach slaying, are finding the place peaceful and comfortable.

The best part of the apartment is that I get my own room but also have great housemates. In my room, there’s lots of light and I’ve managed to hang up all of my South African mud with clothes pins.

Some of my South African mud.

I have my art supplies organized with a whole drawer dedicated to adhesives. Mostly, I’m loving having my own space.

My bedroom, which has a nice little nook with a window which lets in a lot of light.

I’m living with my friend Qian, who lived in the same suite as me last year. She’s a Graphic Design major from Shanghai and is hilarious. She is incredibly talented and often gives me good advice about my work. I’m really enjoying living with her again. My other housemate, Becky, is, believe it or not, also from Spokane. And, believe it or not, her parents work at Whitworth. And, believe it or not, her grandmother was my mentor in high school. And, believe it or not, we live five minutes away from each other. And we hadn’t met until this summer! Becky had been teaching art in China for four years and decided to go to grad school in art. We emailed for a while and I was very excited when she decided on getting an MFA in Illustration at SCAD. We decided to live together and she and Qian have been chatting in Chinese and comparing cooking tips. Becky and I have been having lots of fun realizing how similar our childhoods were (NPR shows featuring prominently, our fathers talking about being “good stewards of time,” enjoying frozen yogurt at Didier’s, etc.). We laugh together a lot and in my opinion, at least, that’s the main requirement for a good home.

Becky, Qian and me at Becky's birthday dinner.

Over the summer, I was becoming wary of coming back to SCAD for a few reasons. For one, it seemed like I was quite adrift in many of my classes -- there wasn’t a whole lot of cohesion to my work, largely because the professors were stretching us in divergent directions with different projects. But it’s different this term, due to an increased flexibility on the part of a the professors and an increased confidence on my part. I feel like I’m finally doing what I want to be doing the way I want to be doing it. This is exciting. My studio classes are Illustration Markets (where we explore the various markets available to us as illustrators) and Children’s Book. Both professors are encouraging me to continue using mud, for which I’m grateful.

I was also wary because I felt like art school seemed so insular. It seemed like very few people (apart from my closest friends) wanted to talk about the outside world. It seemed narcissistic and lazy. It was hard being in South Africa this summer, where I got to revisit the places I’d worked in 2008 and where I’d felt relevant and at least mildly helpful. Grad school provides a rather luxurious and closed environment in general, and the nature of art school only exacerbates this. Several things have made it better this year, though. For one thing, it helps to be living with Qian and Becky. I think about half our sentences begin with, “In China . . . ” or “In South Africa . . . ” We’re constantly reminding ourselves that there is a world outside of downtown Savannah. Also, the professor of my other class, Art Criticism, takes a global view of art history which is essential and unfortunately rare. We’re required to subscribe to the New York Times, and she has an entire class period devoted to art criticism in Africa! I am continuing to tutor ESL students which brings me in touch with a number of people from all over the world. So although I’m back in the SCAD bubble, it doesn’t feel nearly as stifling as I’d feared it might.

And there are great benefits to being in art school which I’m remembering. Aside from seeing my friends again, my favorite part about being back how naturally quirky everyone and everything here is. It’s good to be back in the land of lectures with titles like, “Is There Any Depth in Flatness?” It’s great to get emails from friends with advice about the best glue to use in various situations. In class the other day, one of my friends was looking at our peer’s work on the wall. He sat there holding his hand up in front of his face for about twenty seconds until the professor said, “What are you thinking?” It’s good to be in a place where what might look like insanity to others is actually a sign of thinking. For my friend’s independent project, she is crocheting images of punk rockers. I’m still where I need to be, and that’s also exciting.

I hope you are all well, wherever you are.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Wedding

Hello Everyone,

Almost a month ago, I got to be in my friend Pooja’s wedding. She and I were roommates our freshman at the University of Puget Sound, and she’s been one of my very favorite people ever since.

Pictures outside the EMP in Seattle.

We all wore red shoes!

The bridesmaids and Pooja at the wedding site:
Alki Beach, overlooking the Seattle skyline.

Pooja and me right before the ceremony.

