Every Different Song

On top of Sehome Hill I sit at the controls of a radio station. Listen. To the east you can hear the steady current of traffic on I-5. Imagine that's a mountain river. I turn that down and dial up the sound of birds. Every different song tells me what's going on.

The Portland Parakeet Club

Oh yes, many moons ago in Portland I went into a café that had a new jukebox. They were all excited about it and asking people to bring in records to stock it. The next day I brought them the “Parakeet Training Record.” The girl at the counter was not enthused, in fact I don’t think it ever made it to the turntable, locked to the spindle, with the sound of a dime falling in and the crackling rush of a needle. That fate didn’t even occur to me—I was imagining the Portland Parakeet Club that would soon form, meeting once a week, gathered around the jukebox, everyone with a talkative little bird wearing a mortarboard hat.

college calendar

A relic from my first month at college! (Don't forget the library tour!) This will be appearing in the next Good Deed Rain book, a novel about college. Stay tuned for more about that.

out the window of our old Grant St. house

13 Chapters

13 Chapters of MRS. MAGNUSSON & FRIENDS

Miss Nelson!

page from Miss Nelson is Missing!

the best of friends

It’s funny, on Friday I stopped at the library and got Miss Nelson is Missing! by Harry Allard and James Marshall. To my surprise I realized there is a similarity between Miss Nelson and Mrs. Magnusson, the star of the latest Good Deed Rain book. I think they would be the best of friends.

A 1989 PBS Series

The new Good Deed Rain book is on the way!

Sehome Hill

Birds sing in waves the same way the breeze moves the flowers. The air is alive. Bees ring a rhododendron. There’s an alligator flopped in the path. I’m pretending it isn’t a broken log. I’m pretending the world in the woods on Sehome Hill is a dream. A junco comes to visit where I sit and whispers, then it laughs and flies away.

buttercups

monk

meditation

Sehome Hill

I went to top of Sehome Hill and sat on a rock and I heard a train of geese getting louder. Then I saw them in the leaves and they flew past at exactly my height. I picked up a marble snail and moved it off the trail. This weird bowery squirrel jittered and had a fit right in front of me. It looked like it was possessed by something so I took a different path. Watched a bumblebee an inch off the ground slowly come up to my shoe. Lots of birds singing. I passed a girl who might have been a robot. I went into Old Main to tear a scrap of paper off the bulletin board so I could write this down.

6 Million Dollars

It wasn’t that he had six million dollars, that’s what it cost to put him back together. Actually, he was quite poor. He had one tracksuit to wear and he lived above a garage in an alley. He barely got by on his government pension and when it rained he got a cramp in that bionic leg.

too long in the jungle

electric unicycle

What’s new with Good Deed Rain? Well, I have new 4 books stacked up and waiting for covers so they can be published. However, need help with confoundingly cryptic Photoshop to make the cover templates…Slowly learning how to ride that electric unicycle…Meanwhile, started writing a new novel which will be starring some familiar characters, a flying dog, and also a deity.

Allard & Marshall

One of my favorite dynamic duos is Harry Allard and James Marshall. They made some wonderful books together. Last week on lunchbreak I was reading The Stupids Die and laughing like a buffoon. Here's a Scholastic books link: http://www.judynewmanatscholastic.com/blog/2020/09/the_unique_creative/

The Mermaid Translator

5 year old Imagine

Another book that turns 5 years old! I CAN ONLY IMAGINE. Beautiful cover by artist Annabelle Barrett, also features her color illustrations inside. This book is a collection of five fantastic novels written from 1993-1995. I Can Only Imagine is a comedy about a dishwasher who falls in love with a revolutionary. Keep Up Your Spirits is set at the Angel Club, starring a 1940s musician who wears Okinawa glasses. The Sun Does Shine is about a romantic radio DJ saved from danger by Palomino Towing. White Russia is another surreal love story with typewriter bombs and a word factory at war. Rome Used to be The World stars Sherman Pond who turns into a giant and becomes the star of a Super-8 movie. The book is a zoom into imagination.

5 year old Planet

Here's another book from 5 years ago, DIFFERENT PLANET with the beautiful cover by artist Laura Vasyutynska. She's done a half dozen amazing covers for Good Deed Rain (and another one is in the works!). This book is a collection of 4 sort of science fiction/fantasy novels: The Next President (about the US president being reincarnated as an eel on Mars), The Schubert Story (about a man with a clone who meets a talking dog who sounds like Katherine Hepburn), Convenience (about life in a general store on a platform in outer space), and The Moss Temple (about a man who cleans moss off roofs during wartime). This is another wonder that was never seen by anyone, but you can still find a copy on Amazon. I sure enjoyed it, and I'm sure the future will discover it.

5 year old Orphanage

The Orphanage of Abandoned Teenagers novel was published 5 years ago! I remember loving this one, but I don't think anyone read it. Anyway, you can get it on Amazon for $4. Starring our noble hound too.

Robert Huck's Montana mural

p.150 from The Robert Huck Museum shows the right side of Huck's second and final mural painted in 1960 for a bank in Kalispell, Montana. Top image is Huck's first version of mural section, Middle image is the sketch for redesign, and at Bottom is the final version of mural section. Notice the people in the top original version have been replaced by agriculture.

Robert Huck's Portland mural

Robert Huck painted two public murals in the early 1960s, one in a Portland, Oregon hotel. This is the only image of it I could find.

Huck "Eagle" 1959

Huck watercolor

Here's another Huck artwork. You wouldn't believe how many there are, the book only scratches the surface.

Robert Huck "Antique Armor" 1958