This world is overburden with religions and wannabe 'Messiahs'...We tend to look to the past to find these spiritual leaders because it's too damn hard to prove or disprove anything or any one who lived thousands of years ago and we're told to simply believe, to take the whole 'Savior' thing on 'Faith'. This 'Faith' has led humanity into war after war, every obscenity against mankind has usually been done in the name of 'Religion'. We have these mass volumes of 'Scriptures' or 'Holy Writ' to guide us and only a small percentage of believers ever really read these words, they surround themselves with others who believe like themselves and they let them do the reading, and interpretations to their 'Leaders' and the result... ...We continue to strike out against those who don't believe, we attack with words and fists and anger and hate and we call it 'God's Love'. Bottom line: We don't need ...

It's become a cliche. When we're young we do a lot of crazy, stupid and, often, dangerous things...From drugs to all things sexual, there are rarely any boundaries to the young, but if we're lucky enough to survive and maybe have children so many of us try to forget those days and become the opposite of who and what we were and try to steer the next generation of us away from our mistakes. Which usually only pushes them into the arms of our errors. My mistakes literally fill file cabinets with report after report about incidents where I've pushed the law to the limits, sometimes actually stepping over that line and finding myself in front of a judge that really wanted to make an example of me, wanted to toss me into a cell and toss away the key. That's how I learned about the files about me. The lawyers brought them in and stacked them on their desk in three piles as I was escorted into another room to wait while they argued my future...For hours. This was the...

Truth is a difficult subject to quantify. It's different for everyone and is so often covered up by one to pacify, to change, because it's considered 'Wrong' or 'Selfish' or 'Misguided'...A noble idea that eventually ends up being painful for everyone involved. Way back in the dark ages of high school I had a teacher by the name of Vi W., and we butted heads on almost every thing. I don't know why but we just didn't get along...Until a few years later when we ran into each other in college. She'd gone back and I was just starting and it was a whole new ball game. We were on a different level and she, maybe I, was different. This time I listened. This time she was able to get into my head and she gave me a whole lot of good advice but the best, the one which stuck with me over the years was trite, old fashioned and turned out to be the most important as life began to chip away at me day by day: To thy own self be true.  I didn't pay ...

(Continued) later

When we're children we're taught to believe in pretty much anything...Santa Clause, The Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and from the beginning of our understanding we're taught that America is the land of opportunity, a place where we live in a democracy and that we're the good guys, the people who came to this country and 'Conquered' it...Conquer doesn't really paint the complete picture because the first immigrants to settle on the East Coast accepted the help of the original settlers, the Native Americans, and within 40 years afterward, after they taught them how to survive the harsh winters, how to plant crops and all the other things they needed to live in this new world, they began their systematic elimination of the very people who'd saved them. In a couple of hundred years, after the American Revolution, the French-Indian war and the Civil War, an unnamed journalist waxed poetic about America's 'Manifest Destiny' and the leaders like ...

Yep...More dots. (Continued) later

It's enough to keep you awake at night...Or to start drinking again (Or more). I know it makes me want to run away and hide under a rock until everyone comes to their senses, but I won't because it's pretty evident they won't. Just before this new century I was beginning to have hope for humanity. Gay Marriage was starting to be accepted, the Hate Crime Bill became law, largely because of what had happened to Mathew Shepard in Wyoming, and America was actually starting to accept Equal Rights among the sexes and races. Back in the days of Waldenbooks I'd met this woman who was an interior designer. We use to go for coffee and talk about how the world might become when our generation finally died out, when the last visages of racism is buried with us.  I honestly believed that. But there is a disease that refuses to die and there is no cure for and it's found in the heart and soul of humanity. Hatred. It's ugly, it destroys everything it bumps into and...

On some of the older drawings I use to use a mechanical pen. Later I went back to a crow quill pen point and somewhere along the way I began using anything that would make a line.  (Continued) later

So. Many. Dots. later