Pooja’s family is Indian and her husband, John, is not. For their ceremony and reception, Pooja and John decided to blend their respective cultural traditions so that each would be represented.

Pooja, sandwiched between her aunt and her mother.

Pooja, dressed in a stunning red sari and gold jewelry, walked down the aisle, escorted by her brother. John’s grandfather said a few words and later, after they exchanged rings, he pronounced them married and encouraged the two of them to kiss.

Of course, the most interesting elements of the ceremony for me were the ones I wasn’t familiar with. A family friend acted as the acharya or spiritual leader for the ceremony and since Pooja doesn’t know Sanskrit, he performed the Vedic ceremony in English. This allowed the rest of us to understand what was going on. Pooja’s parents began this portion of the ceremony by tying part of her and John’s clothing together. Literally tying the knot emphasized the union of my friends. They were no longer simply John and Pooja but PoojaJohn. They were one unit and had to walk together as they performed saptapadi, the next element of the Hindu ceremony. Pooja’s brother placed seven leaves on the ground, and as PoojaJohn stepped on each one, they recited a different vow. They promised to be faithful to each other, they vowed to care for any children they may have, and they prayed for a long and happy life together.

I found the Vedic ceremony complemented the western one very well. Either one on its own would have seemed incomplete in the circumstances. And that’s exactly what was happening -- two cultures were coming together. There is a plethora of movies that delight in exaggerating the tension and misunderstandings at cross-cultural weddings (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Birdcage). But part of why these films resonate with us so much is that they are an extension of the truth about any marriage -- all marriages are intercultural for the simple fact that any person comes from a series of subcultures, the strongest being his or her family’s. Often, up until the wedding, the bride and groom have been lone ambassadors for their respective families. Finally, at the wedding, a rather eclectic smattering from one clan is sent as a delegation to meet the equally random grouping of the other. No wonder things can get challenging!

To a bride’s family, the groom’s relations might as well be roasting a lamb on a spit in the front yard. His family, on the other hand, might be raising their eyebrows at her parents’ choice of wardrobe for the rehearsal dinner.
They’re spending how much on that bottle of wine?
I hope he’ll be wearing something a bit more formal to the reception.
We’d never survive in their house! We’re all allergic!
Did her aunt really just call Reagan a chimp?

Of course, the way we are raised never fully leaves us, and the different assumptions and preferences we have show up in high relief when paired against another person’s over an extended period of time. Our cultures coming together can make or break us; we can either recognize the strengths in each and survive on a healthy diet of compromise, or we can let them dislodge us like a tree imperceptibly but permanently uprooting the ground around its base.

The very obviousness of John and Pooja’s cultural differences encourages me. They, along with all of us present at the ceremony, are fully aware that they come from different backgrounds. In bringing together their respective cultures at their wedding, they set a precedent for their marriage; weddings are giant collaborations because marriages are giant collaborations.

In the last few weeks, I have been so sad to read about the building tensions between Muslims and Christians over the proposal to build a mosque at Ground Zero and the subsequent threats to burn the Koran. Perhaps some people are too deeply entrenched in ideology to benefit from the resulting discourse occurring between Muslim and Christian leaders around the country and the world. But I hope that the rest of us remember Pooja, John, and all couples who promise to try more often than not and to find beauty in each other’s differences. I hope we can remember that like it or not, we are tied to our neighbors, and we dare not take a step without them.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Congratulations, PoojaJohn!

Spelling Out Faith

Hi Everyone,

“Once upon a time, there was a Wrghting Wrghle at Whithworth. Sarah was going to go. She was very exyed.” Thus begins one of the many stories I wrote in my second grade journal, which my parents recently unearthed. As you may be able to decipher, I have always been excited by writing. Spelling, however, is not my forte. (“But at least you knew Welsh at a very early age,” my brother said in response to my attempt at phonetic spelling.) My parents were rather puzzled at this apparent gap in my otherwise unwavering academic passion. I remember them sitting me down and telling me I really needed to work on my spelling. They toyed with the idea of setting up a reward system for improved orthographic ability and I regret to this day that I didn’t capitalize on it. But they and my teachers were patient and realized that if I just kept writing, the spelling would come. They continued to foster this interest even while I was busy penning words and phrases so obviously misspelled that they would later become part of my family’s personal argot. Rather than errpting into anger or saying they were nerves about my ability to ever write proper English, they encouraged me to work on my wrghting by journaling, making stories, and even by going to rallies at Whitworth.

