As of today we have two weeks until Hanukkah starts and one month until Christmas day and Kwanzaa week. If you’re like me and enjoy crafty gift-giving, you could probably use some fresh, last-minute ideas. My all-time favorite place to browse (we own the book AND magazine if you want to investigate off-line) is the ReadyMade website. Barbara Jacobs at the American Library Association's Booklist writes:

"...From the pages of ReadyMade magazine appears this compendium of more than 30 projects making the most of recycled paper, plastic, wood, metal, glass, and fabric. Not content to simply show and tell, authors Berger (magazine editor in chief) and Hawthorne (magazine publisher and CEO) add their own funny commentary. Want to debate the utility of chopsticks versus forks? Need to research the manufacture and ingredients of polyester, say, or specific alloys? Desire non-do-it-yourself recycling ideas for some of the more than 730 pounds of paper an average American uses each year? Instructions are easy to follow, the tone is always engaging, and all the projects are practical (for instance, why not have a beer-can room divider or FedEx CD rack?). Appended are abbreviations, hardware screw sizes, conversions, and glossary."

My favorite ideas for what to give your office mates, babysitter, pet, mailman, neighbors, coach, day care provider—that one person whose name you can never remember—are the ReadyMade shrinkysheet designs. These are so cool.

"These are copies, right?"

"Um ... no. These are the real thing."

I imagine we'll be getting a lot of that when The Inspired Line opens this Friday. When exceptional and inexpensive image scanning meets loosely-used printmaking terminology, it's not unusual for people to confuse print reproductions with originals. Art marketing relies on you getting butterflies when the word "original" accompanies a work. To a collector it implies the piece they're buying is one-of-a-kind and therefore a more valuable investment. To a dealer, it means they can charge more. But original is a very broad term and can encompass everything from one (Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, ) to many (Gordon Parks' American Gothic photgraphs). So how do you tell the difference? What should you look for?

Designated by the Kansas State Legislature as the Official State Theatre of Kansas in 1992, The Jayhawk Theatre has been closed for more than thirty years. Plans to demolish the building have been thwarted repeatedly and a fund-raising campaign for full restoration is underway.

Having never been inside, I was especially interested in making reservations for a visit offered by Ghost Tours of Kansas, a guided walkabout through supposedly haunted spaces in both Topeka and Lawrence. Three days before Halloween, my friends and I paid $25 each to help save the theatre and maybe get lucky enough to see "the man in top hat and tuxedo" who frequently appears/disappears on the stage. Armed with cameras, twelve of us along with a local psychic/medium walked single file along an old hallway and into the cold and dusty past of the Jayhawk.

In addition to work and life pulling me in a hundred directions, there’s often a former professor, classmate or colleague asking if I’m working on anything new and if so, what. The answer is always the same: nothing worth showing at the moment but the ideas are piling up. There was a time when I looked down on artists who didn’t produce, who blamed family and work on their creative slump, and now I find myself in exactly the same predicament.

Fed up with talking about thinking, a friend and I went camping this past weekend and aside from my car battery dying (radio + KU/Colorado game + both doors open) we spent a desperately needed 48 hours away from the internet, e-mail, phone, traffic, neighbors, TV and assorted appliance humming. I brought my sketchbook, camera and new library book. Drew and I both agreed to allow each other time alone and it took nearly 18 hours to stop talking and laughing and branch off mentally to accomplish what we intended to do: think, write, not think, sketch, observe, snack, write, draw, think some more, walk alone, stare at nothing, stare at cows, close our eyes and simply be.

Why is this so obviously necessary but so impossibly hard to do?