Tea with McNair

• i love the smell of felft pens in the morning

Last spring I was invited by my friend Paul Braoudakis to write an article for Willow magazine for which he serves as editor, for the Willow Creek Association. I meant to reprint it as a blog post, and forgot.

Best to read it on the Willow site, though none of the illustrations I drew for the article are there...but I've included a few of my cartoons here.  They are basically napkin doodles, sketched with my favorite Faber-Castell, Pitt artist pen, black Indian ink, with the "B" point (a fiber tip that has a brush shape to give varying stroke widths. Comes in lots 'o colors! Click photo, right, to see the magic tip.)
 

HERE is the link to the article. It is a preview of my brainstorming book, TH!NK UP, The 7 Agreement s of Brainstorming (a.k.a. The Productivity Playbook).

Among other insights you will learn how are your impressions of Christmas are valuable year 'round, on every project through the process Walt Disney developed. Walt never had a name forit, but I have come to call it Five Sensing or, the Egg Nog Principle.

After you've read my article on the Willow magazine website, stop back by the old Tea blog and leave a comment, below.

• the soundtrack in my head

        You had to be there.

In the past month I have purged, culled, edited, reorganized, and rediscovered my music library: CD’s, concert DVD’s, and LP’s (ask your mom.)
    Hauling four hundred LPs into Rasputin’s Music in the People’s Republic of Berkeley was a sight to see. It was a minor cultural event. The not-yet-forty-something buy-back guy shuffled through my collection like a novice “Blind Tiger” dealer in Deadwood, South Dakota, with ten thumbs and a second grade reading level.
    After I returned from my one-hour walk through the Cal campus, they were down to less than a hundred keepers. Loading the tack of boxes onto the hand cart I was stopped by an older fellow, “Can I look?”
    “Sure.”
    Leafing through the top box of mostly film scores and Broadway cast recordings he began pulling album after album like a prospector grabbing gems.
    “Don’t leave.” He went behind the counter and with in my view and earshot proceeded to lecture “buy-back-boy” on the value of all the records I was about to leave their store with and head to some competitor.
    An apology.
    A recount.
    A new offer, in writing.
    “Sign here.”
    More cash.

 

Back home, I sorted through the fifty or so LP’s I had kept: Man from U.N.C.L.E. television music, Spike Jones (go to link and hit "preview to here 12 hits), John Fischer Inside (for which I provided cover design, the Goon Shows, the cast  recording of the television version of You’re A God Man, Charlie Brown (staring my pal, Wendell Burton), every Bill Cosby album (since 1964), and a few very rare Broadway cast recordings that will never by available in compact disk.
    With four different tenants in my building moving out of their lofts, last month, I snagged three new-to-me Ikea CD/DVD towers for the price of one new one!
    My Inner Perfectionist was in high fussy as I loaded the shelves—determined to keep no more than the five towers could hold. Success, and a shelf or three to spare.

Alphabetizing, categorizing, and arranging was a process of rediscovering old friends, long forgotten and newly refallen-in-love-with. A few favorites—film scores (and their composers)—for your consideration:
Finding Neverland (Jan A.P. Kaczmarek)
Amélie (Yann tiersen)
For All the Pretty Horses (Marty Stewart)
Band of Brothers (Michael Kamen)
Glory (James Horner)
Henry V (Simon Rattle, composer; Kenneth Branagh, director/star)
Mark Twain: A film by Ken Burns, PBS (various artists)
Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone (Morricone) 
and . . .
Topsy-Turvy (Gilbert & Sullivan) a Mike Leigh film

 

Tea With McNair is a happy Watercooler Wednesday participant!
   

• discovery day

Happy Columbus Day!

When's the last time you ventured into uncharted waters in search of a dream? What's the most recent new discovery you made about yourself by trying something for the first time?

 Fill in the blanks:

 I have always want to ________________________ ,

 But I never did because ___________________________.

