FYE (and I’m not an account clerk anymore!)

Back in 1985 I was fortunate enough to get a temporary job as an account clerk for a city government.  My only qualification was being a typist who made very few errors.  By the time the job opened up for permanent status, I knew how to use a calculator, enter information into the City’s Series 1 IBM computer (it was as big as my walk-in closet), and had demonstrated a knack for detail; I was hired.  It meant I made twice as much as at my previous job (millwork/secretary), and our family finally got health insurance. 

I worked for the City for 16 years.  There were many benefits, such as increased income, meeting a variety of people, increased confidence in my abilities, and a rise in self-esteem.  I got training in accounting and various office skills (including editing), and was introduced to the wonderful world of personal computers. 

There were also drawbacks.  As we switched to more sophisticated computers, more reports were demanded, and they wanted us to do things more quickly.  [Just because you CAN get reports on specific information doesn't mean you NEED them.]  While I am a firm believer in an efficient government, it is still people who enter the information, cut the checks, collect the money, type the letters, take the daily deposit to the bank, maintain the cash pad, go to the post office, make sure things get done on time and accurately, and deal with the dozens of little glitches than can come up in a day.  If you want things done right, you try to keep the people who already do them right.  There was always a push to do more in less time, and “don’t put this in as overtime.” I thought perhaps this only happened in government offices, but have since heard it happens in the private sector as well. 

There were certain deadlines that had to be met.  Twice a month I cut checks and prepared an expenditure report to be okayed at the City Council meeting.  In order to get that done on time, I had a deadline of my own - don’t request a check after X date/time, or it goes on the next pay schedule.  My boss was the worst about bringing things in late and wanting them included.  You know the worst thing about making exceptions and still getting things done on time?  They begin to expect you to do it ALL the time.  Then there were the longterm deadlines, such as tax forms and getting ready for the audit.  But the worst deadline of them all was FYE (fiscal year end), which was June 30th for the City.

Every account clerk deals with FYE.  You want to pay everything that is due by that date (which usually meant a special check run, often at 11 pm).  And if someone buys something on the last day of your fiscal year, and you don’t get the receipt in time, you have to pay for it out of special account lines.  Or if you make a firm commitment to buy something before that day (like an expensive piece of equipment, or a mail order of any kind), you have to pay for it out of the special account lines.  Money that comes in that was due before FYE has to be receipted into special account lines.  And all this had to be done in such a way that the City was fully prepared for it’s audit by independent auditors in September.  For years I hated June 30th.  I couldn’t take a vacation at that time of year (though that didn’t stop my boss from going on a cruise one year), and it usually meant extra work the week before and the week after (but no overtime). 

At one point the constant stress got so bad, I wondered if I could get some time off if I broke my leg falling down the stairs (I had a second floor office).  Figured with my luck it would be something worse, so I began looking for some other occupation - one that worked with people and didn’t include a lot of paper-shuffling.  I went to night classes at my local junior college, and discovered psychology and the possibility of being a therapist.  Went as far as I could with night classes, even transfering to the university level.  But the City administration wouldn’t let me shift my schedule so I could take more day classes. 

Insert here, “and then a miracle happened.”  A small inheritance allowed me to pay my debts, and I could afford to quit.  So I did, in April, well before FYE.  HOORAY! 

In the six years since I left that job, they have had five or six different people doing it.  The people running the City kept demanding more for less, and people have not been willing to put up with the stress.  Am not sure at this point if it’s the City Manager or the Council to blame, but it’s happening in other departments as well.  For instance, they still have a Police Chief who has ruined the police department, which is now down to a skeleton crew because of people leaving. 

June 30th is now a holiday for me.  :-)  Besides relief, even joy, there is another emotion I feel.  The German language has a word for it: Schadenfreude, taking pleasure in someone else’s suffering.  I don’t feel it about whoever is doing that job now, or even the Finance Director (they are on the second one since my former boss retired after me).  And I certainly don’t feel it about the residents of the city (who deserve better, and most don’t have a clue what is going on).  I feel it about an administration and council who doesn’t value hard workers when they’ve got them, who doesn’t listen to the people who DO the jobs, and who keeps trying to get more for less. 

Happy June 30th! 

Learning to knit

   Last year our daughter-in-law gave me a couple lovely, knitted, cotten washcloths.  She intended them for kitchen use, but I tend to be more of a sponge/scour pad person, and they seemed too pretty to use for scrubbing dishes.  Then at Winter Solstice a friend sent me another lovely knitted washcloth along with a bar of lavender soap, and I realized I could use these washcloths in the shower.  Excellent!  They are absorbent, and just rough enough to give good exfoliation.  Now I use them all the time, and I wanted more.  So I decided to knit my own.

