January 23, 2020
Welcome to Notes from the Field! First and foremost, if you are reading this, I thank you for visiting my website! For my first blog I would like to preview some of the upcoming events.
In the Books section, you may have noticed that the book covers are still a work in progress. Baja Redemption, the first novel in the Warriors of Gaia series, will be released later this spring. As you may already know, Japan is at the forefront worldwide for illegal whaling activities. The story centers around the Japanese practice of illegal whaling in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico. With this novel, I hope to raise public awareness to the global plights of cetaceans (whales and dolphins). This story is to be a voice for those who don’t have one. My story is told through the adventures of characters who may be normal or quirky, but ultimately prove themselves to be heroic. (If you would like to be on my email list, look for the subscribe box at the bottom of this page) and I will inform you of the release date of Baja Redemption and let you know how you can obtain your copy of the book.)
Regarding Photography, I currently have 3 works on display in The Jewish Community Center. My wife Katie has ceramic sculptures and a colored pencil and ink drawing in the show. The exhibit runs through January 30th.
Along with artists all over the northwest part of Tucson, we are hosting Art Trails Tucson Open Studio Tours (go to arttrails.org) at our home and gallery (Casa Tortuga Studio) on February 8th and 9th from 10:00 to 4:00 (each day) at 341 E, Burrows Street, Tucson, AZ. We will have for purchase: sculptures, paintings, photographs, cards, and books. Light refreshments will be provided. Please check out our works at the JCC and we hope to see you at Casa Tortuga Studio on the 8th and 9th of February!
Finally, I wanted to leave you with a quote that pretty much sums up my philosophy concerning non-human beings. It is from Henry Beston’s The Outermost House, first published in 1928.
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time. fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”