You should be able to apply this exercise to at least two or three different:
    • dreams
    • unfinished pet projects, and
    • other creative opportunities

All of these have too-long been collecting dust on a shelf, in a "garage box", or in the now-famous and impossible to get to "back of the mind."

Today, set sail for new creative discovery. It can be as simple as going to the drug store, Target, or WalMart and buying a simple water color set, a couple of cheap brushes, an inexpensive pad of watercolor paper. Add water and play.  They only way you can do badly at this is NOT to do it.

> Write. (For one full hour)

> Sketch (10 sketches before taking a break.)

> Strum.

> Dance with abandoned exuberance.

> Re-arrange to rooms in the house.

> Hang different art. (FRAME kid's art.)

> Re-arrange your office.

> Go for a brisk walk to begin taking a stab at improved health.
Start with 20 minutes-a-day.
Add one minute a day up to 30 min.
Walk 30 min of a week. then add one-minute-a-day to 60 min. 
When you are walking one hour a day, you will be doing great.
This was the regimen my friend Wes put me on that got me on my hour-a-day habit.
Walking everyday is time for meditation, prayer, planning...
Walking one-hour-a-day keeps me mindful about health issues in other areas of my life.

I am still making discoveries, everyday that I walk.

Please post in the comment section, below, what you did to "fill in the blanks" in your creative pursuits.

Happy discovering,

McColumbus

.

• mr. churchill said

    . . . a little wit from sir winston


“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
    — Winston Churchill

•   •   •

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.”
    — Winston Churchill

•   •   •

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play. Bring a friend… if you have one.”
    — George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

“Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.”
    — Winston Churchill, in response

• craftsmanship lives

As long as I can remember I have been drawing—maybe longer. And as long as I have been drawing, I have been fascinated by letter forms, typography, and fonts. While my artist friends were tracing cartoon characters and comic book heroes, I was leafing through Life, Look, and other large format magazines tracing giant headlines.
    Before my peers knew what a font was I was intrigued by serifs and san serifs. Then my mom decided to sign me up for a calligraphy class.
    "Don't do it, Don." My Uncle Paul warned his baby sister Donna. "It will ruin his creativity."
    "Won't he learn how to do fancy calligraphy." She asked.
    "So what. Those classes are for people who need help with their creativity. He doesn't. In fact," Uncle Paul said, "It is almost certain to restrict his creativity."
     I never attended that, or any other calligraphy class, ever. But a few days after my mom and uncle talked there arrived in the mail a small book of calligraphy, the now famous "Speedball" instruction book, a set of India ink quill tips, and two long, tapered shafts with cork holders on the end. I still have one of those holders and several of the original tips my uncle sent me. (See photo, left.) 
    Uncle Paul served for several years as Dean of Art Education and Chair of the Print Making Dept. at what was then called Sacramento State College. He was a legend and had many now-famous artists as his students in their early years: Wayne Thiebaud, Mel Ramos, and other great American "Pop Art" pioneers.
    My love for lettering has not abated by time or the birth of computer fonts in the 1980’s.
    SIDE BAR: Did you know that the reason personal computers even have such a variety of fonts-for-all is that when Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs, dropped out of Portland, Oregon's, Reed College, he immediately dropped in on a calligraphy class that he had always wanted to take, but his college counselor said wasn't compatible with his major.
    "That's why," Steve told Stanford University grads in his brief and brilliant commencement address a few years back, "when we designed the first Apple computer, it was the first computer with beautiful typography and proportionally spaced fonts...and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no computer would have them.” (Wild cheers from the cardinal and gold grads.) Watch Jobs’ inspiring, 15 m in. speech, HERE. Be sure to share it with friends of all ages.
    I still play with hand-drawn fonts. All fonts begin as a hand-drawn design. (Even the text of this blog set in "Georgia." I would prefer, no...I would love to use Goudy Old Style, a magnificently elegant classic.) My fascination and enjoyment for fonts has only increased over time. My FontBook file in my MacBook is bursting at the seams. I am a firm believe in the old graphic design adage I see on t-shirts: He who dies with the most fonts, wins! I don’t care if I win, but I’d like to be ranked.
    Then, just yesterday, in my email INBOX a link to an online film the stirred my love for lettering ever more. Watch it HERE and be amazed! Then visit the website for the St.John's Bible project and have a look around—lots of images, music, videos. (The image at the top of this post, above right, is an example from the Saint John's Bible.)
    Afterwords, your assignment is . . . to notice, doodle and play with letter forms. Start with your own name as it is familiar to you. Let me know what you see, draw, or have already been doing with lettering.
    A game I play all the time is seeing letter shapes in ordinary objects, not signage with actual lwords and letters. Yesterday I saw a large crescent-shaped tear in a chain-link fence. It only looked like a break in the metal links. It was really a capital “C”—my first initial is “C”. See what you see if you just look.
    All 160 + of my sketchbooks begin with the phrase, “Anything worth remembering, is worth writing down.” Below are the opening pages in my current, everyday, everywhere sketchbook. 