One drawback — I didn’t know how to knit.  I can crochet, and knitting didn’t look that difficult.  So I bought a couple balls of cotton yarn, a pair of knitting needles, and a book of washcloth patterns.  I had a book at home I thought I could learn from, but it turned out to be more for inspiration than actual learning.  Hmm . . .    So I Googled and found this site: http://learntoknit.com  .  Fortunately the washcloths use basic stitches, and this place gave me good enough instructions to get started.  (A friend has since suggested a book, The Knit Stitch, by Sally Melville; it’s on my “to buy” list.)  I’m now about halfway through my first washcloth, and beginning to feel like I know what I’m doing.  Lots of mistakes, but the yarn is varigated, the piece is supposed to have texture, and it’s just a washcloth for my personal use, so I’m not worrying about the mistakes.  I’m learning.   Am no where near good enough to knit and watch a new DVD, but I knitted through a couple of our John Cusack DVDs last night (”High Fidelity” and “Grosse Point Blank”) and did just fine. 

What I hadn’t expected was the calmness and satisfaction I feel while knitting.  I love working with textiles, anyway.  Perhaps it is in my genes, via those Scots ancestors from Paisley, who had rooms for their weaving looms.  When I was a kid I wove pot-holders and made custom orders for our neighbors.  But when I sit and knit, it’s as if I’m connected to generations of women (and men!) who stretch far back into time, creating practical and beautiful items for their loved ones and their homes.  It is a connection I cherish.

Cutting berry bushes

  Our house is on the west-facing slope of a ridge, with the Redwood National and State Parks beginning at the top of the ridge behind us, and the Pacific Ocean in front of us (less than a mile away as the crow flies).  Our elevation is about 50 feet, so if global warming does raise the oceans 20 feet, we will eventually have beachfront property.  For now we are on a shale/clay slope, with numerous springs popping up throughout the neighborhood.  We get the wind off the ocean (sometimes a LOT), and when it’s not overcast/foggy/raining our property gets sunshine all the way through until sunset (no big trees to the south or west). 

Apparently this combination makes blackberry bushes very happy.  We have LOTS of blackberry bushes, growing all on their own without any encouragement from us.  In another month there will be lots of blackberries to eat.  I don’t can or freeze them, but while they are there we eat them on a daily basis, usually from bush to hand to mouth — they never make it into the house.  The bushes are HUGE (ten feet high in some areas of the yard), currently covered with white blossoms that the hummingbirds love.  In one area of the yard the thicket of berry bushes is so dense, am pretty sure various small birds have safely made their nests there.  The bushes also make a great privacy shield, keeping fence climbing boys out and keeping various neighbors from being able to stare into our backyard through their chainlink fences (and vice versa). 

Berry bushes are very difficult to get rid of.  If this area were ground zero for a nuclear blast (highly unlikely), am sure berry bushes would be the first sign of life afterward.  Wouldn’t be surprised if they mutated and tried to take over the continent, like Godzilla, or the ants in “Them.”  I’ve been told you can safely use the herbicide “Roundup” to kill them, but even then you have to use it undiluted, and sometimes they still come back.  (I try to be organic, so that option doesn’t appeal, anyway.)  I once tried to get rid of the berry bushes along our driveway, cutting them back, then digging out the roots.  I spent a year digging out roots, letting the ground lie fallow, and then digging out any bushes that began from the roots that remained.  The bushes are ten feet high along there again. 

Then there is the question of what to do with the brush you cut back.  Composting is out of the question — every tiny bit is apt to spout again.  Burning messes with the air quality, and I don’t like the smoke and ash that spreads over the neighborhood.  So I cut the canes and branches into small sections, and fill one trash can a week with brush.  We have a section along our garage that we’ve decided to clear out this Summer, so I may be filling dumpsters with brush soon. 

The thing is — I LIKE cutting back the berry bushes.  It means I get outdoors, connect with nature, and get some exercise.  If I’m unhappy about something, or depressed, or just need to think (or conversely, not to think), I go out and cut berry bushes.  Nature always makes me feel better anyway.  And I get to feel I’m doing something useful.  My son suggested it’s a spiritual exercise for me — like those people who create mandalas, and when one is done they get rid of it and begin another one.  There will ALWAYS be berry bushes.  I think he may have a point there.  Some people sweep floors, or wash dishes, or knit, or weave, or whatever.  It’s a “time-out” where you get lost in the flow, and though nothing has really changed, when you are done you feel better.

