Beauty Matters

Little Wing on Chapman Stick – I Can’t Believe I Pulled This Off

Judge J. Wayne "Mouse" Wolfenbarger

One of my favorite people in the world.  Judge J. Wayne "Mouse" Wolfenbarger has died.  I cut my baby teeth practicing in his court.  One of the best people I've ever known.  He's way up on the list of my surrogates.  I just cannot believe I'll never see him again.  This picture stabs me in the heart, especially as I listen to Agnes Obel.

June Carter Carter - Ring of Fire (She wrote it, not Johnny Cash)

Hill Street Shade of Blue

Michael Paul Smith: Fast Forward

My heart breaks for you, Michael.  When I look at this picture of you, my eyes try to play tricks on me.  They conspire with my consciousness to create the ostensible lie that whispers to me that you're always sad, constantly depressed, and steeped in continuous loathing, all based upon this almost incomprehensible visage of the countenance that prison has heaped upon you.  I have to remind myself that you probably smile, or laugh even, and that this photograph is a spark that was pitifully, sadly captured nanoseconds before you grinned out its proper opposite. I've heard the joy of prisoners as they discuss their retarded anecdotes, while coughing out loud.  It's what J.D. Salinger meant when he wrote of  the rocking back and forth "between the grief and the high delight."  I, too, am intimately familiar with both extremes, one more than the other. So we share that, and a cruel father and that's about it.