As many of you may know, I am in love with the artwork of Daniel Merriam. If you haven’t seen his amazing paintings yet, then please visit is web site (but be sure to come back!)

A while ago I received an email from a woman who has a giclee by Mr. Merriam that she is desperate to sell because of a “precipitous financial situation.” She asked me to help her out, and so I’m going to try to do what I can to help her find a good home for “Serenade,” shown above.

Of course, Gail has an interesting story to go along with her painting. It seems that she had been following Daniel Merriam’s work for several years in the ads in Art & Antiques magazine. Finally, they did a feature article on Daniel in the December 2003 edition. Gail took the article to Dan Fiorini, a gallery owner and friend and told him how much she wished she could get a print of “Serenade” - her favorite of all Merriam’s pictures. Dan vowed that, if there was a way to find one, he would do it.

After some correspondence, Mr. Fiorini found a colleague at another gallery who was a personal friend of Merriam’s, and she volunteered to contact him and see if he might have kept back a print that he would be willing to sell. (The original limited edition had been sold out long ago.) Merriam responded that, while he had not retained a copy for himself, he had never issued a print numbered “13″ (13/100). So, it was arranged that he would issue a #13, add a remarque, and ship it to Fiorini Gallery & Frame, in St. Petersburg, Florida. A couple of months later, in early 2004, Gail brought her “monnkee” home.

The Certificate of Authenticity is from Monarch Editions, Daniel Merriam’s publisher. It is signed and numbered by the artist, as is the giclee itself. Gail says, “I suppose you could say that I bought it from the artist, since it really did not come from one of the galleries that sell his work.” She goes on to say, “It was my first adventure in buying ‘real art,’ and I had adored this particular work from the first time I saw it. I’ve always referred to it as me monnkee (think Jamaican accent) and it is breaking my heart to let him go - you should see his lips! The background is filled with faces - some easy to make out, some not. There are penciled-in lyrics to the ‘Garden Song’ that Merriam has him singing while he plays his ornate piano. Every time you gaze awhile, you see more in the scene. Wonderful!”
Gail is asking $3200 or best offer for this artwork.

You can contact Gail by sending an email to dibblegail at yahoo.com.

I was at my father’s house yesterday, the day after Easter. On Easter Sunday the house had been full of family. My sister Kathy organized her annual Easter hunt, filled with riddles and clues that sent the six youngest children running with excitement through the house — even the two sixteen year old boys.

During the day, little bunches of family clustered in different spots around the house, talking, laughing, eating. There on the porch was my niece with her newly magenta-colored hair and my oldest son, both twenty-one, sitting with their grandpa and my sister. In the living room the sixteen year old boys sat with the their thirteen year old cousin watching TV. I was in the kitchen helping my husband make our late lunch– skewers of chicken and lamb and vegetables to be grilled.

I was washing the red, green, and yellow peppers, cutting them in half and pulling out the thick pale ribbings and the tiny seeds, and then rinsing them underneath the water. My dad came up along side me.

“Just think,” he said, “it’s almost been a year since your mom died.”

“I was just thinking about how much she liked this time of year, with all the iris and poppies starting to bloom,” I said quietly.

“And the roses. She loved the garden so much.”

I seem to notice that all this past year has been full of firsts: the first Thanksgiving without Mom. The first Christmas without Mom. This first Easter without Mom. I can’t even imagine what it felt like for my father last month on what would have been their fifty-first wedding anniversary — his first one without Mom. Soon I’ll have my first Mother’s Day without my mom.

I’m writing in the darkness, except for the glow of the monitor light. It casts a pinkish-blue cast of color onto my hands and makes them look old and wrinkly. Then veins on the back of my hands seem more prominent than usual.

As the Easter holiday ended, the family groups started going back to their homes, and gradually it was just my husband and our two boys and myself there with Dad. Yesterday the house was much quieter. We were sitting around the table, talking.

Suddenly there was a loud thump. I looked through the glass out the back door to see a flutter of feathers floating through the air. A bird had flown into the window. I looked outside and saw a dove, wings spread, neck twisted awkwardly, lying on the the door mat.

“Oh my gosh, Michael,” I said to my husband. “I bet that’s one of the doves that we saw under the peach tree this morning. Remember we saw the two of them together on the grass?” They had been walking side-by-side. “I wonder if the mate is around here somewhere. I think this one’s neck must be broken.”

But it was still alive. The tiny lids of its eyes flickered, and I expected the bird to die as I watched it. But instead it folded its wings beneath its body, and straightened it’s head and neck until it was sitting unsteadily on the mat.