I cut berry bushes — what do you do?

Using the Tarot of the Crone

The night before this year’s Summer Solstice I had a rather powerful meditation session, in which I cleared out some psychological baggage and got some healing.  When I prepared to connect with the energies at the moment of the Solstice, I kept in mind the idea of Spirit being grounded into five-senses form (as Machaelle Small Wright says in her books), which meant I visualized what I hope to accomplish in the next six months.  In retrospect, I realized the completion of my thesis was sort of tacked onto the end of it all.   :-)   Most of the things I visualized had to do with fixing up our yard and cleaning our house.   (I didn’t do much housework during grad school.) 

Though I wrote about Christine Jette’s book, Tarot for All Seasons, and the Midsummer Dreams spread, I realized it wouldn’t quite do for my Summer Solstice reading this year.  So I wrote questions for my own three-card spread.  Card 1 on the left would be, Where am I now?  Card 2 on the right would be, Where will I be next?  And Card 3 in the middle would be, How do I get there?  I decided to use the Tarot of the Crone for this reading.

The Tarot of the Crone is a self-published deck created by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince.  You can see additional cards from that deck (and her new Pandora’s Tarot) at http://www.croneways.com .  Tarot of the Crone is out-of-print, but I’ve heard she may be producing more; I’d encourage you to contact her through her website if you are interested.  Tarot of the Crone is a very powerful deck; the artwork is simple but bold, and shows people as they are (beautiful because of their wrinkles and the lives they live).  Those who use it do so because it gives very powerful, often blunt answers, and challenges us to live lives of meaning. 

For Card 1, Where am I now?, I got the Empess reversed (shown here right side up).  The book that comes with the card has a poem for each, and the one for this card is about nurturing.  Ellen doesn’t do reversals with these cards, but I do.  With this deck, I generally take a reversal to mean inner work OR the opposite of what the upright card implies.  Based on my meditation work the night before, I took this to mean that at this time I am using my personal power to nurture myself, to help myself become what I’m here to be. 

My second card, Where will I be next?, is the Ten of Wands, which Ellen also calls Transformation.  The poem with this card is very short: “I went as far as one could go/And then I went farther.”  There’s the shape of a person standing inside that blasted tree stump, with the sun rising (setting?) behind it.  So along with the idea of hard work, for me it carries the idea that the hard work is accomplishing something.  There’s a lot of Fire energy in that card, and realization things will not be the same.

My third card went in the middle, between these two, in response to, How do I get there?  It is the Shadow of Swords, which she also calls Machine, and it was reversed.  This scan makes it look black-and-white, but it is tinted with shades of ice blue.  Each suit has a Shadow card, which represents “the element’s overdone, destructive and transformative powers,” and Ellen’s Sword suit is expressed as Air.  The poem with this card is also short: “My thoughts are perfection/Crystal air/Never touching/Gross matter.”   This card always disturbs me; it reminds me of the mechanical garden in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, where everything is made of metal, perfect and not subject to decay.  BUT, I got it reversed, so for me this suggests that my way to Transformation is not through thought, but by getting my hands dirty, putting out effort and sweat. 

I like to create an affirmation associated with the tarot readings I do for these natural holidays, and the Tarot of the Crone made it easy to come up with a pretty basic one: It’s time for hard work.  Think I’ll print it out with a picture of the Ten of Wands, to remind myself it is leading to Transformation. 

Summer Solstice

Thursday, 21 June, is Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere (Winter Solstice in the Southern).  It will officially be Summer in the U.S. at 2:06 pm on the East Coast, and 11:06 am on the West Coast.  That means it will be the longest day of the year, and the shortest night. 

Even when I was a practicing Christian, I observed the natural holidays, such as Summer and Winter Solstice, and the Spring and Autumn Equinox.  It feels like such days are part of our blood and bone, a part of being human on this planet.  They are signposts in the rhythm of our lives.  Now that my spirituality is more nature-based, I have more freedom to celebrate these days.  I’m three-quarter Scots, so I feel more drawn to the Celtic traditions in this regard.  For the Celts, Summer Solstice was the day of Litha, goddess of abundance, fertility, and order.  Hence, couples jumped over the broom or the Solstice fires that were lit on this day to signify their commitment (June marriages).  Flowers are blooming, and the air is ripe with the smell of roses, honeysuckle, jasmine, and wild azaleas.  In some areas fruit is beginning to ripen on the trees, and the produce sections of markets are filled with oranges, melons, strawberries, and cherries. 

