The T-shirts are ready

The Frog Hospital T-shirts are ready, but first we go to the New York Times website and just read the headlines:

U.S. Aiding Somalia in Its Plan to Retake Its Capital

Great, let's help everybody, we can do it all. Fix Haiti, then Yemen, don't forget Detroit and New Orleans, and then rebuild Pakistan. No problem too great or small, we can do it all.

Or here's a better idea. Let's send the Tea Party people over to Somalia. They would just love it there -- no government, no laws, and no taxes. All you need is a generator, several drums of gasoline, a couple of cell phones, two or three dozen AK-47s, and some four-wheel drive pickups -- and you can set yourself up as a warlord. Lots of peasants in the neighborhood -- good for exacting tribute. It's the purest kind of freedom.

Art News

John Simon died. He was a wonderful artist. Many hundreds of people came to his show in Edison last night. This was an unusual situation. John had been battling cancer for several years, and seeming to be all right, and turning out some very impressive work.

That's why the art show was planned. But he took a turn for the worse last week. He went down pretty fast and he died.

But they still had the show planned -- all the paintings hung and ready to be viewed. So everybody came to celebrate his life and his work. Much love for this fine artist.

Joel Brock went to Los Angeles. I don't know how to make a graceful transition from John Simon's entire life to Joel Brock's less significant trip, so forgive me.

Joel Brock is showing new work at the Cygnus Gallery in LaConner. He has been in Los Angeles, painting the light. This was a surprise to me because all the work I've seen of his has been done in the Skagit Valley.

But there at the Cygnus gallery was Brock's painting of a house in Los Angeles. It was instantly recognizable. I just loved it. But then I love Los Angeles.

Charlie Krafft. Charlie's work is kind of unusual. I won't describe it, but you can find it on Google, just type in Krafft with two f's.

I visited his studio/home on Beacon Hill last week. He fixed me some coffee and then went back to work on his ceramics. We talked while he worked. Charlie has some very strong creative energy, and it was very stimulating just to be talking with him while he worked.

The Museum of Northwest Art has a show of women's lingerie. This is an attempt to restore the erotic potential of downtown LaConner. Sexual expression of any kind has been banned for decades in this town. No dancing. No suggestive hip movement. No fooling around. It has been so dull in LaConner, you could fall asleep on a bench. But a showing of women's ... you know ... is good for the imagination, it livens things up a bit.

That's the art news.

The Flower Report. The daffodils were three weeks early, but a low pressure area is moving in and and bringing back winter weather, so the tulips are not going to come on so fast.

Dating Disaster. This event deserves expansive coverage, but I have to skim over it. I dined at the Lemon Grass, a Vietnamese restaurant in Seattle, with a Lovely Lass.

You could write a book about everything I did wrong. I started out with nervous twitching, then compounded the error by trying to explain the nervous twitching, then motor-mouthing a monologue with surprising emotional intensity -- like, if I showed her I could do handsprings then she might like me.

It was really too much, but there was an underlying sincerity to my effort. I can't explain it any other way.

The Frog Hospital T-shirts are ready to be shipped. This year when you sign up for a $25 subscription to Frog Hospital, you get a FREE T-shirt, no charge for shipping.

Write a check for $25 made out to Fred Owens. Mail it to Box 1292 LaConner, WA 98257. I will send one XL t-shirt to the return address, unless you want another size.

Or pay $25 on the PayPal button -- but then you need to send me an email with the mailing address.

This is not too complicated, and it's a really cool T-shirt. I had it designed by Alexander Kramer, an up and coming artist in LaConner.

The Frog Hospital book will be coming out later this spring. There will also be a book deal, but right now it's the T-shirt deal.

Thank you for your support.



--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

send mail to:

Fred Owens
Box 1292
LaConner WA 98257