We got owls! We got frogs! We got THE MOON.
Yes, it’s another Ramble, coming to you live from the Meadows Preserve in Ojai, California.
For those of you new to the practice: I record these walk-and-talks every so often as a way to keep track of where my head’s at. If you’d rather read the dispatch, there’s a transcript attached to the end of this Patreon post, but Ramble #35 has particularly nice ambient noises, so I recommend popping on your headphones and maybe taking a walk of your own while you tune in.
Discussed in this Ramble:
- Bill Anderson’s The Idle Beekeeper (which I still need to finish)
- Helioscope, my old studio (if you’re a Bluesky user, they have a nice list of studio members and friends, basically a one-stop-shop for following comics folk in Portland)
- The wise friend we phoned for translation help is the inimitable Andrew Berns, whose newsletter (New Wine, Old Vessels) blows me away every time I open it
- Cartooning the Medieval at the Newberry Library with Chris Fletcher and ⤵︎
- Kristen Haas Curtis, whose By the Bones project I also mention (you can find mine in the Autobio Comics collection on Patreon)
- Chris Schweizer and his new book A Dream of Swords
- Mel Gillman and their foraging comics
- Marge Piercy’s To Be of Use, always
Visual addenda:
My sketchbook hoard! Twenty-two years of drawing!
The girl with dragon wings that Sadie requested. (Lord it has been too long since I thought about how to draw dragon wings.)
I asked Sadie’s younger sister if she’d draw me a tiny book about two squirrels named Nutty and Chewy, who were the frequent subject of improvised stories between me and my mum on long drives. I LOVE this drawing because Zina and I play a game where one person starts by saying “What if” and the other says “we” and the first person says another word and you keep going back and forth until you’ve devised a plan. GITA DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THIS, but these squirrels are absolutely us.
My other favorite thing was this page from Sadie’s sketchbook, which baffled me until I realized that this is AN ACTUAL HAIR from her friend Abby, which she GLUED INTO HER SKETCHBOOK and then embellished with a portrait. Absolute genius. 10/10. Love it.
Many sincere thanks to my Patrons who keep me honest with this practice. A lot of this walk was about building momentum, a head of steam, a runway. I can feel it in my bones today. I sat down and wrote a twenty-page letter to an old shipmate who reached out from the mists of time to say hello!! To be clear: I have mail on my desk from 2022. This letter arrived Monday. No idea what’s gotten into me.
But we surf the wave when it comes around.