[John Zeissig]

Steven, I do use kneaded erasers exactly as you described. They're also handy for cleaning up the fingerprints all over the rest of the paper.

Sausalito. I was just having some fun with you guys by being deliberately opaque. I haven't actually set foot in the place in about ten years. It's one of those towns that's changed into something completely different than what it was forty years ago, when I first arrived in the area. You know the scenario: picturesque waterfront town with a large population of houseboaters and other assorted flotsam and jetsam, artists, assorted neurotics and general purpose screw-ups. It wasn't exactly a low rent place, but there was a huge niche for "local color". Then property values started to skyrocket and folks carrying jumbo mortgages decided the place could stand a little cleaning up. That fit right in with the plans of a raft of new regulatory agenctes, and I guess you can fill in the rest of the story. The last time I walked the streets there were a lot of galleries, but they were mostly devoted to Erte, Maxfield Parrish, or the doings of various marine mammals that are either very large or have bristly whiskers. There may be a Kincade gallery, I don't know. I'm not necessarily knocking these developments; it seems to be part of the life cycle of communities like Sausalito. But you've piqued my curiosity. If there's one thing in the art world that's even more ephemeral than artists, it's galleries. I'll have to check it out, there may be some wiggle room there for some version of the portrait trade. I'll report back with my findings.

Like Steven, I'm one of those boat afflicted types. Some time ago I realized I wasn't terribly fond of blue-water cruising, but I'm nuts about canals and rivers and semi-protected waterways. I've owned a 36' powerboat for the last 20 years. We haven't done much with it in the last few years, partly because we've been pretty much everywhere there is to go in these parts that's within range of liquid wind. We've done some canal cruising in Europe on a friend's boat, and one of my ambitions has been to truck our boat to Lake Michigan and do the Great Lakes, Trent-Severn and Rideau canals in Ontario, St. Lawrence to Richelieu, down to Champlain, NYS Barge Canal to Finger Lakes, back to Hudson River, down to N.Y., Jersey coast to Intracoastal Waterway, Chesapeake Bay (Crab Cakes!), Florida, West Coast FLA., Tennessee-Tombigbee to Tenn. River, to Ohio Riv., to Big Muddy, to Illinois Riv. and back into Lake Michigan. Naturally, all of this will be financed by peddling 10 min. charcoal portraits along the way! Sound like a plan?

In the meantime, I think we can get Mike in and out of Sausalito in a manner that befits a portrait artist of his stature.

Here's the rig. Tragic Magic, 36' Stephens, all mahogany on oak frames, built in 1955, powered by twin GMC 350's.