Picasso & Matisse have nothing to worry about. . .

I've run out of room to store one more canvas, so it's either rent a storage unit or just stop painting. The latter is not acceptable, maybe because painting is one of my favorite things to do these days. I admire people who are passionate about something. I'm not sure I'm passionate about painting, but I definitely love doing it. (I really love painting animals. That's Louie Ostrin of Divide, CO, in the photo at right.)

I've gifted many of my paintings to family and friends, but never sold one or even thought about what I would charge if I could. Enter a website called "Artist Rising" that purports to serve as an on-line gallery for not-so-famous wannabe artists.

One thing's for sure.. .I am a better painter than a computer technician. I say that because the other day I spent more than three hours laboriously uploading and labeling more than 35 paintings into four different "Collections". . The Feminine Mystique, The Human Condition,The Art of Nature and Pet Portraits. . only to click on something I obviously shouldn't have,and to discover, to my absolute horror,that I had deleted the entire thing.

I don't give up easily, and this time I was ultra careful not to hit anything that said delete. Jojo's Gallery is now up and running. . if you're curious what I've been working away at these past three years, go to www.artistrising.com, enter the name of my gallery, and take a look.

I'll be curious to know what you think.

Me and Alec Baldwin. . .

I've never been thrown off an airplane for doing it, but I have to admit that I am also addicted.

I play Words With Friends on my iphone and find myself staring at that little screen at all sorts of odd times, like standing on the check-out line at Publix, between tram tours at Fairchild Gardens, and while watching a Netflix movie at night with the "significant other". Words are my business, the written kind that is, and I admit it, I am a vicious competitor.

And speaking of the "significant other", ever since I downloaded the Words app on his iphone, we've had a serious difference of opinion about the rules of the game. Benard feels it is poor sportsmanship on my part when I trump him with a triple score word. I tell him he shouldn't make it so easy for me to do so. Poor guy. . he also gets beaten regularly by his daughter Paula. If this keeps up, he may need psychotherapy soon.

I play regularly with four or five other people, all with very different lifestyles, but all seriously competitive. Some I beat. Some beat me.Some it's about even.

They range from Mario, the head of Reading Services at WLRN where I read every Tuesday morning, to Jon, the husband of my daughter's half sister who last week played from Korea where he was on tour as the sound engineer for John Legend. (Jon doesn't let a little thing like a change of continents get in the way of his Word games.) In between are two or three women friends, including my good friend Merele, best described as "one tough cookie" wordwise and,of course,the often disgruntled "significant other".

In addition to the fun of competition, the game has added significantly to my already pretty extensive vocabulary. Take the word "qi". . .very handy when you have the letter "q" on your board and no "u" to make a normal word. According to Google, it has Chinese roots and means "part of every living thing". And you thought I was just wasting my time playing games.

By the way, my user name is JoanSpec, and I warn you, I give no quarter. Ask my daughter. She refuses to play with me any more. I may have to let Benard win this current game we're playing or I'm possibly in danger of losing him as well. Then who would cook dinner???
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My Mom's writing gene. . the gift that keeps on giving.

I find myself writing about some strange subjects these days in my "semi-retirement" role as a freelance writer. Would-be clients find me on my website, www.joanspector.com, or on something called Thumbtack.com that I apparently signed up for one day and forgot all about.

As a result, I end up researching or using my imagination about businesses and subjects that I never heard of, or at the very least, know absolutely nothing about.

Example: I just completed writing a website for a company that paints commercial and corporate airplanes. Who knew that was such a world-wide business? And I bet you don't know the industry term for the designs you see on the outside of the next plane you fly on. I certainly didn't, but God bless Google! What would we do without it! I had to write one whole web page on the company's ability to do outstanding "LIVERY". It took a quick visit to Google to learn all about the use of that esoteric term when describing the overall paint design of an airplane.

Here's my new favorite. . a 30-something young man, with a wife and two children, in need of a "personal statement" for his application to law school. I interviewed him over the phone and came to understand how important these 500 words could be for his future. I'm sure he will pardon me for allowing you to read the first graph of what I wrote.

As a 14 year old in May of 1994, I, along with three members of my immediate family and seven others, found ourselves clinging to a capsized raft in the choppy waters of the Caribbean, somewhere between the coast of Cuba and the tip of South Florida. Rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard, we were taken to Guantanamo Naval Base where we lived for six months before making our way finally to the United States in January of 1995..

I made him promise to let me know when the law school accepts him.
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Internet - 1, Joan - 0

There is nothing so humbling as a computer that refuses to do what you instruct it to do.

I guess I am a victim of th generation gap, even if I try not to be. My experience this week with trying to rid myself of AOL and changing over to gmail.com has revealed a definite gap. . call it an abyss. . in my technological rapport. My grandson would be ashamed of me, but yesterday I cried "Uncle" and begged Jose, my tech guy, to give me back my old Desktop and my old accounts.

My moment of truth came when I realized that the changeover had lost my address books, or at the least, I could no longer locate them. That included my "blog friends" list . . .that's all you guys. . .and my business list that I needed to support my website. That made me more than a little frantic since I was in the middle of writing a website for a new client.

In trying to get back my address books, I managed to somehow erase the tool bar on my Explorer website so that I could no long interact with my Morgan Stanley portfolio or my Bank of America account, making it impossible for me to pay my bills on line.

In retrospect, the message I left on Jose's phone was pretty pathetic. Basically, I begged him to put me back in my comfort zone. Obviously, he answered my call, because here I am.

I know. I know. Having AOL dates me. So be it. Call me dated. I'm a happy camper once again and I don't think I'll be making any changes in the near future, so no nasty comments please.

