art showing in minneapolis library

As in my art.  And the Pierre Bottineau library in NE Minneapolis.  The Minnesota Children's Book Illustrator's Guild, of which I am a member, is showing some pieces here.  We set up Thursday and our show will the stay in the library through the end of February.

Stop by and check it out!  No excuses!

the six million dollar website

I have rebuilt it!  I had the technology!

In other words, my website has become awesome beyond your feeble human powers of comprehension.  You should probably go check it out.

Because if you don't, then you will always wonder... what did she mean?

In semi-related news, I just spent nearly my whole day off sitting in front of glowing rectangles.  
Something was wrong with GoDaddy's FTP server and I had to upload all of my new content one. file. at. a. time.

Ugh. 

EDIT:  FIXED THE GALLERY

hate is a primitive instinct

I want to start by saying that this is not meant to be anti-religious.  I know people of faith who believe that the divine power of the universe is a being of love, acceptance, and forgiveness.  They believe in a god who answers prayers with healing and guidance, not wrath and disease.  This is faith that I can understand.  What I cannot understand is a person who takes the time to set up a hateful website or to paint a picket sign with hateful messages and march with it in the street.  What kind of a person has hours, days, and even weeks to devote to joyfully working toward the destruction of their fellow man, and on top of that to do it in the name of god? 

Thinking about this makes me physically ill.  I do not understand it.  I would not take comfort in the thought of a hateful god that would destroy his own people for any reason.   I would rather believe that there is no god and nothing after death except oblivion.  How can anyone take comfort in such violent faith?  It's downright psychotic.

God does not hate gays.  Humans hate gays.  Humans hate gays because they are afraid of what it would mean if gays were allowed into the definition of normal.  Gays are hated because they are not understood.  This is not a new concept.

Basic human nature- the nature of the primate homo sapiens- required that humans fight other humans for survival.  Now that we do not live in a tribal paradigm, we must create other tribes to hate.  We hate the tribe of the poor.  We hate the tribe of the immigrants.  We hate the tribe of the gays.  It isn't really because they are gay.  Homosexuality is simply the quantifier that allows us to group them into a tribe.  A tribe that is not ours, so that we have something outside and other to project our problems and insecurities onto, and then identify as our enemy.  This hate complex is the last vestige of our naked ancestry:  destroying an outside enemy was the only thing that made primitive homo sapiens feel safe in a world that had not yet been tamed by science and reason.  

It is time that we moved beyond this senseless, barbaric instinct.   We should not glorify the weakness in our hearts that causes us to despise what we do not understand.  When I used to go to church, the message of unconditional love is what I felt a connection to, not the tales of judgement day.  Now, I firmly believe that the fate of mankind has been placed into our own hands.  Whatever consequences await us will be of our own making.  I sincerely hope we can wake up to our crimes as a species before we destroy ourselves.  It would be a shame for all the beautiful accomplishments of mankind to be forever eclipsed by this ugliness.