My father wanted to move it out to the grass, but I talked him out of it, afraid that any further trauma would kill it for sure.

“It’s just stunned,” Michael said. “It will be better.”

We sat down to lunch. Every few minutes someone would go slowly by the door and peak out the window to see if the bird was okay.

One day, when I was a little girl, my mom, dad, and sisters were driving along Highway 37 during the summer. It’s a narrow stretch of road with water on either side. At that time, there was barely a shoulder to pull off onto in case of an emergency. There were so many accidents on the road, that it was known as “Blood Alley.” We were riding in our sleek, aged red Oldmobile station wagon. I loved that car because it had a rear facing seat in the back and a back window that rolled down.

Suddenly the traffic ahead of us slowed down to an agonizing crawl.

“Must be an accident ahead,” said my dad.

My mom was in the front passenger seat with her red pouffy hair and her white green tinted cats eye sunglasses.

“I hope nobody got hurt,” she said.

Finally we came to the cause of the traffic jam. A pheasant had been hit by a car on the road and been killed. Its bereft mate was standing over the body in the middle of our lane and wouldn’t move. Drivers were trying to edge their cars around the bird without hurting it, cautiously crossing the double yellow line and move into the oncoming lane because there was no shoulder to speak of on our side of the road.

I watched the birds as we crept past. I watched them the whole length of the side windows, and as we passed, I moved to the back seat and watched them out the rear window. Watched the cars slowing down; watched them make their wide arcs across the the lanes. Hoping that no one would hit that second bird.

As we sat there eating lunch, I told my dad that story and asked him if he remembered. It didn’t surprise me that he didn’t.

A few minutes later, my dad got up to check on the dove. As he moved closer to the window, the dove rose up and flew away into a nearby tree.

I wonder what it’s like for my dad when we all leave his house, and he’s left alone in the quiet again.

Me on the Ferry

Every winter break, my sister, Kris and I, take our kids on a day trip to San Francisco. We’ve been doing it for years. Sometimes the hubbies are able to go. This was the first year my other sister, Kathy, and her kids went along with us. Having just gotten a cute little digital camera for Christmas, I decided to take it along and make a photo journal of our day. So come along with us as we travel through one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

We catch the Vallejo ferry at 10:00, coffee in hand.The boat is crowded, but the nine of us all manage to get seats together. The weather is cold, breezy, and crisp, and the sky is impossibly blue. On our hour long ride, we pass San Quentin Prison and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Alcatraz

The Golden Gate Bridge

As we approach the city, I can see the Transamerica building, with its distinctive pyramid shape, rising into the sky. And to the west, is the lovely silhouette of Coit Tower with its collection of colorful houses resting below it.

Transamerica Pyramid Building

Coit Tower

After arriving at the pier, we go into the Ferry Building which is filled with wonderful shops. There’s a bakery, olive oil stores, candy stores, cheese market, flower shops, all open onto a main walk way. There are restaurants and coffee shops and other little stores. At this point, the kids usually complain about being hungry, so we grab a couple of freshly baked baquettes to nibble on as we walk.

Candy Shop

A Decorative Tile Outside the Olive Oil Shop

Dishes of Exquisite Chocolates

Flower and Plant Shop

Sightseeing Tours

Eventually we leave the Ferry Building and walk across the street to the Hyatt Regency Hotel. If we do our little trip before Christmas, we always enjoy the elaborate, minature Santa’s Village that they set up in the hotel lobby. But since we this trip is after the holiday, the village display has been taken down in preparation for the New Year’s Eve party. It’s always fun to ride up seventeen floors inside the hotel’s glass elevator. Sometimes we go to the very top where they have a rotating restaurant called the Equinox.

Sculpture in the Lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel

Right outside of hotel, at the corner of Market and California streets, we catch the cable car for our ride to Chinatown. The office buildings along California Street still have most of their Christmas decorations up.

Our Cable Car Ride

Decorations on California Street

After the slow climb to the top of the hill, we jump off the cable car at Grant Street and start our descent through Chinatown. My sister and I always enjoy going into a little religious gift shop next to St. Mary’s Church. The church has been there since before the 1906 earthquake.

Carved Wooden Angel

Chinatown in so much fun; it’s a feast for the senses. The street is narrow and the sidewalks crowded. Shop’s wares spill out into the sidewalk. The kids usually buy sparklers and smoke bombs for New Years, and I love looking at the silks and pottery and ivory carvings. Kris and I always buy boxes of chewy rice candy. Exotic smells come out of the herb shops and there seems to be a different Chinese restaurant at every other door.

A View Down Grant Street

Gold Ornaments and Tiles Decorate a Bank

Oriental Store

Dragon Mural

At the end of Grant Street, I see this street sign. I’ve never noticed it before. It leads into a tiny alley that’s closed off for construction.

Jack Keroac Street

We head down Columbus Street, backtracking a bit, as we make our way to our favorite Chinese restaurant. Everyone goes ahead while I take some more pictures. I pass City Lights Bookstore, where the Beat Poets (like Jack) used to hang out. There’s a colorful collage mural on the side of wall of a local bar. The letters were spelled out using wine bottle labels. The Transamerica building looms overhead, and so does the green building which is shaped like a giant ornate wedge of cheese.

Famous City Lights Bookstore

Vesuvi0

Transamerica Building

The Green Building

I finally reach the restaurant, and everyone is waiting at our favorite table — a huge round one with a lazy susan in the middle. We devore garlicky string beans, sizzling rice soup, honey walnut prawns, potsickers, and cashew chicken. At the end of the meal, they bring us a little dish with quarters of ice cold oranges and fortune cookies. We read our fortune cookies aloud, and then I make everyone give me the little strips of paper. I don’t know the name of this restaurant; it’s a little hole in the wall. But we’ve been going here for years and the meal is always fabulous.

Usually this is the time when the kids start complaining that their feet are tired, be we still have a lot of walking to do before we reach our final destination. A hot fudge sundae at Ghiradelli Square is always a good motivator, so soon we’re back on Columbus and walking up the hill through North Beach to Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s a nice long trek, and there’s always lots to see.

Bridal Boutique

Mural on the Side of a Building

St. Peters and St. Pauls Cathedral at Washington Square

Wig Shop Window

Bimbo’s Comedy Club

Since I’m taking so long with all this photography stuff, everyone else goes on ahead. Eventually I reach The Cannery, a collection of shops and restaurants in an old brick building across from Fisherman’s Wharf. Inside is the Basic Brown Bear Factory, where you can pick out and dress your own stuffed bear or other animal. And across the street is a cute little Italian restaurant. We also pass Hyde Street Pier which has a very cool submarine and two old ships that you can tour.

The Cannery

The Basic Brown Bear Factory

Ciopinno and Pasta

Hyde Street Pier

Another Old Ship

I’m almost to my destination, and I know I’ll find everyone there at Ghiradelli’s Square. From the bottom of the hill below the cable car turn-around, I look over the San Francisco Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands. Over me is the huge Ghiradelli sign

Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands

Ghiradelli Square

Ghiradelli Chocolate Shop

I find everyone waiting in line to get ice cream. This place is always packed, but people move in and out pretty fast, so we usually don’t have trouble getting a seat. They bring a huge, gooey, made-to-order banana split to our table and Kris and I dive in (we always share.) Afterwards, I go into the candy store and stock up on Peppermint Bark.

By now, we are really worn out, so we catch the J line bus back to the Ferry Building. If we rushed, we could catch the next boat, but we decide to take our time. We go back inside and get bread, cheese, olives, and a bottle of wine for the ride back home. I know it sounds like all we do is eat, and you are absolutely right! We get back on the ferry boat. The sun is just beginning to slink down, and the lights on the Bay Bridge are just starting to twinkle. I sit on the deck of the boat, and take some last photographs of our City by the Bay.

Ferry Boat

The Bay Bridge

The Port of San Francisco

Night Skyline

I consider myself to be an optimistic person. I tend to see the glass as half-full, look on the bright side, think positive, and believe that the sun will come out tomorrow. When I took my computer’s dead hard drive to the disk recovery people, it never really occured to me that they wouldn’t be able to rescue some, if not all, of the data. So when I got the call and they said that they were unable to retrieve any information at all, I totally freaked-out.

There was one thing I wanted more than anything else on my computer, and that was the set of pictures I had taken of my mom’s “nature” art work that she created around her home as her Alzheimer’s worsened. Every time I went to visit, I had secretly taken pictures of the beautiful designs she made on table tops, chairs, pathways, dirt patches — all over the yard.

When I got off the phone and realized that all these images were gone, I lay my head on the table and sobbed. I felt like my mom had been taken from me again. I felt like this was the last little gift of artistic beauty that she was able to share with us, and I was devastated that it was gone.