Have some respect for my advanced age! (OMG! Did I just say that???)
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A different kind of Tweet

The president of the Tropical Audubon Society took me for a bird walk yesterday. It was a fascinating three hour exercise in patience and leg strength.

Once a year the Society offers Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden volunteers their own opportunity to travel the Garden's Kushlan Bird Trail under the guidance of its president, Joe Barros. Saturday was a decidedly overcast day with lots of rain on the radar, so when I turned up at the designated time of 8am, I was joined by only three other volunteers and Stephanie Bott, the staff person in charge of volunteers.

Joe Barros describes himself as an ardent, even obsessed, "birder". In his other life he is a practicing dentist, but on this morning he is in full "birder" mode, equipped with high powered binoculars and an iPhone app that provides us with instant close ups of the birds we are looking for as well as the sounds of their tweets.

Joe is a master at "phishing". . .the art of making weird sounds that immitate bird calls and attract the real thing to respond in kind. Although the Kushlan Bird Trail has a definite route that people are supposed to follow, Joe doesn't believe the birds always agree with the map. So we find ourselves slogging through the muddy undergrowth of the area known as the Keys Habitat and crisscrossing the Lowlands to inaccessible spots where various species of birds are known to hang out.

The last time I went bird watching was in Africa with my then 9-year old grandson. (Adam recently turned 33, so you get the picture that I might be a little rusty in this department.) Either my binoculars were stronger then, or my vision isn't quite so sharp, but I did manage to spot and focus on an amazing variety of avian life, including my beloved anhinga that I just finished painting in my art class. (See attached photos.)

Volunteering at Fairchild continues to open new areas of interest for me. I reccommend it highly. I have to go out on my 7th floor balcony now and tell that feathered creature sitting on my railing. .the one that likes to scare my cats. . . that he isn't just any old bird, he's actually a fish crow, native to Florida.

I wonder if he knows that.
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I was a teen-ager with America's oldest teen-ager

I just returned from five days in New York City. Coincidentally, I was meeting my friend Judy at MOMA on Thursday, when I picked up a copy of USA Today and learned that Dick Clark had died. I say coincidentally because Judy and I were teen-agers with a truly teen-age Dick Clark in our hometown of Mount Vernon, New York.

Now that I am back home in Miami, I am sitting at my desk with my high school yearbook, it's cover emblazoned with "Maroon & White - 1947". Those were A.B. Davis High's school colors, and that was the year Judy, Dick Clark and I graduated. There are lots of pictures of a teen-age Dick in my yearbook because he was a mover and shaker even then. The attached is actually his yearbook photo.

Dick was president of my graduating class, and voted, according to an article in the New York Times, "Most likely to sell the Brooklyn Bridge". I remember him best as Head Cheerleader at a time when Judy and I were both baton twirlers at football games and band parades. Our friends, the identical Sonnenblick twins, Jean & Muriel, waved maroon and white banners. Sounds corny today, but in Mt. Vernon, in the mid-40's, it was considered very desirable to be any of the above.

Dick lived in an apartment complex called Park Lane, a block north of my apartment home at 531 E. Lincoln Ave. I tell you that because Judy and I walked several miles each morning to high school, toting our notebooks and school books on one hip, talking for the most part about boys, boys boys. Deep we weren't. Inevitably, Dick Clark and his best friend, Andy Grass, would be walking in front of us, taking the same early morning trek. Cool kids walked. Nerds took the bus. We considered ourselves very cool although I don't think that designation had come into popular usage yet.

Years later, when Dick became a celebrity with his American Bandstand and went on to become a titan in the music and entertainment industry, I often mused about how we never would have guessed that that nice guy we said hello to every morning and was part of our everyday world, would someday become "The Dick Clark" the whole world knew and admired.

Gee, had I not been so busy talking to Judy, I might have thought about dating Dick instead of just smiling and passing him by. A missed opportunity, to be sure. I see by the Times article he had three wives and I've had two husbands, so I don't think I'll worry about it. But it did make me sad to hear of his passing.

A busy morning at WLRN. . .

The "significant other" and I manned the check-in desk at WLRN Public Radio & Television this morning. We were there to welcome distinguished guests and about 150 youngsters from the Primary Learning Center, a Dade County-sponsored school for Pre-K, K and First Grade kids from the surrounding neighborhood of the Downtown Miami studio.

They were here to participate in the "Premier" of ENERTIPS, a new WLRN original TV series that educates kids about caring for the environment.

Among the distinguished guests we welcomed: Alberto Carvalho, the new Superintendent of Miami Dade County Schools, Dr. Lawrence Feldman, the Chairman of the School Board, and an assortment of young actors who are the voices of the animated characters in the TV program.

To add to the excitement, volunteers passed out plastic bags of popcorn and some kind of drink to the kids as they settled down on the floor of the TV studio to watch the film. I found myself sitting next to the actor who voiced Matthew Handy, the film's main character. He's the one who singlehandedly saves the Town of Tipsville from the evil Mr. Backhand and his plan to abuse energy and the environment. At the conclusion of rhe film, I complimented him on being the "good guy". He seemed pleased.

Benard and I both love WLRN and are quick to say yes when Ulie, the head of Volunteers, calls on us for various jobs. The station just went through it's annual fund drive, an extremely important means of keeping public radio and TV on the air with State budgets cut to a bare minimum these days.

While we are both regular members of the station, I must admit I made an additional small pledge on the day it qualified you to enter a drawing to win an overnight visit at the Great Ape Rescue Center near Tampa. While the Center is not open to the public, the winner gets to stay overnight in a cabin within the grounds and also gets a personal tour and introduction to the resident apes. Benard is not as thrilled as I am about the possibility of living with simians for forty eight hours. I, on the other hand, am keeping my fingers crossed, just waiting to hear my name called.

That would make a helluva blog, don't you agree????
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