The movie Doubt (Thank heavens they didn’t put me in charge of spelling that!) starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep, deals brilliantly with the way doubt can be either a vehicle for discovering the truth or a sledgehammer to the truth you’ve already had. The climax of the movie comes when Meryl Streep’s character, who until that point has been adamantly suspicious of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s moral integrity, confides to her fellow sister, “I HAVE DOUBT!” In my opinion, the seriousness of the film breaks down for a moment here due to the suddenness and intensity of this revelation.

The other day, my brother and I were talking about times in our lives when we’ve been scared. My most terrifying time came after my family and I went on Semester at Sea when I was 16, when what I’d seen and learned caused me to question for the first time the religion that I’d grown up with and which structured my life. Am I Christian simply because my parents are? I wondered. Are all religions simply the opiate of the masses, as Marx said? Does Christianity deal effectively with the question of suffering? Is it even possible to know ultimate truth? This was a definite “I HAVE DOUBT!” period in my life, and I’ll be eternally grateful to the people who listened patiently to me as I processed and fretted, and I’m not even an award winning actress!

Eventually, after running my mind around in circles, it began to dawn on me that I could never argue my way back to being a Christian and that in fact, this was the whole point of faith. Since then, I have learned to see faith as an activity rather than a possession you could lose or regain. A few weeks ago, I finished President Obama’s first book, Dreams From My Father. Before he became a Christian, churchgoing friends of his would ask him about his beliefs. “I would shrug and play the question off,” he says, “unable to confess that I could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly, between faith and simple endurance.” I love this. It acknowledges that there are times when faith has very little to do with heartfelt belief and is more about just making it through the day. It acknowledges that there are times when believing in something bigger and better than us seems to be pure idiocy.

For several years after Semester at Sea, my faith felt featherlight. I would hear a comment or learn a fact in a class that would plunge me into a nauseating spasm of doubt. This faith which I’d fought so hard to win back seemed as fickle as a windsock, inflating only when the wind was strong enough.

After some time, though, things got better. The doubts remained, to be sure, but the anxious spiritual paralysis faded away. I learned to live with doubt. Last week, I wrote the following response to the Obama quote in my journal: So often, my senses seem to be telling me that they are all there is. But I keep going, despite what my belief-o-meter is telling me on a given day. I guess that’s partly because I know by now that I’ll “come around,” that give me a few days or even hours, and I could be singing a different tune. But I think it’s also partly because by now, I tend to see those periods or moments of doubt as essential to my faith. They’re the other side of the coin, the yang, the versa, the exhale. If I don’t have voices, including my own, that are expressing doubt at least semi-regularly, my faith becomes a monologue rather than a conversation.

I now see myself as a pendulum oscillating between doubt and belief and faith is the arc that this movement creates. I think faith is as hard as spelling. I’ll never be able to spell “privilege” on the first try, and I’ll never be able to prove definitively that God exists. But there is a strength that comes from endurance and in the end, knowing the Word is more important than spelling it.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Ideally Speaking

Hello Everyone,

I’m beginning to realize how important doing laundry is to me. I’ve already written two other letters about it, and am about to start a third. But laundry is something that is by its very nature cyclical, so I don’t feel too bad about bringing it up time after time. As I mentioned in an earlier letter, when I was in France, I hung my laundry on a line to dry. This habit continued in South Africa, where even in winter, it is common to rely on good old fashioned sunshine and a nice breeze. When we got back to Spokane and started to hack away at the mountains of dirty laundry we had accumulated, it was mid-July. I was convinced that it would not only be more energy efficient to use a clothes line, it would also be quicker, since the semi-arid conditions of Spokane summers make this time of year ideal for drying clothes outside. There was one problem: we don’t have a clothes line.

Not to worry, I declared! I’m a resourceful person! So I went to our garage to see what I could use instead. I found what I deemed a worthy substitute: weed wacker cord. It was strong, we had a ton of it, and best of all, it was a lovely blue color! My brother, who by this point had taken an interest in my project, helped me tie a length of wire to a fence post. “So,” I said, “know any good knots?” We momentarily regretted that he’d never been a boy scout, where an older boy, perhaps as part of his Eagle Scout project, would perhaps have passed on some of his knotty wisdom (careful how you say that!) in a series of seminars or something. But we forged ahead and managed to tie the cord all the same. We then stretched it tight and tied the other end to a hook attached to the bottom of our deck. It was perfect! The day was roasty and the line was taught. My freshly cleaned clothes would be stretched out and dry in minutes, I was sure. Think how much energy we’d be saving by not using the drier. Maybe, I thought, with a sudden gasp of environmental evangelism, the neighbors will see our stewardship example and follow suit!
I got my basket of clothes and proudly put the first item on the line. It sagged significantly. I put the second item on and the line bent lower still. After a few more, my T-shirts were touching the ground. This was not ideal.




The obvious solution was to go out and buy some actual laundry line and start again. But, for whatever reason, Matthew and I continue to use this system to dry our laundry. We started propping up the loaded line with plastic lawn furniture. When the chairs got knocked over in the breeze, we used duct tape to secure them to the line. We’ve probably dried over ten loads of laundry this way, and despite the rather pathetic display in the back yard, it works!

The back yard is the arena for another operation I’ve been performing regularly. I have a backlog of dirt samples from France and South Africa that I didn’t have time to filter while I was away, so I’ve been doing that under our deck. We have a table, where I can put my growing collection of mud-filled yogurt containers. There is a spigot nearby and I can dump the refuse mud directly into the flowerbed. The only issue is that my dad and brother have been stripping the deck so they can repaint it. This means that chunks of paint have been floating down into the mud, which defeats the purpose of filtering it in the first place. So, remembering I am resourceful, I looked around until I found an old plastic table cloth which I now use to cover the mud. To ensure that it won’t blow away, I pin it down to the table with a bucket, one of my snowboots, and one of my mom’s gardening clogs.





Though this seems to do the trick, I must confess that there have been several moments when I have thought to myself, “When I get a studio of my own, I won’t have to deal with these kind of inconveniences!”

But then I check myself: I paint with mud precisely because it isn’t ideal! I paint with mud because most people don’t have access to refined Winsor and Newton pigments. I paint with mud because even though I filter it, there are irregularities that make it an unpredictable and exciting medium. I paint with mud because it is inefficient, forcing me to put in hours of work before I even begin to think about an image.

I recently read a summary of the Bible which concluded by saying, “Ideally speaking, if we all lived in this kind of altruistic concern and engagement, human history would culminate in an epiphany of God in man. Mankind would visibly be ‘Christ.’” Thomas Merton, the author, put his entire summary, which was about a page long, in all caps, to separate it from the rest of the text. I read the conclusion and snort-laughed to myself. No kidding it’s “ideally speaking”! It’s hard enough for one life to be saturated with altruism, let alone all of human history. We have a very hard time seeing Christ in anyone, never mind all of humankind. However, as he said, Merton wasn’t describing what is, but what should be. Ideals are essential. They encourage us and make us aim high. They give us something to hope in and to wait for.

But it helps to recognize that sometimes, “good enough” is precisely that. We don’t live in the ideal; we live in the dirt. And as long as we manage to clean our clothes every so often, who cares how exactly we dry them?

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Voice

Hello Everyone,

A few weeks ago, my family celebrated my parents’ 30th wedding anniversary partly by listening to a cassette recording of the speeches made at their reception. The best man spoke first, offering encouragement and congratulations. My uncle spoke next, seeing the occasion as a chance not only to offer wisdom and his best wishes, but also to share some of his favorite jokes regardless of whether he could think of an appropriate segue. Then it was time for the speech my brother and I had been waiting a lifetime to hear. Ever since I can remember, people have been telling me what a good speech my dad gave. “A classic,” they’d say. “I will remember it for the rest of my life.”

So we were ready to be amazed, and amazed we certainly were. A man with a rather high pitched and vaguely sibilant voice started talking and Matthew and I assumed he was introducing our father. It took us about a minute of context clues and assurance from our parents to realize that it was our father. It was a great speech, but though the content was quintessential Daddy with a sustained comic theme, a hilarious impression of the then president of South Africa, P.W. Botha, and a brilliantly placed pun to cap it all off, the voice was incongruous. He proceeded to speak this way for maybe ten minutes. His intonation and inflection were the same, but that voice! We thought maybe the tape had warped after three decades, but the other two speakers had sounded normal. There was only one explanation: his voice has changed significantly.

This incident threw into turmoil an analogy I adopted several years ago to help me understand the difference between artistic “style” and “voice.” I heard from an illustrator that one’s style is more superficial or at least more controllable than one’s voice. Just as you can change fashion styles by putting on a different set of clothes, you can change artistic styles by choosing to draw differently, for example by including significantly more or less detail, by using a very different medium, or by relying more or less on value or textures. I think that accents are the vocal equivalent of style. My brother can change between accents faster than an experienced shopaholic goes through outfits in the Nordstrom changing rooms on Black Friday. Even people who aren’t training to be actors sometimes find themselves involuntarily imitating those exotic foreigners who pronounce “been” as “bean,” and who say things like “I need to go to the loo.”

One’s voice, though, is much harder to change. We think that essentially once we’ve braved our way through the murky waters of puberty, our voices remain relatively constant. I had a childhood friend who was always trying to make her voice less nasal. And though her attempts provided me many a good laugh, she never succeeded in modifying her voice at all. And perhaps because of this apparent permanence, it seems that people sometimes listen more to our voices than to our accents or even to the words we say. Although my mom’s accent has softened a bit and mine has always been slightly more British-sounding than my peers’, we have distinctly different accents. And yet I can’t count the number of times I answer the phone by saying, “Hi, this is Sarah,” only to have the person on the other end respond by saying, “Hi Sue, this is so-and-so.” It gets confusing when they ask for me:
“Oh hi, Carrie. Actually, this is Sarah.”
“How are you doing? Are you having a good summer?”
“Yeah, it’s been good. You?”
“Very good, thank you. Well, could you tell Sarah that she needs to set up an appointment at the dentist?”
“Um . . . well, this IS Sarah.”
“She could come in any time next week.”
“Uh . . . actually, this is -- oh nevermind. Yeah, I’ll have her call you back.”

So it was all the more strange to me that it was my dad’s voice -- not just his accent -- that had changed so dramatically. The analogy the illustrator had given me was in danger of either exploding or expanding. If my physical voice doesn’t remain constant throughout life, does that meant that my artistic voice will also change? Of course, I want to grow and develop, but shouldn’t there be a definitive Mouse-ish-ness to all my work? I don’t know, and I don’t suppose it is terribly helpful or healthy to be constantly examining my work wondering, “Is this drawing the real me? . . . What about this one?” So many things are better understood in retrospect.

Some voices do change over time, and so they should. They subconsciously react to new experiences and other people’s voices. Come to think of it, this sounds a lot like the job description of an artist. The past thirty years have been incredibly rich for my parents, and if the next thirty are similarly varied, who knows what my dad will sound like in 2040!

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Chocolate, Wine and All That's Fine!

Hello Everyone,

One of the interesting aspects of being in South Africa with my family again is that it is a familiar but not completely regular event in our lives. As such, it has been a chance for us and our friends and family to measure how we’ve changed. Some people noticed, for instance, that my dad no longer wears his glasses after his cataract surgery, while my mom sported hers briefly after a contact-losing incident in Grahamstown. My brother was by far the biggest shock to everyone we met and once people located his torso and head poking through the hole in the ozone layer, they usually let forth some kind of exclamation like, “My heavens!” or “What happened to you?” I’ve been wondering that for years.

As someone whose upward growth terminated in the last millennium, I am perhaps more acutely aware of less physical changes. I’m beginning to conclude that part of growing up is learning to like things you once detested with every fiber of your being. I don’t know if age chisels away our once-adamant standards or if it simply provides the wisdom to increase our tolerance in certain areas, but humans universally reserve the right to change their opinions as they grow older.