    Your turn! Have fun.

+ This post is a part of the nation of blogonators gathered under the driping banner of Watercooler Wednesdays ~ join us...or stay in your room.

• favorite things

        

        . . . just to name a few  

Classic Movie :: At least twice each month I dig through the VHS box or scan the DVD collection (recently thinned out) to find an old favorite to enjoy. Last weekend I attended a men's retreat lead by the team from Band of Brothers in Colorado Springs. They employ a number of film clips in their teaching. Braveheart, Gladiator, and the HBO series Band of Brothers were most prevalent. (I am also a fan of the Band of Brothers series on HBO and Braveheart.)

 Then, towards the end of a long evening session on Saturday, BOB founder, Vance Brown, began to tell the story of another hero. As he described him I thought of one of my favorite, very inspiring, but little known films. Nah, I thought, he can’t be talking about that movie. And then he said it, "Simon Birch." 

The unlikely story of a boy, very small for his age, severely physically impaired, but intelligent and wise beyond his years. Next, Vance showed not one, but three long clips from that film. After a long evening and full weekend of tough love, the one hundred plus men were clearly moved by this little life. Simon Birch is as powerful a hero as Maximus Decimus Meridius (Gladiator), William Wallace (Braveheart),  and the men of "Easy Company" of the 101st Airborne paratroopers in Europe during WWII (Band of Brothers.)

(There are several clips from Simon Birch on YouTube, one HERE. I suggest you not look at too many as they will be plot spoilers. Get the DVD, soon. You will watch it more than once and loan it out, a lot.)

I have worn my Band of Brothers ring for a few years now. It was given to me by my close friend, Wes Roberts, who serves as staff chaplain for the "BOB" staff and conferences.

After Saturday night's session we all repaired to the ice cream parlor in Mount Hermon Conference Center’s main camp. I would have preferred the cigar room in the lobby, but, alas there is no such venue there...yet.
   
TOBACCO :: Back at home, Monday . . . I re-watched Simon Birch, with a bowl full of savory Iwan Ries China Black wafting in my pipe.

WINE :: I rarely smoke my pipe without a glass, or three, of Elu (meritage) by St. Supery—a favorite little winery in Napa Valley. The Elu 2004 was a gift from a friend. I was enjoying it so much I looked it up on line and the sticker shock made me drink the next pour much more slowly . . . with a bit of dark chocolate.

BOOK :: Later I curled up with one of a half dozen books I am reading, THE ANIMATED MAN, A Life of Walt Disney—the best Disney biography I have read yet. (Linked at lower left.)

MUSIC :: While reading, I  listened to Marc Shaiman’s melodious score—another favorite of mine. The soundtrack CD also contains eleven classic rock ‘n’ roll hits from the sixties.  

    Oh, waiter! More wine, please.

[ This post is a part of the unstoppable on line force Watercooler Wednesdays. ]