I’m delighted to have my animations become part of a music video created, composed and performed by Chris Oledude. It’s available for viewing on youtube.com. Chris Owens did a fantastic job with this protest song and I had a great time collaborating with him to make a strong visual presentation for his music. It’s angry, relevant, outrageous and catchy! Check it out!

https://youtu.be/UqW-b6wDbsg?feature=shared

I don’t usually talk about manuscripts. I haven’t had a lot of success in the last couple of years with getting published. This one took me almost two years to write, but it was a hoot! Something stirred my imagination, and provoked a lot of ideas about money and how we pursue it, fetishize it, and covet it, despite the damage such a pursuit does to our lives. I hope to have more news about this later, but I can confidently say that it’s the funniest novel I’ve ever written.

I’m thrilled to have my film JUPITER WASHINGTON~CARPENTER included in the 200 year anniversary of Brooklyn Museum, the second largest museum in New York City! It will be screened as part of the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition which runs from Oct. 4, 2024-Jan. 26, 2025.

If you’ve never been to the Brooklyn Museum, come now! And if you’ve been, come see this exhibition which showcases the talent of more than 200 artists who have lived or maintained a studio in Brooklyn in the last five years. It is a multi-cultural, multi-media, multi-themed display of artists grappling with matters local and global.

Here’s a link to my short film. It’s 16 minutes long, with sound and subtitles.

Part of my presentation on October 14, 2023 at the King Manor Museum included a presentation about the true story of Samuel Anderson, an enslaved carpenter on the Mt. Vernon estate of George Washington.

According to the Alexandria Gazette, he lived 100 years, from 1745 to 1845. He was abducted from Guinea as a boy and enslaved in North America to work on a carpentry crew for George Washington. He was briefly liberated by the British during the Revolutionary War, on the HMS Savage, and recaptured by Washington at the surrender of the British in Yorktown at the end of 1781. But this was only the first 35 years of his life.

He gained his freedom in 1801 when Martha Washington freed all of the enslaved people who were the ‘property’ of her deceased husband, as Washington had requested in his will. She never freed the people whom she considered her property, however. They included Samuel Anderson’s wife, Agnes, and their children: Heuky, Cecelia, Anderson, Ralph, Charity and Charles. Anderson spent the rest of his life trying to purchase the freedom of his children and grandchildren.

150-03 Jamaica Avenue
Jamaica, NY 11432

My shadow puppet film about a fictional character on the boyhood farm of George Washington will be screening at the King Manor Museum on Saturday October 14, 3:00-4:00 p.m. It’s a story about a young carpenter who seeks his liberation. The story is told entirely with shadow puppets.

https://www.kingmanor.org/

Reservations: 718-206-0545

Tickets available at eventbrite.com

Here’s a trailer for the film!

The wonderful people at King Manor Museum in Queens, NY are showing my shadow puppet film, “JUPITER WASHINGTON~CARPENTER” along with a presentation about Samuel Anderson, a real carpenter who was enslaved to George Washington. It’s an amazing story. Anderson lived to the age of a hundred; he was born in Guinea, Africa, abducted as a child, brought to the Americas where he became a talented carpenter responsible for some of the fine carving inside the mansion at Mt. Vernon. The other extraordinary details of Anderson’s life will be revealed on October 14th at the King Manor Museum, a jewel in New York City, the former home of Rufus King, founding father, Senator, diplomat and abolitionist. Join us!

This week (7/17) the New York Times displayed a seven-day map of the United States with hot spots where temperatures were far above “normal” temperatures for the summer. It’s clear that there’s no normal left anywhere in the world. Antarctica is warmer than ever before, fires are raging in France and Spain, record-breaking heat struck Britain, and temperatures across Africa and Asia are killing people at a greater rate than ever before. We were warned that this would happen, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who reads the news at least once a year.

50% of the U.S. Senate refuses to take extreme action. Lindsey Graham argues that before we do anything that might harm the US fossil fuel industry we should pressure China. We’re all sinking in a leaky life raft and he’s complaining that he shouldn’t have to be the first to start bailing.

Here’s a cartoon I made a few weeks ago to illustrate the overwhelming feeling I get reading the news these days.