I had three parties booked this weekend. Yesterday I did Face-Painting at a St. Patrick's Day Event. Today I did Caricatures at a Bar Mitzvah. And tomorrow it's Caricatures at a Christening.

I thought you might like to see the sort of stuff that I do to get my pen moving. My Warm-Ups, you might say. This is what I drew in the car before going in to the Bar Mitzvah today:

On line at the Post Office.

I've been watching so many movies this year that they're starting to run into one another - Like, one movie continues the previous movie.

My mind is working like that with this latest one. Interesting to be watching 'Across the Universe' so soon after 'Alexander'. One of the things I was impressed with was 'across the universe'. How anything we say or do carries - affects one thing which in turn affects another and another and another.

I understood that already on a personal basis. But watching the movie 'Across the Universe' after 'Alexander', I finally saw it on a greater scale. That politics really do affect our little lives.

'Across the Universe' right after the song 'Nothing's Gonna Change My World' - In this movie about rebellion against the Viet Nam War. Watching that right after quoting from the movie Alexander ("The dream must exhaust us. They must die before they kill us with their blasted dreams.) ---

Both the altruistic and the selfish dreams of powerful people - It made me think of how even their dreams affect everyone in the world. The dreams of the little people. The dreams of the so-called powerful people. Do you want to be mindlessly tossed this way and that by the dreams of others? Or do you want to take charge of creating this world that we are all living in?

Love is a gentler emotion than anger. Love, kindness, simplicity - they're gentler than anger, greed, and hatred. They have just as much power - If the people out there can hear them over the cacophany of the fury. And worst of all, most of what we know as love is contained between two people (Or a small family. Or our own group, religion, race, country....) The 'love only me' and the 'foresake all others' that our civilization preaches. So what really happens with those softer emotions is that it passes greed and callousness to everyone else out there in the world. If a person who is deeply in love, focused on his lover, uses others to get stuff to bring to his lover. He might ignore the deeper love-needs of everyone else.

Callousness to 'other' people doesn't Just affect Their world. It affects the whole world - the world that you and I live in. Across the Uni-Verse. There is only One Verse. One Song that the whole world is creating.

What to do? Where to go with this? Please be nice to me. Really. About the things I care about deep inside.

One of those things is: To accept everyone no matter what they look like. That's one of the reasons I draw Caricatures. To show everyone that they all look unique. To be able to care and love people who might or might not look like the 'cool' kid. Real opportunity for relationships, wealth, and meaningfulness in their lives - no matter what they look like.

Another Artist. This time I drew Mike Ufferman: