"God blessed the broken road that lead me straight to you." --song

  "Life is a gift God gives to each of us; what we make of our lives is our gift to God."

  There are ways that God knows each of us so deeply, more so than we really ever come to unerstand ourselves and life.  And that's how He puts people together.

  Our Dad didn't really understand our Mom in her artsy-spiritual workshop mode, but he respected it.  He nurtured that for her to have.  And she nurtured him.  Mom said that their secret to more than fifty years of marriage--they cared about each other even more than they each cared about self.  She spoiled family with an unselfish love and care that some people never come to know.

  She never just disappeared into a world of art.  When I was very young and she a young mama she decided about not having a lazy or a mean family.  She made herself rise to the occasion, big and small, at every turn.  She could find the gold in any shitpile, and she worked hard to instill in all of us the determination.

  To some extent people continually decide who to be.  And life molds us too.

  Very few contemporaries were real excited about multi-media art.  For most, there was something like a phase or a stage of, like, Rodney Dangerfield "getting" lifelong learning.  But by 1998 there was that word online in high school textbooks, even writing and music craft textbooks.  Don't PUSH ME, a middle age woman sneered at people in line behind her.  We were lined up, sagging bookbag shoulder sloping  and worn shoes to see the glowing thing...people with not much too say beaming.

  So it's like

  Like

  And it just gets there?

  Hit enter, return, this key here.

  People who'd trained their whole lives in specific fields and disciplines, Well

  You'd think we were asking you to change genders or something.  For Christ's sake mohn, just try it.

  Some artists upped their mixed media skills and put somethings together.  At shows peers oooh'd and oooooo'd, t'skd, and that sparks something for me, in my practice, nice set of tools!  For sure, other people dragged foot, refused, held out, shyly asked how?  Some "baby boomers" (a marketing coinage that really irks some people) pushed it off on the younger people, and some, just like they had with cooking and finances, knew the younger people would need

  An ear

  Sounding board

  Help navigating the capabilities

  To be:

  I think we really reach that point every 20-30 years.  And while the world never totally rolls over and plays dead so the next gen can have at the controls, there's a good deal of space and support for today's young people to contribute.  That's promising for our nation in a big old world.