Sometimes you just have to find the right place to write.  On a sunny beach. In a remote Colorado lake.  

Anywhere that inspires and doesn't get cell service!  Where's YOUR place?

This is the coolest thing!

Please check out this website:

As an enthusiastic scuba diver, I LOVE seeing what people do to preserve and in this case create reefs so generations can enjoy them! BUT more than that this is just a SUPER cool website!

http://www.underwatersculpture.com

FLUSH, THE FISH

When I was a boy, I was very industrious.

I tried my hand at many sales and marketing jobs (sold all things door to door and in my "snack shack" which I built out of pilfered wood from the housing construction sites near my house, tsk tsk.... I found enough nails left in the dirt outside the sites to put together a pretty impressive shack (all featured in my GP saga).


One thing I tried my hand at was a goldfish farm. I planned to sell them along with all of the candy, gum and other treats in my snack shack to my friends.

I bought some twenty goldfish bowls, calculated that each bowl would supply around fifty newbies and I would continue to build my farm. I supplied each with "verified" male and female fish and waited for them to make me UBER RICH!

One by one they all turned belly up and so did my fish industry (which happened to be in the basement next to the bathroom providing an easy burial.





To distance myself from the ever dying fishies emotionally, I didn't name the first two thousand* but then came upon a clever enough name. Every goldfish I owned from that point on, as well as the other varieties we would get when my own boys owned them were named FLUSH.


From these experiences has come a new picture book that is working its way from my brain to paper. It is called Flush, The Fish, which takes on two meanings depending on how you say that sentence.

Flush is a little albino fish (or the more politically correct way to say it is that he is actually pigmentally impaired) who prefers the backstroke to any other. This unusual fish is mistaken for any number of belly up fish who have somehow leached out their color into the still somewhat clear waters of their bowl, so the little fish farmer gives him his proper burial in the nearby commode. Flush goes whirling down into the underworld, underwater domain and the adventure begins...

NO, it is nothing like Finding Nemo!

Now back to the book!

*hyperbole

Favorite animal?

I am not sure why, but in the last month I have had four different kiddoes email me asking me what my favorite animal is. I love animals and of course favor my "pets", but of all the animals, the dolphin is my favorite for many reasons.

One of my favorite things to do is to scuba dive. I have seen many many underwater creatures; beautiful, strange and scary. The scariest was a four hundred pound potato grouper on a wreck off the Caymen Islands. The most graceful underwater and at the surface was the dolphin. When I was a kid I never missed Flipper, an old television show and always wanted to live on a boat and be a marine biologist, just not good enough at math and science. But the main reason was that I wanted to swim and befriend the dolphin!

I had one young lady write me back to tell me that your favorite animal says a lot about what kind of a person you are. A dolphin is the embodiment of freedom in the water. An intelligent creature whose understanding sometimes rivals the human species. A family was lost at sea after their yacht capsized near the coast of New Zealand. When the choppers finally found them (a spec in the sea) they were surrounded by numerous dolphins. The chopper pilot reported that below them were great white sharks and that the dolphins were diving and bumping them away from the human family. WOW! Flipper would be proud!

It's hard not to love a sea creature that cares the way I would hope my own species would. What is your favorite animal?