Three Gifts

  Have you been to those eateries that use butcher paper as a table cloth and provide crayons or markers? I LOVE that! My version of ambiance! A couple of weeks ago, we sat down to a lovingly prepared dinner at home. My loving and supportive wife set out a place mat of blank paper and a cup with some crayons. An invitation to draw continues to delight and humble me at the same time.  I doodled out some birds, sea creatures, land animals and a zoo keeper. You see one of the birds as today's doodle.

   The next two gifts appeared at Christmas in the form of books. I'll probably devote another blog or two to these. The first is a team written book by NPR's "Puzzlemaster" Will Shortz, whose puzzlers have been a staple on Weekend Edition. The other writer, Robert Mankoff, serves as The New Yorker's cartoon editor(he still owes me a rejection letter or maybe a promise to publish:)  The book combines New Yorker cartoons with NPR puzzles and has already brought hours of great fun! 

   The third gift is a book about the art of caricature by Tom Richmond, whose work appears in that highbrow publication, Mad Magazine. The caricatures remind me of many happy hours reading "Mad" and laughing at the drawings. The lessons in anatomy and psychology, not to mention art, stretch the intellect and imagination at the same time. These gifts and a nice coffee=cartoonist heaven. Until Monday, then.