Summer Solstice is also deemed a time when psychic ability is stronger.  If you read tarot cards, this might be a good time to ask questions about issues we tend to hide in our unconscious.  Or perhaps to state our intentions for the future, and consider our options for making these things happen.  Christine Jette wrote a book I like to consult at the natural holidays, Tarot for All Seasons (Llewellyn Publications, 2001).  She suggests tarot spreads for the various holidays, as well as the New and Full Moons.  Jette offers a six-card spread for the Summer Solstice, called Midsummer’s Dream, which explores the question of what will set your spirit free, where you may be vulnerable, and how to develop your psychic ability. 

For this particular Summer Solstice, a friend passed along information suggesting this may be an especially advantageous time for rebalancing power and clearing out psychological blocks that keep you from growing as a person.  Solstice energies will be like a wave, beginning around the 16th of June, peaking on the 20th, 21st, and 22nd, and then gradually diminishing through the 26th.  If you meditate, this might be a very good time to pay attention to those intuitive hits that pop up.  Even for those who claim to be psychically “tone deaf,” this may be a good time to pay attention to your emotions.  Don’t turn them off, but pay attention to what comes up, and allow yourself to experience where that emotion leads you.  You may find healing at the other end.

Happy Summer Solstice!

Father’s Day: A Mixed Bag

  For many years Father’s Day was a non-event for me.  My dad died when I was seven, so by the time I was old enough to be aware of a special day that didn’t include presents for me, there was no one around to celebrate (until I got old enough to send cards to my grandfather).  I would like to have known my dad when I was older, but that’s the way things go.  I remember good things about him, and some less pleasant things, but they are all from a small child’s perspective.  Unfortunately this was back in the era when fathers went out and earned money, and didn’t spend quite as much time with their kids.  I know he cared about me, and that I gave him a chance to express his tender side, but sometimes he just didn’t know how to act with a child.  The thing I most often heard him say was my mother’s name, and then “…do you see what she’s doing?”    :-)  It usually meant he didn’t approve of whatever it was, but didn’t know what to do about it. 

Fortunately, as I got older I had some wonderful people to watch as they became fathers.  I’m thinking now of my ex, my husband, and my son.  All three of them are very good fathers, and two are very good grandfathers.  The first thing I appreciated is their patience — that doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes get frustrated, but all three are very patient with children and with explaining things at the child’s level.  (Which made me realize my father hadn’t been very patient with me.)  Also, all three are very good at remembering what it is like to be a child — they still have a sense of playfulness, which makes them more fun to be around no matter what your age. 

I have read that while mothers affect how we feel about ourselves, fathers affect how we relate to the world around us.  This is a generalization, and as such is not always applicable to each person, but tends to be so for most people.  Within this generalization, that means fathers affect whether a child sees the world as a friendly place, or a stern place with rules, or an adventure, or a place to dominate, or a place where we help others, or a scary place where you always have to be on guard, . . . you get the picture.  Last month I wrote an entry about Mother’s Day ( http://judithornot.wordpress.com/2007/05/14/the-dark-side-of-mothers-day ), and many of the same ideas go for Father’s Day.  Those of us who knew our fathers or who had close father-figures may have wonderful memories, or memories we’d rather forget, or a mixed bag.  We may or may not be dealing with those emotions, but we need to be aware those experiences probably color the way we deal with the world around us.  What we are aware of, we are able to change (if we want to). 

Am writing this today to thank those good fathers.  To encourage all those potential father-figures out there to be aware how important you may be in a child’s life.  And to offer hope to those whose experiences were not good.  Remember — our histories have affected who we are, but we can recreate who we are and how we relate to those around us. 

Reading/Writing Blogs

I like reading about people.  When I was a kid I discovered the biography section in our school library, and I read every book in it.  Being an only child with a widowed (and not very outgoing) parent, I didn’t have much first-hand experience with how a range of people did things.  I watched people a lot, trying to figure out what worked, what didn’t, what their motives were, who was liked (and why) and who wasn’t (and why) — things like that.  But actual interaction with people was scary — what if I did something wrong?  So I discovered biographies and autobiographies, where I could read about people in the comfort of my room or sitting under a tree.  We’re talking the late 1950s/early 1960s here, so there were not a lot of kids books about women.  I learned a lot about Clara Barton, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Amelia Earhart, but there were more books about Teddy Roosevelt, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett, George Washington Carver, Luther Burbank — you get the picture.  Those last two especially fascinated me — people who worked with plants, and helped make the world a better place with food. 

