My dad

I lost my dad a year ago. Not long after, my aunt asked if I was going to write an obituary. What I wrote was mostly that, a little bit upside-down from the traditional structure, but something that pulled together who he was, at least to me. I thought today, on the anniversary, I would post that here.

*

Don Chandler Little was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 6th, 1945, and grew up in Maysville, Kentucky, the only child to Frank Chandler and Stella Aline Little. As a kid, he loved playing baseball with the neighborhood boys and listening to games on the radio. In the summers, the family would vacation in Florida where Don would play golf with his dad, check out the Daytona Speedway, and lounge on the beach, devouring paperbacks one after the other. In high school, he played French horn in the band and landed the lead part in his senior class play, Mr. Coed.

When he graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Accounting from the University of Kentucky, Don was awarded a Corning Glass fellowship, which gave him the chance to travel the world. He saw Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Israel, then headed to Europe. In Brussels, he took a pause in his touring to work at the local Corning Glass offices to earn some extra traveling money. Stopping one day into the First National City Bank, he was waited on by Kathy Cooke, an American living overseas with her Naval family. He asked her out and the rest is history.

Because Kathy invited Don home to Holland to meet her family. "I know what's going to happen," she said. "You're going to meet my sister and fall in love with her."

And he did.

And he did.

Lucy Cooke and Don Little met in mid-January of 1968. Their first date was Chinese food in London's SoHo in February. In April, they were engaged. Statistics on marital success based on longevity of courtship be damned.

They returned from Europe and were married on August 24th, 1968. Don had landed a job at Arthur Andersen and Company but first headed off for a few days' honeymoon, followed by a trip to his boyhood home in Kentucky to visit the local draft board. Unsure how to classify the young men who'd been awarded Corning Glass fellowships, the draft board had given each a business deferral, but now that Don's fellowship had come to an end, that classification changed. To 1A: draft immediately.

"Your wife doesn't happen to be pregnant, does she?" a woman working in the draft board office asked him.

She explained that if his wife were expecting, he'd be eligible again for a business deferral. Eugenia Bain was born approximately nine months later.

Statistics on domestic success based on preparation and planning be damned.

In August of 1971, Don still working for Arthur Andersen, they moved to Melbourne, Australia, where their second child, Edina Kathleen, was born, in September of 1972. They lived there until May of 1974, when they moved back to Washington DC, and then, a little later, Southern California, welcoming son Frank Chandler in July of 1976.

By then, Don had left Arthur Andersen and was working for US Rentals. The family of five became a family of seven with the addition of Carmen Garcia and her two-month-old baby Liz. In the early Eighties, Don started G/L Systems, which provided payroll and other accounting services to local businesses. The family continued to grow, welcoming the next generation: Amy Bullard, Alex Bullard, Abigail Bailey Little, and Hana Tateno.

In Don's business G/L Systems, which he ran for almost forty years, he described himself as a "one-stop comptroller." But what else was he? Husband, father, grandfather (known to his grandchildren as Pops). Lover of sports, particularly ice hockey and baseball. Avid reader. Punster. Clever namer of pets. Ardent scholar of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Ardent enthusiast of tasty things including frozen yogurt, milkshakes, Junior Mints, Heath Bars, Klondike Bars (his last discovered treat), and Lucy Little's excellent cooking. Lover of music. A storyteller at heart. A true gentleman. A computer whiz who was known to review new programs for software creators. The dad who did his kids' taxes for years even though taxes were his least favorite activity in accounting. Bringer of surprise bouquets of flowers. Orchestrator of cunning and elaborate gift schemes. Sporter of the most dashing beard. A quiet force who knew his mind and spoke it well. A generous person. A respectful person. An authentic person. The perfect emblem, in this daughter's opinion, of what a man should be.

Book Cover Redux: Dispatches from Anarres

Last November, Forest Avenue Press did a cover release for our next anthology, Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin, conceived and edited by Susan DeFreitas. Then in January, we got feedback from our distributor, Publishers Group West, that they were concerned the cover skewed too sci-fi. 

