"I grew up with 6 brothers. That's how I learned to dance--waiting for the bathroom" (--Bob Hope)

I spent a good bit of time waiting in airports today...not much time for painting, but I did do a few mediocre sketches sitting there... I had a good bit of company, as you can see...all of us waiting...

"I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder...



"I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed,
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered...


"and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder"

Excerpts from "I Am Waiting"
from: A Coney Island of the Mind
(-Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

"I took a course in speed-waiting. Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes." (--Steven Wright)

"Eggs-pressions"

"Egg on one's face:" embarrassment usually resulting from one's own actions

"To put all your eggs in one basket:" relying exclusively on one person or thing

"To egg on:" to encourage or dare someone to do something that may be unwise or dangerous

"Walking on eggshells:" trying not to upset someone, or to tread lightly around a sensitive topic

"A bad egg:" a worthless person


"Love and eggs are best when they are fresh." (-Russian proverb)

"Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm" (-Unknown)

Today, while I was visiting the University of Wisconsin in Madison, I stumbled upon the Allen Centennial Gardens, a beautiful, serene oasis, smack dab in the middle of a bustling urban campus.

It's my first day of hightailing it all over the country, and of course, when I hit this campus, I saw the usual rows of bikes lined up the way they always are. I smiled, as they made me realize I'm definitely "back at it." This campus in particular has a large number of students who navigate with their Vespas, tooling around town, and up and down the meandering hills.

I've been to this campus numerous times before, and I'm accustomed to the swarms of students and sounds of quads filled with people hurrying from class to class with iPods and cell phones in tow. The campus is situated partially on an isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Menona, and I'd seen the calm waters there before and the lovely trails that lie parallel to it.

But if there's ever a spot on a campus that suggests serenity, you can be sure I'm going to do my best to light on it as quickly as possible. I'd never seen this peaceful spot before, so needless to say, I was thrilled to discover it today.

The Allen Centennial Gardens is a stunning horticultural teaching garden that serves as an instructional outdoor lab, but it also enhances the campus with bursts of colorful flowers, creative landscaping and a graceful tranquility.

These trips take me forever to plan and coordinate, between routing trips and schedules, booking flights and rental cars, haggling with hotels, working around fairs I also need to attend, and making contacts at each school, and after months at it all, I definitely stress myself before I head out on the road, worrying that I'll forget some detail or other, even though this is my seventh year on the road doing this.

But at the end of the day, once I get out on the road, it invariably hits me all over again just how fortunate I am to see so much of the country that I might not see otherwise, and I marvel that I get to experience, firsthand, the beautiful campuses I see all over America.

"Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning." (-Thomas Edison)