drawing, traveling

I’m looking for a drawing notebook that’s only a couple of dozen pages long, drawing paper that’s acceptable for a light wash, which I can use both for lunar pencil drawings and nature sketches when we go down in the Keys for the Winter Star Party.    Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff hawks the American Journey Journaling Sketchbook, which is 140-pound hot press paper, “an elegant off-white color,” no less.  Twenty sheets is about the right length, 12” X 9” landscape.  If I put an order in soon, it will be here in plenty of time for WSP.

But first I want to check at the local art store,  both to “buy local” and to save the postage – nine bucks for a $28.59 sketchbook.  Anyhow, I’ll pedal down in that direction to work this morning.


This was the year I was born (from Writer’s Almanac) –

On this date in 1943, Franklin Roosevelt completed the first airplane journey by a sitting president. He needed to get to the Casablanca Conference in Morocco to discuss strategy with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. German U-boats were making sea travel too perilous, so his advisors agreed - somewhat reluctantly - that air travel was the best option. Roosevelt left Florida in a Boeing 314 Flying Boat. Nicknamed the Dixie Clipper, the 314 was a commercial, rather than a military, seaplane, and it was fitted out comfortably with beds and a lounge area.
They departed from Florida, and the journey took four days, due to frequent refueling stops. They flew from Trinidad to Brazil, then across the Atlantic to Gambia, and then on to Morocco. Roosevelt, 60 years old and somewhat frail, suffered some from the high altitude, and had to be given oxygen, but he was in good spirits. He celebrated his 61st birthday on the return journey, enjoying a birthday luncheon over Haiti.

Four days to get to Morocco!  Our trip there seemed that long, most of a half-century ago, taking a small boat across from Spain.  A clear windy day with high seas, and both of us had a touch of the stomach flu.

That was 1971, I think.  I’d been back from Vietnam for more than a year, and still carried the switchblade I’d bought in Mexico the year before.  In Marrakesh I had to pull it out to bluff down a pack of juvies.  Wouldn’t do that now.  (Wouldn’t have carried it on the plane over, either.)

The sky’s starting to get light here.  A damp gray.  It’s only 36 out there now – hey, is this Florida? – but it will be in the fifties by noon.  Think I’ll write for a couple of hours before I venture out on the bike.

Joe