My original concept, when I first started sending out early samples, had been ALL-SCI-FI-ALL-THE-TIME: a huge silver interplanetary communicator shooting out into space. Susan had brought me back to earth a bit by reminding me that Le Guin's works are equally divided between science fiction and fantasy—and that our collection Dispatches from Anarres is as well. To add that fantasy element, she had the cool idea of filling the sky with the silhouettes of flying dragons.

When in January our representatives at PGW brought up their own too-much-sci-fi concern, we said, hey, but dragons, and they said, what dragons?, and we were like, what do you mean, what dragons?, but it was true: when viewed in any smaller-form that more subtle element did kind of disappear. 

So I set out to find a way to get those dragons to stand out more without making the cover too busy in the process. We were getting pretty late in the game to be tinkering with the cover, but it was important to get it right. I was playing with color and brightness and contrast when I started...

...to have second thoughts.

About the whole thing.

PGW's concerns, Susan's early concerns, what if I was getting this thing all wrong?

In an email to Forest Avenue Press publisher Laura Stanfill in which we were discussing little changes like font sizes, I snuck in:

There's also part of me that is wondering... is this cover right? Are we getting the Le Guin right? Should it be an alien landscape instead? 

Because Le Guin was always more focused on the natural world than technology, even in her sci-fi writings. One of the representatives at PGW had called her work nature writing. And a lot of her own book covers reflect that.

As soon as I wrote that what if to Laura—what if I'd been getting it wrong all along—I knew I was right.

You might think, um, what are you thinking, deciding to go completely back to the drawing board so late in the process, I mean, what are you going to do, conjure up an alien landscape like magic?

Well, yes. That's what I was going to do.

It just so happens I have a brother who creates alien landscapes. 

Ever since he was a kid, my brother Frank Little has been creating and refining a world. A specific world all his own, with maps he drew, stories he wrote, words in different languages, king lists for dynasties of rule. As he became an adult, that obsession drew him to learn computer modeling programs.

Look at this!

And this!

What would you do if this thing cropped up in your backyard?

You can't really see the detail on these because of the thin format of my blog, which I'd change but I'm afraid it'll throw off the layout of sooo many posts so I always leave it alone... but you can check out more of his work on DeviantArt here or on his website here.

The night after I wrote that what-if note to Laura, I started scrolling through his artwork, hoping I might find something that would work. When I came across this, I had one of those visceral moments: I knew it was perfect.

Anarres, the inhabited moon in Le Guin's book The Dispossessed, is a barren desert of a place, with very little animal and plantlife. We didn't expressly need the setting of the book cover to be Anarres, but it was important that it not not be Anarres, if that makes sense. Not only did the terrain in Frank's "Hanging Artichoke" feel right, I could already picture what I would do with it. I imagined a whole bunch more sky above the cliff (I could add that in) and a woman standing on the edge looking out over the desert vista as if awaiting word from those Dispatches that had been sent from her world to the next.

I wondered if Frank would be okay with me... getting my fingers into his artwork. Adding more sky. Tossing a woman onto his mountaintop. When I texted to ask about it, he said, referencing Le Guin, "Well since I recently reread all of her stuff I would love to have one of my pictures involved..."

It was strange to go back to square one and reposition the text after I'd gotten so used to looking at the layout of the original book cover. This new approach and new artwork wanted a completely new layout, new colors, new fonts. When I sent Laura my first [new] draft, I punned, "This is soooo different from what we had before. It's like night and day. Get it?"

I played around with slight variations on text and placement. For some I added a little more sun in the sky—and even a silhouette of one of Susan's dragons.

But dragons don't exist on Anarres (birds don't even exist on Anarres), so we chucked the dragon and packaged up the sample we thought was the best of the batch, Laura and me, and sent it Susan's way. 

