Another Time and Work Space

Here in San Diego, we're fortunate enough to have mild weather all year around. It's almost never too hot or too cold to sit outside and work on an art project. The table in the photograph was where I worked last year, when I shared a studio at Spanish Village Art Center with several other artists. Now I have my own studio, and I look forward to working outside, sitting at that table which has been housed in my patio at home for the last nine months.

I look forward to working outside, because I enjoy the fresh air, and also I'm more visible to passersby. For an idea of what Spanish Village is, click over to the website at www.spanishvillageart.com. As of this writing, my studio is not listed among the others, but soon it will be. I want to paint the front door and put up a sign, at least, to show that I am there. Then they will photograph my front door and add it to the site. In the meantime, I have registered my domain name for a website of my own. The address is www.broomclosetdesigns.com. It also is not started, but as soon as I get my new computer running I will use Yahoo's SiteBuilder to work on it. Right now, it will be just a placeholder, but I have big plans for it. Who would have thought when I stared at that first version of a web browser that my life would come to this. In those days our main means of communication was through news groups.

I was writing a great deal of poetry at that time and I joined a news group for writing. I wrote a poem in which I mentioned a rain tree, a tree that grows in Africa. I read about the tree in a magazine and liked the name; however, I made an incorrect reference about it. I shared the poem with the writing group and several days later I received an email from a doctor living in Zimbabwe who suggested a slightly different description for the tree.

Nowadays if someone wrote to me from Zimbabwe, I would be pleased of course, but I wouldn't be so amazed. In those days, the old days, I was stunned and thrilled that my "voice" had reached so far around the world to a man I would never have met in the ordinary course of my life, and whom I never did meet, but who carried on a conversation about writing with me for over a year. And he mentored me through the writing of my first novel. It was a remarkably rare treat.