By high school there were a lot more biographies with a lot more variety.  I also discovered newspaper columns, where people offered their opinions on a wide range of subjects.  I got better at questioning why people thought the way they did — where did they get their information, and what about their lives caused them to see things that way?  I also discovered the most interesting areas of any subject were the people.  What was daily life like for people in colonial America?  How did the war for independence affect their lives?  The broad sweeps of history were necessary but boring — I wanted to know the people side of things.  Even math and science (my worst subjects) were more interesting when I learned about the lives of mathematicians and scientists.

Meanwhile, the same observations of the little things in life were showing up in my letters.  One set of grandparents lived about a thousand miles away, so I wrote to them every week to keep in touch.  My mom used to ask what I had to write about that often, but the letters were always three to four pages long, and filled with information about school, or books I was reading, or what new plants were blooming in the yard.  I loved writing letters, and by high school I was writing to pen pals in other countries, and friends and relatives fighting in Vietnam.   I even had this crazy notion I’d like to be a writer someday.

Jump ahead about 30-35 years.  The only writing I did was letters, journals, and assignments for school.  There is a LOT more to read about people, though.  Books, magazines, TV shows with so much reality you want to puke, . . . and blogs.   Partly because my focus was on school at the time, I was a little late in discovering blogs.  I became envolved in a couple online communities, and got my reading-about-people fix that way.  Some of them mentioned having a blog, and since I enjoyed their online comments I visited their blogs.  It wasn’t long before I was hooked.  A friend mentioned a free service that monitors your favorite blogs and lets you know when they have a new entry, so I signed up for that.  [ http://www.google.com/reader ]  Eventually I branched out and read random blogs in my topics of interest, adding them to my list when their writing style appealed to me.  The blogs I read have different styles — while some are like newspaper columns, others are electronic journal entries, with interesting graphics and results of the latest “what type are you?” online quiz they have taken.  Those later are primarily friends with whom I already have a connection, and they make me smile.  :-)  Yet even then I am people-reading, because I genuinely want to know how they handle the problems in their day and what cheers them up. 

It is the opinion pieces I find most interesting, the ones where they share a current event or some fact about nature, and then write about their own thoughts or reactions.  Even when they write about their own lives, I find that fascinating, because it gives me a feel for why they think or act a certain way.  In my Women’s Studies classes they called this “standpoint,” because when we write, our opinions always affect what is said and how we say it, and it’s better to let people know where you stand right up front. 

So, that is why I read blogs.  Suspect I’ve been writing blogs ever since those letters to my grandparents.  I’ve given up on the published author idea (not enough drive), but I like this method of sharing thoughts with people and appreciate when they comment.   It’s like sitting around a table with my cohort in grad school, sharing ideas  :-)  (something I already miss). 

Now I’m curious about you — why do you read blogs?    

New Moon in Gemini

   Last month at the New Moon I wrote about my habit of using the Herbal Tarot (Tierra and Cantin, U.S. Games, 1993) to chose a card of advice for the month ahead (http://judithornot.wordpress.com/2007/05/16/new-moondark-moon/ ).  I dealt the Five of Wands, and yes, it was a month with some struggle involved.  But when you realize it is expected, it is easier to deal with, rather like flowing with the power directed against you and using it to your advantage (as in martial arts). 

This month the New Moon is in Gemini, so it seemed appropriate my card of advice came up as the Page of Swords.  (Gemini is an Air sign, and I associate Swords with Air.)  I dealt the card reversed; with this deck, I take that as indicating inner work. Some of the ideas Tierra and Cantin suggest for this card (from The Spirit of Herbs, which came with the deck) are

• a new start, with fresh ideas and thoughts
• sweeping away encumbrances, such as depession and negativity
• being ready for change and new possibilities
• being open to a new reality

What is fascinating is that all this fits in with books I’ve been reading lately by Machaelle Small Wright (Behaving as if the God in All Life Mattered, Dancing in the Shadows of the Moon, and The Mount Shasta Mission).  Much of it is about being open to new ideas, and being willing to change the way we see reality. 

Another interesting “coincidence” is that the herb Tierra and Cantin associate with the Page of Swords is dill (anethum graveolens).  I have been using flower essences since last September, and recently I’ve been testing positive for dill.  The essences I use are by Perelandra Ltd., and the blurb they write about dill says “It assists the individual in reclaiming balance in the area of personal power, thus resulting in a shift in his relationship with those around him” (Perelandra Essences Guide, p. 13).  Tierra and Cantin (back to The Spirit of Herbs) write, “It enables the user to bring out and show to the world her/his inner reality and spiritual aspirations.  It will calm the air element and help one to digest new thoughts coming through” (p. 181).  These ideas are so relevant to my life right now, and very encouraging — suggesting I am on the right path.

Looks like it will be a month of inner examination, and that I should be open for more changes.  Keeping that in mind, the affirmation I created is, “I sweep away negative thoughts to clear the way for a new reality.”  Will be interesting to see what this month brings. 

Global Warming

I remember celebrating the first Earth Day in 1970, my senior year in high school.  I rode my bike to school most of that year, even though I had a car.  I put away our electric can opener, and insisted we use the manual one, and went around turning off lights.  Five years later I moved to Northern California, and though I wouldn’t say we were exactly part of the back-to-the-land movement, we heated our home with waste wood, and learned creative ways of cooking what was then called “health food.”  At one point we lived in a bus.  One of the reasons we only had one child is because I was concerned about the ecological burden our increasing population was putting on the planet. 

Last week we bought Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and tonight we watched it.  While I can see improvement since 1970 in how the U.S. reacts to the idea of Reduce/Reuse/Recycle, sometimes I worry that we won’t be able to do enough . . . that there is too little time to make enough of a difference before things get really bad.  Gore’s movie, even while telling the inconvenient truths as they are (and they are scary!), is good about encouraging people to do things — suggesting there is still time.  I hope so.  You can get more ideas and information at www.climatecrisis.net  . 

Meanwhile, I have to contend with having a President who refuses to see truth on so many issues.   Sigh . . .     It is so sad and discouraging to have the rest of the world take global warming seriously, to make changes that benefit the planet AND their economy, and have him insist such a thing is not possible in the U.S.   This issue makes me very angry, and am trying hard to “keep a civil tongue,” but maybe that is the problem — there are too many of us keeping a civil tongue. 

At the G8 conference in Germany, all of the nations have decided to sign a declaration regarding a cutback in CO2 emissions — except the U.S.     If you want to read more about it, please go to

http://action.foe.org/dia/organizationsORG/foe/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=621

Friends of the Earth is putting together a petition to present to the delegations from other countries, letting them know we are ashamed of President Bush, and that he does not speak for us or the people of the United States.  I’ve signed it, and am encouraging everyone I know to do the same.    I love the United States, and want to continue living in this beautiful area.  But I’m tired of being ashamed of the current administration and the consumerist practices I see pushed down the throats of people around me. 

I used to belong to an organization that did a lot of camping, and one of their mottoes was to leave a site in better condition than it was when we got there.  I’m still hoping to do the same for planet Earth.

Kevin Smith rocks!

  There are artists who are a must-see for me when it comes to movies.  They might act in it, or write script or music for it, or whatever, but if they had anything to do with it, I will make an effort to see that movie.  Kevin Smith has become one of those artists.

Kevin Smith is a writer, director, actor, editor, producer, and probably has lots of other talents I know nothing about.  I first became familiar with his work during my undergrad days, when a professor showed “Chasing Amy” in one of my classes.  I raved about it to a friend, who encouraged me to watch “Clerks” and “Mallrats.”  (Warning: Those last two have a lot of profanity, but are nevertheless very funny and insightful — in weird ways.)  Kevin Smith wrote, directed, and acted in those movies, as well as “Dogma” — a wonderful commentary on religion and human nature. 

Must admit, I haven’t seen all Smith’s stuff, a lapse I hope to correct over the Summer.  I saw “Catch and Release” after it came out on DVD, a romantic comedy where Kevin plays the friend who constantly quotes the sayings on Celestial Seasoning tea boxes.  Frankly, he is the reason I have watched it over and over, because he is funny and touching and so REAL.  While at the movies recently, I discovered he is also in the movie-to-be-released-on-June-27, “Live Free or Die Hard,” the new Bruce Willis action flick.  I would have seen it anyway (to keep my husband company), but now I WANT to see it. 

Kevin Smith is based in New Jersey, and has a very East Coast feel about him (in interviews and such).  Sometimes his language is also more foul than I prefer.  But I’m willing to put up with these things, because he often says stuff that is both very funny and very true.  He is an interesting person.