My husband and son tried to console me, but it was no use. I felt stupid, careless, thoughtless. How could I not have backed-up my pictures and documents? I went into the shower and cried some more as the water washed over me. I felt heartbroken. Yet, these were just inanimate objects. Just memories. Everyone was healthy. No one had gotten hurt. The house hadn’t burned down. As I drove to the computer place, I cried some more. All my public domain scans, photos of all my old art work, the email addresses of all my students’ parents, all those bookmarks and blog spots I’d collected over the years. But it wasn’t that I’d lost email addresses or music, all of which could be replaced over time; I had allowed my computer to become the repository of my artistic endeavors for the past five years, and now there was nothing left.

I composed myself in the car before walking into the computer shop. I approached the receptionist, and she said she was sorry that they hadn’t been able to recover the data.

“Do you have a grief counselor?” I asked facetiously.

“Why, as a matter of fact we do,” she replied. Apparently all those feelings I was experiencing are very common, and they actually have a counselor (formerly a suicide-hotline volunteer) to listen to anguished customers vent their frustrations about the loss of their computer hard drives and data.

The receptionist asked me to have a seat in their waiting room — the “Museum of Bizarre Disk-asters.” All over the place were examples of miraculous data recovery missions. Here was a CPU that had been charred and melted during a house fire. “Data Recovered!” said the sign next to it. There was a lap top that had been run over by a semi-truck. “Data Recovered!” Here was a story of a woman who had been working as a juggler on a cruise ship — which sank. She rented scuba diving equipment, dived into the murky waters, and retrieved her laptop. “Data Recovered!” Autographed pictures of Sting, Barbara Mandrell, Isaac Hayes, the writers of the Simpson’s and other famous people lined the walls. They had all had their “Data Recovered!” But not little old me.

I read an article about the counselor. In an interview she said that her clients usually felt angry with themselves for not having backed-up their computers [check], confused over their feelings of sorrow about the loss of an inanimate object [check], and depressed because of the loss of information which had been the result of years of creative expression [check]. She said that losing the information often fit the definition of a traumatic event because the total loss of control involved. I could totally relate.

“May I have a tissue?” I had to ask the lady at the front desk as my weeping resumed.

Driving back home, I wondered what life lessons I could learn from this dismal experience, beyond the most obvious one about backing-up the hard drive. Maybe I trust technology too much. Maybe I rely on it more than I should. But things happen, and we make the best of it and go on. After all, tomorrow is another day.

My hard drive was replaced by Apple (thank goodness for extended warranties!!), and today I started reinstalling software, setting up my email accounts, and adding in some of my more important bookmarks. As I was going through my CD’s, I found one in a case that said - Back-Up Disk, 8/23/05. My heart started pumping as I place it in the drive. I saw the iPhotos folder. I tried not to get my hopes up as I previewed a jpeg, but there they were — all of the pictures I had taken of my mother’s nature designs! I had backed them up after all. What a miracle! What a treasure recovered! Oh what a lucky girl I am!

Sticks and Stones

As the new year quickly descends upon us, I am here to offer a tiny bit of advice to those of you who follow along in my artful journey of life. Are you listening? Here it is: BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE!!

Yes, mine is a tale of woe, a lesson hard-won through the grim reality of experience. You think it won’t happen to you, but it will. You will return to your computer after a day of joyful frolicking and will complacently sit down to send an email and discover that the friggin’ hard drive has disappeared. Disappeared without a trace! Why has this happened? It is a mystery beyond mysteries. And the why’s, should you discover them, will bring you little satisfaction because everything is gone. Gone, I say. The pictures, the music, the bookmarks, the email addresses, the logos, and letters, the web pages, the art work. All gone.

The irony is that you’ve been meaning to back-up the data. Oh yes you have. You say to yourself that this is something you MUST DO. You’ve read about it. You’ve heard about people losing everything, and you tell yourself you will back-up those important files. But then you don’t. You have considered getting an external hard drive, but $150 seems like just so much money to spend on yourself, especially during this holiday season, which is, afterall, all about giving. So you put it off. Or maybe you did back-up the data, once, a long time ago. Time has passed so quickly. Was it really two years ago that you burned all your important docs to those CD’s and DVD’s?

Take it from me– tomorrow, if not today, back-up your hard drive, or that $15o you were reluctant to spend could turn into $500 to $2500 that you have to shell-out to the mysterious data-recovery people who work in an unmarked building in an obscure part of town. They are kind and gentle souls who will sympathize with you as they kindly and gently hold your hard drive hostage and attempt to eek out remnants of sectors and partitions.

Now, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

POSTSCRIPT: Go HERE to read what happened next.