(Please don't notice how many times I miscapitalized Le Guin above. I knew how to spell it. I knew. But somehow I goofed.)

It was so important to both of us that Susan like the cover of the book she'd conceived. And it was so important that PGW think it was a cover that would sell the book. So many considerations go into the creation of a book cover, and I realized, as I worked on this one, that we had more people we wanted to please than ever before. 

There was the editor and the distributor, there was the publisher and the cover designer (I like liking things). There was Frank whose artwork I was using. There were alllll the authors who'd written stories for the book. But even beyond this, there was the legacy of Ursula K. Le Guin. Her memory, her family, her legion of fans. 

Eek, that's a lot of people.

We started to get feedback. PGW loved it. For Susan, it wasn't sci-fi enough, didn't tell enough story. My brother joked, "Ok yeah that's the coolest thing I've ever seen." Laura then sent the sample to a couple Le Guin experts, one being our copy editor Bailey Potter, and her feedback: women on Anarres don't wear dresses.

Oops.

To Susan's concerns about the amount of sci-fi, I thought, OK, this new cover, that was like night and day to the old cover, I think it needs to go back to night.

Or maybe...

What if instead of the light blue of day or the deep blue of night we take a left turn into red?

And added, in that red sky, the planet to Anarres' moon: Urras.

A la:

I started by getting my fingers even deeper into Frank's artwork. With his blessing, I cut the sky out around his cliff and hanging artichoke. I made two overlapping files, one that was just cliff-artichoke and one that contained the desert vista. The biggest challenge working with the artwork was darkening that vista and getting those colors to fade nicely up into the sky color. 

Then I built a planet. That took a while. Planets are big. I also worked longer than you want to know to build a new outfit for my woman, with lots of feedback from Susan, Laura, and our two Ursula K. Le Guin experts, writer Sarah Cypher and our copy-editor Bailey Potter. The planet was built mostly in Illustrator, the woman in Paint Shop Pro. I added stars the the sky. I took them out again. I know I'm grossly oversimplifying this part of the process, but heck, this blog post is already the size of the indefinable fathoms between here and Anarres. In the end, Laura shared with me that Susan said:

"This image feels—almost like someone contemplating the cosmos, other civilizations—or like someone standing on another planet contemplating Earth. That feels like the story implied by this image, and it could not be more perfect."

Ah! That felt good.

(Stand-in blurb, notwithstanding. That, as always, will be updated down the line.)

Dispatches from Anarres will be published by Forest Avenue Press this coming November, with stories from (big breath) TJ Acena, Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher, Stevan Allred, Jason Arias, Stewart C. Baker, Jonah Barrett, Curtis Chen, Tina Connolly, Mo Daviau, Rene Denfeld, Molly Gloss, Rachael K. Jones, Michelle Ruiz Keil, Juhea Kim, Jessie Kwak, Jason LaPier. Fonda Lee, David D. Levine, um me, Sonia Orin Lyris, Tracy Manaster, James Mapes, C.A. McDonald, Tim O’Leary, Ben Parzybok, Nicole Rosevear, Arwen Spicer, Lidia Yuknavitch and Leni Zumas, and with a foreword by David Naimon. 

More information is here. More on editor (and writer) Susan DeFreitas is here. Big thanks to Frank Little for his art, and to Susan, Laura, the folks at PGW, and our LeGuin specialists Bailey Potter and Sarah Cypher for all their input.

Here's a sneak peek story snippet for you. From "Each Cool Silver Orb a Gift" by Nicole Rosevear

*

Helena had not yet been born when the long war, the last war, began, but she had been in the Southlake settlement from its beginning, providing her unfocused childhood labor to the construction of communal households, dining and medical facilities, gathering spaces, and gardens. Over decades, she had moved her way through the full set of work cycles, adding her name to the lottery of women eligible to sit on the Council late in her fourth decade, knowing the chances of being drawn were slim. She did not need that particular honor to hold a deep pride in her small part in the building of Southlake, this newly gentled world, made better for all by the ruling hands of women.

When Sasha, the last remaining member of the original Council, added her name to the list of those withdrawing from the work cycles, Helena attended the lottery, excited to witness the drawing of a new member, a rare and momentous event. The afternoon was cool and muggy, the hazy sun unable to break through the clouds. When the name was drawn and called, she did not recognize it as her own, looking around at the women, men, and thirds gathered in the main square for this other Helena. When she realized others were looking back at her rather than past her, that she was that Helena, she cried out in surprise. To step into the shoes of one of the original Council members was an honor she had not dreamed of.

Walking back to her household, the flurry of conversations and introductions already a blur, the metal of her new Council pin cool against her throat, Helena passed a group of three men and two thirds in an alcove near a dining hall. She heard the tail end of a hissed whisper, one of the thirds saying, “. . . their pawns to being yours.” When they saw her approaching, the man directly facing her tapped his collarbone twice, near the spot Council members wore their pins. The group turned quickly away from each other, one of the thirds offering her a casual open-handed greeting.

“Afternoon,” she said, returning the gesture. It seemed that they did not want her to have heard them, and it was easy enough to imagine she hadn’t.

On his birthday: early journal entries about my brother Frank, with spelling errors intact and my own commentary in green

1979
December 31—Frank and Mom found a stray puppy and brought it home a month or something after Gertrude died. But we aren't going to keep the stray. I call her Shoepolish.

1981
September 19—Today we went to see the play "West Side Story." It was great. We got autographs like we did in Oklahoma. We had almost the same seats, In front. At the rumble where the 2 leaders are supposed to be dead Frankie yelled out (during silence) "Are they dead?" [He shouted this in the theater during the dramatic silence following the two men falling dead. The whole theater burst out laughing and I remember one of the dead actors on stage trying not to laugh.]

1982
September 30—Edina's birthday. We went to the French Pantry for Edina's birthday. Alaine (a waitress) teaches sign language. She gave us name signs. Mine's an "E" (left hand) rubbing my right arm. (I like to make music). Edina is 2 "E"s signing "talk". Frankie is an "F" with the 3 last fingers chomping the thumb for Pac-Man.

December 7—The McLittle Theatre is going to do "Best of Friends" in Feb. when noni & Coco come out. I'm Jenni. Frankie's Jonathan, Heather's Susan Evans, Edina's Dad, Shena's Mom & Mara's Mary. & I just can't wait! It was soooo! windy at night!!!! [The McLittle Theatre was what we called ourselves when we did plays and made the parents watch. Of note here is that Frank played Jonathan, a character who died pretty close to the beginning of the play, and my sister Edina got stuck playing the dad.]

1983
January 1—It is now 1983. [I wrote the number 3 at the stroke of midnight.] Happy New Year! I resolve to be a nicer, more outward person. I am a shyish person, but I resolve to become less shy. We had a party at my cousin Heather's lake house. It was my family, Heather's & the Macys. We took a boat ride & had a foot ball pool. Frankie & Ev Macy won!!! When we went to the dock there was slush on the ground!!!! (This is California!) I prayed for snow & in a way I got it!

February 3—Gayle of course wasn't at school today. I hung around with Julie Davenport & Kristin at lunch. They wanted me to play a mean trick on Frankie. I didn't.

February 24—The rapid precipitation and thunder and lightening were simultanious at around 3:00 today. Frankie and I ran to the van, the rain pouring around us. I had double warmth because of the use of my 2 coats. Gayle wasn't at school so I remained solitary untill she arrived. We had bells and during it, a drill for earthquakes but there wasn't the slightest tremor. Gayle & I talked about dumbfounding & stupefying dreams we'd had. After school we had hot chocolate. It had an aromatic eroma and was sensationally delicious and warm with cream on top. I played video games on coleco and helped Frankie with homework. Through it all, I deduce, precicely that it was a fairly chaotic day but alittle chaos makes the eazy easier.

March 1 Today I went outside & sang in the rain. I sang the song "Here comes the rain" that I made up on Feb. 27th and just (from that) sang anything I thought of (about the rain). I'll always sing. My life is like a musical. A long time ago I sang a circus song. Frankie & his friend were making a circus for Heather & I to see. I got up and starting singing about what you need for a circus. Heather joined in on a 2nd verse and we sang just like a musical. I loved it. I've sang about what to do (A song called "What shall we do today", I've sang about when Mom wouldn't understand me (A song called "What do you mean by that) etc. I always just sing. My life is a musical.

April 10—I went to Shena's. We watched 3 movies. The Incredible Shrinking Woman", "Somewhere in Time" & "Annie." I did a large sermon outline. We have 2 new games. "Oink" & "Space Panik" I played "Star Wars" with Frankie.

May 10—I went to the orthodontist. I got an impreshion of my teath, learned all about what they're going to do. Shena came over. We started talking over "old times." Frankie went to the SanDiego Wild Animal Park. At the bird show a bird took a dime out of his hand. In the cat & canine show a dog took a necklace from him. In the elephant he lied down while an elephant crouched over him.

May 15—We (Shena & I) had 2 doughnuts each when we came to my house to get some Atari cartages to play at Shena's house. I went with Shena & Peg shopping for a shirt for Shena to wear to model some homemade pants in a fashion show. At home, we had (my family) strawberry-short-cake for dessert. Frankie & Edina got new bikes. Frankie is trying to learn how to ride his. I saw "An Officer & a gentleman" again.

May 21—Today was really part work, part play. (The play part was more) I finnished cleaning out my clothes. I cleaned out my room & vacuumed it. I listened to my play tape reciting my lines 2 ½ times. Afterwards Dad, Frankie & I went to the park to help Frankie ride his bike. When we came home it was time to swim. Frankie & I swam. Mom came in once. In the morning Edina, Frankie & I went to yum yum's for doughnuts. We walked. As I walked down the sidewalk I felt the love in the morning air. I saw 2 "planet of the Apes" movies.

May 25—At school today during P.E. a giant swarm of bees swarmed around the play ground. I had a good piano lesson. A kid in Frankie's class (Matt) punched Frankie & he hit the ground on his chin. He (Frankie) now has a big bump on his chin. He also, at home, got stung by a bee. What a day he must have had!

June 9—I did my science project & got a 97. I said an extemporaneous speech about Frankie.

June 10—The 8th grade got our year books today. I got it signed by alot of people. In the back Mom had "Roses are Red violets are blue Gigi graduated - yahoo; yahoo!" put in & "Edina & Frank did good too….".

a moment in the day: dream

I wake up before the alarm goes off, and the last bit of dream sits here, on my pillow. I've dreamed it almost every night for the last month, in some way or other. Dreamed it for the few weeks before I flew to California and I've been dreaming it since I came home. Always the way with one of these California visits. In the dream, it's my last night there and I'm going to have to leave again.

It's weird to me how hard I grieve for that part of my life that's far away. Not weird that I miss my family, but how much. With how good I have it here. A good and interesting man as my husband, a good job, my friends, my endless, beloved projects. My doggie. It's not like before, when every time I left my family in California, I was heading off to an existence that felt crushingly boring and distinctly not mine. But no matter what I have here in this lovely Portland life-after, there's that one deep hole I can't fill.

A week and a half ago, the Saturday of Noni's memorial, stepping up to Mom and Dad's door, me with my good shoes in one hand, Frank and I were talking about death. Partly because of Noni, yes, but also, I think, partly because Frank has a daughter now, and children are the markers of the swift and endless passage of time.

"I think about how I won't exist," he said, "and I think about how I won't exist forever. All that time going on forever and ever..."

He was freaking himself out just thinking about thinking about it.

Though I believe, like my brother, that after I die, my consciousness won't continue, won't go to some heaven or into some new body, death isn't the forever that obsesses me. Walking up to Mom and Dad's house with my good shoes in my hand, I was thinking about my life - all that time - how little of it will be spent with this handful of the people I love most.

The other night, back here in Portland, Stephen and I sat up in bed doing what we love to do, watching an old movie. It was The Merry Widow, with Jeanette MacDonald shrouded in black tulle and Maurice Chevalier singing, "Girls! Girls! Girls!"

Late, ten thirty at least, and I started to doze, just a moment. Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier were embracing, and then my eyes closed and I started to dream. Dreaming about that same hug, but instead of MacDonald and Chevalier, it was Mom and me.

easter

Nice little Easter.

First cyber, then in the flesh.

Morning computer time, me alone in the studio, a back and forth string of Jesus Christ Superstar lyrics down my facebook page with Frank.

Life lived with fingertips and words.

He started it. The opening line to Heaven On Their Minds. One of my very favorite of the songs. We rolled it out, line after line. Only sad thing: Edina wasn't on. Or you would have had the three of us going at it.

Here would be a funny Little Family Easter vigil in cybertime. The three of us in our separate corners, each with a basket of malted milk balls and jelly beans (or maybe some pizza... I'd rather the pizza) laying down a back and forth of that whole rock opera. Think we could do it? We were trying to do it without cheating yesterday, and after a while, I knew my memory for the lyrics was going a little blooey. We didn't get past Heaven, but that was enough for me to feel Easter.

In the evening, it was Mary and Stephen and me and salad and appetizers and good music and then Judy Garland and Easter Parade. Mary brought CDs of classical adagios and we sat and listened and talked. She also brought Benny. Elegant greyhound, he of the celebrated longest tail of all greyhounds around. Really: he won a prize. It was some big local greyhound get-together Mary took him to recently. The prize was a soft rubber doggie bowl you can fold up and take with you. She had it with her, in fact, and put it on her lap full of water and he got his sleek nose up there and drank. Weirdly, the doggie bowl was imprinted with an ad for some beer.

To get ready for having Mary over, I cleaned off my desk - by which I mean the little table in the living room, the only table in the apartment. I piled my piles on the other piles on my real desk in the studio, which is so full of piles that I can't write back there. This morning, I moved my laptop back on the table but left the piles in the back. I'll get those piles moved back, but for today, I might just see what it's like to write without a mess around me.

vote!

So excited to learn that my brother, Frank Little, is up for artist of the month at Renderosity. He does amazing things with computer art, and one of the things that I especially like about his work is that it's so much more than just a lovely and intriguing visual. It's all a part of a world he's created. You can even see a map of the place on his gallery.

Check him out and vote for him, eh? Renderosity is quick to create a user name for and free. You can click here to go directly to the voting page. It has link to all the artists up for the November artist of the month, and Frank is FCLittle.

Took me a while to find the place to vote, but somewhere under the part with the little bars showing the percentages of the current voting, there's a little line that says log in and vote... or something. Anyway, vote, vote, vote! His work is graceful and unique and subtle in ways that most of the other stuff I see just isn't. Here are a couple more examples of his work...




Also, you can click here for an earlier blog post on his work, plus my tattoo, which is written in one of the languages from his world.

frank's going away party in pictures

sidewalk art says: bon voyage, frank. orange county, ca 1,001.4 miles. that way.


lovely glass bead gift from sue...



guests...







lots of great conversation...






and after dinner, what's a party without fire dancing in the backyard?

peach.










a bit o' fire eating...



this picture that includes the twinkle lights running along kat's fence makes it kind of look like frank's eating fire too...



and (since this is for frank) there must be ice cream. and magic shell.



and whipped cream...



lots of whipped cream...





and there must be a beatles sing-along...








if you don't know the song, you can always stand in the background with your phone...



thanks to kathy for hosting and to peach for performing and creating our chalk welcome mat and to everyone for making it a lovely time. best going-away party ever. now, let's not let him go...

fun with powells' photo booth

Right now, Powell's has a little attraction going on where you can have your picture taken superimposed in front of our entrance and with your name, or whatever else you want, on the marquee. With [my brother] Frank so soon to leave town, I said we should get in line and have a kooky Powell's picture together.


The choking was his idea.

But wait, there's more. You must look close. If we zero in a bit, you see...


And then we bring it in just a bit closer...

wild things part two

At first I didn't want to like it. Because Where the Wild Things Are was a favorite book, and I didn't want any of that magic tinkered with.

Then I wanted to like it. Because I was visiting family in California and my nephew Maxx (10) and my niece Zoë (5) loved it.

Some wild things...

*******************Maxx******************

*******************Zoë*******************

******************Frank******************

Had to put my brother in there. He just fit so well.

When I didn't want to like it, I thought maybe I'd end up liking it, and that'd be a nice surprise. When I started to want to like it, I was afraid I wouldn't and then what would I say to Maxx and Zoë?

In the end, I had some mixed feelings, but overall I did like it. In a lot of ways, it has a light touch, which made me feel taken care of, since one of the things that is sweet about the book is its light touch. The portrayal of the wild things, to me, felt so real and so regular. There was something charming and engaging in the regularness of these monsters. And how that regularness blended with wild-thing-ness so that you could have

[did i mention? spoilers.]

Carol talking like an adult human, emoting like a child, and suddenly saying he might just eat his feet off.

What I didn't like as much? How Max runs away rather than letting his imagination create a forest out of his bedroom. Especially how he scales a cliff a la adventure movie to get to where the wild things are. And how the film does not end on supper that is still hot - which is the apex of the book's poetry.

On the other hand. I did like the very last moment in the film - getting to watch Max just watch his mother sleeping - which does encompass all that "and it was still hot" says, and more. That is a beautiful moment. And one that, again, is done with a light touch. The Max in me still wants to stomp my feet a bit about the departure, but because it has its own poetry, I'm happy with it.

Another lovely moment? Max under his mom's desk, plucking at her tights as she works.

I'll just mention one other moment and the thought I had watching it. When Max is running from Carol, and KW tells Max to climb in her mouth and hide in her stomach. Not at all in the book, of course, but this felt so Sendak to me. Not only because it reminded me of the part in We Are All In the Dumps With Jack and Guy when the moon saves the kittens by carrying them in its mouth, but because it contains that same kind of elegant fiendishness that I've always loved in Sendak's work.

tattoo part three

It was in these very hills that I got my first tattoo.

No.

But when people see my tattoo for the first time, they usually ask me what it says or what language it's in.


I say, "It's in Dnalsjian."

Saeshan ni'shou means water in the sand, and it's written in a language my brother created - actually one of many. Frank has created an entire world, with whole histories, maps, myths and folktales, ecosystems...

Seems like he's used every avenue possible in his ongoing fleshing out of this world. He's written stories, drawn creatures, plants and landscapes, made globes, written music - one time he took an old dining room table and painted the map of the world across it. The smaller lettering in my tattoo was taken from his writings.

Frank's latest medium is computer art. The picture at the top of my post is somewhere in the hills of Old Minzaron. Which, for all you travelers out there, is on the continent of Mersinoe, which is north of Dnalsj.

One of the things I love the most about his work, beyond the skill in it of course, is how he's able to create landscapes that seem equally real and alien.

Here's one more.


And here's what Frank says about the tasty treats in the picture:

"...their fleshy meat, though pungent, is considered a delicacy to many peoples in the region. Wealthy aristocrats from distant nations will pay exorbitant amounts to have it shipped great distances to be prepared at their courts....personally I'm not a big fan, but then again, I have simple tastes."

These small images don't do the pieces justice, of course. Click to enlarge and really see the detail. Then visit his Renderosity page here.