The day before I left Virginia, mom talked me into playing miniature golf with her. Here's a photo from the back nine, by the artificially-blue-water waterfall. You can see by her expression that mom is none too happy about the fact that I am kicking her ass on the links.

I also took a few photos, again not very good ones, of some of the paintings & drawings that are hanging on mom's walls - ones that particularly like. I don't know anything about these except that the barber drawing is from Indonesia & accurately reflects entrepreneurship in that country in the early 60's.

Here are a couple of not-great photos of some of my work that mom has on her walls. This first one is a yarn embroidery thing on burlap, done when I was about 10 or 11 probably.

And this one is from a series of "landscape" paintings I did in 2000-2001:

Bethesda, Maryland

I'd missed seeing my old friends George & Sandra Frowick the last time in was in D.C., so I made sure to go over to their house this time. Of course their kids are lots older, they have new dogs etc. My photos of George & Sandra didn't turn out well so here's one of their rescue dog Buddy, whom I liked a lot, and the bottom picture is of their eldest son holding Sophie their Jack Russell terrier. Sophie was crazy about me until I started trying to take her picture.

Also Roanoke

In Roanoke I was directed to Mini-Graceland, or maybe more precisely Mini-Elvis Land:

In the picture above you can see Graceland, under the dogwood tree, and here in the picture below is Elvis' Tupelo birth house on the left, and the church Elvis first sang at on the right. In miniature of course.

Virginia

I went to Roanoke to visit Jim Leftwich, whom I hadn't seen since he & his wife Sue relocated there from Charlottesville. They now live a couple doors down from Ralph Eaton, whom I'd met back in 1989 0r 1990 at Holyland in Joshua Tree. Jim & Ralph have been friends since they were children. I spent a couple days there & had a great time.

Jim & Ralph in the graveyard.

Jim & Ralph on the mountain.

Jim in his studio. He & I made some collages for Dobrica Kamperelic. Afterwards we had some chicken that Ralph barbequed up with his ultra-secret "Blood of Elvis" bbq sauce. Best sauce I ever had.

Sue warming up by the fire.

Ralph applying The Blood Of Elvis.

I found a couple photos I'd taken of Camper the day before he died, about three & a half weeks ago. I didn't think of them consciously as "last" photos, because he was doing pretty well that day. Anyway I'm sure glad I took them. Here are the ones that were in focus. I like the one above because he doesn't look sick or miserable, and he's looking right at the camera. If I knew how to use Photoshop I could get rid of that eye bugger.

In these other two, you can kind of tell he's not himself. In reality he was feeling much worse than he looks in these pics. Goodbye buddy.

It's been pretty quiet around the house since Camper died. We all still miss him very much & are being extra nice to each other right now. Here's Jen being extra nice to Boojum.

Mrs. Kelly hasn't been feeling too great this winter, so it was nice to see her out taking some sun the other day. Jen went over to find out how things were going & to help take in the Kelly's trash cans.

A couple days ago I went over to SF & hung out with Linda Wilson. She's getting around a little better on her cane & she is in very good spirits. We walked down to get tortas & juice which we took & ate at the office of El Tecolote newspaper, where Linda is archiving all the thousands of photos in their collection. I didn't take the picture above, I stole it from Linda's blog of photos of Mission residents.

I didn't think I still had this poster & was surprised to find it yesterday when I was doing some spring-cleaning in my studio. This is from a festival that Ellen Zweig produced in 1984 with help from me, Marsha Vdovin, Amy Elliott & Andrea Dace. Poster is a little hard to read. Some very heavy hitters were swinging away during the festival's four consecutive nights. It was insane. I know I've written about it but I can't remember where right now. Too many blogs. My brain is turning to rotten mush.

Alžběta Skálová sent me this photo that her parents Franta & Eva (in front) made for her at the home of Professor Eckelhaft (rear, with black spider on head). Just a typical evening for these bookish paleoicthyologists. Alžběta's studying at Maryland ICA in Baltimore this year.