This time in South Africa, I’ve been noticing that I have actually acquired many tastes which I once regarded as being reserved for idiotic adults. When I was younger, for example, I couldn’t imagine who in their right mind would ever invent dark chocolate. Nor could I imagine that once it was invented, someone might actually choose it over milk chocolate. Wine also fell into this category. So you take grape juice, and you let it rot a bit so it gets bitter, and then you drink it? No wonder Peter Pan never wanted to grow up.

Another thing I associated with being old was liking birds and plants. When we went to zoos or game reserves when I was younger, I couldn’t understand why the grownups spent so much time getting excited about birds. Sure, they were sometimes colorful and made interesting noises, but next to

an elephant,

or a rhino,

or a giraffe,

-- I mean, really! -- no comparison! And plants were worse -- they don’t even move! My grandmother loved both and I suspect I transferred her passion to more adults than was fair, but in my eight-year-old mind, I’d know I was old when I started wearing floral print blouses and having long chats with sparrows in the backyard.

I assumed that learning to like dark chocolate and wine and other disgusting things were thresholds I would have to cross as I forged into adulthood. I pictured one of those evolution of man cartoons where the monkey on all fours is crawling along, eating sensible things like graham crackers and root beer (when his mommy would let him); the more adept and upright monkey next to him is able to do his homework on his own; the one next to that one has figured out how to make a friend or two in middle school; the next has gotten his driver’s license; the next has graduated from high school; the almost-humanoid is in college and finally (ta-da!), the recognizable adult human is walking erectly, trimming hedges while sipping wine, eating dark chocolate and using words like “mortgage,” “diesel engine,” and “APR financing.”

However, as I mentioned, this trip has been showing me that I’m further along in the Darwinian diagram than I thought. We’ve been going to wine estates and I certainly appreciate the reputation South African wine has. Many of you know how essential chocolate is in a Jackson family trip, and several of the chocolates we’ve gotten have been of the dark variety. Some of my favorite photos from this trip have been of plants and birds.

Some kind of wizened-looking ibis.

Aloe leaves.

A wildebeest behind some shrubs.


A Milky Giant Eagle Owl we saw at a bird sanctuary.


Scoping out the waterhole.


A guinea fowl: "Oh no, you di-ent!"

A kingfisher in flight.

Some grass in the sunset.

A spoonbill landing at a waterhole.
I think spoonbills get the prize for the strangest looking birds we saw this trip.

Some birds coming in to land at the waterhole.

By my childhood definition, I am essentially a full-fledged adult now. I not only tolerate some things I used to hate -- I really enjoy them! And to my surprise, I don’t feel a huge loss of innocence; the chocolate may be dark, but adulthood doesn’t have to be.

Of course, there is not usually any rhyme or reason to what starts to tempt us and what continues to repulse us. When I was younger, I hated rice, any cooked vegetables and fish (God must have known that I would have withered away if he’d given me to Asian parents). About four years ago, I learned to like rice. I was sitting at an Iranian restaurant in Seattle with my friends and the only vegetarian option on the menu was some kind of rice dish. I sighed internally and knew I’d just have to grin and bear it. To my utmost surprise, I found that I not only could stomach the rice -- I was actually enjoying it quite a lot. Rice has now become one of my favorite foods and a staple in my diet. Cooked veggies likewise have become much more appetizing to me, though I still generally prefer them raw or frozen. Fish, on the other hand, has fallen even further in my taste buds’ estimation, perhaps because I now don’t eat any meat.

I can’t explain how I convinced myself that rice was delicious or how I went from cringing at a real wine Eucharist offered in some churches to cringing at the grape juice offered at others (I suppose it’s not entirely inappropriate to squirm during Communion). Some parts of growing up just come naturally like learning to walk or losing your teeth, and I guess liking dark chocolate must be one of them. Other parts need to be drilled repeatedly into your head and are much more difficult to get: time management, loving your neighbor as yourself, keeping your room tidy, whistling.

My family and I are safe at home in Spokane now after a freakishly long time in transit. I’m looking forward to seeing or talking with many of you soon, after I sleep some more, and I’m grateful to have seen others of you so recently!

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse